Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Plantar fascia-specific stretching versus radial shock-wave therapy as initial treatment of plantar fasciopathy.

BACKGROUND Whether plantar fascia-specific stretching or shock-wave therapy is effective as an initial treatment for proximal plantar fasciopathy remains unclear. The aim of this study was to test the null hypothesis of no difference in the effectiveness of these two forms of treatment for patients who had unilateral plantar fasciopathy for a maximum duration of six weeks and which had not been treated previously. METHODS One hundred and two patients with acute plantar fasciopathy were randomly assigned to perform an eight-week plantar fascia-specific stretching program (Group I, n = 54) or to receive repetitive low-energy radial shock-wave therapy without local anesthesia, administered weekly for three weeks (Group II, n = 48). All patients completed the seven-item pain subscale of the validated Foot Function Index and a patient-relevant outcome questionnaire. Patients were evaluated at baseline and at two, four, and fifteen months after baseline. The primary outcome measures were a mean change in the Foot Function Index sum score at two months after baseline, a mean change in item 2 (pain during the first few steps of walking in the morning) on this index, and satisfaction with treatment. RESULTS No difference in mean age, sex, weight, or duration of symptoms was found between the groups at baseline. At two months after baseline, the Foot Function Index sum score showed significantly greater changes for the patients managed with plantar fascia-specific stretching than for those managed with shock-wave therapy (p < 0.001), as well as individually for item 2 (p = 0.002). Thirty-five patients (65%) in Group I versus fourteen patients (29%) in Group II were satisfied with the treatment (p < 0.001). These findings persisted at four months. At fifteen months after baseline, no significant between-group difference was measured. CONCLUSIONS A program of manual stretching exercises specific to the plantar fascia is superior to repetitive low-energy radial shock-wave therapy for the treatment of acute symptoms of proximal plantar fasciopathy.
Mathematical Modeling in Tobacco Control Research: Initial Results From a Systematic Review.

OBJECTIVES The US Food and Drug Administration has expressed interest in using mathematical models to evaluate potential tobacco policies. The goal of this systematic review was to synthesize data from tobacco control studies that employ mathematical models. METHODS We searched five electronic databases on July 1, 2013 to identify published studies that used a mathematical model to project a tobacco-related outcome and developed a data extraction form based on the ISPOR-SMDM Modeling Good Research Practices. We developed an organizational framework to categorize these studies and identify models employed across multiple papers. We synthesized results qualitatively, providing a descriptive synthesis of included studies. RESULTS The 263 studies in this review were heterogeneous with regard to their methodologies and aims. We used the organizational framework to categorize each study according to its objective and map the objective to a model outcome. We identified two types of study objectives (trend and policy/intervention) and three types of model outcomes (change in tobacco use behavior, change in tobacco-related morbidity or mortality, and economic impact). Eighteen models were used across 118 studies. CONCLUSIONS This paper extends conventional systematic review methods to characterize a body of literature on mathematical modeling in tobacco control. The findings of this synthesis can inform the development of new models and the improvement of existing models, strengthening the ability of researchers to accurately project future tobacco-related trends and evaluate potential tobacco control policies and interventions. These findings can also help decision-makers to identify and become oriented with models relevant to their work.
Modeling Individual Decision for Collaboration and Implications for Intelligent Assistance

As collaboration has proven to be beneficial in learning environments, there has been an emerging interest in automating the formation of student groups. However, existing work focuses on optimal formations from the instructor’s perspective based on pedagogical criteria (e.g., maximal group productivity, avoiding orphans or unmatched students). In contrast, we propose a formal collaboration model from the student’s perspective using formation criteria that are important to individual students. As a consequence, resulting formations may contain groups of isolated students. We believe this result opens an opportunity to utilize the model in helping designers develop better adaptive systems for single users. To this end, we derive a formal model that explains why some users choose to collaborate while others choose to work independently. We implement this model and demonstrate in simulation the various factors involved in people’s choices in the context of collaborative story writing. Furthermore, we use this model as the basis of designing an adaptive story writing assistant for individual users and discuss the design implications for intelligent assistance in general.
Primary Leiomyosarcoma of the Adrenal Gland

We report a rare case of a primary leiomyosarcoma of the adrenal gland. A 73-year-old woman presented with an inferior vena cava syndrome. MR imaging was suggestive of a large tumour originating from the right adrenal gland. Angiography revealed a tumour vascularised by the right adrenal artery. At explorative laparotomy a tumour of 27 cm in diameter was found which was completely fixed to the liver; the tumour was therefore considered unresectable. As a consequence of the mechanical problems caused by this large tumour, the patient died 3 weeks after the operation. Autopsy revealed no distant metastases or other primary tumour site.
Development of method of optimized flavor production systems design based on nano-emulsification Kawista (Feronia limonia) Fruit extraction

‘Kawista’ (Feronia limonia) as a tropical fruit has unique flavor that can be applied as a flavor for food products. Flavor as volatile components are unstable by environment factors such as temperature and storage. Flavor nano emulsification form to improve the stability towards environment and increase its use in food products. Research carried out is system development of the nano emulsification Kawista extract flavor with sonication method. The best treatments are selected by Response Surface Methodology (RSM) for independent variable are amplitude (70-100%), time (90-150s) and temperature (5-45°C) controlled by the software of the device. The Flavor Extraction by maceration technique extended highest yield and flavor components. Nano-emulsions made with composition 1% (w/w) flavor extract, 2% (w/w) surfactant (tween 80), 0.25% Gum, and 96.75% (w/w) deionized water. The probe of sonication successfully for preparing stable O/W nano emulsions at amplitude, time and temperature 81.01%, 150s, 45°C, respectively. Characteristic of nano-emulsions i.e energy input (15.489J), viscosity (2.076 mPa.s), droplet size (13.446nm), and Polydispersity index (0.469).
Metamorphic Changes in Glycolipids and Myelin Proteins and 2′,3′‐Cyclic Nucleotide 3′‐Phosphohydrolase in Bullfrog and Axolotl Brains

Abstract: The metamorphic changes in levels of glycolipids and myelin proteins and 2′,3′‐cyclic nucleotide 3′‐phosphohydrolase (CNP) in the brains of bullfrog tadpoles, adult frogs, and axolotls were investigated, with particular emphasis on myelin maturation. The concentrations of cerebroside. sulfatide, and galactosyldiacylglycerol gradually increased from the onset of prometamorphosis throughout the active metamorphic period and then greatly increased after metamorphosis was completed. The ratio of glucocerebroside to galactocerebroside increased greatly in the prometamorphic period and then rapidly decreased to the frog level during the climax period. The fatty acid compositions of cerebroside and sulfatide showed a developmental change, with 24:1 being more predominant in the later metamorphic stage. The proportion of hydroxy fatty acids increased up to the onset of the prometamorphic stage and thereafter remained constant at ∼ 50% of the total. The CNP activity remained unchanged throughout metamorphosis at 60% that in frog myelin and increased in the adult frog. The composition of tadpole myelin proteins remained constant during metamorphosis, with large basic protein being the most abundant, and in the frog, proteolipid protein and large basic protein were present in comparable amounts. The two adult forms of axolotl, i.e., the neotenous and metamorphosed forms, exhibited almost identical myelin constituents, and CNP activity in the neotenous form amounted to one‐fifth that in the bullfrog. These results indicate that active biosynthesis of myelin marker components occurs as metamorphosis proceeds, but more pronounced changes of myelin components occur after metamorphosis is completed.
Realization of Electronically Tunable Currentmode First-order Allpass Filter and Its Application

This article presents a resistorless currentmode first� order allpass filter based on second generation current controlled current conveyors (CCCIIs). The features of the circuit are that: the pole frequency can be electronically controlled via the input bias current: the circuit description is very simple, consisting of 2 CCCIIs and single grounded capacitor, without any external resistors and component matching requirements. Consequently, the proposed circuit is very appropriate to further develop into an integrated circuit. Low input and high output impedances of the proposed configuration enable the circuit to be cascaded in currentmode without additional current buffers. The PSpice simulation results are depicted. The given results agree well with the theoretical anticipation. The application example as a currentmode quadrature oscillator is included.
Formation of Glaciers on Mars by Atmospheric Precipitation at High Obliquity

Surface conditions on Mars are currently cold and dry, with water ice unstable on the surface except near the poles. However, geologically recent glacierlike landforms have been identified in the tropics and the midlatitudes of Mars. The ice has been proposed to originate from either a subsurface reservoir or the atmosphere. We present high-resolution climate simulations performed with a model designed to simulate the present-day Mars water cycle but assuming a 45° obliquity as experienced by Mars a few million years ago. The model predicts ice accumulation in regions where glacier landforms are observed, on the western flanks of the great volcanoes and in the eastern Hellas region. This agreement points to an atmospheric origin for the ice and reveals how precipitation could have formed glaciers on Mars.
Versatile Surface Modification Using Polydopamine and Related Polycatecholamines: Chemistry, Structure, and Applications

Polydopamine and related polycatecholamines can be easily deposited onto almost any surface from mild, aqueous solution. This results in durable, nanoscale coatings that exhibit high biocompatibility and have useful chemical and electronic properties. Additionally, these materials can be readily chemically and physically modified, and consequently, they are used extensively for surface modification. This review investigates the formation and modification of polycatecholamines; how they adhere to surfaces; and the chemical, physical, and electronic properties of the resultant materials. There is also an exploration of the extraordinary array of applications in which these fascinating materials are employed.
The mass and dynamical state of Abell 2218

Abell 2218 is one of a handful of clusters in which X-ray and lensing analyses of the cluster mass are in strong disagreement. It is also a system for which X-ray data and radio measurements of the Sunyaev--Zel'dovich decrement have been combined in an attempt to constrain the Hubble constant. However, in the absence of reliable information on the temperature structure of the intracluster gas, most analyses have been carried out under the assumption of isothermality. We combine X-ray data from the ROSAT PSPC and the ASCA GIS instruments, enabling us to fit non-isothermal models, and investigate the impact that this has on the X-ray derived mass and the predicted Sunyaev--Zel'dovich effect. We find that a strongly non-isothermal model for the intracluster gas, which implies a central cusp in the cluster mass distribution, is consistent with the available X-ray data and compatible with the lensing results. At r<1 arcmin, there is strong evidence to suggest that the cluster departs from a simple relaxed model. We analyse the dynamics of the galaxies and find that the central galaxy velocity dispersion is too high to allow a physical solution for the galaxy orbits. The quality of the radio and X-ray data does not at present allow very restrictive constraints to be placed on H0. It is apparent that earlier analyses have underestimated the uncertainties involved. However, values greater than 50 km s−1 Mpc−1 are preferred when lensing constraints are taken into account.
Low Power Parylene‐Based Memristors with a Graphene Barrier Layer for Flexible Electronics Applications

Lowering the programing power consumption is of importance to capacitate high‐efficiency flexible neuromorphic electronics. However, this remains particularly challenging for organic flexible memristor due to its high reset current. Here a robust route is reported to capitalize on graphene with native nanopores as a barrier layer for the parylene‐based flexible memristors, eventually conferring the devices to be operated with ultralow reset current (<50 µA) and programming power consumption (<150 µW). The graphene‐integrated memristor device in the architecture of Al/graphene/parylene/W (G‐memristor) lowers the reset current by ≈47 times and the programming power consumption by ≈14 times, respectively, as compared with those without the graphene barrier layer. Intriguingly, the conductive atomic force microscope characterizations reveal the metallic filamentary‐type switching mechanism of these G‐memristor devices, in which the intrinsic nanopores on graphene impart the formation of finer conductive filaments between Al electrode and parylene layer while suppressing the diffusion of mass metal atoms across the architecture. The integration of nanopores graphene as the barrier layer of organic memristors offers a promising route to low‐power flexible neuromorphic computing electronics.
Brain Segmentation in Head CT Images

Brain segmentation in head computed tomography scans is essential for the development of computer-aided diagnostic methods for identifying the brain diseases. In this paper we present a hybrid framework to brain segmentation which joints region-based information based on watershed transform with clustering techniques. A pre-processing step is used to reduce the spatial resolution without losing important image information. An initial partitioning of the image into primitive regions is set by applying a rainfalling watershed algorithm on the image gradient magnitude. This initial partition is the input to a computationally efficient region segmentation process which produces the final segmentation. We have applied our approach on several head CT images and the results reveal the robustness and accuracy of this method.
Hotspot discovery algorithms in coverage selection model over VANETs

The RSU deployment algorithms to cover interest regions have emerged as promising areas of research in vehicular ad hoc networks. However, there is few research on the discovery of the interest regions. Besides, the deployment algorithms are usually proposed for either continuous coverage or sparse coverage. The wisdom of the model selection are rarely addressed. In this paper, we proposed a new algorithm to discover interest regions. A budget-constrained coverage selection algorithm is also presented to help network designers choose suitable coverage models to meet the budget and quality requirements. The algorithms are implemented on top of Ns2 and the simulations are carried out using SUMO and OpenStreet Maps. The performance comparison between our algorithm and other two clustering algorithms prove that our algorithm has a better performance in terms of contact time for both sparse coverage and continue coverage.
Tyrosine phosphorylation of BCR by FPS/FES protein-tyrosine kinases induces association of BCR with GRB-2/SOS

The human bcr gene encodes a protein with serine/threonine kinase activity, CDC24/dbl homology, a GAP domain, and an SH2-binding region. However, the precise physiological functions of BCR are unknown. Coexpression of BCR with the cytoplasmic protein-tyrosine kinase encoded by the c-fes proto-oncogene in Sf-9 cells resulted in stable BCR-FES protein complex formation and tyrosine phosphorylation of BCR. Association involves the SH2 domain of FES and a novel binding domain localized to the first 347 amino acids of the FES N-terminal region. Deletion of the homologous N-terminal BCR-binding domain from v-fps, a fes-related transforming oncogene, abolished transforming activity and tyrosine phosphorylation of BCR in vivo. Tyrosine phosphorylation of BCR in v-fps-transformed cells induced its association with GRB-2/SOS, the RAS guanine nucleotide exchange factor complex. These data provide evidence that BCR couples the cytoplasmic protein-tyrosine kinase and RAS signaling pathways.
Generating and reporting peak and cluster tables for voxel-wise inference in FSL

Mass universities analyses, in which a statistical test is performed at each voxel in the brain, is the most widespread approach to analyzing task-evoked functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) data. Such analyses identify the brain areas that are significantly activated in response to a given stimulus. In the literature, the significant areas are usually summarised by providing a table, listing, for each significant region, the 3D positions of the local maxima along with corresponding statistical values. This tabular output is provided by all the major as dsa dneuroimaging software packages including SPM, FSL and AFNI. Yet, in the HTML report generated by FSL, peak and cluster tables are only provided for one type of inference (cluster-wise inference) but not when a voxel-wise threshold is specified. In this project, we proposed an update for FSL to generate and report peak and cluster tables for voxel-wise inferences.
From Partial toward Full Parsing

Full-Parsing systems able to analyze sentences robustly and completely at an appropriate accuracy can be useful in many computer applications like information retrieval and machine translation systems. Increasing the domain of locality by using tree-adjoining-grammars (TAG) caused some researchers to use it as a modeling formalism in their language application. But parsing with a rich grammar like TAG faces two main obstacles: low parsing speed and a lot of ambiguous syntactical parses. In order to decrease the parse time and these ambiguities, we use an idea of combining statistical chunker based on TAG formalism, with a heuristically rule-based search method to achieve the full parses. The partial parses induced from statistical chunker are basically resulted from a system named supertagger, and are followed by two different phases: error detection and error correction, which in each phase, different completion heuristics apply on the partial parses. The experiments on Penn Treebank show that by using a trained probability model considerable improvement in full-parsing rate is achieved.
How Can a Cluster Policy Enhance Entrepreneurship? Evidence from the German ‘Bioregio’ Case

I investigate the mechanisms through which a cluster policy can enhance entrepreneurship defined as new venture creation. The paper is based on the study of a cluster policy (‘BioRegio’) that strongly simulated new firm creation in biotechnology in Germany after 1996. The process induced by BioRegio at the territory level is analyzed over a ten-year period (1995–2004). I identify a three-step social mechanism through which a cluster policy can enhance entrepreneurship. The presented results strengthen the literature on cluster policies and clusters on the specif c issue of entrepreneurship: four main contributions are suggested.
Second-Order Power Spectrum and Nonlinear Evolution at High Redshift

The Eulerian cosmological fluid equations are used to study the nonlinear mode coupling of density fluctuations. We evaluate the second-order power spectrum including all four-point contributions. In the weakly nonlinear regime we find that the dominant nonlinear contribution for realistic cosmological spectra is made by the coupling of long-wave modes and is well estimated by second order perturbation theory. For a linear spectrum like that of the cold dark matter model, second order effects cause a significant enhancement of the high $k$ part of the spectrum and a slight suppression at low $k$ near the peak of the spectrum. Our perturbative results agree well in the quasilinear regime with the nonlinear spectrum from high-resolution N-body simulations. We find that due to the long-wave mode coupling, characteristic nonlinear masses grow less slowly in time (i.e., are larger at higher redshifts) than would be estimated using the linear power spectrum. For the cold dark matter model at $(1+z)=(20,10,5,2)$ the nonlinear mass is about $(180,8,2.5,1.6)$ times (respectively) larger than a linear extrapolation would indicate, if the condition rms $\delta\rho/\rho =1$ is used to define the nonlinear scale. At high redshift the Press-Schechter mass distribution significantly underestimates the abundance of high-mass objects for the cold dark matter model. Although the quantitative results depend on the definition of the nonlinear scale, these basic consequences hold for any initial spectrum whose post-recombination spectral index $n$ decreases sufficiently rapidly with increasing $k$, a feature which arises quite generally during the transition from a radiation- to matter-dominated universe.
Building Reconstruction from Lidar Data

Since the traditional building extraction from the common optical images is highly labor-intensive, time-consuming and very expensive. With the wide use of LIDAR System, it is possible to acquire buildings in cities in a fast way. In this paper, we present a new method to detect the outline of buildings and how to reconstruct them based on works of other scholars in this area. Two main steps (building outline detection and building reconstruction) are described. An experimental study has been conducted. Our preliminary Experimental results indicate that the method is feasible.
Polar targeting of Shigella virulence factor IcsA in Enterobacteriacae and Vibrio

Asymmetric localization is key to the proper function of certain prokaryotic proteins important to virulence, chemotaxis, cell division, development, motility, and adhesion. Shigella IcsA is localized to the old pole of the bacterium, where it mediates assembly of an actin tail inside infected mammalian cells. IcsA (VirG) is essential to Shigella intracellular motility and virulence. We used translational fusions between portions of IcsA and the green fluorescent protein (GFP) to determine the regions of IcsA that are necessary and sufficient for its targeting to the bacterial old pole. An IcsA-GFP fusion that lacks a signal peptide localized to the old pole, indicating that signal peptide-mediated secretion is not required for polar localization. Two regions within IcsA were required for localization of an IcsA-GFP fusion to the old pole. Further characterization of these regions indicated that amino acids 1–104 and 507–620 were each independently sufficient for polar localization. Finally, when expressed in Escherichia coli, Salmonella typhimurium, Yersinia pseudotuberculosis, and Vibrio cholerae, each of the two targeting regions localized to the pole, indicating that the mechanism of polar targeting used by IcsA is present generally among Enterobacteriacae and Vibrio.