Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Spinal anesthesia with bupivacaine and fentanyl associated with femoral nerve block in postoperative analgesia in the reconstruction of the anterior cruciate ligament

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: To evaluate postoperative analgesia and the need for tramadol in patients undergoing reconstruction of the anterior cruciate ligament with spinal anesthesia, fentanyl and femoral nerve block. METHODS: 166 patients were divided into four groups (G). All patients received spinal anesthesia with 15mg of isobaric bupivacaine at 0.5%. In the G2 and G3 groups, 25μg of fentanyl was associated with bupivacaine and in groups G3 and G4 femoral nerve block was associated with 100mg of bupivacaine at 0.5%, without vasoconstrictor. Patients received timed dipyrone and ketoprofen and were instructed to request tramadol if the pain was ≥4 on the numerical scale. After 6, 12 and 24 hours of spinal anesthesia, the score was recorded on the numerical scale, the request of tramadol and adverse events. RESULTS: Mean pain scores at 6 and 24 hours were not different. In the 12-hour evaluation, there was a difference only in G4 in relation to G1 (p=0.01). Tramadol was requested by 46.7% in G1, 52.9% in G2, 18.6% in G3 and 36.4% in G4 (p=0.009), with a difference between G1 and G3 and also between G2 and G3. CONCLUSION: The association of spinal anesthesia and femoral nerve block in G4 provided lower pain scores in the evaluation at 12 hours after anesthesia. On the other hand, the highest indices were observed in G2, spinal anesthesia with fentanyl. Pain scores at 6 and 12 hours were similar. The highest consumption of analgesics occurred in those who reported more pain in G2.
IT Students Selection and Admission Analysis using Naïve Bayes and C4.5 Algorithm

Admission to college and selection of applications have probably become an integral part of some colleges and universities in their enrolment process, yet it is girded by controversy and skepticism. A new area of research that uses techniques of data mining is known as Educational Data Mining. It incorporates machine learning algorithms and statistical methods to help for the interpretation of student’s learning habits, academic performances, and further improvements-if needed. This paper focuses on the predictive values of certain academic variables, admission tests, high school academic records as related to the performance of Information Technology (IT) students at the end of the first year. For this reason, 221 data were used, and C4.5 and Naive Bayes algorithms are applied to generate a prediction on the students' performance. The C4.5 classification gained 98.64% in 10-folds cross-validation and 96.97% in the 70% training and 30% testing percentage split compared to Naïve Bayes which only gained 89.14% and 86.36% for both 10-folds cross-validation and 70% training and 30% testing percentage split respectively. The comparative analysis of the result shows that senior high school track and academic data and admission test results are the influential attributes to the performance of IT students in their first year. This paper recommends for future studies to add different data from different years to increase the accuracy of the prediction.
A deep learning framework for wall motion abnormality detection in echocardiograms

Coronary Artery Disease (CAD) is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in developed nations. In patients with acute or chronic obstructive CAD, Echocardiography (ECHO) is the standard-of-care for visualizing abnormal ventricular wall thickening or motion which would be reported as Regional Wall Motion Abnormality (RWMA). The accurate identification of regional wall motion abnormalities is essential for cardiovascular assessment and myocardial ischemia, coronary artery disease and myocardial infarction diagnosis. Given the variability and challenges of scoring regional wall motion abnormalities, we propose the development of a platform that can quickly and accurately identify regional and global wall motion abnormalities on echo images. This thesis describes a deep learning-based framework that can aid physicians to utilize ultrasound for wall motion abnormality detection. The framework jointly combines image data and patient diagnostic information to determine both global and clinically-standard 16 regional wall motion labels. We validate the approach on a large cohort of echo studies obtained from 953 patients. We then report the performance of the proposed framework in the detection of wall motion abnormality. An average accuracy of 69.2% for the 16 regions and an average accuracy of 69.5% for global wall motion abnormality were achieved. To the best of our knowledge, our proposed framework is the first to analyze left ventricle wall motion for both global and regional abnormality detection in echocardiography data.
K-layer for Influencer Identification in Complex Networks

A small set of influential nodes, called influencers, spread information through a network faster and broader than other nodes. Identifying influencers has profound implications in various real-world spreading dynamics such as viral marketing, epidemic outbreaks and cascading failures. In this paper, we use and leverage the idea behind the widely-used k-shell index to introduce a new centrality index we call k-layer. The k-layer index, calculated through k-layer decomposition, quantifies the core of the network through the distance of nodes from the periphery of the network. Intuitively, the k-layer value of node i represents the depth of the node tree with node i as the root node within the scope of nodes that have been already removed. Our experimental results show that the proposed k-layer metric outperforms the k-shell index and the Mixed Degree Decomposition(MDD) in detecting the influencers of networks. After that, taking into account the node location characteristics in the network, an extended k-layer index, named KR-layer (KLR) is proposed and proved to have better ability to identify key nodes in complex networks. Our findings reveal the essential role of nodes’ distance from the periphery, leading us closer to the optimal solution of the influencer identification problem.
User Models for Culture-Aware Music Recommendation: Fusing Acoustic and Cultural Cues

Integrating information about the listener’s cultural background when building music recommender systems has recently been identified as a means to improve recommendation quality. In this article, we, therefore, propose a novel approach to jointly model users by their musical preferences and cultural backgrounds. We describe the musical preferences of users by the acoustic features of the songs the users have listened to and characterize the cultural background of users by culture-related socio-economic features that we infer from the user’s country. To evaluate the impact of the proposed user model on recommendation quality, we integrate the model into a culture-aware recommender system. By analyzing a dataset comprising approximately 400 million listening events of about 55,000 users from 36 countries, we show that incorporating both acoustic information of the tracks a user has listened to as well as the cultural background of users in the form of a music-cultural user model contributes to improved recommendation performance. Furthermore, we provide a systematic analysis of the influence of different features on the quality of the provided culture-aware track recommendations. We find that considering acoustic features that model the characteristics of tracks and a user’s musical preferences have the highest impact on recommendation performance. However, adding socio-economic features allows further improving the recommendation quality. In addition, we identify interesting correlations between acoustic characteristics of music preferences and cultural features of populations at the country level.
COMPARISON OF SUBTHALAMIC NUCLEUS VS. GLOBUS PALLIDUS INTERNA DEEP BRAIN STIMULATION IN TERMS OF GAIT AND BALANCE; A TWO YEAR FOLLOW-UP STUDY.

AIM Objective For advanced Parkinson's disease (PD), deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a well-established treatment. In the long-term, however, subthalamic nucleus (STN) DBS can result in the worsening of the axial symptoms and gait disturbance, eventually causing frequent falls. This prospective study aims to compare the effects of STN and globus pallidus interna (GPi) DBS on the motor outcome, gait and balance function, fall risk (FR), and non-motor symptoms. MATERIAL AND METHODS We randomized patients with advanced PD with the indication of DBS to undergo either STN or GPi DBS and followed them for 2 years. We collected data at baseline and postoperative 6, 12, and 24 months. We compared changes in the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS) score, timed gait tests, posturography, non-motor symptom questionnaire (NMSQuest), hospital anxiety and depression (HAD) scale, and levodopa equivalent dose (LED). RESULTS Both STN and GPi DBS are equally effective in alleviating disabling motor complications. However, seemingly, STN DBS could cause more gait and balance problems; hence, a tailored approach seems to be more appropriate in the target selection. CONCLUSION Both STN and GPi DBS are equally effective in alleviating disabling motor complications. However, seemingly, STN DBS could cause more gait and balance problems; hence, a tailored approach seems to be more appropriate in the target selection.
Advances and Applications of Dezert-Smarandache Theory (DSmT), Vol. 1

This chapter presents a general overview and foundations of the DSmT, i.e. the recent theory of plausible and paradoxical reasoning developed by the authors, specially for the static or dynamic fusion of information arising from several independent but potentially highly conflicting, uncertain and imprecise sources of evidence. We introduce and justify here the basis of the DSmT framework with respect to the Dempster-Shafer Theory (DST), a mathematical theory of evidence developed in 1976 by Glenn Shafer. We present the DSm combination rules and provide some simple illustrative examples and comparisons with other main rules of combination available in the literature for the combination of information for simple fusion problems. Detailed presentations on recent advances and applications of DSmT are presented in the next chapters of this book.
Ring VCO Phase Noise Optimization by Pseudo-Differential Architecture in 28nm FD-SOI CMOS

This paper presents a Pseudo-differential Ring-VCO (PRVCO) architecture optimized to improve by more than a factor of two the phase noise performance of regular single-ended inverter-based Ring-VCO (RVCO). Two RVCO topologies are compared and integrated in 28nm FD-SOI CMOS technology from STMicroelectronics. Based on a double tuning approach, each oscillator presents a Frequency Tuning Range (FTR) between 0.7 GHz and 2.8 GHz (120 % of FTR). The coarse tuning is realized by the local supply voltage variation, while the fine tuning is obtained via the transistors wide range body biasing specific to FD-SOI. Under typical configuration, the PRVCO presents a phase noise (PN) performance of − 95.7 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset frequency, which represents a 4 dB improvement compared to the inverter-based RVCO phase noise at 1.7 GHz. Both fabricated RVCOs performances are compared to the state-of-art regarding their oscillator's and VCO's Figure of Merit (FoM).
A statistical examination of the properties and evolution of libre software

How and why does software wolve? this question has been under study since 40 years ago, and it is still a subjet of controversy . This thesis prevents the results of an empirical study bases on datathesis containing information about thuousands of libre (three/ open source) software proyects: it exclusively uses publicly avarable data sources, which makes it possible that all the results are redeteable and verifiable by third parties.
Role of aPKCl in epidermal morphogenesis and homeostasis

Cell polarity, defined as the asymmetric distribution of proteins, lipids and structural elements within a cell, is crucial for tissue homeostasis by regulating a variety of functions such as barrier formation, cell fate, migration and cell shape. The overall aim of this study was to examine how polarity pathways regulate epidermal morphogenesis and homeostasis and more specifically, the balance between differentiation and proliferation in a self-renewing stratified epithelium. Atypical protein kinase C (aPKC) is a key player in the regulation of polarity, although most of its functions have been studied in lower organisms or in mammalian simple epithelial cells. In mammals, two aPKC isoforms have been identified, aPKCλ and aPKCζ. To elucidate the role of aPKCλ in the stratifying epithelium of mice, aPKCλ was deleted specifically in all epidermal lineages (aPKCλepi-/- mice). Loss of aPKCλ resulted in a progressive phenotype characterized by a hyperthickened interfollicular epidermis (IFE), enlarged sebaceous glands and deformed hair follicles (HFs). We observed increased differentiation of sebaceous glands and IFE whereas HF differentiation was perturbed after aPKCλ deletion, suggesting cell fate changes within the epidermal lineage. aPKCλepi-/- HFs increasingly failed to enter resting phases of the hair cycle, which was associated with increased proliferation and a loss of quiescence in HF bulge stem cells. Concomitantly with inappropriate HF stem cell activation, immunohistochemical and FACS analyses revealed a gradual loss of bulge stem cell marker expression, indicating a depletion of bulge stem cells over time in aPKCλepi-/- mice. This was accompanied by a gradually increased number of cells expressing markers of more committed progenitors suggesting altered cellular fate of aPKCλ-/- HF stem cells. The gradual loss of stem cell function was confirmed in vitro by a loss of proliferative potential of adult keratinocytes. Moreover, aged mice showed complete alopecia and a premature aging phenotype indicating exhaustion of stem cells. Together, these data demonstrate that loss of aPKCλ exhausts the bulge stem cell compartment over time. Cellular analyses revealed that epidermal deletion of aPKCλ increased the ratio of asymmetric versus symmetric divisions in the IFE as well as HFs providing a mechanistic explanation for how aPKC regulates epidermal cell fate decisions. On the molecular level this was linked to altered Rac1 activation and changes in the expression and in vitro localization of the cell fate protein Numb. Moreover, loss of aPKCλ increased Wnt/β-catenin signaling in keratinocytes, which provides a potential link to altered HF cycling. In summary, this work revealed that aPKCλ is crucial for epidermal homeostasis and HF stem cell maintenance and demonstrates a key role for aPKCλ in the regulation of epidermal cell fate decisions, likely by controlling the balance of asymmetric versus symmetric cell divisions.
Old Age Imposes Selection of Precursor B Cells by a Surrogate Light Chain Dependent Mechanism

of a dissertation at the University of Miami. Dissertation supervised by Professor Richard Riley No. of pages in text. (167) Senescent mice show diminished B lymphopoiesis as well as alterations in mature B cell compartments. Within both spleen and bone marrow (BM), aged mice show ~5-10 fold increases in “age associated B cells (ABC)”, which is a normally minor mature B cell subset that lacks surface expression of CD21/35 and CD23. This population, through senescence acquired secretion of TNFα, can induce apoptosis in pro-B cells directly, as well as indirectly through the bone marrow. Adoptive transfer experiments suggest ABC contribute to a proinflammatory environment within the bone marrow of aged mice. Old FO and FO-like BM B cells produce TNFα while young do not, but both ages contain an IL-10 producing subset, which can abrogate the effects of TNFα on pro-B cells. The increased ABC relative to the FO-like B cells in the bone marrow showed significant correlation to the loss of B cell precursors (BCP) in old mice in vivo. This in turn contributes to the loss in B lymphopoiesis seen in old age. Aged pre-B and pro-B cells have reduced expression of the surrogate light chain (SLC; VpreB, λ5), part of the pre-BCR complex. In both aged mice and ABC adoptive transfer recipients, pro-B cells show decreased expression of SLC. BCP that show little or no SLC expression are resistant to TNFα induced apoptosis. Pro-B cells express a “pro-BCR” complex that contains cadherin 17 (cadh17) and SLC. Low expression of cadh17/SLC in pro-B cells is associated with increased phosphorylation of pro-apoptotic Bim, leading to its inactivation and degradation. Crosslinking cadh17 on the surface of SLC pro-B cells restores apoptotic sensitivity to TNFα by reducing the levels of phospho-Bim. Loss of SLC also alters the susceptibility of pro-B cells to a very different apoptotic stimulus, TGFβ, at the signal transduction and nuclear translocation stages. These results suggest that alterations in B cell composition in old age contribute to an inflammatory bone marrow microenvironment, which preferentially targets pro-B cells that express high levels of SLC, inducing apoptosis and reducing the pool of pro-B cells in aged mice to low SLC expressing cells. This loss of high SLC expressing pro-B cells likely compromises B cell development at the pro-B to pre-B transition.
Sources of acoustic scattering near a halocline in an estuarine frontal system

INIDEP and Dto. Ciencias Marinas, UNMDP, Funes y Pena, 7600 Mar del Plata, Argentina.SUMMARY: Salt wedge is a quasi permanent feature at the Rio de la Plata estuary, generating strong vertical density gra-dients. Zooplankton and ichthyoplankton organisms aggregated below the halocline were insonified utilizing a scientificechosounder operating with a 120 kHz single beam transducer. From acoustic data and CTD measurements, a strong coin-cidence between the depths of the scattering layer and the halocline was proven. The organisms from the zooplankton andthe ichthyoplankton were caught with a Nackthai sampler and classified into four functional groups according to their scat-tering properties. A multiple regression analysis shows fish larvae as the most significant source of sound scattering at thehalocline. Finally, the salt wedge across the estuarine regime is described employing an echochart. The halocline hereshowed a quasi constant depth at 7-8 m with the salt water intruding 100 km upstream.
Analysis and Optimization of Cache-Enabled Fog Radio Access Networks: Successful Transmission Probability, Fractional Offloaded Traffic and Delay

In this paper, the edge caching optimization problem in fog radio access networks (F-RANs) is investigated. Considering that fog access points (F-APs) can offer cooperation gain by jointly transmitting the same file or content diversity gain by concurrently transmitting the coded subfiles, we propose to use both joint transmission (JT) strategy and parallel transmission (PT) strategy to serve users. Using tools from stochastic geometry, we first derive the expressions of successful transmission probability (STP) under different transmission strategies, and then derive the expressions of fractional offloaded traffic (FOT) and delay. We further formulate the corresponding edge caching optimization problem to maximize the STP, FOT or minimize the delay. Considering the NP-hard property of the above optimization problem, we propose an improved fruit fly optimization (FFO) based edge caching scheme, which utilizes the dynamic search step to avoid pre-mature convergence. Furthermore, we theoretically analyze the convergence and global optimality of our proposed scheme. Numerical results show that a significant performance gain is achieved by using our proposed edge caching scheme compared with the baseline schemes.
The Impact of Sexual Behaviours, Risk Perceptions and the Criminalization of HIV Non-Disclosure on HIV Transmission among HIV-Negative and HIV-Positive Men Who Have Sex With Men in Toronto

Background: Theory suggests that perceived human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) risk and actual HIV risk behaviour are cyclical whereby engaging in high risk behaviour can increase perceived risk, which initiates precautionary behaviour that reduces actual risk, and with time reduces perceived risk. While current perceived risk may impact future actual risk, it is less clear how previous actual risk shapes current perceived risk. If individuals do not base their current perceived risk on past behaviour, they lose the protective effect of perceived risk motivating precautionary behaviour. Our goal was to determine the impact of actual risk on perceived risk. Methods: Sexually active men who have sex with men (MSM) were recruited at the Maple Leaf Medical Clinic in downtown Toronto from September 2010 to June 2012. Participants completed a socio-behavioural questionnaire using an Audio Computer Assisted Self-Interview (ACASI). Actual HIV risk (primary predictor) was constructed by applying principal component analysis (PCA) to eight sexual risk survey questions and comprised three components which reflected sex with casual partners, sex with HIV-positive regular partners and sex with HIV unknown status regular partners. Perceived HIV risk (outcome) was measured by asking participants what the chances were that they would ever get HIV. Multivariable logistic regression was used to measure the association between actual and perceived HIV risk. Results: One hundred and fifty HIV-negative MSM were recruited (median age 44.5 years [IQR 37–50 years]). Twenty percent of MSM perceived their HIV risk to be high. The odds of having a high perceived risk was significantly higher in those with high actual HIV risk indicated by low condom use with an HIV-positive regular partner compared to those with low actual HIV risk indicated by high condom use with an HIV-positive regular partner (Odds Ratio (OR) 18.33, 95 % confidence interval (CI) 1.65–203.45). Older age was associated with lower perceived risk but only age 40–49 compared to less than 30 was statistically significant (OR 0.12, 95 % CI 0.016–0.86). The odds of having high perceived risk was significantly associated with men who used poppers in the previous 6 months compared to those who did not use poppers (OR 5.64, 95 % CI 1.20–26.48). Conclusions: Perceived HIV risk increased significantly as condom use with an HIV-positive regular partner decreased. However, perceived HIV risk was not associated with condom use with casual partners or HIV unknown status regular partners, even though these behaviours could be considered risky. The relationship between perceived and actual risk in HIV studies is complex and has implications on how health care workers address the issue of risky sexual behaviour and perceived risk.
1*4 Rectangular Patch Array Operating at 10GHz Using Corporate Feeding Technique

Present day communication systems need more compact design with low cost, less weight and better performance over wide spectrum of frequencies . The microstrip antenna is best suited for above all requirements. Here a rectangular patch microstrip antenna is designed to operate at 10 GHz frequency using HFSS software. After that a 1×4 array is designed using that rectangular patch element for better performance in various parameters like gain, return loss and VSWR. This antenna is designed for X-band applications like radar, satellite communications, medical and some wireless communications.