Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Risk Factors for Physical Injury Among Women Assaulted by Current or Former Spouses

This study examined risk factors for physical injuries resulting from partner violence using data from the Canadian Violence Against Women Survey. Multivariate results indicated that experiencing violence before the union, having a partner who was drinking at the time of the assault, having children who witnessed the assault, experiencing previous violence by the same partner, fearing one's life was in danger, and experiencing high levels of emotional abuse were related to an increased risk of both minor and severe injuries. Both models had good predictive value: 80% concordance rate when predicting minor injuries and 90% concordance rate when predicting severe injuries. Knowledge of a woman's status on these risk factors would allow public health practitioners to intervene with battered women more effectively to prevent injuries.
A Hybrid Security Mechanism for Intra-WBAN and Inter-WBAN Communications

The emerging wireless body area networks (WBANs) have a great potential for the growth and development of future ubiquitous healthcare systems. However, due to the use of unreliable wireless media, WBANs are exposed to a variety of attacks. The prevention of these attacks depends upon the cryptographic techniques. The strength of cryptography is based on the keys used for encryption and decryption in the communication process. Security is still an alarming challenge for WBANs and needs attention of the research community. The proposed work introduces a hybrid key management scheme for both intra-WBAN and inter-WBAN communications. The proposed technique is based on preloaded keys as well as keys automatically generated from biometrics of the human body. The biometric-based calculations are of linear time complexity to cater the strict resource constraints and security requirements of WBANs. The proposed security mechanism provides an efficient solution for the security of both intra-WBAN and inter-WBAN communications. The results of the proposed technique are compared with an existing key management technique known as BARI+. The results show significant improvement over the results produced by BARI+ in terms of storage, communication, energy overhead, and security.
Mind my value: a decentralized infrastructure for fair and trusted IoT data trading

Internet of Things (IoT) data are increasingly viewed as a new form of massively distributed and large scale digital assets, which are continuously generated by millions of connected devices. The real value of such assets can only be realized by allowing IoT data trading to occur on a marketplace that rewards every single producer and consumer, at a very granular level. Crucially, we believe that such a marketplace should not be owned by anybody, and should instead fairly and transparently self-enforce a well defined set of governance rules. In this paper we address some of the technical challenges involved in realizing such a marketplace. We leverage emerging blockchain technologies to build a decentralized, trusted, transparent and open architecture for IoT traffic metering and contract compliance, on top of the largely adopted IoT brokered data infrastructure. We discuss an Ethereum-based prototype implementation and experimentally evaluate the overhead cost associated with Smart Contract transactions, concluding that a viable business model can indeed be associated with our technical approach.
Activity-Based Scene Decomposition for Topology Inference of Video Surveillance Network

The topology inference is the study of spatial and temporal relationships among cameras within a video surveillance network. We propose a novel approach to understand activities based on the visual coverage of a video surveillance network. In our approach, an optimal camera placement scheme is firstly presented by using a binary integer programming algorithm in order to maximize the surveillance coverage. Then, each camera view is decomposed into regions based on the Histograms of Color Optical Flow (HCOF), according to the spatial-temporal distribution of activity patterns observed in a training set of video sequences. We conduct experiments by using hours of video sequences captured at an office building with seven camera views, all of which are sparse scenes with complex activities. The results of real scene experiment show that the features of histograms of color optic flow offer important contextual information for spatial and temporal topology inference of a camera network.
Mortality of American Troops in the Iraq War

We estimate the death rate of United States troops deployed to Iraq from the beginning of the US invasion through 30 September 2006. Eighty percent of the deaths in Iraq were combat-related. The death rate in Iraq is lower than that of the civilian population of the United States but substantially higher than that of young adults. It is much lower than the death rate of US troops in Vietnam, in part because a much smaller fraction die among those wounded in Iraq. We also estimate relative mortality levels for US troops according to numerous demographic variables through 30 November 2006. The risk of death in Iraq per deployment is shown to be highest for Marines; Naval and Air Force personnel in Iraq have lower death rates than the civilian population of comparable age. Other categories with above-average mortality in Iraq are enlisted troops, males, younger persons, and Hispanics. Copyright 2007 The Population Council, Inc.
The effect of antiretrovirals on myoblast proliferation : migration and differentation.

Successful antiretroviral (ARV) treatment is associated with suppression of HIV viral load and the reduction of clinical disease progression. Despite marked improvements in ARV medication, side effects from long-term treatment, such as loss of muscle mass do occur. The mechanism by which ARVs affect muscle mass is unclear, however, published in vitro data suggests a negative effect on myoblast fusion during differentiation. The objective of this study was therefore to determine the effect of ARVs on processes required for successful myogenesis; these included proliferation, migration during wound repair, and differentiation. C2C12 mouse skeletal myoblasts and human primary culture skeletal (HSk) myoblasts were incubated with Zidovudine (nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor-NRTI), Tenofovir (nucleotide reverse transcriptase inhibitor-NtRTI) or Ritonavir (protease inhibitor-PI) at a concentration range of 0.01 μM to 10 μM. Proliferation was determined using crystal violet and migration was analyzed using a 2D wound healing assay. The commitment of myoblasts into the myogenic lineage was assessed via the expression of the transcription factor Pax7. Differentiation was measured by assessing the fusion index of multinucleated myotubes. C2C12 myoblast proliferation was observed to increase significantly in response to Tenofovir (1 μM and 10 μM). In HSk cells however, proliferation was observed to decrease significantly in response to Tenofovir (1 μM). Zidovudine had no consistent effect on C2C12 proliferation at any dose tested, but caused a decrease in HSk myoblast proliferation (0.01 μM and 0.1 μM); however this was statistically non-significant. A small dose-dependent increase in C2C12 and HSk cell number, although not significant, was seen in response to Ritonavir. Wound closure results revealed both dose-dependent and time-dependent effects of Tenofovir and Zidovudine on human myoblast migration, with significant decreases in the rate of wound closure (4-7 hours) noted at 0.1 μM and 0.01 μM doses respectively. Zidovudine had no significant effect on migration while Ritonavir (0.01 μM) was observed to significantly increase percentage wound closure of human myoblasts, suggesting an increased ability to migrate during wound repair. Differentiation results indicated a decrease in myoblast fusion in response to all three ARVs. However only Ritonavir was shown to negatively affect myosin heavy chain expression. Further research into the exact mechanism of decreased fusion is required. To our knowledge, this study is the first to suggest that selected ARVs may significantly influence myoblast regeneration capabilities by modulating myoblast proliferation, migration, differentiation
On the duality of operating system structures

Many operating system designs can be placed into one of two very rough categories, depending upon how they implement and use the notions of process and synchronization. One category, the "Message-oriented System," is characterized by a relatively small, static number of processes with an explicit message system for communicating among them. The other category, the "Procedure-oriented System," is characterized by a large, rapidly changing number of small processes and a process synchronization mechanism based on shared data.In this paper, it is demonstrated that these two categories are duals of each other and that a system which is constructed according to one model has a direct counterpart in the other. The principal conclusion is that neither model is inherently preferable, and the main consideration for choosing between them is the nature of the machine architecture upon which the system is being built, not the application which the system will ultimately support.
G-CSF in the setting of acute myocardial infarction

Experimental data suggest that stem cell mobilization with granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) may have potential as a novel regenerative strategy in the setting of acute myocardial infarction (AMI). Potentially beneficial effects of G-CSF may be attributed mainly to direct action of the cytokine G-CSF on injured myocardium by inhibition of apoptosis, rather than to differentiation of mobilized bone marrow stem cells into cardiac myocytes. This article reviews potential cardioprotective effects of G-CSF and discusses experimental and clinical findings with G-CSF in the setting of AMI.
β- to ω-Hydroxylation of the Esophageal Carcinogen Methyl-n-amylnitrosamine by the Rat Esophagus and Related Tissues

Abstract When the esophageal carcinogen methyl- n -amylnitrosamine (MNAN; concentration, 3 mg/liter) was incubated in vitro with rat esophagi for 3 hr, five principal neutral metabolites (Metabolites 2 to 6; total yield, 3.0% of the MNAN per 100 mg tissue) were separated by gas chromatography, with detection by a thermal energy analyzer. Rat liver produced similar metabolites (total yield, 2.1% of the MNAN per 100 mg tissue). Metabolites 4 to 6 and a minor product, Metabolite 7, were tentatively identified as 2-, 3-, 4-, and 5-hydroxy-MNAN (HO-MNAN), respectively, from a comparison of their gas chromatography retention times with those of the synthesized compounds. Rat esophagus produced similar amounts of 3- and 4-HO-MNAN and lesser amounts of 2-HO-MNAN, whereas rat liver produced mainly 4-HO-MNAN. Rat nasal tissue metabolized 8.0% of the MNAN per 100 mg tissue, with a metabolite pattern like that of the esophagus. Rat lungs produced mostly 5-HO-MNAN. A comparison of yields from tissues of rats, hamsters, guinea pigs, and mice supported the view that the total production of neutral MNAN metabolites indicated the sensitivity to MNAN carcinogenesis, with some exceptions. MNAN injected i.p. was less carcinogenic for the esophagus and nasal cavity in Sprague-Dawley than in MRC-Wistar rats, perhaps because the livers of Sprague-Dawley rats metabolized more of the MNAN. The urine of MNAN-treated MRC-Wistar rats contained MNAN and metabolites provisionally identified as 2-, 3-, and (as the major product) 4-HO-MNAN. The identity of the urinary 4-HO-MNAN was confirmed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. We speculate that tissues like the esophagus, which (unlike the liver) produce significant proportions of 2- and 3-HO-MNAN, also produce significant amounts of the most likely proximal carcinogen, 1-HO-MNAN.
Quantifying choriocapillaris flow deficits using global and localized thresholding methods: a correlation study.

Background To investigate the correlation and agreement of two previously published choriocapillaris (CC) quantification methods using a normal database with swept-source optical coherence tomography angiography (SS-OCTA). Methods Normal adult subjects from all age groups imaged by SS-OCTA were used in this study. Each subject was imaged with 3 mm × 3 mm and 6 mm × 6 mm scan patterns centered on fovea, upon which en face CC images were generated by segmenting volumetric OCTA data. After signal compensation and removal of projection artifacts and noise, CC images were analyzed to identify flow deficits (FD) using two published methods. The first method utilized standard deviation from a young normal database (SD method) as the global thresholding while the second method utilized fuzzy C-means algorithm (FCM method) with local thresholding. Both methods segmented FDs from CC images and quantified FD density (FDD) and mean FD size (MFDS). In each 3 mm × 3 mm scan, three regions were quantified: a 1 mm circle (C1), a 1.5 mm rim (R1.5) and a 2.5 mm circle (C2.5). In each 6 mm × 6 mm scan, five regions were quantified: C1, R1.5, C2.5, a 2.5 mm rim (R2.5) and a 5 mm circle (C5). Spearman correlation and Bland-Altman plot analyses were conducted to compare the two methods. Results Data obtained from 164 normal subjects (age: 56±19, 59% females) were used in this study. Strong correlations were observed between the two methods in all comparisons (r: 0.78-0.94, all P<0.0001). Overall MFDS provided higher or comparable correlation coefficients (r) compared to FDD. We have also observed stronger correlations in the central macula compared to parafoveal and perifoveal regions for both FDD and MFDS. In regions of C1, R1.5 and C2.5, 6 mm × 6 mm scans resulted in better agreement (smaller mean bias, similar or tighter limit of agreement) between the two methods for both FDD and MFDS compared to 3 mm × 3 mm scans. Conclusions There are strong correlations and satisfactory agreement between SD method and FCM method. SD method requires the reference to a normal database for CC quantification while FCM does not. Both methods could be used for the analysis of CC FDs in clinical settings depending on specific study designs such as the availability of a normal database.
Meatal Occlusive Disease in Adult Males: Are There Any Clinical Variations?

Objective: The study aimed to document the types of meatal occlusive disease (MOD) in adult males in terms of its clinical presentation, management and prognosis. Material and Methods: Eighty-six adult males with MOD were assessed during the study period. The patients were divided into Group 1, having meatal opening that was occluded by flimsy adhesions (meatal synechia/adhesive type MOD), and Group 2 that included patients who had circumferential constriction of the meatus (meatal stenosis/constrictive type MOD). All patients underwent meatal dilatation up to 18 Fr followed by self-dilatation for 3 months with topical clobetasol for 4 weeks. Degree of discomfort during self-dilation, improvement in flow rate, International Prostate Symptom Score (IPSS score) and recurrences were recorded at pre-determined intervals. Results: Twenty-eight patients had meatal synechia (Group 1) and 48 had meatal stenosis (Group 2). Discomfort during self-dilatation in Group 1 patients was significantly less; there was improvement in IPSS and peak flow rate (mean follow-up 26.8 months) as compared to Group 2. With dilation alone, no recurrence was noted in Group 1; however, Group 2 showed 62.8% recurrence indicating poor outcome in this subset of patients. Conclusion: MOD in adult males consists of 2 separate clinical entities with different therapeutic outcomes.
Structural insights into alcohol dehydrogenases catalyzing asymmetric reductions

Abstract Alcohol dehydrogenases are a group of oxidoreductases that specifically use NAD(P)+ or NAD(P)H as cofactors for electron acceptance or donation and catalyze interconversion between alcohols and corresponding carbonyl compounds. In addition to their physiological roles in metabolizing alcohols and aldehydes or ketones, alcohol dehydrogenases have received considerable attention with respect to their symmetry-breaking traits in catalyzing asymmetric reactions and have Accordingly, they have become widely applied in fine chemical synthesis, particularly in the production of chiral alcohols and hydroxyl compounds that are key elements in the synthesis of active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) employed in the pharmaceutical industry. The application of structural bioinformatics to the study of functional enzymes and recent scientific breakthroughs in modern molecular biotechnology provide us with an effective alternative to gain an understanding of the molecular mechanisms involved in asymmetric bioreactions and in overcoming the limitations of enzyme availability. In this review, we discuss molecular mechanisms underlying alcohol dehydrogenase-mediated asymmetric reactions, based on protein structure–function relationships from domain structure to functional active sites. The molecular principles of the catalytic machinery involving stereochemical recognition and molecular interaction are also addressed. In addition, the diversity of enzymatic functions and properties, for example, enantioselectivity, substrate specificity, cofactor dependence, metal requirement, and stability in terms of organic solvent tolerance and thermostability, are also discussed and based on a comparative analysis of high-resolution 3 D structures of representative alcohol dehydrogenases.
Intelligent Space — concept and contents

This paper describes our concept of Intelligent Space. Intelligent Spaces are rooms or areas that are equipped with sensors, which enable the spaces to perceive and understand what is happening in them. With such features, people or systems in the Intelligent Space can use additional functions that are afforded by the space. This research field itself is not particularly related to robotics, but we believe robots under Intelligent Spaces have many interesting features. Intelligent Spaces are expected to have a broad range of applications such as in homes, offices, factories, etc. Thus, we can consider that a robot, which will be used in our general living environment, is related to the concept of Intelligent Space. Several applications of Intelligent Space are shown in this paper with descriptions.
High Level of Childhood Trauma Predicts a Poor Response to Spinal Cord Stimulation in Chronic Neuropathic Pain.

BACKGROUND Spinal cord stimulation (SCS) relieves pain by delivering doses of electric current to the dorsal column of the spinal cord and has been found to be most effective in the treatment of neuropathic pain. Psychological distress is a significant risk factor for the development of chronic pain and has been found to affect the outcome of SCS. Childhood trauma is a risk factor for chronic pain, but has not previously been studied in SCS patients. OBJECTIVES The objective of this prospective registry-based study was to investigate the prevalence of 5 domains of childhood trauma (emotional neglect, emotional abuse, physical neglect, physical abuse, and sexual abuse) and their relationship with the outcome of spinal cord stimulation on patients suffering from treatment-resistant chronic pain. METHODS SCS patients treated at Kuopio University Hospital between 1/1/2015 and 12/31/2016 were sent a survey in the mail, the Trauma and Distress Scale, assessing childhood trauma (n = 43). Neuropathic pain, disability, anxiety, and depression were measured in the patients pre-surgery and at 6 and 12 months post-surgery. The patients who provided their name on the questionnaire (n = 22) and had suffered from 3 or more domains of trauma were grouped as the high-trauma group (n = 13) and the rest as the low-trauma group (n = 9). RESULTS The questionnaire was completed by 40 patients (93%). At least 1 domain of trauma was experienced by 35 (88%) patients, and at least 2 by 24 (60%). The low-trauma group displayed a statistically significant decrease in the mean PainDETECT score from 21.5 before SCS to 16.5 at 12 months post-surgery (Wilk's lambda = 0.297, F(2,9) = 10.6, P = 0.004), contrary to the high- trauma group (Wilk's lambda = 0.904, F(2,6) = 0.3, P = 0.739). LIMITATIONS Only 22 of the 40 patients provided their name on the questionnaire, which decreased the sample size on follow-up. CONCLUSION This was the first study to investigate childhood trauma in SCS patients. Patients who had experienced high amounts of childhood trauma did not experience any relief from neuropathic pain 12 months' post-SCS, contrary to the low-trauma group. Childhood trauma might be a factor worth screening in the preoperative evaluation and aftercare of SCS candidates. KEY WORDS Spinal cord stimulation, the Trauma and Distress Scale, chronic pain, childhood trauma, childhood abuse, childhood neglect, chronic back pain, back pain, psychological distress, neuropathic pain.
Optimal Hardware and Software Arithmetic Coding Procedures for the Q-Coder

The Q-Coder is an important new development in arithmetic coding. It combines a simple but efficient arithmetic approximation for the multiply operation, a new formalism which yields optimally efficient hardware and software implementations, and a new form of probability estimation. This paper describes the concepts which allow different, yet compatible, optimal software and hardware implementations. In prior binary arithmetic coding algorithms, efficient hardware implementations favored ordering the more probable symbol (MPS) above the less probable symbol (LPS) in the current probability interval. Efficient software implementation required the inverse ordering convention. In this paper it is shown that optimal hardware and software encoders and decoders can be achieved with either symbol ordering. Although optimal implementation for a given symbol ordering requires the hardware and software code strings to point to opposite ends of the probability interval, either code string can be converted to match the other exactly. In addition, a code string generated using one symbol-ordering convention can be inverted so that it exactly matches the code string generated with the inverse convention. Even where bit stuffing is used to block carry propagation, the code strings can be kept identical.
Dexmedetomidine for the management of delirium in critically ill patients—A protocol for a systematic review

Delirium is a common complication in critically ill patients and carries an increased risk of mortality and morbidity. Dexmedetomidine can potentially treat delirium by diminishing predisposing factors. The evidence regarding the use of dexmedetomidine in the management of delirium is conflicting. This protocol aims to identify the beneficial and harmful effects of dexmedetomidine in the management of delirium.
Rheological Issues in Carbon-Based Inks for Additive Manufacturing

As the industry and commercial market move towards the optimization of printing and additive manufacturing, it becomes important to understand how to obtain the most from the materials while maintaining the ability to print complex geometries effectively. Combining such a manufacturing method with advanced carbon materials, such as Graphene, Carbon Nanotubes, and Carbon fibers, with their mechanical and conductive properties, delivers a cutting-edge combination of low-cost conductive products. Through the process of printing the effectiveness of these properties decreases. Thorough optimization is required to determine the idealized ink functional and flow properties to ensure maximum printability and functionalities offered by carbon nanoforms. The optimization of these properties then is limited by the printability. By determining the physical properties of printability and flow properties of the inks, calculated compromises can be made for the ink design. In this review we have discussed the connection between the rheology of carbon-based inks and the methodologies for maintaining the maximum pristine carbon material properties.