Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
[Neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy followed by combined thoracoscopic and laparoscopic esophagectomy in the treatment of locally advanced esophageal carcinoma].

OBJECTIVE To investigate the feasibility and efficacy of neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy followed by combined thoracoscopic and laparoscopic esophagectomy (CTLE) in the treatment of advanced esophageal carcinoma. METHODS From June 2011 to February 2012, 11 patients with locally advanced esophageal carcinoma underwent neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy followed by CTLE (clinical stage IIB-IIIA). NP (vinorelbine pin and cisplatin) or TP (program paclitaxel-pin and cisplatin) were applied as preoperative chemotherapy. During the same period, conventional fractionated radiotherapy was used with the radiation dose of 40 Gy/20 F. At four to six weeks after CRT, 11 patients received three-incision CTLE. RESULTS During chemoradiation, 9 patients developed bone marrow suppression. The interval between completion of chemoradiation and surgery was (49.6±15.4) d. Intraoperative findings revealed local fibrosis in one patient (75 days after chemoradiation) while operative difficulty was not increased in the remaining 10 patients. Compared to 15 patients who received surgery alone, operative time was shorter [(242.3±27.0) min vs.(280.5±27.2) min, P=0.002] and intraoperative blood loss was less [(168.2±95.6) ml vs. (244.5±84.8) ml, P=0.042], the number of removal lymph nodes was similar [(19.5±5.8) vs. (20.5±7.1), P=0.683], postoperative hospital stay was prolonged [(18.9±10.3) d vs. (12.5±4.6) d, P=0.020]. The postoperative complication rate was 36.4% including cervical anastomotic leak with pulmonary infection (n=1), cervical anastomotic fistula and hoarseness (n=1), pulmonary infection with pleural effusion (n=2). Follow up ranged from 1 to 9 months, and no recurrence was found. CONCLUSION The neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy followed by combined thoracoscopic and laparoscopic esophagectomy in the treatment of locally advanced esophageal carcinoma is safe, feasible, and the short-term outcomes are favorable.
Altered Motor Control Strategies in Subjects With Sacroiliac Joint Pain During the Active Straight-Leg-Raise Test

Study Design. An experimental study of respiratory function and kinematics of the diaphragm and pelvic floor in subjects with a clinical diagnosis of sacroiliac joint pain and in a comparable pain-free subject group was conducted. Objective. To gain insight into the motor control strategies of subjects with sacroiliac joint pain and the resultant effect on breathing pattern. Summary of Background Data. The active straight-leg-raise test has been proposed as a clinical test for the assessment of load transfer through the pelvis. Clinical observations show that patients with sacroiliac joint pain have suboptimal motor control strategies and alterations in respiratory function when performing low-load tasks such as an active straight leg raise. Methods. In this study, 13 participants with a clinical diagnosis of sacroiliac joint pain and 13 matched control subjects in the supine resting position were tested with the active straight leg raise and the active straight leg raise with manual compression through the ilia. Respiratory patterns were recorded using spirometry, and minute ventilation was calculated. Diaphragmatic excursion and pelvic floor descent were measured using ultrasonography. Results. The participants with sacroiliac joint pain exhibited increased minute ventilation, decreased diaphragmatic excursion, and increased pelvic floor descent, as compared with pain-free subjects. Considerable variation was observed in respiratory patterns. Enhancement of pelvis stability via manual compression through the ilia reversed these differences. Conclusions. The study findings formally identified altered motor control strategies and alterations of respiratory function in subjects with sacroiliac joint pain. The changes observed appear to represent a compensatory strategy of the neuromuscular system to enhance force closure of the pelvis where stability has been compromised by injury.
Intermediate-Term Results of Meniscal Repair in Anterior Cruciate Ligament-Reconstructed Knees

We investigated the incidence of and risk factors for recurrent tears of repaired menisci in anterior cruciate ligament-reconstructed knees. We observed 63 patients whose menisci had been evaluated at second-look arthroscopy as healed (N = 50) or incompletely healed (N = 13) for an average of 4 years (range, 2 to 9.5). Of the 13 patients with incompletely healed menisci, 6 (46%) required additional meniscal surgery and 2 (15%) had recurrence of meniscal symptoms such as catching or locking. Among the 50 patients with healed menisci, 5 (10%) required additional meniscal surgery and 9 (18%) had recurrence of meniscal symptoms after second-look arthroscopy. The timing of the recurrence of these symptoms was from 12 to 28 months after surgical repair. Of the 11 patients who had undergone additional surgery, 6 had sustained second injuries during sports activities and the other 5 had no identifiable cause of injury. When comparing age, tear sites, rim width, side-to-side differences with KT-1000 arthrometer testing, and the pivot shift test, there were no differences between the group requiring additional surgery, the symptomatic group, and the asymptomatic group. However, the postoperative Tegner activity score of the group requiring additional surgery was statistically significantly higher than the others.
Channel Tracking for AF MIMO Relaying Systems

In this paper, we consider the problem of channel estimation in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) amplify-and-forward (AF) relaying systems operating over time varying channels. Only data at the receiving end are assumed available for the estimation. By employing a first-order autoregressive (AR) model for characterizing the time-varying nature of the channels to be estimated, we derive an expectation-maximization (EM) Kalman filter (KF) that utilizes the received signal at the destination to track the individual channel links. The extended KF algorithm is also derived and compared to the proposed EM-based KF. Our simulation results show that the proposed EM-based KF offers better estimation performance with less complexity when compared to the EKF algorithm.
Senz: A Context Awareness Middleware System Used in Mobile Devices

With the continuing penetration of sensor devices and the development of wireless communication techniques, increasing number of applications involving context awareness in ubiquitous computing have been used in daily life. How to collect data from mobile devices at a low energy cost and to mine contextual habits of users remains a key challenge for ubiquitous computing. We proposed an efficient context- awareness computing middleware system, Senz. By leveraging high-efficiency mobile data transmission method, using high-performance context recognition algorithms, and combining mobile data with online third-party data, this middleware system can recognize various user behavior patterns reliably, accurately and efficiently. Experiments show that the Senz recognition accuracy of context activity is above 83% on average and the energy cost is relatively low. By integrating Senz SDK and cloud computing engine, developers can build rich user experience apps with better understanding of users' behavior data and providing various personalized contextual services.
Microtubular Screw Symmetry: Packing of Spheres as a Latent Bioinformation Code

Oh (6/4) symmetry group describes face-centered-cubic sphere packing and derives informatkn coding laws.3 Hexagonal packing of protein monomers independent of the Oh (6/4) symmetry group has been used to explain the form patterns of viruses, flagella, and MT! Because hexagonal packing and face-centered-cubic packing of spheres have equal density, I use both to explain M T organization. Hexagonal packing may be used by fixing conditions. This is possible if tke centers of spheres lie on the surface of a cylinder (with radius equal to the Oh (6/4) unit sphere) and if (and only if) the sphere values in the axial direction (lattice) of the cylinder by order of sphere packing is the same as in the dimension in which the face-centered-cubic packing is done. Because 6-fold symmetry axis of Oh group is inverse, there must be two kinds of spheres (white and black) on the cylinder surface, but linked such that they have the dimension value in which the face-centered-cubic packing is done. This packing on the cylinder surface leads to “screw symmetry” (FIGURE 1). From coding theory, the symmetry laws of aand P-tubulin subunits lead to the conclusion that 13 protofilaments passes one of the best known binary error-correcting codes [K, (13, 26, S)] with 64 code words. Symmetry theory further suggests that on the surface of a circular cylinder in axial direction there must be a code of length of 24 monomer subunits. If the coding efficiency is used as a criterion of transmission, then 6-binary dimers of K, code should be coded to give a 4-dimer ternary sequence of Kz [24, 34, 131 code. This code may result from interaction between 24 tubulin monomers and high molecular weight proteins. Under the influence of Ca2+-calmodulin, binary dimers of K1 code give dimer ternary sequence of-K, code. In this way, KI and K2 codes, which result from the property of the Oh (6/4) symmetry group, lead a K (B6T4) transmission bioinforma-
Effects of Lithology and Fracture Characteristics on Hydraulic Properties in Crystalline Rock : Mirror Lake Research Site , Grafton County , New Hampshire

A combination of subsurface borehole imaging data and drilling logs were used to characterize the fractures and lithology in 40 bedrock wells at the fractured-rock research site in the Mirror Lake area in Grafton County, New Hampshire. The purpose of the research was to determine whether subsurface lithology and fractures have an effect on the hydraulic conductivity of the crystalline-rock aquifer in the Mirror Lake area. The distribution of fractures and lithology was quantified with respect to depth, altitude, topographic setting, and spatial distribution. The density of fracturing was described and comparisons were made between lithology, fracture characteristics, and hydraulic-conductivity measurements. Fracturing was found to be related to lithology, depth, and topographic setting. No clear correlation was established between hydraulic conductivity and fracture properties including alteration, oxidation, aperture, orientation, and density.
Policing Postsecondary Education: University Police Legitimacy and Fear of Crime on Campus

Assessing the perceptions that students have of the university police officers charged with ensuring student safety is important to maintaining the overall safety of the campus. The current study sought to assess the relationship between student perceptions of university police and the fear of crime felt by students while on campus. Data collection was conducted through a survey methodology using a convenient sample of students in which a self-report survey was sent to the university email addresses of all students enrolled in a southeastern university (n=260). Through the employment of a scale developed to assess the perceptions of university police legitimacy and a similar scale to assess fear of crime, the results of the study demonstrate a relationship exists between the variables. The relationship strengthens when demographics are controlled for. This study was designed to add to the limited amount of research examining perceptions of university law enforcements.
The Impact of a Narrative Design Strategy for Information Visualization on a Public Display

Public displays are increasingly deployed to make civic data easily and publicly consumable. While augmenting such public visualizations with a narrative design strategy could be promising to engage a lay audience, they might perform differently on public displays than on common online media because of the more context-sensitive environment. We therefore report on a comparative in-the-wild study of a public display that contrasts an identical public visualization with and without a narrative structure, and unravel how this affects the user engagement and insight creation process. Our findings indicate how a narrative strategy in relation to contextual aspects supports deeper, more personal reflection on data, connects authorship to the surrounding environment, and overcomes comprehension issues. We believe these results are useful for making public visualizations more effective, as well as understanding why and how lay users interact with and learn from narrative data visualization in general.
Sliding mode control for singularly perturbed system

When dealing with large scale systems, the dimension and ill condition of the state matrix motivate the use of model order reduction methods. Singular perturbation theory is found to be a good approach to obtain a reduced order model. This article presents the use of a single sliding mode controller designed for the slow component of singular perturbed system. The stability analysis is investigated using the Lyapunov approach. We provide sufficient condition for asymptotic stability of the full order singular perturbed system.
Mild renal dysfunction in patients undergoing cardiac surgery as a new risk factor for EuroSCORE

Background It has recently been suggested that mild renal dysfunction is associated with increased mortality in cardiac surgery; however, this risk factor is not accounted for in the European System for Cardiac Operative Risk Evaluation (EuroSCORE). The aim of the present study was to assess the effect of mild renal dysfunction as a predictor of operative mortality and develop and validate a modified logistic EuroSCORE model. Methods This was a retrospective, observational, cohort study of prospectively collected data on 16 086 consecutive patients undergoing cardiac surgery at the Bristol Heart Institute between April 1996 and February 2009. To develop a modified logistic EuroSCORE, data were dived into developmental and validation datasets (11 596 and 4490 patients respectively). The relationship between risk factors and mortality was assessed using univariate and logistic regression analysis. Calibration and discrimination were assessed by Hosmer Lemeshow χ2 test and receiving operative characteristic (ROC) curve. Results Overall hospital mortality was 2.6%. At multivariate analysis, 13 out of 18 variables of the EuroSCORE influenced operative mortality; moreover, preoperative mild renal dysfunction, defined as serum creatinine 130–199 μmol/l, was identified as a new risk factor for mortality (OR 1.819, 95% CI 1.353 to 2.447, p<0.0001). EuroSCORE was able to predict mortality; however, modified logistic EuroSCORE had a better discriminatory power (area under ROC: 0.844 vs 0.784, p=0.002). Conclusions Preoperative mild renal dysfunction is an independent risk factor for mortality in patients undergoing cardiac surgery. These findings now need to be validated with data from other centres.
Android programming techniques for improving performance

Android has been researched in various mobile device fields such as Smartphone and Tablet PC. In here, we should remember that mobile devices have limited storage and constrained battery life. Therefore, when developers develop applications, they should do efficient programming. In this paper, we have proposed programming guidelines for an effective way to improve performance in Android applications. We have programmed Android applications using Java and Native C, and compared the performance between the two languages. The applications are composed of five categories such as JNI delay, Integer, Floating-point, Memory access algorithm and String processing. By analyzing the results, we propose a more efficient way to program Android applications.
Influence of intestinal myoelectrical activity on the growth of Escherichia coli

Intestinal bacteria, particularly those adhering to intestinal epithelial cells, are exposed to electric fields and currents generated by the muscular activity of the small intestine. This activity displays a regular pattern known as the myoelectrical migrating complex (MMC). In order to explore the possibility that these endogenous electric fields could affect bacterial growth, a digitised duodenal signal obtained via serosal electrodes from a healthy calf was recorded and then applied via platinum electrodes to Escherichia coli cultures. The culture tubes were placed within a Faraday shield, incubated at 37°C with shaking, and stimulated by the electric current for 5 or 8 h. The growth of E. coli stimulated by the electric current was significantly altered compared to those of non‐stimulated controls: after a period of intensive growth, inhibition of cell division was observed. This was not the case when the bacteria with lon mutation were used. Moreover, synchronic bacterial culture could not be achieved in the presence of the MMC‐related electric field. These results suggest that the myoelectrical activity of the duodenum, through action on cell membrane, can affect cell division of intestinal bacteria. Bioelectromagnetics 22:449–455, 2001. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Optimization techniques for cosine-modulated filter banks based on the frequency-response masking approach

An optimization technique for designing cosine-modulated filter banks using the frequency-response masking approach is proposed. In the given method, we perform minimization in the least-squares and minimax senses, subject to direct and aliasing transfer-function constraints. For optimization, a quasi-Newton algorithm with line search is used, based on sequential quadratic programming. Simplified analytical expressions to impose the interference constraints are proposed. The results are lower levels of aliasing transfers for a pre-determined filter order, or reduced filter complexity for given levels of interference. Specifications that were unfeasible due to lengthy FIR filter requirements are now achieved using the FRM-CMFB design.
Intrauterine proximity to male fetuses affects the morphology of the sexually dimorphic nucleus of the preoptic area in the adult rat brain

Previous studies on polytocous rodents have revealed that the fetal intrauterine position influences its later anatomy, physiology, reproductive performance and behavior. To investigate whether the position of a fetus in the uterus modifies the development of the brain, we examined whether the structure of the sexually dimorphic nucleus of the preoptic area (SDN‐POA) of rat brains accorded to their intrauterine positions. Brain sections of adult rats gestated between two male fetuses (2M) and between two female fetuses (2F) in the uterus were analysed for their immunoreactivity to calbindin‐D28k, which is a marker of the SDN‐POA. The SDN‐POA volume of the 2M adult males was greater than that of the 2F adult males, whereas the SDN‐POA volume of the 2M and 2F adult females showed no significant difference. This result indicated that contiguous male fetuses have a masculinizing effect on the SDN‐POA volume of the male. To further examine whether the increment of SDN‐POA volume in adulthood was due to exposure to elevated steroid hormones during fetal life, concentrations of testosterone and 17β‐estradiol in the brain were measured with 2M and 2F fetuses during gestation, respectively. On gestation day 21, the concentrations of testosterone and 17β‐estradiol in the brain were significantly higher in the 2M male rats as compared with the 2F male rats. The results suggested that there was a relationship between the fetal intrauterine position, hormone transfer from adjacent fetuses and the SDN‐POA volume in adult rat brains.
Characterization of sea urchin unconventional myosins and analysis of their patterns of expression during early embryogenesis

Early sea urchin development requires a dynamic reorganization of both the actin cytoskeleton and cytoskeletal interactions with cellular membranes. These events may involve the activities of multiple members of the superfamily of myosin motor proteins. Using RT‐PCR with degenerate myosin primers, we identified 11 myosin mRNAs expressed in unfertilized eggs and coelomocytes of the sea urchin Strongylocentrotus purpuratus. Seven of these sea urchin myosins belonged to myosin classes Iγ, II, V, VI, VII, IX, and amoeboid‐type I, and the remaining four may be from novel classes. Sea urchin myosins‐V, ‐VI, ‐VII, and amoeboid‐type‐I were either completely or partially cloned and their molecular structures characterized. Sea urchin myosins‐V, ‐VI, ‐VII, and amoeboid‐type‐I shared a high degree of sequence identity with their respective family members from vertebrates and they retained their class‐specific structure and domain organization. Analysis of expression of myosin‐V, ‐VI, ‐VII, and amoeboid‐type‐I mRNAs during development revealed that each myosin mRNA displayed a distinct temporal pattern of expression, suggesting that myosins might be involved in specific events of early embryogenesis. Interestingly, the onset of gastrulation appeared to be a pivotal point in modulation of myosin mRNA expression. The presence of multiple myosin mRNAs in eggs and embryos provides insight into the potential involvement of multiple specific motor proteins in the actin‐dependent events of embryo development. Mol. Reprod. Dev. 57:111–126, 2000. © 2000 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Ternary complex structure of human hgprtase, prpp, mg2+, and the inhibitor HPP reveals the involvement of the flexible loop in substrate binding

Site‐directed mutagenesis was used to replace Lys68 of the human hypoxanthine phosphoribosyltransferase (HGPRTase) with alanine to exploit this less reactive form of the enzyme to gain additional insights into the structure activity relationship of HGPRTase. Although this substitution resulted in only a minimal (one‐to threefold) increase in the Km values for binding pyrophosphate or phosphoribosylpyrophosphate, the catalytic efficiencies (kcat/Km) of the forward and reverse reactions were more severely reduced (6‐ to 30‐fold), and the mutant enzyme showed positive cooperativity in binding of α‐D‐5‐phosphoribosyl‐1‐pyrophosphate (PRPP) and nucleotide. The K68A form of the human HGPRTase was cocrystallized with 7‐hydroxy [4, 3‐d] pyrazolo pyrimidine (HPP) and Mg PRPP, and the refined structure reported. The PRPP molecule built into the [(Fo – Fc)ϕcalc] electron density shows atomic interactions between the Mg PRPP and enzyme residues in the pyrophosphate binding domain as well as in a long flexible loop (residues Leu101 to Gly111) that closes over the active site. Loop closure reveals the functional roles for the conserved SY dipeptide of the loop as well as the molecular basis for one form of gouty arthritis (S103R). In addition, the closed loop conformation provides structural information relevant to the mechanism of catalysis in human HGPRTase.
Investigation of AC loss and current distribution in co-axially assembled cable conductor of multiple HTS tapes

Numerical studies on characteristics of the inter-layer current distribution and the AC losses in co-axial multi-layer cable conductors with superconducting magnetic shields were performed by using the model developed by our previous study. The inter-layer current distribution and AC loss dependencies on the twist pitches, the diameter and the numbers of the superconducting layers of the cables were investigated. The analytical results showed that the magnetic field produced by the shielding currents strongly affected the current distribution and the AC losses of the cable. Based on the model, the optimized cable structures to achieve the uniform current distribution and to reduce the AC losses were studied. Examples of the optimized structures obtained by our model were presented and compared with those obtained by the conventional electric circuit model.