Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparison of Surgical and Conservative Treatments for Odontoid Fractures in the Elderly: Results from Three Tertiary Referral Centers in the Netherlands

Objective: Odontoid fractures are the most common cervical spine fractures in elderly patients. The optimal treatment in this age group remains controversial. The goal of this study was to compare outcomes of surgical and conservative treatments. Methods: A retrospective cohort study was conducted in three tertiary referral centers in the Netherlands. Patient records were reviewed for patients who met the selection criteria (i.a. age ≥55 years, type II/III odontoid fractures). Fracture healing (union/stability) and clinical outcomes (Likert scale) were assessed. The influence of age, applied treatment, and treatment strategy (‘fracture based approach’ or ‘primarily conservative’) was studied. Results: A total of 105 patients were included (18 treated surgically, 87 treated conservatively; 52 treated with ‘fracture based approach’, 53 treated ‘primarily conservative’). No difference was found in fracture union (68% overall) and fracture stability (88% overall). Data on clinical outcome were scarce, but did not differ between treatment groups. Patients ≥80 years had worse outcomes in both applied treatment- and treatment strategy arms. Conclusion: No radiological differences in outcome between surgical or conservative treatment (strategies) were observed. The majority of patients achieved fracture healing. The exact correlation between the quality of fracture healing (union or stability) and clinical outcome remains unclear. Advanced age (>80 years) negatively influenced outcome.
Multiresolution Motif Discovery in Time Series

Time series motif discovery is an important problem with applications in a variety of areas that range from telecommunications to medicine. Several algorithms have been proposed to solve the problem. However, these algorithms heavily use expensive random disk accesses or assume the data can fit into main memory. They only consider motifs at a single resolution and are not suited to interactivity. In this work, we tackle the motif discovery problem as an approximate Top-K frequent subsequence discovery problem. We fully exploit state of the art iSAX representation multiresolution capability to obtain motifs at different resolutions. This property yields interactivity, allowing the user to navigate along the Top-K motifs structure. This permits a deeper understanding of the time series database. Further, we apply the Top-K space saving algorithm to our frequent subsequences approach. A scalable algorithm is obtained that is suitable for data stream like applications where small memory devices such as sensors are used. Our approach is scalable and disk-efficient since it only needs one single pass over the time series database. We provide empirical evidence of the validity of the algorithm in datasets from different areas that aim to represent practical applications.
Perspectives on the State of Modeling and Simulating Human Intent Inferencing

This paper presents the current state of research and practice for human intent inferencing, recognition, and application. The paper addresses both the specific topic of human intent inferencing and areas closely associated with human intent inferencing drawn from the research areas of artificial intelligence, human computer interaction, and cognitive science. Examples of these closely related topic areas are cognitive modeling and knowledge representation, plan/goal recognition and interpretation, and mixed initiative and collaborative problem-solving. Finally, the paper closes with a summary of the issues still remaining in the area of human intent inferencing and some recommendations on future research directions.
Sensitizing Black Adult and Youth Consumers to Targeted Food Marketing Tactics in Their Environments

Food marketing environments of Black American consumers are heavily affected by ethnically-targeted marketing of sugar sweetened beverages, fast foods, and other products that may contribute to caloric overconsumption. This qualitative study assessed Black consumers’ responses to targeted marketing. Black adults (2 mixed gender groups; total n = 30) and youth (2 gender specific groups; total n = 35) from two U.S. communities participated before and after a sensitization procedure—a critical practice used to understand social justice concerns. Pre-sensitization focus groups elicited responses to scenarios about various targeted marketing tactics. Participants were then given an informational booklet about targeted marketing to Black Americans, and all returned for the second (post-sensitization) focus group one week later. Conventional qualitative content analysis of transcripts identified several salient themes: seeing the marketer’s perspective (“it’s about demand”; “consumers choose”), respect for community (“marketers are setting us up for failure”; “making wrong assumptions”), and food environments as a social justice issue (“no one is watching the door”; “I didn’t realize”). Effects of sensitization were reflected in participants’ stated reactions to the information in the booklet, and also in the relative occurrence of marketer-oriented themes and social justice-oriented themes, respectively, less and more after sensitization.
A comparison of pectoralis versus lumbar skeletal muscle indices for defining sarcopenia in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma - two are better than one

Backgrounds Sarcopenia is known to be associated with poor clinical outcome in patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL). There is no consensus concerning the optimal method to define sarcopenia in DLBCL. Methods We retrospectively reviewed 193 DLBCL patients treated with rituximab plus cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine, and prednisone (R-CHOP) therapy. Sarcopenia was classified by the region where the pretreatment skeletal muscle index (SMI) was measured. Results Both the sarcopenia-L3 and sarcopenia-pectoralis muscle (PM) groups had increased incidences of severe treatment-related toxicities and treatment discontinuation compared with the non-sarcopenia-L3 and non-sarcopenia-PM groups, respectively. The sarcopenia-L3 and non-sarcopenia-L3 groups had 5-year overall survival (OS) rates of 40.5% and 67.8% (p < 0.001), respectively. The sarcopenia-PM and non-sarcopenia-PM groups had 5-year OS rates of 35.9% and 69.0% (p < 0.001), respectively. When the sarcopenia-L3 alone and sarcopenia-PM alone groups were compared, there were no differences in baseline characteristics, treatment toxicity, or survival. In multivariate analysis, when compared with the non-sarcopenia-both group, OS was significantly worse in the sarcopenia-both group (HR, 2.480; 95% CI, 1.284 – 4.792; p = 0.007), but not in patients with either sarcopenia-L3 alone or sarcopenia-PM alone (p = 0.151). Conclusions L3- and PM-SMIs are equally useful to define sarcopenia, which is related to intolerance to R-CHOP therapy and to worse survival in patients with DLBCL. More prognostic information can be obtained when these two SMIs are combined to define sarcopenia.
Simple Example: Clustering Images Using Expectation Maximization

This paper gives an example of a novel simple implementation of the EM algorithm for clustering images. Here we use a simple gray scale color feature to describe an image. When compared to results of other methods using the same simple feature, we found that the proposed method performs well. These comparison results imply that this simple model can be extended to cluster images using more complex features such as texture, shape, and other color descriptors to further improve the precision and recall of the results in order to outperform the existing methods. Further research can prove that this simplified EM algorithm achieves robust classification of unrestricted image domain.
Exploring Healthcare Opportunities in Online Social Networks: Depressive Moods of Users Captured in Twitter

Background Depression is the most commonly diagnosed mental disorder in many developed countries. Despite increasing public knowledge and awareness, many individuals with depression go undetected and untreated. While public programs such as the National Depression Screening Day are an important step towards decreasing the prevalence of undiagnosed depression, their main limitation lies in the selection bias of people they can reach, because the programs are participation-oriented. In terms of reaching vulnerable individuals, one useful addition to existing screening methods is to utilize a large amount of content individuals share on online social networks. In websites like Facebook and Twitter, hundreds of millions of users across a wide spectrum of demographics post their moods and thoughts in real-time. Data embedded in these sites hence could provide a cost-effective way to study health behaviors from non-clinic-based populations. Objective We would like to determine the degree to which online sentiments of depressed users in Twitter differ from non-depressed users and to understand the linguistic features in tweets that are reflective of one’s depressive state. Methods The analysis was conducted in three steps: (1) classifying 69 participants into three depressive levels based on the Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression (CES-D) scale, which is a self-judged survey; generally depression symptoms are divided into three groups based on the likelihood of having depression: low (0-15), mild to moderate (16-22), and high range (23-60), (2) collecting the tweets of the participants, and (3) comparing the online sentiments with the offline counterpart. We measured the sentiment scores of online tweets by Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC), a text analysis program that counts words in psychologically meaningful categories. We ran multiple regression with CES-D and LIWC scores. Results 1. Depressed users had a higher chance of using words in certain affect categories such as “anger (e.g., hate, kill, annoyed)”, “causation (e.g., because, effect, hence)”, and “friends (e.g., buddy, neighbor, friend)” . On the other hand, the usage of words related to “communication (e.g., tell, speak, claim)” and “tentative (e.g., maybe, perhaps, guess)” were dropped for the depressed users. 2. The qualitative content analysis suggests that depressed users were more likely to post tweets about themselves than to interact with other users seen by increase usage of first person pronouns compared to non-depressed Twitter users. Conclusions Our results imply that it is possible to use online social network data for exploring public behaviors in relation to depression. While preliminary, we expect to gain more insights from using social network data for healthcare purposes in the future with the goal of building a depression screening system in online social networks to decrease the prevalence of undiagnosed depression. []
Trapped water molecules are essential to structural dynamics and function of a ribozyme

Ribozymes are catalytically competent examples of highly structured noncoding RNAs, which are ubiquitous in the processing and regulation of genetic information. Combining explicit-solvent molecular dynamics simulation and single molecule fluorescence spectroscopy approaches, we find that a ribozyme from a subviral plant pathogen exhibits a coupled hydrogen bonding network that communicates dynamic structural rearrangements throughout the catalytic core in response to site-specific chemical modification. Trapped long-residency water molecules are critical for this network and only occasionally exchange with bulk solvent as they pass through a breathing interdomain base stack. These highly structured water molecules line up in a string that may potentially also be involved in specific base catalysis. Our observations suggest important, still underappreciated roles for specifically bound water molecules in the structural dynamics and function of noncoding RNAs.
Functional roles of the transcription factor Oct-2A and the high mobility group protein I/Y in HLA-DRA gene expression

The class II major histocompatibility complex gene HLA-DRA is expressed in B cells, activated T lymphocytes, and in antigen-presenting cells. In addition, HLA-DRA gene expression is inducible in a variety of cell types by interferon-gamma (IFN-gamma). Here we show that the lymphoid- specific transcription factor Oct-2A plays a critical role in HLA-DRA gene expression in class II-positive B cell lines, and that the high mobility group protein (HMG) I/Y binds to multiple sites within the DRA promoter, including the Oct-2A binding site. Coexpression of HMG I/Y and Oct-2 in cell lines lacking Oct-2 results in high levels of HLA-DRA gene expression, and in vitro DNA-binding studies reveal that HMG I/Y stimulates Oct-2A binding to the HLA-DRA promoter. Thus, Oct-2A and HMG I/Y may synergize to activate HLA-DRA expression in B cells. By contrast, Oct-2A is not involved in the IFN-gamma induction of the HLA- DRA gene in HeLa cells, but antisense HMG I/Y dramatically decreases the level of induction. We conclude that distinct sets of transcription factors are involved in the two modes of HLA-DRA expression, and that HMG I/Y may be important for B cell-specific expression, and is essential for IFN-gamma induction.
Smoothed particle hydrodynamics in complex shapes

In this paper, we propose an improved computation model of wall boundary in Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics, a particle method for fluid simulation. Generally, particle methods calculate a wall boundary by converting it to wall particles. The proposed method uses a distance function calculated from a polygon model as a wall boundary. As a result, fluid motion in complex shapes can be simulated easily. Since the method does not use wall particles, it is able to represent a wall boundary without increasing the particle resolution. When a boundary is represented by wall particles, we have to generate a large number of wall particles. The proportion of the number of wall particles in total number of particles is high. However the proposed method does not need wall particles, it can reduce the total number of particles. After the simulation, surface mesh is usually constructed to visualize a simulation result from particles. However, it is difficult to generate smooth surface from them. We also propose a visualization method which can construct smooth fluid surfaces contacting with a wall boundary.
System Design and Control of Anthropomorphic Walking Robot LOLA

This paper presents the 25-DOF full-size humanoid robot LOLA . Our goal is to realize fast and human-like walking. Furthermore, we want to increase the robot's autonomous, vision-guided walking capabilities. LOLA is characterized by a redundant kinematic configuration, an extremely lightweight design, joint actuators with brushless motors and an electronics architecture using decentralized joint control. Special emphasis was put on an improved mass distribution to achieve good dynamic performance. Center of mass trajectories are calculated in real-time from footstep locations using a spline collocation method. Reference trajectories are modified by a stabilizing control system based on hybrid force/position control with an inner joint position control loop.
Cross-Species, Amplifiable EST-SSR Markers for Amentotaxus Species Obtained by Next-Generation Sequencing

Amentotaxus, a genus of Taxaceae, is an ancient lineage with six relic and endangered species. Four Amentotaxus species, namely A. argotaenia, A. formosana, A. yunnanensis, and A. poilanei, are considered a species complex because of their morphological similarities. Small populations of these species are allopatrically distributed in Asian forests. However, only a few codominant markers have been developed and applied to study population genetic structure of these endangered species. In this study, we developed and characterized polymorphic expressed sequence tag-simple sequence repeats (EST-SSRs) from the transcriptome of A. formosana. We identified 4955 putative EST-SSRs from 68,281 unigenes as potential molecular markers. Twenty-six EST-SSRs were selected for estimating polymorphism and transferability among Amentotaxus species, of which 23 EST-SSRs were polymorphic within Amentotaxus species. Among these, the number of alleles ranged from 1–4, the polymorphism information content ranged from 0.000–0.692, and the observed and expected heterozygosity were 0.000–1.000 and 0.080–0.740, respectively. Population genetic structure analyses confirmed that A. argotaenia and A. formosana were separate species and A. yunnanensis and A. poilanei were the same species. These novel EST-SSRs can facilitate further population genetic structure research of Amentotaxus species.
Intranasal Administration of Interleukin-1 Receptor Antagonist in a Transient Focal Cerebral Ischemia Rat Model

The interleukin-1 receptor antagonist (IL-1RA) is a potential stroke treatment candidate. Intranasal delivery is a novel method thereby a therapeutic protein can be penetrated into the brain parenchyma by bypassing the blood-brain barrier. Thus, this study tested whether intranasal IL-1RA can provide neuroprotection and brain penetration in transient cerebral ischemia. In male Sprague-Dawley rats, focal cerebral ischemia was induced by middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) for 1 h. The rats simultaneously received 50 mg/kg human IL-1RA through the intranasal (IN group) or intraperitoneal route (IP group). The other rats were given 0.5 mL/kg normal saline (EC group). Neurobehavioral function, infarct size, and the concentration of the administered human IL-1RA in the brain tissue were assessed. In addition, the cellular distribution of intranasal IL-1RA in the brain and its effect on proinflammatory cytokines expression were evaluated. Intranasal IL-1RA improved neurological deficit and reduced infarct size until 7 days after MCAO (p<0.05). The concentrations of the human IL-1RA in the brain tissue 24 h after MCAO were significantly greater in the IN group than in the IP group (p<0.05). The human IL-1RA was confirmed to be co-localized with neuron and microglia. Furthermore, the IN group had lower expression of interleukin-1β and tumor necrosis factor-α at 6 h after MCAO than the EC group (p<0.05). These results suggest that intranasal IL-1RA can reach the brain parenchyma more efficiently and provide superior neuroprotection in the transient focal cerebral ischemia.
Performance Enhancement of MEMS-Based INS/GPS Integration for Low-Cost Navigation Applications

The relatively high cost of inertial navigation systems (INSs) has been preventing their integration with global positioning systems (GPSs) for land-vehicle applications. Inertial sensors based on microelectromechanical system (MEMS) technology have recently become commercially available at lower costs. These relatively lower cost inertial sensors have the potential to allow the development of an affordable GPS-aided INS (INS/GPS) vehicular navigation system. While MEMS-based INS is inherently immune to signal jamming, spoofing, and blockage vulnerabilities (as opposed to GPS), the performance of MEMS-based gyroscopes and accelerometers is significantly affected by complex error characteristics that are stochastic in nature. To improve the overall performance of MEMS-based INS/GPS, this paper proposes the following two-tier approach at different levels: (1) improving the stochastic modeling of MEMS-based inertial sensor errors using autoregressive processes at the raw measurement level and (2) enhancing the positioning accuracy during GPS outages by nonlinear modeling of INS position errors at the information fusion level using neuro-fuzzy (NF) modules, which are augmented in the Kalman filtering INS/GPS integration. Experimental road tests involving a MEMS-based INS were performed, which validated the efficacy of the proposed methods on several trajectories.
A Three-Dimensional Networks-on-Chip Architecture with Dynamic Buffer Sharing

3D integration is a practical solution for overcoming the failure of Dennard scaling in future technology generations. This emerging technology stacks several die slices on top of each other on a single chip in order to provide higher-bandwidth and lower-latency than a 2D design due to extremely shorter inter-layer distances in the third dimension and. In this paper, we leverage the low-latency vertical links to address buffer management, one of the most important design and management issues in Network-on-Chip (NoC). To this end, we present VerBuS, an architecture for 3D routers with Vertical BUffer Sharing capability enabled by ultra-low latency vertical links of a 3D chip. VerBuS can share virtual channels (VC) between vertically stacked routers. This way, the buffering capacity of a highly loaded router is increased by using idle VCs of vertically adjacent routers. Experimental results show up to 20% improvement in NoC performance metrics over state-of-the-art 3D router designs.
Histometric Analysis of Skin‐Radiofrequency Interaction Using a Fractionated Microneedle Delivery System

BACKGROUND Fractionated microneedle radiofrequency (RF) devices have been reported to be effective in treatment of various dermatologic disorders. OBJECTIVES To analyze histometric changes in skin‐RF interactions using a fractionated microneedle delivery system. MATERIALS AND METHODS RF energies were delivered using a fractionated microneedle device to an in vivo minipig model with penetration depths of 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5, and 3.5 mm; RF conduction times of 20, 50, 100, and 1,000 ms; and energy levels of 5.0, 10.0, 20.0, 25.0, 37.5, and 50.0 V. RESULTS Immediately after treatment, skin samples showed that the RF‐induced coagulated columns in the dermis formed a cocoon‐shaped zone of sublative thermal injury. Four days after the treatment, skin specimens demonstrated reepithelialization, and the dermal RF‐induced coagulated columns showed mixed cellular infiltration, neovascularization, and granulation tissue formation. Microneedle depth and RF conduction times, but not energy level, significantly affected histometric values of RF‐induced dermal coagulation. Microneedle RF treatment affected adnexal structures by coagulating follicular epithelium and perifollicular structures. CONCLUSIONS Our data may be of use as an essential reference for choosing RF parameters in treatment of various skin conditions.
Measurement of sublingual blood velocity as a tool for monitoring sepsis

Measurements of sublingual blood velocity and blood flow were performed at normal body temperature and after both hot and cold stimulation. Laser speckle measurements of blood velocity were compared with measurements of blood flow obtained with a commercial laser Doppler flowmeter. Sublingual blood velocity increased in all subjects in response to both hot and cold stimulation as compared with that at normal temperature.