Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An In Vitro Evaluation of Alumina, Zirconia, and Lithium Disilicate Surface Roughness Caused by Two Scaling Instruments

PURPOSE Plaque control is crucial for the prevention of inflammatory periodontal disease. Hand scaling instruments have been shown to be efficient for the removal of plaque; however, routine periodontal prophylactic procedures may modify the surface profile of restorative materials. The purpose of this study was to assess in vitro the changes in roughness of alumina, zirconia, and lithium disilicate surfaces treated by two hand scaling instruments. MATERIALS AND METHODS Forty-eight alumina specimens, 48 zirconia specimens, and 48 lithium disilicate specimens, were selected. All specimens were divided into three groups of 16 each; one group for each material was considered the control group and no scaling procedures were performed; the second group of each material was exposed to scaling with steel curettes simulating standard clinical conditions; the third group of each material was exposed to scaling with titanium curettes. After scaling, the surface roughness of the specimens was evaluated with a profilometer. First, a statistical test was carried out to evaluate the difference in surface roughness before the scaling procedure of the three materials was effected (Kruskal-Wallis test). Subsequently, the effect of curette material (steel and titanium) on roughness difference and roughness ratio was analyzed throughout the entire sample and within each material group, and a nonparametric test for dependent values was conducted (Wilcoxon signed-rank test). Finally, the roughness ratios of the three material groups were compared by means of a Kruskal-Wallis test and a Wilcoxon signed-rank test. Upon completion of profilometric evaluation, representative specimens from each group were prepared for SEM evaluation to evaluate the effects of the two scaling systems on the different surfaces qualitatively. RESULTS After scaling procedure, the roughness profile value increased in all disks. Classifying the full sample according to curette used, the roughness of the disks treated with a steel curette reached a higher median value than that of the titanium group. Zirconia demonstrated the least significant increase in surface roughness. The result was 3.9 times of the initial value as compared to 4.3 times for alumina and 4.6 times for lithium disilicate. CONCLUSIONS Comparison of profilometer readings before and after instrumentation, carried out with different hand scaling instruments, highlighted both a statistically and clinically relevant increase in material roughness.
Enhanced muscle blood flow with intermittent pneumatic compression of the lower leg during plantar flexion exercise and recovery.

This study tested the hypothesis that intermittent compression of the lower limb would increase blood flow during exercise and postexercise recovery. Data were collected from 12 healthy individuals (8 men) who performed 3 min of standing plantar flexion exercise. The following three conditions were tested: no applied compression (NoComp), compression during the exercise period only (ExComp), and compression during 2 min of standing postexercise recovery. Doppler ultrasound was used to determine superficial femoral artery (SFA) blood flow responses. Mean arterial pressure (MAP) and cardiac stroke volume (SV) were assessed using finger photoplethysmography, with vascular conductance (VC) calculated as VC = SFA flow/MAP. Compared with the NoComp condition, compression resulted in increased MAP during exercise [+3.5 ± 4.1 mmHg (mean ± SD)] but not during postexercise recovery (+1.6 ± 5.9 mmHg). SV increased with compression during both exercise (+4.8 ± 5.1 ml) and recovery (+8.0 ± 6.6 ml) compared with NoComp. There was a greater increase in SFA flow with compression during exercise (+52.1 ± 57.2 ml/min) and during recovery (+58.6 ± 56.7 ml/min). VC immediately following exercise was also significantly greater in the ExComp condition compared with the NoComp condition (+0.57 ± 0.42 ml·min-1·mmHg-1), suggesting the observed increase in blood flow during exercise was in part because of changes in VC. Results from this study support the hypothesis that intermittent compression applied during exercise and recovery from exercise results in increased limb blood flow, potentially contributing to changes in exercise performance and recovery. NEW & NOTEWORTHY Blood flow to working skeletal muscle is achieved in part through the rhythmic actions of the skeletal muscle pump. This study demonstrated that the application of intermittent pneumatic compression during the diastolic phase of the cardiac cycle, to mimic the mechanical actions of the muscle pump, accentuates muscle blood flow during exercise and elevates blood flow during the postexercise recovery period. Intermittent compression during and after exercise might have implications for exercise performance and recovery.
Algorithms for Large-Scale Astronomical Problems

Modern astronomical and cosmological datasets are getting larger and larger, including billions of astronomical objects and taking up terabytes of disk space. However, many classical astrophysics applications do not scale to such data volumes, which raise the question: Can we use modern computer science techniques to help astrophysicists analyze large datasets? In order to answer the question, we have applied distributed computing techniques and developed algorithms to provide fast scalable solutions. In this report we introduce our initial works on three astrophysics applications:  We have developed a distributed version of the Friends-of-Friends technique, which is a standard astronomical application for analyzing clusters of galaxies. The distributed procedure can process tens of billions of objects, which makes it sufficiently powerful for modern astronomical datasets and cosmological simulations.  The computation of correlation functions is a standard cosmological application for analyzing the distribution of matter in the universe. We have studied several approaches to this problem and developed an approximation procedure based on a combination of these approaches, which scales to massive datasets.  When astronomers analyze telescope images, they match the observed objects to the catalog. We have developed a matching procedure that maintains a catalog with billions of objects and processes millions of observed objects per second. I propose to extend our existing solutions, as well as address several new problems.
On the Progress of Scanning Transmission Electron Microscopy (STEM) Imaging in a Scanning Electron Microscope

Abstract Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) with low-energy electrons has been recognized as an important addition to the family of electron microscopies as it may avoid knock-on damage and increase the contrast of weakly scattering objects. Scanning electron microscopes (SEMs) are well suited for low-energy electron microscopy with maximum electron energies of 30 keV, but they are mainly used for topography imaging of bulk samples. Implementation of a scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) detector and a charge-coupled-device camera for the acquisition of on-axis transmission electron diffraction (TED) patterns, in combination with recent resolution improvements, make SEMs highly interesting for structure analysis of some electron-transparent specimens which are traditionally investigated by TEM. A new aspect is correlative SEM, STEM, and TED imaging from the same specimen region in a SEM which leads to a wealth of information. Simultaneous image acquisition gives information on surface topography, inner structure including crystal defects and qualitative material contrast. Lattice-fringe resolution is obtained in bright-field STEM imaging. The benefits of correlative SEM/STEM/TED imaging in a SEM are exemplified by structure analyses from representative sample classes such as nanoparticulates and bulk materials.
The Revolving Hospital Door: Hospital Readmissions Among Patients Who Are Homeless

Background:National attention is increasingly focused on hospital readmissions. Little prior research has examined readmissions among patients who are homeless. Objective:The aim of the study was to determine 30-day hospital readmission rates among patients who are homeless and examine factors associated with hospital readmissions in this population. Methods:We conducted a retrospective chart review of patients who were homeless and hospitalized at a single urban hospital from May–August 2012. Homelessness was identified by an electronic medical record flag and confirmed by manual chart review. The primary outcome was all-cause hospital readmission to the study hospital within 30 days of hospital discharge. Patient-level and hospitalization-level factors associated with risk for readmission were examined using generalized estimating equations. Results:There were 113 unique patients who were homeless and admitted to the hospital a total of 266 times during the study period. The mean age was 49 years, 27.4% of patients were women, and 75.2% had Medicaid. Half (50.8%) of all hospitalizations resulted in a 30-day hospital inpatient readmission and 70.3% resulted in either an inpatient readmission, observation status stay, or emergency department visit within 30 days of hospital discharge. Most readmissions occurred early after hospital discharge (53.9% within 1 week, 74.8% within 2 weeks). Discharge to the streets or shelter versus other living situations was associated with increased risk for readmission in multivariable analyses. Conclusions:Patients who were homeless had strikingly high 30-day hospital readmission rates. These findings suggest the urgent need for further research and interventions to improve postdischarge care for patients who are homeless.
Implementing O(N) N-Body Algorithms Efficiently in Data-Parallel Languages

The optimization techniques for hierarchical O(N) N-body algorithms described here focus on managing the data distribution and the data references, both between the memories of different nodes and within the memory hierarchy of each node. We show how the techniques can be expressed in data-parallel languages, such as High Performance Fortran (HPF) and Connection Machine Fortran (CMF). The effectiveness of our techniques is demonstrated on an implementation of Anderson's hierarchical O(N) N-body method for the Connection Machine system CM-5/5E. Of the total execution time, communication accounts for about 10-20% of the total time, with the average efficiency for arithmetic operations being about 40% and the total efficiency (including communication) being about 35%. For the CM-5E, a performance in excess of 60 Mflop/s per node (peak 160 Mflop/s per node) has been measured.
The landscape of microbial phenotypic traits and associated genes

Bacteria and Archaea display a variety of phenotypic traits and can adapt to diverse ecological niches. However, systematic annotation of prokaryotic phenotypes is lacking. We have therefore developed ProTraits, a resource containing ∼545 000 novel phenotype inferences, spanning 424 traits assigned to 3046 bacterial and archaeal species. These annotations were assigned by a computational pipeline that associates microbes with phenotypes by text-mining the scientific literature and the broader World Wide Web, while also being able to define novel concepts from unstructured text. Moreover, the ProTraits pipeline assigns phenotypes by drawing extensively on comparative genomics, capturing patterns in gene repertoires, codon usage biases, proteome composition and co-occurrence in metagenomes. Notably, we find that gene synteny is highly predictive of many phenotypes, and highlight examples of gene neighborhoods associated with spore-forming ability. A global analysis of trait interrelatedness outlined clusters in the microbial phenotype network, suggesting common genetic underpinnings. Our extended set of phenotype annotations allows detection of 57 088 high confidence gene-trait links, which recover many known associations involving sporulation, flagella, catalase activity, aerobicity, photosynthesis and other traits. Over 99% of the commonly occurring gene families are involved in genetic interactions conditional on at least one phenotype, suggesting that epistasis has a major role in shaping microbial gene content.
Genome-Wide Exome Analysis of Cmv5-Disparate Mouse Strains that Differ in Host Resistance to Murine Cytomegalovirus Infection

Host resistance to murine cytomegalovirus (MCMV) varies in different strains of laboratory mice due to differences in expression of determinants that control and clear viral infection. The major histocompatibility complex class I Dk molecule is one such determinant that controls MCMV through the action of natural killer (NK) cells. However, the extent of NK cell–mediated Dk-dependent resistance to infection varies in different mouse strains. The molecular genetic basis of this variation remains unclear. Previous work to examine the Dk effect on MCMV resistance in MA/My × C57L offspring discovered multiple quantitative trait loci (QTL) that may serve to modify NK cells or their capacity to respond during MCMV infection. One QTL in particular, Cmv5, was found to regulate the frequency of NK cells and secondary lymphoid organ structure in spleen during MCMV infection. Cmv5 alleles, however, have not been identified. We therefore sequenced and analyzed genome-wide exome (GWE) variants, including those aligned to the critical genetic interval, in Cmv5-disparate mouse strains. Their GWE variant profiles were compared to assess strain-specific sequence data integrity and to analyze mouse strain relatedness across the genome. GWE content was further compared against data from the Mouse Genomes Project. This approach was developed as a platform for using GWE variants to define genomic regions of divergence and similarity in different mouse strains while also validating the overall quality of GWE sequence data. Moreover, the analysis provides a framework for the selection of novel QTL candidate sequences, including at the Cmv5 critical region.
Quantum-Behaved Particle Swarm Optimization: Analysis of Individual Particle Behavior and Parameter Selection

Quantum-behaved particle swarm optimization (QPSO), motivated by concepts from quantum mechanics and particle swarm optimization (PSO), is a probabilistic optimization algorithm belonging to the bare-bones PSO family. Although it has been shown to perform well in finding the optimal solutions for many optimization problems, there has so far been little analysis on how it works in detail. This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the QPSO algorithm. In the theoretical analysis, we analyze the behavior of a single particle in QPSO in terms of probability measure. Since the particle's behavior is influenced by the contraction-expansion (CE) coefficient, which is the most important parameter of the algorithm, the goal of the theoretical analysis is to find out the upper bound of the CE coefficient, within which the value of the CE coefficient selected can guarantee the convergence or boundedness of the particle's position. In the experimental analysis, the theoretical results are first validated by stochastic simulations for the particle's behavior. Then, based on the derived upper bound of the CE coefficient, we perform empirical studies on a suite of well-known benchmark functions to show how to control and select the value of the CE coefficient, in order to obtain generally good algorithmic performance in real world applications. Finally, a further performance comparison between QPSO and other variants of PSO on the benchmarks is made to show the efficiency of the QPSO algorithm with the proposed parameter control and selection methods.
Efficient and fair scheduler of multiple resources for MapReduce system

Scheduling tasks close to their data and optimising resources utilisation are both crucial for the efficiency of MapReduce system. On the other hand, there is a conflict between fairness and efficiency. In this study, an efficient and dominant resource held time fairness (EHTF) scheduler is presented, in which the efficient utilisation of resources, data locality and fairness are addressed simultaneously. In EHTF scheduler, the authors introduce the concept of ‘coarse-grained fairness’ to improve the efficiency of MapReduce system. For each scheduling, several tasks from different jobs can be assigned to the free slot without violating the coarse-grained fairness doctrine. To determine the best task from these several tasks in each scheduling step, a score model is proposed by taking into consideration both resources utilisation and data locality. The authors describe the design and implementation of EHTF scheduler. The authors’ experimental results show that EHTF achieves more fairness and better throughput than Fair and Quincy schedulers.
Discovery of novel heart rate-associated loci using the Exome Chip

Abstract Resting heart rate is a heritable trait, and an increase in heart rate is associated with increased mortality risk. Genome-wide association study analyses have found loci associated with resting heart rate, at the time of our study these loci explained 0.9% of the variation. This study aims to discover new genetic loci associated with heart rate from Exome Chip meta-analyses. Heart rate was measured from either elecrtrocardiograms or pulse recordings. We meta-analysed heart rate association results from 104 452 European-ancestry individuals from 30 cohorts, genotyped using the Exome Chip. Twenty-four variants were selected for follow-up in an independent dataset (UK Biobank, N = 134 251). Conditional and gene-based testing was undertaken, and variants were investigated with bioinformatics methods. We discovered five novel heart rate loci, and one new independent low-frequency non-synonymous variant in an established heart rate locus (KIAA1755). Lead variants in four of the novel loci are non-synonymous variants in the genes C10orf71, DALDR3, TESK2 and SEC31B. The variant at SEC31B is significantly associated with SEC31B expression in heart and tibial nerve tissue. Further candidate genes were detected from long-range regulatory chromatin interactions in heart tissue (SCD, SLF2 and MAPK8). We observed significant enrichment in DNase I hypersensitive sites in fetal heart and lung. Moreover, enrichment was seen for the first time in human neuronal progenitor cells (derived from embryonic stem cells) and fetal muscle samples by including our novel variants. Our findings advance the knowledge of the genetic architecture of heart rate, and indicate new candidate genes for follow-up functional studies.
A QoE-Driven Encoder Adaptation Scheme for Multi-User Video Streaming in Wireless Networks

Video streaming over networks has grown rapidly in recent years. Increasing focus has gradually turned from quality of service awareness to end viewer’s quality of experience (QoE) awareness. For multi-user video streaming services, videos are encoded and transmitted through a bandwidth-limited wireless networks. Therefore, proper encoder settings for videos are required to satisfy the total channel rate constraint. In this paper, a QoE-driven High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) encoder adaptation scheme is proposed, aiming to maximize QoE of all the users for wireless networks. First, the influence of HEVC encoder on video streaming is investigated to generate an encoder parameter model. Then, the effect of network impairment together with HEVC encoder is taken into account to derive a subjective QoE prediction model. Afterward, we formulate a QoE-maximized encoder adaptation with total channel rate constraint into an optimization problem based on the obtained encoder parameter model and the subjective QoE model. The problem is solved and incorporated into an online encoder adaptation scheme. Compared with conventional rate allocation methods, the proposed QoE-driven encoder adaptation scheme achieves significant QoE gains independent of wireless network channel rate and video content. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed encoder adaptation scheme can improve the QoE by 31.4% with fixed number of users or increase the number of satisfied users by 35.5% with variable number of users.
The validity and reliability of the My Jump 2 app for measuring the reactive strength index and drop jump performance.

BACKGROUND This is the first study to independently assess the concurrent validity and reliability of the My Jump 2 app for measuring drop jump performance. It is also the first to evaluate the app's ability to measure the reactive strength index (RSI). METHODS Fourteen male sport science students (age: 29.5±9.9 years) performed three drop jumps from 20 cm and 40 cm (totaling 84 jumps), assessed via a force platform and the My Jump 2 app. Reported metrics included reactive strength index, jump height, ground contact time, and mean power. Measurements from both devices were compared using the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), Pearson product moment correlation coefficient (r), Cronbach's alpha (α), coefficient of variation (CV) and Bland-Altman plots. RESULTS Near perfect agreement was seen between devices at 20 cm for RSI (ICC=0.95) and contact time (ICC=0.99) and at 40 cm for RSI (ICC=0.98), jump height (ICC=0.96) and contact time (ICC=0.92); with very strong agreement seen at 20 cm for jump height (ICC=0.80). In comparison with the force plate the app showed good validity for RSI (20 cm: r=0.94; 40 cm; r=0.97), jump height (20 cm: r=0.80; 40 cm; r=0.96) and contact time (20 cm=0.96; 40 cm; r=0.98). CONCLUSIONS The results of the present study show that the My Jump 2 app is a valid and reliable tool for assessing drop jump performance.
Cultural Probes: The best way to go for PD in sensitive research settings? A methodological reflexion

Cultural Probes are widely used as a methodological tool in participatory design (PD) processes. In our contribution, we focus on the use of probes in the sensitive, intimate setting of informal care and discuss their role as one methodological option (or “tool kit”) within a longer, mixed method-process of an international and interdisciplinary PD project. We state that a carefully designed set of probes and a rather flexible use of them can not only support the understanding of a certain setting and the involved (care) practices for the researchers, but also underlines the involvement of the participants within the co-designprocess. 1 Introduction and Context The background of this short reflection is an international and interdisciplinary research EU project at the University of Siegen, called “TOPIC” (“The Online Platform for Informal Caregivers”). It was undertaken with information scientists, sociologists and media scientists together with partners from professional care institutions and an engineering company from 2013-2016. The overall aim of the project was to understand the care practices of elderly informal caregivers and how they relate to opportunities for support by designing a web-based care platform that could integrate various services, including information provision, social networking and coordination tools (e.g. a digital calendar). Accordingly, we investigated the following research questions: What are the major characteristics of the routine care and the coordination work of elderly informal caregivers? And: What implications for design can we make from learning more about care practice? In reference to the sensitive and private character of informal care and along with our epistemological understanding and the design case study approach (Wulf et al., 2011; Müller et al., 2012), we realised a qualitative empirical study over three years (Schorch et al., 2016). The pre-study (first year of the project) covered an ethnography