Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
[Sagittal balance of the spine].

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY The authors examined the modifications of sagittal shape and muscular functions in different vertebral diseases in order to investigate their correlations and to specify the role of hip extension in standing posture. MATERIALS AND METHODS We included 57 patients presenting various diseases, among which lumbar kyphosis, spondylosis and spondylolisthesis, backache and lumbar stenosis. We measured joint mobility (hip extension, lumbar flexion), muscular retractions (ilio-psoas, hamstrings, rectus femoris), and muscular strength (spine flexors and extensors, hamstrings, quadriceps femoris). On standing lateral x-rays, measurements were made of various spinal and pelvic parameters, among which the "pelvi-femoral angle", proposed by the authors for hip extension evaluation. RESULTS There was a significant correlation between pelvi-femoral angle and pelvic backward tilting (r = 0.8037 p < 0.01). This angle can therefore be considered as fundamental for evaluation of sagittal posture. Characteristic abnormalities were found for each pathogenic group, notably for lumbar kyphosis and spondylolisthesis. DISCUSSION Upright posture is secondary to hip extension and lumbar lordosis, and an optimal and economic standing posture is obtained when balance between these two phenomena is correct. In lumbar kyphosis pelvic modifications such as hip extension, and pelvic backward tilt-up arise compensating the anterior displacement of the center of gravity, while in spondylolisthesis, anterior displacement is secondary to sacral obliquity. CONCLUSION It is very important to evaluate the pelvis position in sagittal spinal diseases, in order to understand postural deterioration mechanisms. Lumbar kyphosis and spondylolisthesis are two examples of failure of upright posture.
Reduction in surface contamination with antineoplastic drugs in 22 hospital pharmacies in the US following implementation of a closed-system drug transfer device

Purpose. Surface contamination with the antineoplastic drugs cyclophosphamide, ifosfamide, and 5-fluorouracil was compared in 22 US hospital pharmacies following preparation with standard drug preparation techniques or the PhaSeal® closed-system drug transfer device (CSTD). Methods. Wipe samples were taken from biological safety cabinet (BSC) surfaces, BSC airfoils, floors in front of BSCs, and counters and analyzed for contamination with cyclophosphamide, ifosfamide, and 5-fluorouracil. Contamination was reassessed several months after the implementation of the CSTD. Surface contamination (ng/cm2) was compared between the two techniques and evaluated with the Signed Rank Test. Results. Using the CSTD compared to the standard preparation techniques, a significant reduction in levels of contamination was observed for all drugs (cyclophosphamide: p < 0.0001; ifosfamide: p < 0.001; 5-fluorouracil: p < 0.01). Median values for surface contamination with cyclophosphamide, ifosfamide, and 5-fluorouracil were reduced by 95%, 90%, and 65%, respectively. Conclusions. Use of the CSTD significantly reduces surface contamination when preparing cyclophosphamide, ifosfamide, and 5-fluorouracil as compared to standard drug preparation techniques.
Yeh1 Constitutes the Major Steryl Ester Hydrolase under Heme-Deficient Conditions in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

ABSTRACT Steryl esters are stored in intracellular lipid droplets from which they are mobilized upon demand and hydrolyzed to yield free sterols and fatty acids. The mechanisms that control steryl ester mobilization are not well understood. We have previously identified a family of three lipases of Saccharomyces cerevisiae that are required for efficient steryl ester hydrolysis, Yeh1, Yeh2, and Tgl1 (R. Köffel, R. Tiwari, L. Falquet, and R. Schneiter, Mol. Cell. Biol. 25:1655-1668, 2005). Both Yeh1 and Tgl1 localize to lipid droplets, whereas Yeh2 is localized to the plasma membrane. To characterize the precise function of these three partially redundant lipases, we examined steryl ester mobilization under heme-deficient conditions. S. cerevisiae is a facultative anaerobic organism that becomes auxotrophic for sterols and unsaturated fatty acids in the absence of molecular oxygen. Anaerobic conditions can be mimicked in cells that are deficient for heme synthesis. We here report that Yeh1 is the sole active steryl ester hydrolase under such heme-deficient conditions, indicating that Yeh1 is activated whereas Yeh2 and Tgl1 are inactivated by the lack of heme. The heme-dependent activation of Yeh1 is mediated at least in part by an increase in steady-state levels of Yeh1 at the expense of Yeh2 and Tgl1 in exponentially growing cells. This increase in steady-state levels of Yeh1 requires Rox3, a component of the mediator complex that regulates transcription by RNA polymerase II. These data thus provide the first link between fat degradation and the transcriptional control of lipase activity in yeast.
Minimally Supervised Multilingual Taxonomy and Translation Lexicon Induction

We present a novel algorithm for the acquisition of multilingual lexical taxonomies (including hyponymy/hypernymy, meronymy and taxonomic cousinhood), from monolingual corpora with minimal supervision in the form of seed exemplars using discriminative learning across the major WordNet semantic relationships. This capability is also extended robustly and effectively to a second language (Hindi) via cross-language projection of the various seed exemplars. We also present a novel model of translation dictionary induction via multilingual transitive models of hypernymy and hyponymy, using these induced taxonomies. Candidate lexical translation probabilities are based on the probability that their induced hyponyms and/or hypernyms are translations of one another. We evaluate all of the above models on English and Hindi.
The Effectiveness of Instructional Methods Based on Learning Style Preferences of Agricultural Students: A Research Tool for Continuous Improvement for Faculty in Career and Technical Education (CTE) Programs

This study was conducted to research learning style preferences of agriculture students. Specifically, the objectives which guided the study were: (1) to determine the learning style preferences of undergraduate agricultural students enrolled in a given Soil Science course and (2) to ascertain if there were differences in the students’ course grade average (CGA) in the given Soil Science course when the treatment group were taught according to their learning style preferences versus the control group. For research question two, there was a hypothesis statement to determine if modifying the instructional approach to the students’ learning style preference for the treatment group produces a higher course grade average (CGA) than the control group. The Productivity Environmental Preference ____________ Dominick E. Fazarro is with the Department of Agricultural & Industrial Sciences at Sam Houston State University. He can be reached at def003@shsu.edu. Tim Pannkuk and Dwayne Pavelock are also in the Department of Agricultural & Industrial Sciences at Sam Houston State University. Darcy Hubbard is with the South Grand Prairie High School. The Effectiveness of Instructional Methods 85 Survey (PEPS) was used to obtain the students’ preferred learning style preferences. Results indicate that modifying the instructional approach to the students’ learning styles preference (Structure) would result in a higher course grade average (CGA) for the treatment group versus the control group.
Influence of Land Cover Type and the Reliability of Selected Land Surface Models: A Comparison of WRF Version 3.6 Coupled to CLM Version 4.0, Noah-MP, and the Bucket Hydrology

In this study, the validity of 3 LSMs (Community Land Model version 4.0, Noah-MP and the Budyko Bucket Hydrology model [henceforth referred to as 'Bucket model']) coupled with the Weather Research and Forecasting model version 3.6 (WRF3.6), was examined in an effort to show the associated strengths and weaknesses of each LSM. This objective was completed by first, developing expected results based on a simple surface energy budget calculation, and by later comparing model output to Parameter-elevation Relationships on Independent Slopes Model (PRISM) data, which serve as gridded observed values of mean monthly temperature and total monthly precipitation. solar radiation, and soil water content (SWC) are also compared to observations from several Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) and AmeriFlux sites across the Central and Southern Great Plains. The LSM output analysis revealed an overall warm bias in CLM4.0 and Noah-MP, with a cool bias of larger magnitude in the Bucket model. All 3 LSMs produced similar patterns of wet and dry biases when compared to each other across identical time periods, but no overall bias for any particular LSM emerged. Biases in model output of SWC, SH, LH, and downward solar radiation compared to observations, were consistent with what would be expected based on results from the surface energy budget component of the study. While many factors should be considered when choosing a LSM, both sophisticated LSMs seem to be viable options for simulating the effects of land use change in the Southern Great Plains region, while the limitations of the Bucket model with detailed surface energy calculations make it less suitable for such a detailed study. i Acknowledgements I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Van Den Broeke, for all of his advice and encouragement throughout my graduate research and coursework. I would also like to thank him for his continued support of completing my graduate thesis remotely. Additionally, I am also appreciative and thankful for the support and council from my committee members, Dr. Oglesby and Dr. Rowe. This work would not have been made possible without the help of those mentioned above as well as the other members of the project, namely: provided invaluable knowledge on the subject of R statistical programming language. I would also like to thank my family for unwavering support of my continued education and fellow graduate and undergraduate students for providing a venue to bounce ideas off of as well as an …
PRECISE: PRivacy-preserving cloud-assisted quality improvement service in healthcare

Quality improvement (QI) requires systematic and continuous efforts to enhance healthcare services. A healthcare provider might wish to compare local statistics with those from other institutions in order to identify problems and develop intervention to improve the quality of care. However, the sharing of institution information may be deterred by institutional privacy as publicizing such statistics could lead to embarrassment and even financial damage. In this article, we propose a Privacy-preserving Cloud-assisted quality Improvement Service in healthcare (PRECISE), which aims at enabling cross-institution comparison of healthcare statistics while protecting privacy. The proposed framework relies on a set of state-of-the-art cryptographic protocols including homomorphic encryption and Yao's garbled circuit schemes. By securely pooling data from different institutions, PRECISE can rank the encrypted statistics to facilitate QI among participating institutes. We conducted experiments using MIMIC II database and demonstrated the feasibility of the proposed PRECISE framework.
WiFi GPS based combined positioning algorithm

If nowadays, positioning becomes more and more accurate, and covers better and better a territory (indoor and outdoor), it remains territories where traditional (and basic) positioning system (GPS, gsm or WiFi) and hybrid ones (GPS- gsm, GPS-WiFi, GPS-WiFi-gsm, …) are insufficient and requires research investment treating combined positioning. In this paper we propose a GPS-WiFi combined positioning algorithm, based on trilateration technique. Real experiments and other simulation are conduced and demonstrate accuracy gains, even where various criteria dilution of precision (GPS dop's criteria, or ours WiFi geometrical and signal attenuation's dop proposal, or hybrid dop one's) indicate all the disruption of positioning service. A testbed scenario issued from a real urban campus environment validates not only our GPS-WiFi combined positioning algorithm but also an implementation of pertinent positioning techniques and dop's criteria. This work constitutes a further step to better position everywhere and to ensure continuity of a positioning service.
Issues in Automated Negotiation and Electronic Commerce: Extending the Contract Net Framework

In this paper we discuss a number of previously unaddressed issues that arise in automated negot/ation among self-interested agents whose rationality is bounded by computational complexity. These issues are presented in the context of iterative task allocation negotiations. First, the reasons why such agents need to be able to choose the stage and level of commitment dynamically are identified. A protocol that allows such choices through conditional commitment breaking penalties is presented. Next, the implications of bounded rationality are analysed. Several tradeoffs between allocated computation and negotiation benefits and risk are enumerated, and the necessity of explicit local deliberation control is substantiated. Techniques for linking negotiation items and multiagent contracts are presented as methods for escaping local optima in the task allocation process. Implementing both methods among self-interested bounded rational agents is discussed. Finally, the problem of message congestion among self-interested agents is described, and alternative remedies are presented.
Convergence Properties of the Randomized Extended Gauss-Seidel and Kaczmarz Methods

The Kaczmarz and Gauss-Seidel methods both solve a linear system $\bf{X}\bf{\beta} = \bf{y}$ by iteratively refining the solution estimate. Recent interest in these methods has been sparked by a proof of Strohmer and Vershynin which shows the randomized Kaczmarz method converges linearly in expectation to the solution. Lewis and Leventhal then proved a similar result for the randomized Gauss-Seidel algorithm. However, the behavior of both methods depends heavily on whether the system is under or overdetermined, and whether it is consistent or not. Here we provide a unified theory of both methods, their variants for these different settings, and draw connections between both approaches. In doing so, we also provide a proof that an extended version of randomized Gauss-Seidel converges linearly to the least norm solution in the underdetermined case (where the usual randomized Gauss Seidel fails to converge). We detail analytically and empirically the convergence properties of both methods and their extended variants in all possible system settings. With this result, a complete and rigorous theory of both methods is furnished.
Query-directed adaptive heap cloning for optimizing compilers

Andersen's pointer analysis becomes more precise when applied with full heap cloning but unscalable for large, heap-intensive programs. In contrast, k-callsite-sensitive heap cloning can be faster but less precise for some programs. In this paper, we make one step forward by enhancing Andersen's analysis with QUery-Directed Adaptive (QUDA) heap cloning for optimizing compilers. The novelty of our analysis, called QUDA, lies in performing k-callsite-sensitive heap cloning iteratively, starting with k = 0 (without heap cloning), so that an abstract heap object is cloned at iteration k = i + 1 only if some mayalias queries that are not answered positively at iteration k = i may now be answered more precisely. QUDA, which is implemented in Open64, has the same precision as the state-of-the-art, FULCRA, a version of QUDA with exhaustive heap cloning, but is significantly more scalable. For 10 SPEC2000 C benchmarks and 5 C applications (totalling 840 KLOC) evaluated, QUDA takes only 4+ minutes but exhaustive heap cloning takes 42+ minutes to complete. QUDA takes only 75.1 % of the time that Open64 takes on average to compile these 15 programs under “-O2”.
Disruption of Aryl Hydrocarbon Receptor Homeostatic Levels during Embryonic Stem Cell Differentiation Alters Expression of Homeobox Transcription Factors that Control Cardiomyogenesis

Background: The aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR) is a ligand-activated transcription factor that regulates the expression of xenobiotic detoxification genes and is a critical mediator of gene–environment interactions. Many AHR target genes identified by genome-wide gene expression profiling have morphogenetic functions, suggesting that AHR may play a role in embryonic development. Objectives: To characterize the developmental functions of the AHR, we studied the consequences of AHR activation by the agonist 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-doxin (TCDD), and the result of its repression by the antagonists 6,2,4-trimethoxyflavone and CH 223191 or by short-hairpin RNA (shRNA)-mediated Ahr knockdown during spontaneous differentiation of embryonic stem (ES) cells into cardiomyocytes. Methods: We generated an AHR-positive cardiomyocyte lineage differentiated from mouse ES cells that expresses puromycin resistance and enhanced green fluorescent protein (eGFP) under the control of the Cyp1a1 (cytochrome P450 1a1) promoter. We used RNA sequencing (RNA.Seq) to analyze temporal trajectories of TCDD-dependent global gene expression in these cells during differentiation. Results: Activation, inhibition, and knockdown of Ahr significantly inhibited the formation of contractile cardiomyocyte nodes. Global expression analysis of AHR-positive cells showed that activation of the AHR/TCDD axis disrupted the concerted expression of genes that regulate multiple signaling pathways involved in cardiac and neural morphogenesis and differentiation, including dozens of genes encoding homeobox transcription factors and Polycomb and trithorax group proteins. Conclusions: Disruption of AHR expression levels resulted in gene expression changes that perturbed cardiomyocyte differentiation. The main function of the AHR during development appears to be the coordination of a complex regulatory network responsible for attainment and maintenance of cardiovascular homeostasis. Citation: Wang Q, Chen J, Ko CI, Fan Y, Carreira V, Chen Y, Xia Y, Medvedovic M, Puga A. 2013. Disruption of aryl hydrocarbon receptor homeostatic levels during embryonic stem cell differentiation alters expression of homeobox transcription factors that control cardiomyogenesis. Environ Health Perspect 121:1334–1343; http://dx.doi. org/10.1289/ehp.1307297
rEMM: Extensible Markov Model for Data Stream Clustering in R

Clustering streams of continuously arriving data has become an important application of data mining in recent years and efficient algorithms have been proposed by several researchers. However, clustering alone neglects the fact that data in a data stream is not only characterized by the proximity of data points which is used by clustering, but also by a temporal component. The extensible Markov model (EMM) adds the temporal component to data stream clustering by superimposing a dynamically adapting Markov chain. In this paper we introduce the implementation of the R extension package rEMM which implements EMM and we discuss some examples and applications.
Immunohistochemical Subtypes of Breast Cancer: Correlation with Clinicopathological and Radiological Factors

Background The relationship between biomarkers and imaging features is important because imaging findings can predict molecular features. Objectives To investigate the relationship between clinicopathologic and radiologic factors and the immunohistochemical (IHC) profiles associated with breast cancer. Patients and Methods From December 2004 to September 2013, 200 patients (mean age, 56 years; range, 29 - 82 years) were diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent surgery at our institution. Their medical records were reviewed to determine age, symptom presence, mammographic findings (including mass, asymmetry, microcalcifications, or negativity), sonographic Breast Imaging-Reporting and Data System (BI-RADS) category, pathologic type of cancer (invasive ductal, mucinous, medullary, or papillary carcinoma), histologic grade, T-stage, and IHC subtypes. Based on the IHC profiles, tumor subtypes were classified as luminal A, luminal B, human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) enriched, or triple-negative (TN) cancers. Using univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses, we looked for correlations between four IHC subtypes and two IHC subtypes (TN and non-triple negative [non-TN]) and clinicopathologic and radiologic factors, respectively. Results Based on our univariate analyses with the four subtypes, the TN subtype showed a higher incidence of masses on mammography compared to the other subtypes (P = 0.037), and the TN subtype also tended to have the highest histologic grade among the subtypes (P < 0.001). With regard to the two IHC subtypes, the TN subtype had a significant association with medullary cancer (P = 0.021), higher histologic grade (grade 3; P < 0.001), and higher T stage (T2; P = 0.027) compared to the non-TN subtypes. In a multivariate logistic regression analysis of the clinicoradiologic factors compared to luminal A, the HER2 subtype had a significant association with BI-RADS category 4b (odds ratio [OR], 9.005; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.414 - 57.348; P = 0.020) and borderline significance with category 4c (OR, 4.669; 95% CI, 0.970 - 22.468; P = 0.055). In a multivariate logistic regression analysis of the clinicoradiologic factors associated with the non-TN subtypes, the TN subtype was significantly correlated with medullary carcinoma (OR, 7.092; 95% CI, 1.149 - 43.772; P = 0.035). Conclusion These results suggest that patients with the TN subtypes are more likely to have higher-histologic-grade tumors and medullary cancer. The HER2 subtype was typically associated with a higher BI-RADS category.