Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Postoperative Walking Ability of Non-ambulatory Cervical Myelopathy Patients

Study Design. A retrospective analysis. Objective. The aim of this study was to clarify the postoperative improvement of walking ability and prognostic factors in nonambulatory patients with cervical myelopathy. Summary of Background Data. Many researchers have reported the surgical outcome in compressive cervical myelopathy. However, regarding severe gait disturbance,, it has not been clarified yet how much improvement can be expected. Methods. One hundred thirty-one nonambulatory patients with cervical myelopathy were treated surgically and followed for an average of 3 years. Walking ability was graded according to the lower-extremity function subscore (L/E subscore) in Japanese Orthopedic Association score. We divided patients based on preoperative L/E subscores: group A, L/E subscore of 1 point (71 patients); and group B, 0 or 0.5 point (60 patients). The postoperative walking ability was graded by L/E subscore: excellent, ≥2 points; good, 1.5 points; fair, 1 point; and poor, 0.5 or 0 points. We compared preoperative and postoperative scores. The cutoff value of disease duration providing excellent improvement was investigated. Results. Overall, 50 patients were graded as excellent (38.2%), and 21 patients were graded as good (16.0%). In group B, 17 patients (28.3%) were graded as excellent. Seventeen patients who were graded as excellent had shorter durations of myelopathic symptoms and/or gait disturbance (7.9 and 3.8 months respectively) than the others (29.5 and 8.9 months, respectively) (P < 0.05). Receiver-operating characteristic curve showed that the optimal cutoff values of the duration of myelopathic symptoms and gait disturbance providing excellent improvement were 3 and 2 months, respectively. Conclusion. Even if the patients were nonambulatory, 28.3% of them became able to walk without support after operation. If a patient becomes nonambulatory within 3 months from the onset of myelopathy or 2 months from the onset of gait disturbance, surgical treatment should be performed immediately to raise the possibility to improve stable gait. Level of Evidence: 3
CGAM: A community and geography aware mobility model

The advances of localization‐enabled technologies have led to huge volumes of large‐scale human mobility data collected from Call Data Records (CDR), Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking systems, and Location Based Social networks (LBSN). These location data that encompass mobility patterns could generate an important value for building accurate and realistic mobility models and hence important value for fields of application including context‐aware advertising, city‐wide sensing applications, urban planning, and more. In this paper, we investigate the underlying spatio‐temporal and structural properties for human mobility patterns, and propose the Community and Geography Aware Mobility (CGAM) model, which characterizes user mobility knowledge through several properties such as home location distribution, community members' distribution, and radius of gyration. We validate the CGAM synthetic traces against real‐world GPS traces and against the traces generated by the baseline mobility model SMOOTH and assess that CGAM is accurate in predicting the performance of flooding‐based and community‐based routing protocols.
Characterization of non-crimp fabric laminates: loss of accuracy due to strain measuring techniques

In mechanical characterization methods, the mechanical properties of multiple material test specimens are measured to determine the probabilistic characteristics of the material’s properties through statistical inference. Several of these methods require the measurement of deformations, and to do so, they rely on local strain measuring techniques, such as bonded strain gages and extensometers. In this study, we show that for non-crimp fabric laminates, local strain measurements acting as proxies of global laminate strain contain a random strain measurement error. Furthermore, we demonstrate that this strain measurement error can significantly reduce the accuracy of characterization methodologies for non-crimp fabric laminates. The strain measurement error pollutes the mechanical property measurements on laminate test specimens, leading to inaccurate statistical inferences. Because the strain measurement error is random, the inferences regarding the mechanical properties may occasionally be conservative or non-conservative with respect to the inference that would have been made if there was no strain measurement error. The results presented in this study are of importance because over-conservative mechanical properties can lead to unnecessarily heavy structures, and non-conservative ones may lead to unsafe structures, endangering life property and the environment. Both scenarios are discussed along with their likelihood and possible consequences.
Evaluation of a Novel Out‐of‐Plane Needle Guide

Most ultrasound‐guided regional procedures use an in‐plane approach. Out‐of‐plane approaches may be desirable in some situations but can be difficult because of an inability to visualize the needle until it intersects the plane of the ultrasonic beam. Here we present a novel out‐of‐plane needle guide, using a retreating depth stop, and compare its performance with unguided in‐plane and out‐of‐plane techniques.
A Radial Basis Function Neural Network Multicultural Factors Evaluation Engine For Product Concept Development

In recent years, new product development (NPD) has become more and more competitive and globalized. In order to succeed in the global marketplace, it is imperative to take multicultural factors into serious consideration during the stage of product concept development. Generally, the voice of customers has been treated as a starting point to downstream product definition and design metrics determination in developing new product concepts. As a result, the elicitation, representation and management of customer requirements will determine the success level of an organization's NPD efforts. Therefore, multicultural factors, also known as the ‘macro’ perspective in the business environment, are the most significant imperatives for organizations to handle, especially in the current trend of globalization. In practice, there are few holistic and promising systems for multicultural factor evaluation in customer requirements. This work aims at realizing a prototype system that combines the strengths of the laddering technique and the radial basis function neural network for customer requirements acquisition and multicultural factor evaluation. The performance of the prototype system is illustrated by using a case study on the design of a refrigerator. The results obtained from the case study are discussed.
Knowing your enemy: understanding and detecting malicious web advertising

With the Internet becoming the dominant channel for marketing and promotion, online advertisements are also increasingly used for illegal purposes such as propagating malware, scamming, click frauds, etc. To understand the gravity of these malicious advertising activities, which we call malvertising, we perform a large-scale study through analyzing ad-related Web traces crawled over a three-month period. Our study reveals the rampancy of malvertising: hundreds of top ranking Web sites fell victims and leading ad networks such as DoubleClick were infiltrated. To mitigate this threat, we identify prominent features from malicious advertising nodes and their related content delivery paths, and leverage them to build a new detection system called MadTracer. MadTracer automatically generates detection rules and utilizes them to inspect advertisement delivery processes and detect malvertising activities. Our evaluation shows that MadTracer was capable of capturing a large number of malvertising cases, 15 times as many as Google Safe Browsing and Microsoft Forefront did together, at a low false detection rate. It also detected new attacks, including a type of click-fraud attack that has never been reported before.
Structural characterization and thermal stability of W/Si multilayers

Tungsten/silicon multilayers with tungsten layers of a thickness of 1–2 nm were prepared by means of electron beam deposition. Their structure and thermal stability under rapid thermal annealing were investigated by a combination of x-ray diffraction techniques and cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy. The crystallization behavior was found to depend on the interdiffusion and mixing at the tungsten/silicon interfaces during deposition as well as during annealing. The as-deposited tungsten/silicon multilayers were amorphous and remained stable after annealing at 250 °C/40 s. Interdiffusion and crystallization occurred after annealing all samples from 500 °C/40 s up to 1000 °C/20 s. By performing the same heat treatment in the tungsten/silicon multilayers, the formation of body-centered cubic W was observed with a layer thickness ratio δ_W/δ_si = 1, whereas tetragonal WSi_2 was detected in tungsten/silicon multilayers with a layer thickness ratio of δ_w/δ_si ∼0.25. This dependence of the crystallization products on the layer thickness ratio δ_w/δ_si originates from the different phenomena of interdiffusion and mixing at the tungsten/silicon interfaces. The possible formation of bcc tungsten as a first stage of crystallization of tungsten-silicon amorphous phase, rich in tungsten, is discussed.
An improvement on binocular indirect ophthalmoscopy for diabetic retinopathy

Diabetic retinopathy is a growing cause of concern with rising obesity levels and for premature babies who if diagnosed with retinopathy of prematurity, are highly prone to blindness. For observations, a baby's head is held in place, the eyelids are pried open using a wire speculum and the eyeball is held to a side using McNamar's spoon, all this while the baby is in an incubator. For other older patients, there are two phases of observation: i) The patients undergo iris dilation for 30 to 45 minutes before observation by an ophthalmologist ii) The patients undergo the dilation process again for 20–30 minutes, for the Fundus Imaging process. The whole process is quite cumbersome for elderly patients. The Binocular Indirect Ophthalmoscope-Retinopathy (BIOR) targets this problem along with the retinal imaging of a premature baby. This paper describes the BIOR device, which integrates a camera with an ophthalmoscope to simultaneously capture images while the ophthalmologist observes a patient, these pictures are routed through a handheld display device to a mobile phone that segregates pictures by patient details. Other advantages associated to the use of BIOR include: Cheap (premeditated), elimination of the Fundus Camera (quite expensive), reducing the number of excruciating observations on babies while giving proof to possible sceptical parents and improving the time factor, most important for treatment of any disease. Resulting pictures although of a lower quality (360 p) due to the tight budget, are useful; confirmed by the collaborating Ophthalmologist. This is the first step towards a highly precise optical device and further scope of improvement has been mentioned at the end of this paper.
Influence Factor in Thickness of Cyst Wall of Epidermal Cysts

Purpose: An epidermal cyst is one of the most common benign tumors of the skin and its major treatment method is excision. Surgical excision is treatment of choice for epidermal cysts, but the cyst wall may be ruptured during operation, especially when the cyst wall is relatively thin. The incomplete excision of the cyst sometimes occurs because of a rupture of the cyst and incomplete excision may cause recurrence. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the factors that can influence the thickness of the cyst wall of epidermal cysts. Methods: From December 2008 to November 2013, medical records and tissue pathology slides of 290 patients with an epidermal cyst were reviewed retrospectively. The relationships among the regions, history of infection, the age of patients, and the thickness of the cyst and epidermis were analyzed. Results: There was no difference between thickness of cyst wall and site of occurrence and between thickness of epidermis and site of occurrence. The thickness of epidermal cyst wall with previous infection is thicker than those without infection episode (P = 0.01). However, the difference of thickness of epidermis above the cyst between with and without previous infection is not statistically significant (P = 0.641). The thickness of cyst wall and epidermis showed positive correlation (Pearson correlation coefficient 0.391, P = 0.01). Conclusion: From this study, there was a tendency cyst wall with the history of infection or incision and drainage is thicker. When surgical excision, more attention to excise epidermal cyst completely is needed for the prevention of recurrence of the cyst.
Space Efficiency in Synopsis Construction Algorithms

Histograms and Wavelet synopses have been found to be useful in query optimization, approximate query answering and mining. Over the last few years several good synopsis algorithms have been proposed. These have mostly focused on the running time of the synopsis constructions, optimum or approximate, vis-a-vis their quality. However the space complexity of synopsis construction algorithms has not been investigated as thoroughly. Many of the optimum synopsis construction algorithms (as well as few of the approximate ones) are expensive in space. In this paper, we propose a general technique that reduces space complexity. We show that the notion of "working space" proposed in these contexts is redundant. We believe that our algorithm also generalizes to a broader range of dynamic programs beyond synopsis construction. Our modifications can be easily adapted to existing algorithms. We demonstrate the performance benefits through experiments on real-life and synthetic data.
Quasi-Static Crush Behavior of Aluminum Hexagonal Honeycomb with Perforated Cell Walls

The crush behavior of aluminum hexagonal honeycomb with perforated cell walls under out-of-plane quasi-static loadings was experimentally investigated. The honeycomb specimens with different heights were compressed in axial direction under displacement control. There are four sequential deformation stages during compression: linear elasticity, buckling, crushing and densification state. The performances of hexagonal honeycombs with perforated cell walls were compared with those of imperforated hexagonal honeycombs with the same sizes. The results show that the perforated holes weaken the strength of honeycombs markedly and the strength of honeycomb decreases with the specimen height.
A 3.5–4GHz FMCW radar transceiver design with phase-domain oversampled ranging by utilizing a 1-bit ΔΣ TDC

A 3.5-4GHz FMCW radar transceiver employing a phase-domain oversampled ranging method is implemented in 0. 18μm CMOS for short-range wireless sensor network (WSN) applications. To overcome the tradeoff between bandwidth and ranging resolution in the conventional FMCW radar, a digital phase rotator and a 1-bit ΔΣ TDC are utilized to realize the oversampled phase-domain ranging, achieving both wide capture range and fine resolution. The proposed ranging method is verified in the prototype FMCW transceiver hardware and the feasibility of sub-cm ranging capability is also demonstrated based on on-board modulation measurement.
Effects of Remifentanil on In-Hospital Mortality and Length of Stay Following Clipping of Intracranial Aneurysm: A Propensity Score-matched Analysis

Background: Remifentanil is an ultrashort-acting µ-opioid receptor agonist and is especially suitable for neuroanesthesia. We previously reported that general anesthesia with remifentanil for brain tumor resection was associated with lower postoperative mortality and shorter postoperative length of stay (LOS) when compared with surgeries without remifentanil. This phenomenon may also exist during clipping of intracranial aneurysms (ICAs), where brain tissue frequently suffers ischemia and reperfusion injury. We performed a propensity score-matching study to compare in-hospital mortality and postoperative LOS with and without remifentanil in such patients. Methods: We used the Diagnosis Procedure Combination inpatient database in Japan that includes 926 acute care hospitals to identify patients who underwent clipping of ICAs under general anesthesia between July and December 2007. Results: Of the 4502 patients who underwent ICA clipping, 1380 propensity-matched pairs (n=2760) were included for outcome comparison. The remifentanil group had significantly lower in-hospital mortality than the nonremifentanil group (4.2% vs. 7.7%; P<0.001). Use of remifentanil was an independent factor for lower in-hospital mortality (odds ratio=0.52; 95% confidence interval, 0.37-0.74; P<0.001). By contrast, postoperative LOS did not differ significantly between the 2 groups. There was no difference in the occurrence of postoperative complications except for hydrocephalus, which was more common with remifentanil. Conclusions: This retrospective observational study demonstrated a possible relationship between the use of remifentanil for neuroanesthesia and reduced mortality of patients undergoing clipping of ICAs with open craniotomy. Prospective interventional studies are necessary to confirm this relationship.
Using the reverse-carry approach for double datapath floating-point addition

The double-datapath organization of a floating-point adder results in reduced latency. One of the main characteristics of this organization is the combination of addition/subtraction with rounding into a single add/round module, which is implemented as one pipeline stage and might be responsible for the cycle time. We propose the utilization of the most-significant carry detector and the corresponding adder using the reverse-carry approach to reduce the latency of this add/round module. In addition, the particular organization of the reverse-carry adder is used to reduce the contribution on the delay of the row of half adders that is included in the FAR datapath to produce the sum plus two. Estimates for a 64 bit add/round module show a potential reduction of delay of about 15%.
Optimal path planning utilizing dissipation function based on terrain elevation map for lunar rovers

For planetary rovers, a path planning with reduced risk is critical to realize safety and efficient locomotion on uneven terrain. To realize such locomotion, it is important to combine the local information observed by on-board sensors and global geometry obtained from, for example, satellites. In this research, we focus on a motion planning integrating these geometric information with two different levels of resolutions. In this research, we interpolate DEM data using low-order function and generate the cost map which indicates the error between interpolation function and grid data. The rover is navigated to avoid the area with large error where the elevation changes drastically. We present an avoidance method based on the dissipation function related to the map error. The rover can avoid the hazardous areas and move economically using the optimal calculation and the cost map. Through numerical simulations, we compare the proposed method with two generally known search algorithms in order to verify the superiority of the proposed method.
Passivation of nanocrystalline Al prepared by the gas phase condensation method: An x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy study

Nanocrystalline aluminum powders have been prepared by the gas phase condensation method. Samples have been synthesized in a conventional preparation chamber for gas phase condensation and also in the pretreatment chamber of an XPS (x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy) spectrometer so that in situ studies of the passivation process of nanocrystalline aluminum can be performed. For the range of particle sizes (12–41 nm) studied in the present work, we found a universal behavior during passivation with oxygen of the nanocrystalline Al^0. An Al_2O_3 overlayer of 4 nm, which protects the material from further oxidation, was obtained for all samples independently of the route of oxygen dosage. A careful analysis of the photoelectron parameters (binding energy and Auger parameters) for Al and O shows that in the early stages of passivation the alumina overlayer is so thin (<2.5 nm thickness) that the Al_2O_3 –Al interface induces an increase in the relaxation energy of the photoholes as compared to that of bulk alumina. Conclusions have been drawn about the best way to proceed during passivation of Al ultrafine particles before exposure to an air atmosphere.
A fork-like dual-band antenna with an inverted U-shaped parasitic element for WLAN and WIMAX applications

A fork-like dual-band dipole antenna with an inverted U-shaped parasitic element (IUSPE) is proposed and its performance is analyzed in detail. The proposed antenna is realized by using two-overlapped U-shaped (TOUS) patch and an IUSPE, which is fed by the coaxial line. The proposed antenna is built and numerically simulated by the HFSS. The simulated results show that the optimized antenna can operate at 3.3–3.69 GHz for WiMAX and 5.15–5.25 GHz for WLAN communication applications with respect to S11 < −10 dB. Additionally, the proposed antenna gives a good impedance matching characteristic at the desired operating frequency bands and has omnidirectional radiation patterns, making it suitable for multi-band wireless communication applications.
Loop antenna design for ultra low power transmitters

The paper presents a method for selecting the carrier frequency of an ultra low power, size-constrained, Colpitts oscillator transmitter in order to minimise transmitter power consumption. The configuration studied uses a single-turn loop antenna which also acts as the inductor of the frequency-defining LC tank. The characteristics of the antenna have been modelled to determine its optimal electrical size in terms of maximising power transfer for a given constraint on antenna dimensions. This analysis reveals that the loop antenna has a particular electrical size, corresponding to a circumference-to-wavelength ratio of about 0.2, for which it both radiates efficiently and possesses a high Q-factor. Evaluation of the frequency-dependent losses of the other circuit elements has allowed the preferred carrier frequency to be determined as a function of antenna size. The results indicate that cm-scale devices should be able to achieve short range, low data-rate transmission (e.g., 10 kb/sec over 1 m) with total transmitter powers of the order of 10 /spl mu/W.