Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Dynesys Lumbar Spinal Stabilization System: A Preliminary Report on Positional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Findings

Study Design. We present the positional magnetic resonance imaging findings of a prospective case series of patients undergoing surgery with the Dynesys spinal stabilization device (Zimmer, Inc., Warsaw, IN). Objective. To explore the biomechanical impact of the Dynesys device in vivo. Summary of Background Data. Spinal fusion surgery is widely used for painful degenerative conditions of the lumbar spine that have not responded to conservative measures. It often produces good outcomes but can be associated with adjacent segment hypermobility that may lead to further degeneration and pain. Previous cadaveric biomechanical studies claim that the Dynesys Dynamic Spinal Stabilization System allows some lumbar movement, behaving similar to a normal spine in extension but similar to rigid fixation in flexion. Methods. Twenty-four patients with dominant low back pain, with or without leg pain, were treated with the Dynesys. All patients underwent positional magnetic resonance imaging before surgery and 9 months after surgery. Measurements were made to assess the differences at the operated level, adjacent level, and whole lumbar spine. Results. There was a statistically significant reduction in flexion-extension range of movement of both the whole lumbar spine by 13.37° (P = 0.002) and at the instrumented segments by 4.08° (P < 0.001) following surgery. There was an insignificant reduction in range of movement at the level above instrumentation (P = 0.807). Mean anterior disc height at the instrumented level reduced by 0.7 mm following insertion of the Dynesys (P < 0.027). Mean posterior disc height reduced by 0.3 mm (P = 0.453). In a neutral posture, the Dynesys had no significant impact on lordosis or inclination of operated or adjacent levels. Contrary to cadaveric study findings, the Dynesys appears to restrict extension more than flexion with respect to a neutral posture. Conclusions. In vivo, the Dynesys Stabilization System allows movement at the instrumented level, albeit reduced, with no significant increased mobility at the adjacent segments. There was reduction of the anterior disc height without a significant increase of the posterior disc height.
Facile LC-UV methods for simultaneous monitoring of ciprofloxacin and rosuvastatin in API, formulations and human serum.

An efficient, selective and cost-effective liquid chromatographic assay was developed and validated for the simultaneous quantification of ciprofloxacin and rosuvastatin in Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (API), pharmaceutical formulations and in human serum. The chromatographic system consisted of mobile phase methanol-water, 90:10 v/v at pH 3.0 adjusted with o-phosphoric acid, pumped at 1.0 mL/min through a prepacked Purospher Star C18 (5 µm, 25 × 0.46 cm) column and effluent was monitored at the isosbestic point (255 nm) as well as at the λmax of individual drugs (243 and 271 nm). The method was validated over a linear concentration range of 0.25-15 µg/mL for ciprofloxacin and 0.33-20 µg/mL for rosuvastatin (r(2) ≥ 0.999). The ranges of reliable response (limits of detection and quantitation) for ciprofloxacin were 3-15 and 9-45 ng/mL and 17-29 and 52-88 ng/mL, respectively, for rosuvastatin in all API, pharmaceutical formulations and human serum. Analytical recovery from human serum was >98% and relative standard deviation (RSD) was <2. The accuracies were 97.13-102.55 and 97.41-101.31% and precisions in RSD were 0.04-1.90 and 0.02-1.23% for ciprofloxacin and rosuvastatin, respectively. No matrix interferences, ion suppression/enhancement and carry-over were detected. The total assay run time was less than 5 min. In another study, for optimum performance the detector was programmed for multiwavelength scanning at the absorption maxima of each component. Consequently, the linearity range was improved and limit of detection and quantitation values were down to 1-4 and 4-12 ng/mL for ciprofloxacin and 3-5 and 9-15 ng/mL for rosuvastatin, respectively. The validation parameters fitted ICH guidelines through the isosbestic and individual λmax approach. The small sample volume and simplicity of preparation make this method suitable for use in human serum samples, pharmaceutical formulations, quality control, drug-drug interaction studies, clinical laboratories, drug research centers and forensic medical centers.
Multiband Flat-Plate Inverted-F Antenna for Wi-Fi/WiMAX Operation

A printed multiband flat-plate inverted-F antenna (IFA) is presented. The antenna is complexly structured and can operate as an internal laptop antenna over multiple Wi-Fi and WiMAX frequency bands. The antenna was studied by means of numerical simulations. The predicted achievable -10 dB return loss bandwidth of the antenna is confirmed and demonstrated by experimental measurements.
Overexpression of a pectin methylesterase inhibitor in Arabidopsis thaliana leads to altered growth morphology of the stem and defective organ separation

The methylesterification status of cell wall pectins, mediated through the interplay of pectin methylesterases (PMEs) and pectin methylesterase inhibitors (PMEIs), influences the biophysical properties of plant cell walls. We found that the overexpression of a PMEI gene in Arabidopsis thaliana plants caused the stems to develop twists and loops, most strongly around points on the stem where leaves or inflorescences failed to separate from the main stem. Altered elasticity of the stem, underdevelopment of the leaf cuticle, and changes in the sugar composition of the cell walls of stems were evident in the PMEI overexpression lines. We discuss the mechanisms that potentially underlie the aberrant growth phenotypes.
Modelling and Assessing Energy Performance of an Urban Transport System with Electric Drives

Energy conservation is one of the key priorities of sustainable development strategy. Transport systems are responsible for about one third of energy consumption. As result, the identification of solutions to reduce energy consumption in these systems is essential for the implementation of the sustainable development strategies. The present work is dedicated to identifying the possibilities for a reduction in the consumption of electric energy in electric urban public transport systems, using the audit of their electricity system. After justifying the importance of these concerns, a mathematical model of the electrical energy balance of the electric urban public transport system and its components is presented. The analysis is applied to determine the losses in the system components and useful energy, based on the evaluation and energy consumption measurements. The measurements to reduce energy losses are identified and characterized under technical and economic aspect, optimal electrical energy balances being done on this basis.
Intramyocardial implantation of CD133+ stem cells improved cardiac function without bypass surgery.

INTRODUCTION Cell transplantation for myocardial regeneration has been shown to have beneficial effects on cardiac function after myocardial infarction. Most clinical studies of intramyocardial cell transplantation were performed in combination with coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG). The contribution of implanted stem cells could yet not be clearly distinguished from the effect of the CABG surgery. Our current phase 1 clinical study has focused on the safety and feasibility of CD133+-enriched stem cell transplantation without CABG and its potential beneficial effect on cardiac function. METHOD AND RESULTS Ten patients with end-stage chronic ischemic cardiomyopathy (ejection fraction <22%) were enrolled in the study. Bone marrow (up to 380 mL) was harvested from the iliac crest. CD133+ cells were purified from bone marrow cells using the CliniMACS device with purities up to 99%. Autologous bone marrow CD133+ cells (1.5-9.7 X 106 cells) were injected into predefined regions. Cardiac functions prior to and 3, 6, and 9 months after cell transplantation were assessed by cardiac magnetic resonance imaging. Stem cell transplantation typically improved the heart function stage from New York Heart Association/Canadian Cardiovascular Society class III-IV to I-II. The mean preoperative and postoperative ventricular ejection fractions were 15.8 +/- 5% and 24.8 +/- 5%, respectively. CONCLUSION CD133+ injection into ischemic myocardium was feasible and safe. Stem cell transplantation alone improved cardiac function in all patients. This technique might hold promise as an alternative to medical management in patients with severe ischemic heart failure who are ineligible for conventional revascularization.
Complete genome sequence of Methanoculleus marisnigri Romesser et al. 1981 type strain JR1

Methanoculleus marisnigri Romesser et al. 1981 is a methanogen belonging to the order Methanomicrobiales within the archaeal phylum Euryarchaeota. The type strain, JR1, was isolated from anoxic sediments of the Black Sea. M. marisnigri is of phylogenetic interest because at the time the sequencing project began only one genome had previously been sequenced from the order Methanomicrobiales. We report here the complete genome sequence of M. marisnigri type strain JR1 and its annotation. This is part of a Joint Genome Institute 2006 Community Sequencing Program to sequence genomes of diverse Archaea.
Has adaptive dynamics contributed to the understanding of adaptive and sympatric speciation?

Adaptive dynamics (AD) theory (Dieckmann & Law, 1996; Metz et al., 1996) has been widely used as an attractive extension of previous phenotypic approaches, namely evolutionary game theory and optimization models (Meszéna et al., 2001). In the majority of AD models, the basis of evolution consists of replacement of a ‘resident’ population by a ‘mutant’ phenotype. Because fitness depends both on the mutant phenotype and the current state of the resident population, evolution proceeds in a continuously changing fitness landscape. This allows the dynamical attainability, the evolutionary stability and the invasion potential of mutants to be independent of one another. Earlier modelling approaches have also allowed these stability properties to combine in different ways, but AD provides an elegant mathematical framework unifying previous attempts. It is thus a convenient method deeply rooted both in evolutionary ecology to investigate frequencyand density-dependent evolution. As such, AD has been successful in investigating many evolutionary topics as well as in addressing important issues of conservation biology (http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/ADN). One of the most intriguing situations investigated by AD is evolution towards fitness minima. In this case, a singular population state is both an attractor of the mutation-selection process and also, once reached, a repellor of the evolutionary dynamics. Such a phenotype or strategy is referred to as an ‘evolutionary branching point’, because in its vicinity different phenotypes can invade and undergo divergent evolution. The discovery that such branching processes can occur in a variety of ecological situations is touted as a major contribution of AD to the theory of sympatric speciation: the branching point can represent the ecologically-driven evolution, not only of polymorphisms, but also, in some cases, of separate species. Dieckmann and Doebeli’s highly cited papers (especially Dieckmann & Doebeli, 1999; Doebeli & Dieckmann, 2000, 2003) argue that frequency-dependent ecological interactions can easily provide the selective environment required for assortative mating to evolve as a kind of reinforcement of ecologically driven post-zygotic isolation. One is then tempted to ask: ‘Adaptive dynamics: is speciation too easy? ’ (Bridle & Jiggins, 2000). The review by Waxman & Gavrilets (2005) emphasizes that we should examine these models more carefully before accepting these contributions of AD to speciation theory. In this review, we ask: (1) Is AD an appropriate tool for modelling speciation? (2) What does AD really teach us about sympatric speciation?
Outsourcing Privacy Preserving ID3 Decision Tree Algorithm over Encrypted Data-sets for Two-Parties

ID3 decision tree data mining is a popular and widely studied data analysis technique for a range of applications. In this paper, we focus on the privacy-preserving ID3 decision tree algorithm on horizontally partitioned datasets. In such a scenario, data owners wish to learn the decision tree result from a collective data set but disclose minimal information about their own sensitive data. In this paper, we consider a scenario in which multiple parties with weak computational power need to run an ID3 algorithm on their databases jointly while simultaneously outsourcing most of the computation of the protocol and databases to the cloud. In such a scenario, each party can have the correct result calculated on the data from all the parties with most of the computation outsourced to the cloud. Concerning privacy, the data owned by each party should be kept confidential from both the other parties and the cloud. To ensure data privacy, we modify the Secure Equivalent Testing Protocol (SET) and design the Outsourced Secure Shared xlnx Protocol (OSSx ln x) and other sub-protocols. We then propose a cloud-aided ID3 solution based on these protocols, which is used to build an outsourced privacy-preserving ID3 data mining solution.
Undergraduate research as curriculum

To date, national interests, policies, and calls for transformation of undergraduate education have been the main drivers of research integration into the undergraduate curriculum, briefly described here. The New Horizons in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education conference at the Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel) this fall presents an exciting opportunity to discuss integration of undergraduate research into the curriculum and other cutting‐edge topics in biochemistry and molecular biology education from a cross‐national perspective. I look forward to exploring prospects for international collaboration on research and development of course‐based undergraduate research experiences and on STEM education in general. © 2017 by The International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 45(4):293–298, 2017.
In‐vivo observation of cells with a combined high‐resolution multiphoton–acoustic scanning microscope

We present a combined multiphoton–acoustic microscope giving collocated access to the local morphological as well as mechanical properties of living cells. Both methods relay on intrinsic contrast mechanisms and dispense with the need of staining. In the acoustic part of the microscope, a gigahertz ultrasound wave is generated by an acoustic lens and the reflected sound energy is detected by the identical lens in a confocal setup. The achieved lateral resolution is in the range of 1 μm. Contrast in the images arises mainly from the local absorption of sound in the cells related to viscose damping. Additionally, acoustic microscopy can access the sound speed as well as the acoustic impedance of the cell membrane and the cell shape, as it is an intrinsic volume scanning technique. The multiphoton image formation bases on the detection of autofluorescence due to endogenous fluorophores. The nonlinearity of two‐photon absorption provides submicron lateral and axial resolution without the need of confocal optical detection. In addition, in the near‐IR cell damages are drastically reduced in comparison with direct excitation in the visible or UV. The presented setup was aligned with a dedicated procedure to ensure identical image areas. Combined multiphoton/acoustic images of living myoblast cells are discussed focusing on the reliability of the method. Microsc. Res. Tech., 2007. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Detection of 3-D Individual Trees in Urban Areas by Combining Airborne LiDAR Data and Imagery

An automated approach to extracting 3-D individual trees in urban areas is developed based on jointly analyzing airborne LiDAR data and imagery. First, the spectral, geometric, and spatial context attributes are defined and integrated at the LiDAR point level. Then, a binary AdaBoost classifier is used to separate points belonging to trees from other urban objects. Once the classification is completed, a spectral clustering method by applying the normalized cuts to a graph structure of point clouds of the vegetation class is performed to segment single trees. The geometric and spectral attributes play an important role in establishing the weight matrix, which measures the similarity between every two graph nodes and determines the cut function. The performance of the approach is validated by real urban data sets, which were acquired over two European cities. The results show that 3-D individual trees can be detected with mean accuracy of up to 0.65 and 0.12 m for tree position and height. Based on the results of this work, geometric and biophysical properties of individual trees can be further retrieved.
Fundamental investigation of very fast transients in power-electronic winding for Solid-State Transformers

There are problems with insulation failures in high-voltage transformers due to fast transient voltages. Within novel Solid-State Transformers (SST) this problem exists constitutionally because of the SSTs rectangular working voltages. Experiments and simulations have been performed to get accurate understanding of the phenomena. The results and theories are discussed in this paper.
Prevalence of psychological trauma in operationally deployed Navy personnel : a baseline surveillance report

Defence Health Service (DHS) considered that mental health was a significant issue for the Australian Defence Force. Mental health monitoring and surveillance is considered by the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing to be a key aspect of a conceptual frame for the promotion, prevention and early intervention for mental health. In 2001, the Fleet Health Support Unit (FHSU) of Maritime Headquarters began briefing and screening Royal Australian Navy personnel deploying to the Middle East Area of Operations (MEAO). In its infancy, the program involved personnel being provided a mental health brief and mental health screening at the commencement of, and upon return from, operational deployments. This program was initially adapted from a process used by the Australian Army. The DHS standardised the process across the ADF, removing pre-deployment screening. The results of individual questionnaires from screening were recorded and stored on a FHSU database. This database provided an opportunity for review and surveillance of mental health for individuals, ship cohorts, deployments and subgroups within the RAN. This report establishes surveillance baselines for psychological trauma-related symptoms in personnel deploying to the MEAO. For this report, five questions were addressed: ■ What is the prevalence of significant psychological trauma symptoms among RAN personnel returning from operational deployment? ■ What normative data for RAN personnel can be derived from the analysis? ■ What differences in prevalence are there between subgroups within the population? ■ How does the post-deployment prevalence of significant psychological trauma symptoms compare with predeployment? ■ How does the prevalence of psychological trauma symptoms among RAN personnel compare with other military groups returning from deployment?
Postsystolic shortening is a strong predictor of recovery of systolic function in patients with non-ST-elevation myocardial infarction.

AIMS Differentiation between necrotic and viable myocardium is difficult in the setting of acute myocardial infarction (MI). Post-systolic shortening (PSS) has been proposed as a marker of recovery after revascularization, but has not previously been assessed in patients with NSTEMI prior to revascularization. In this study, we aimed to examine the relation between PSS and improvement of contractile function after successful revascularization. METHODS AND RESULTS Thirty-five patients with non-segment elevation MI and regional systolic dysfunction were examined immediately prior to revascularization, and at follow-up 9 ± 3 months after successful revascularization. Regional systolic function was assessed by speckle tracking echocardiography as regional strain, expressed as mean peak negative longitudinal strain in segments supplied by the culprit artery. Recovery of systolic function was assessed as the difference between regional strain at follow-up and baseline (ΔStrain). Post-systolic shortening was defined as shortening in diastole beyond minimum systolic length. By multivariate regression analysis, several other variables that may affect viability were also assessed. Post-systolic shortening was observed in 32 patients (91%), mean -1.9 ± 1.4%. Mean ΔStrain was -3.3 ± 2.9%. After adjustment for baseline systolic function, PSS (β = 0.77, P= 0.022), and angiographic severity were independent predictors of viability by multiple regression analysis. Interestingly, troponin T was not a significant predictor. CONCLUSIONS Post-systolic shortening is associated with improved myocardial function after revascularization in patients with acute MI. It predicts long-term systolic function, and provides information on the potential benefit of the procedure.
Tracking Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Clones during a 5-Year Period (1998 to 2002) in a Spanish Hospital

ABSTRACT Three hundred seventy-five consecutive methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) clinical isolates recovered between 1998 and 2002 at the Nuestra Señora de Candelaria University Hospital in Tenerife, Spain, were analyzed by molecular fingerprinting techniques to determine MRSA clonal types and their prevalence over time. After determining antibiotic susceptibility, we used SmaI-digested genomic DNA separated by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) to characterize MRSA isolates and to establish PFGE types. Additionally, several selected isolates representative of each major PFGE type were tested by multilocus sequence typing (MLST) and by a multiplex PCR method capable of identifying the structural type of the staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec (SCCmec), generating the corresponding sequence type (ST)-SCCmec types. Results of PFGE, supported by those of MLST and SCCmec typing, allowed us to identify six MRSA clones within the five major PFGE types and document temporal shifts in the prevalence of these MRSA clones from 1998 to 2002. Four of the clones were the pandemic “Iberian” (designated ST247-MRSA-IA), EMRSA-15 (ST22-MRSA-IV), EMRSA-16 (ST36-MRSA-II), and the so-called pediatric (ST5-MRSA-IV) clones, while the other two (ST125-MRSA-IVA and ST146-MRSA-IVA) clones could be derived from the pediatric one. The most striking temporal shift in the dominance of MRSA clones was the replacement of the multidrug-resistant and highly epidemic Iberian clone by the so-called British EMRSA-16 clone during the 5-year surveillance period. Our results are in accordance with previously stated findings showing the worldwide hospital dominance of relatively few pandemic and presumably virulent MRSA clones. We report for the first time the detection in Spain of the British EMRSA-15 and pediatric clones, as well as the abrupt replacement of the Iberian by the EMRSA-16 as the major MRSA clone.
A Method of Passage-Based Document Retrieval in Question Answering System

We propose a method for using the scoring values of passages to effectively retrieve documents in a Question Answering system. For this, we suggest evaluation function that considers proximity between each question terms in passage. And using this evaluation function , we extract a documents which involves scoring values in the highest collection, as a suitable document for question. The proposed method is very effective in document retrieval of Korean question answering system.