Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Critical Shoulder Angle is Predictive of Rotator Cuff Tears and Shoulder Osteoarthritis and is Better Assessed with Radiographs over MRI

Objectives: The critical shoulder angle (CSA) (Moor et al., Annual Meeting AAOS 2013) is measured as the angle between glenoid and lateral border of the acromion and has been associated with glenohumeral osteoarthritis (OA) as well as rotator cuff tears (RTC). The purpose of this study was to determine the reproducibility of the CSA for the detection of patients with RTC or OA by x-ray and to determine whether the CSA can also be measured with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Methods: In this IRB approved study, a pre-hoc power analysis was performed to determine sample size. The CSA was measured by x-ray and MRI in 3 age-matched groups of 10 patients each, consisting of a non-traumatic full-thickness RCT group, a non-traumatic and non-inflammatory OA group, and a non-RCT/non-OA-pathology group. All patients underwent routine x-rays with a standardized technique and had standard shoulder MRI’s in a 3.0T magnet. All pathologies were determined from pre-op imaging studies and were confirmed at surgery. Subjects were retrieved from a prospectively collected data registry. Three independent observers, one radiologist and 2 orthopedic surgeons, performed the measurements. CSA angles were measured using Stryker OfficePACS Power 4.1 Express Edition (Kalamozoo, MI). Results: The inter-observer correlation coefficients of the measurements done by x ray and MRI were 0.95 and 0.83, respectively. There were differences in the mean CSA’s among the three groups, measured by x-ray (ANOVA between RCT, OA, non-RCT/non-OA: p <0.001). MRI showed greater variability in the CSA measurements among observers and across pathologies. Radiographs were more predictive of pathology than MRI. For example, patients with CSAs greater than 35° had a 79.3% chance to be part of the RCT group when measured by x-ray, whereas the chance was only 69.0% using MRI. Those with angles less than 30° by x-ray had an 82.6% probability to be part of the OA group, whereas the probability dropped to 47.3% when the measurement was done by MRI. When the study groups were compared, no significant differences were seen in the mean CSAs by x-ray and MRI in the RCT and non-RCT/non-OA pathology group, 37.3±2.6° versus 36.4±1.9° (p = 0.24) and 32.7±2.5° versus 31.8±2.7 (p = 0.20), respectively. Whereas a significant difference was observed the OA group by x-ray 28.7±2.2° versus 31.3±4.4 by MRI (p = 0.01), although the trend remained for a lower CSA in OA. Conclusion: The CSA measured by x-ray showed excellent inter-observer agreement and less variability than measurements done by MRI, especially in patients with OA. The CSA was also highly diagnostic for predicting RCT’s and OA of the shoulder. This study furthermore confirms the work of Moor and Gerber and suggests that there may be biomechanical and anthropomorphic components that underlie these shoulder disorders. CSA may also have effects on clinical outcome after surgical treatment. Furthermore, novel surgical procedures might be able to affect the CSA to hasten or prevent progression of RCT’s or OA.
The Montreal Cognitive Assessment to Screen for Cognitive Impairment in HIV Patients Older Than 60 Years

Abstract:Progress in HIV treatments has led to HIV-infected patients living into their 60s and older. Because HIV-associated neurocognitive disorder (HAND) in older age is associated with more executive dysfunction, cognitive screening instruments tapping this domain may be optimal. We examined the Montreal Cognitive Assessment to identify HAND in 67 HIV-infected patients older than 60 years, of which 40% were diagnosed with HAND. Receiver operating characteristic curve identified an optimal cutpoint of ⩽ 25 for HAND with a sensitivity of 72% and specificity of 67%. We conclude that the Montreal Cognitive Assessment has only moderate performance characteristics for cognitive screening of HIV-infected elders.
Characterization of eight polymorphic microsatellite loci for the giant grouper (Epinephelus lanceolatus Bloch)

Eight polymorphic microsatellite loci were isolated and characterized using a small insert genomic DNA library for the giant grouper (Epinephelus lanceolatus Bloch, 1790), a commercially valuable marine fish in tropical waters. They showed polymorphism information content ranging from 0.177 to 0.775, allele numbers ranging from two to 10, effective allele numbers ranging from 1.227 to 5.012, and observed and expected heterozygosities from 0.2 to 0.733 and from 0.185 to 0.801, respectively, which we anticipate will be useful for population genetic studies of the giant grouper.
Factors underlying observed injury rate differences between temporary workers and permanent peers

BACKGROUND Temporary workers face increased risk of injury as compared to permanent workers in similar occupations. This study explores the role played by several potential risk factors. METHODS Injured temporary and permanent workers, matched by industry, tenure and demographic characteristics, were interviewed to isolate the association of temporary employment with several injury risk factors. RESULTS Temporary workers had higher workers' compensation claims rates than their permanent worker-peers. In interviews temporary workers a reported a lower frequency of exposure to hazards. However, they also reported being less likely to be equipped to cope with hazards by such countermeasures as experience screening, safety training and task control. CONCLUSION Policies are needed to improve screening and training of temporary workers to assigned tasks, to discourage job-switching, to improve temporary workers' hazard awareness, to protect their right to report unsafe conditions. The responsibilities of agencies and host employers for ensuring the safety of their temporary workers need clarification in regulatory policy.
Chikungunya Virus Induces IPS-1-Dependent Innate Immune Activation and Protein Kinase R-Independent Translational Shutoff

ABSTRACT Chikungunya virus (CHIKV) is an arthritogenic mosquito-transmitted alphavirus that is undergoing reemergence in areas around the Indian Ocean. Despite the current and potential danger posed by this virus, we know surprisingly little about the induction and evasion of CHIKV-associated antiviral immune responses. With this in mind we investigated innate immune reactions to CHIKV in human fibroblasts, a demonstrable in vivo target of virus replication and spread. We show that CHIKV infection leads to activation of the transcription factor interferon regulatory factor 3 (IRF3) and subsequent transcription of IRF3-dependent antiviral genes, including beta interferon (IFN-β). IRF3 activation occurs by way of a virus-induced innate immune signaling pathway that includes the adaptor molecule interferon promoter stimulator 1 (IPS-1). Despite strong transcriptional upregulation of these genes, however, translation of the corresponding proteins is not observed. We further demonstrate that translation of cellular (but not viral) genes is blocked during infection and that although CHIKV is found to trigger inactivation of the translational molecule eukaryotic initiation factor subunit 2α by way of the double-stranded RNA sensor protein kinase R, this response is not required for the block to protein synthesis. Furthermore, overall diminution of cellular RNA synthesis is also observed in the presence of CHIKV and transcription of IRF3-dependent antiviral genes appears specifically blocked late in infection. We hypothesize that the observed absence of IFN-β and antiviral proteins during infection results from an evasion mechanism exhibited by CHIKV that is dependent on widespread shutoff of cellular protein synthesis and a targeted block to late synthesis of antiviral mRNA transcripts.
Fast multi-view face alignment via multi-task auto-encoders

Face alignment is an important problem in computer vision. It is still an open problem due to the variations of facial attributes (e.g., head pose, facial expression, illumination variation). Many studies have shown that face alignment and facial attribute analysis are often correlated. This paper develops a two-stage multi-task Auto-encoders framework for fast face alignment by incorporating head pose information to handle large view variations. In the first and second stages, multi-task Auto-encoders are used to roughly locate and further refine facial landmark locations with related pose information, respectively. Besides, the shape constraint is naturally encoded into our two-stage face alignment framework to preserve facial structures. A coarse-to-fine strategy is adopted to refine the facial landmark results with the shape constraint. Furthermore, the computational cost of our method is much lower than its deep learning competitors. Experimental results on various challenging datasets show the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Donors succeed by making themselves obsolete : Compartamos taps financial markets in Mexico

The support of international and Mexican donors helped Financiera Compartamos grow from a small, non-governmental organization to the largest microfinance institution in Latin America, raising funds in the financial markets while maintaining an unswerving commitment to serving poor women. This report is a case study describing the development of Compartamos, the donor funding that that financed its growth to self-sufficiency, how it built technical capacity, and how it attained success in financial markets.
Information access and relevance affects adoption decision: rethinking adopter categorization.

Adopters of innovations have been habitually classified into categories ranging from innovators to laggards. The term 'laggards' have often been used by extension agents to explain why farmers 'resist' change. But are these categorization justified merely because of individual adopter's risk perceptions or are there other exogenous variables relating to information access that play significant roles to determine adoption decision? This paper analyzed the effect of information access, cost, relevance and knowledge utilization on adoption decision using empirical data obtained from two geopolitical division of Nigeria. Results revealed that information access was a major constraint among the respondents. Only about eighteen percent had complete information access relating to diverse information needs, 47% had no relevant information access. Those who had information access were majorly the innovators/early adopters (84%), the laggards recorded the lowest complete information access (0.9%). Disseminated information was also perceived differently among the adopter groups. Only respondents who perceived disseminated information as relevant to current agricultural needs were more disposed to utilize it than the contrary. Results indicated that there was a strong correlation between adopter categories and information access, information relevance and information cost. Hence, it is unjustified to regard individual adopters as laggards or imply that farmers resist change except there is a justifiable evidence to prove that adopters possess similar level of information in comparable socioeconomic environment. Even at that it is still necessary to determine what might have influenced overt decision during the process of information management.
Speeding Up A* Search on Visibility Graphs Defined Over Quadtrees to Enable Long Distance Path Planning for Unmanned Surface Vehicles

We introduce an algorithm for long distance path planning in complex marine environments. The available free space in marine environments changes over time as a result of tides, environmental restrictions, and weather. As a result of these considerations, the free space region in marine environments needs to be dynamically generated and updated. The approach presented in this paper demonstrates that it is feasible to compute optimal paths using A* search on visibility graphs defined over quadtrees. Our algorithm exploits quadtree data structures for efficiently computing tangent edges in visibility graphs. We have developed an admissible heuristic that accounts for large islands while estimating the cost-to-go and provides a better lower bound than the Euclidean distance-based heuristic. During the search over visibility graphs, the branching factor of A* can be large due to the large size of the region. We introduce the idea of focusing the search by limiting the child nodes to be in certain regions of the workspace. Our results show that focusing the search significantly improves the computational efficiency without any noticeable degradation in path quality. We have also developed a method to estimate bounds on how far the computed path can be from the optimal path when methods for focusing the search are utilized for speeding up the computation.
Simulation of Novel Linear Inductive Displacement Sensor

One of the displacement measurement methods is using inductive sensors, usable for both small and large displacement. In this paper a 3-D linear inductive displacement sensor has been introduced. The proposed sensor consists of 2 elements that can measure 5cm with accuracy of 100ìm in large scale measurement. The first part is a coil and the second is a movable core that moves within the coil and it operate like differential pair. For transforming the value of varying in inductance that is in the result of approaching the target to the sensor, inductance varying is transformed to the voltage varying in vet son bridge circuit and finally, the value of displacement can be obtain.
Screening for Intratubular Germ Cell Neoplasia of the Testis Using OCT4 Immunohistochemistry

Specific populations of patients are at high risk for the development of germ cell neoplasia. OCT4 has been shown to be a sensitive and specific marker for intratubular germ cell neoplasia of the testis. Whether or not OCT4 immunohistochemistry is a clinically useful screening tool in patients at risk for developing malignant germ cell tumors is not currently known. We undertook immunohistochemical staining for OCT4 in a large series of patients who underwent testicular biopsy or orchiectomy for reasons other than for management of a testicular mass suspicious for malignancy (infertility, cryptorchidism, atrophic testicle, etc.). OCT4 nuclear staining was identified in germ cells in 6 of 157 patients, all of whom had clinical risk factors for the development of testicular germ cell tumors. Two of the 6 patients were under 1.5 years of age, making the significance of OCT4 positivity less certain in these cases. The remaining patients with OCT4-positive germ cells consisted of 3 adults and 1 7-year-old child. Intratubular germ cell neoplasia was identified by light microscopy in only 1 of the 6 OCT4-positive cases. OCT4 immunostaining was negative in all patients who presented with infertility and who had no additional germ cell tumor risk factors. OCT4 immunohistochemistry may be useful in identifying early forms of preinvasive germ cell neoplasia in patients with risk factors for the development of malignant testicular germ cell tumors. The low incidence of OCT4 positivity in the adult infertility patients argues against the routine use of OCT4 immunostains in testicular biopsies for infertility unless additional risk factors are present.
The Case for Automatic Database Administration using Deep Reinforcement Learning

Like any large software system, a full-fledged DBMS offers an overwhelming amount of configuration knobs. These range from static initialisation parameters like buffer sizes, degree of concurrency, or level of replication to complex runtime decisions like creating a secondary index on a particular column or reorganising the physical layout of the store. To simplify the configuration, industry grade DBMSs are usually shipped with various advisory tools, that provide recommendations for given workloads and machines. However, reality shows that the actual configuration, tuning, and maintenance is usually still done by a human administrator, relying on intuition and experience. Recent work on deep reinforcement learning has shown very promising results in solving problems, that require such a sense of intuition. For instance, it has been applied very successfully in learning how to play complicated games with enormous search spaces. Motivated by these achievements, in this work we explore how deep reinforcement learning can be used to administer a DBMS. First, we will describe how deep reinforcement learning can be used to automatically tune an arbitrary software system like a DBMS by defining a problem environment. Second, we showcase our concept of NoDBA at the concrete example of index selection and evaluate how well it recommends indexes for given workloads.
Spatial regularization based on dMRI to solve EEG/MEG inverse problem

In this paper, we present a new approach to reconstruct dipole magnitudes of a distributed source model for magnetoencephalographic (MEG) and electroencephalographic (EEG). This approach is based on the structural homogeneity of the cortical regions which are obtained using diffusion MRI (dMRI). First, we parcellate the cortical surface into functional regions using structural information. Then, we use a weighting matrix that relates the dipoles' magnitudes of sources inside these functional regions. The weights are based on the region's structural homogeneity. Results of the simulated and real MEG measurement are presented and compared to classical source reconstruction methods.
Demographics, Experience, and Perceptions of Information Quality on the World Wide Web

Little empirical research on users’ perceptions of the information quality of the World Wide Web has been conducted. This study examines users’ perceptions of the quality of information found on the World Wide Web. The effect of demographic differences (age, gender, and education) and differences in experience (computer experience, Internet experience, experience conducting research using the Internet, and work experience) on users’ perceptions of the information quality of the World Wide Web are examined. Undergraduate and graduate students were surveyed using an instrument that builds on prior research by Wang and Strong (1996) identifying fifteen dimensions of data quality. Measures of demographic characteristics and experience were added to the survey. The findings will provide a basis for the development of interventions to sensitize users of the World Wide Web to information quality issues.
DETERMINANTS OF CAPITAL STRUCTURE: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF VIETNAMESE LISTED FIRMS

This study examines the factors that potentially affect the financial leverage of listed firms on Vietnamese stock exchanges, and identifies the key determinants of the capital structure of these firms. The paper also explores the capital structure theories and how they explain capital structure decisions of firms worldwide and in Vietnam. Based on a sample of 183 non-financial publiclytraded firms from 2009 to 2013, this study uses the estimation method with fixed-effects model (FEM) to deliver the most reliable factors, and a pooled OLS method to assess the impacts of industry classification. The initial nineteen explanatory variables represent the factors that potentially determine capital structure: business risk, profitability, firm size, growth opportunities, tangibility of assets, uniqueness of assets, taxes, non-debt tax shields, industry condition, stock market condition, debt market condition, and macroeconomic condition. This study identifies that the most reliable and important factors that determine the use of debt by Vietnamese listed firms are firm size (+), inflation rate (+) as a proxy for macroeconomic condition, tangibility of assets (+), business risk (+), stock market return (+) as a proxy for stock market condition; followed by the moderately influential factors, including profitability (–), growth opportunities (–/+), industry mean leverage (+) as a proxy for industry condition, average lending rate (+/–) as a proxy for debt market condition, and uniqueness of assets (+). This study maintains that industry classification plays an important role in a firm’s leverage. There is strong evidence of a higher level of debt for firms belonging to Construction, Construction Materials, Real Estate industries and Mineral industries, followed by Manufacturing, Steel, and Plastics and Packaging industries. Whether or not firms belong in highly regulated industries also affects their capital structure.
Environmental accounting in China: the case of a medium sized Chinese state owned enterprise

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the discussions about the radical change that is required if any notion of sustainability is to hold in the future. It is hypothesised that developments in environmental sustainability accounting are likely to take place in China because it has both a tradition of harmony in its predominant philosophical schools and it has a political system based on strong government that is able to shape approaches to sustainability. Design/methodology/approach –The paper contains a synthesis of the literature on environmental accounting and on episteme change. Using a Foucauldian epistemic framework and method, a case of a Chinese state owned enterprise is examined for evidence of developments in environmental accounting and of the attitudes of the accountants implementing changes to the accounting systems to incorporate such developments. Findings – Developments in environmental accounting are found to mirror the developments in environmental management more generally. The influences on these developments are found to be rooted in a life-centred morality based on Chinese philosophy, invention using new technologies, removal of some of the barriers caused by specialisation and an awareness of issues linked to anthropocosmic (rather than anthropocentric) notions of world order. Practical implications – A case such as this opens the door for Chinese organisations to move towards environmental sustainability and its associated accounting in ways that are not mimetic of practices in other parts of the world (i.e. the West). This means that China could lead the world in new approaches to accounting for sustainability that do more than reduce organisations’ short term reputational risk. Originality/value – This paper builds on the theoretical work on episteme change and the possibility of a new primal episteme by applying it to a Chinese organisation so as to test the theory as developed originally by Foucault.