Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Efficacy of octyl-2-cyanoacrylate tissue glue in blepharoplasty. A prospective controlled study of wound-healing characteristics.

OBJECTIVE To compare the surgical efficacy and wound-healing characteristics of the tissue adhesive octyl-2-cyanoacrylate (approved by the Food and Drug Administration) with traditional suture closure in upper blepharoplasty. METHODS Prospective, randomized, blinded study comparing cosmetic and functional outcome and time efficiency. Twenty subjects underwent upper eyelid blepharoplasty. Each patient had a control side and an experimental side determined randomly. One eyelid incision was closed with octyl-2-cyanoacrylate (Dermabond; Ethicon Inc, Somerville, NJ) tissue glue, and the other with 6.0 suture (polypropylene or fast-absorbing gut). Comparisons were performed for the time for closure by each method, wound healing, and patient satisfaction. Macrophotographs of the wounds at 1, 2, and 4 weeks after surgery were graded by 5 observers blinded to the closure method, using a 10-point scale and a modified Hollander wound evaluation scale. RESULTS No statistically significant difference was found between the quality of octyl-2-cyanoacrylate closure and suture closure at 1 month. There were no differences in wound complications, duration of healing, inflammation, or final incision appearance. By 2 weeks, the sides were indistinguishable in 15 (75%) of the patients. Time for closure averaged 7 minutes with suture and 8 minutes with glue. CONCLUSIONS Octyl-2-cyanoacrylate glue is an excellent alternative to suture closure, producing equivalent quality of closure at all time points and no difference in appearance. This adhesive was sufficient to withstand the forces of closure in upper eyelid blepharoplasty without dehiscence in the absence of sutures.
Analysis of large-scale social and information networks

The growth of the Web has required us to think about the design of information systems in which large-scale computational and social feedback effects are simultaneously at work. At the same time, the data generated by Web-scale systems—recording the ways in which millions of participants create content, link information, form groups and communicate with one another—have made it possible to evaluate long-standing theories of social interaction, and to formulate new theories based on what we observe. These developments have created a new level of interaction between computing and the social sciences, enriching the perspectives of both of these disciplines. We discuss some of the observations, theories and conclusions that have grown from the study of Web-scale social interaction, focusing on issues including the mechanisms by which people join groups, the ways in which different groups are linked together in social networks and the interplay of positive and negative interactions in these networks.
The Effective Bandwidth Problem Revisited

This article studies a single-server queueing system with autonomous service and ℓ priority classes. Arrival and departure processes are governed by marked point processes. There are ℓ buffers corresponding to priority classes, and upon arrival a unit of the kth priority class occupies a place in the kth buffer. Let N (k), k = 1,2,…, ℓ denote the quota for the total kth buffer content. The values N (k) are assumed to be large, and queueing systems both with finite and infinite buffers are studied. In the case of a system with finite buffers, the values N (k) characterize buffer capacities. This article discusses a circle of problems related to optimization of performance measures associated with overflowing the quota of buffer contents, particularly buffers models. Our approach to this problem is new, and the presentation of our results is simple and clear for real applications.
A Single Ascending Dose Study of Epigallocatechin Gallate in Healthy Volunteers

This randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study assessed the safety, tolerability and plasma kinetic behaviour of single oral doses of 94% pure crystalline bulk epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) under fasting conditions in 60 healthy male volunteers. In each group of 10 subjects, eight received oral EGCG in single doses of 50 mg, 100 mg, 200 mg, 400 mg, 800 mg or 1600 mg, and two received placebo. Blood samples were taken at intervals until 26 h later. The area under the concentration-time curve from 0 h to infinity (AUC(0–∞)), the maximum plasma concentration (C max) of EGCG, the time taken to reach the maximum concentration (T max), and the terminal elimination half-life (t 1/2z) of EGCG were determined. Safety and tolerability were assessed. In each dosage group, the kinetic profile revealed rapid absorption with a one-peak plasma concentration versus time course, followed by a multiphasic decrease consisting of a distribution phase and an elimination phase. The mean AUC(0– ∞) of total EGCG varied between 442 and 10368 ng·h/ml. The according mean C max values ranged from 130 to 3392 ng/ml and were observed after 1.3–2.2 h. The mean t 1/2z values were seen between 1.9 and 4.6 h. Single oral doses of EGCG up to 1600 mg were safe and very well tolerated.
Sustained Spinal Cord Compression: Part I: Time-Dependent Effect on Long-Term Pathophysiology

Background: The objective of this study is to determine whether there is a relationship between the duration of sustained spinal cord compression and the extent of spinal cord injury and the capacity for functional recovery after decompression.Methods: Sixteen dogs underwent sustained spinal cord compression for thirty or 180 minutes. The cords were compressed with use of a loading device with a hydraulic piston. A pressure transducer was attached to the surface of the piston, which transmitted real-time spinal cord interface pressures to a data-acquisition system. Somatosensory evoked potentials were monitored during a sixty-minute recovery period as well as at twenty-eight days after the injury. Functional motor recovery was judged throughout a twenty-six-day period after the injury with use of a battery of motor tasks. The volume of the lesion and damage to the tissue were assessed with both magnetic resonance imaging and histological analysis.Results: Sustained spinal cord compression was associated with a gradual decline in interface pressure. Despite this, there was continuous decline in the amplitude of the somatosensory evoked potentials, which did not return until the cord was decompressed. Within one hour after the decompression, the dogs in the thirty-minute-compression group had recovery of somatosensory evoked potentials, but no animal had such recovery in the 180-minute group. Recovery of the somatosensory evoked potentials in the thirty-minute group was sustained over the twenty-eight days after the injury. Motor tests demonstrated rapid recovery of hindlimb motor function in the thirty-minute group, but there was considerable impairment in the 180-minute group. Within two weeks after the injury, balance, cadence, stair-climbing, and the ability to walk up an inclined plane were significantly better in the thirty-minute group than in the 180-minute group. The longer duration of compression produced lesions of significantly greater volume, which corresponded to the long-term functional outcome.Conclusions: The relatively rapid viscoelastic relaxation of the spinal cord during the early phase of sustained cord compression suggests that there are mechanisms of secondary injury that are linked to tissue displacement. Longer periods of displacement allow propagation of the secondary injury process, resulting in a lack of recovery of somatosensory evoked potentials, limited functional recovery, and more extensive tissue damage.Clinical Relevance: The findings underscore the importance of timely decompression to improve long-term functional recovery after spinal cord injury.
Adaptive force reflecting teleoperation with local intelligence

Purpose – This paper aims to make an industrial robot intelligently and remotely cooperate with humans to work in unknown unstructured environments.Design/methodology/approach – Presents a bilateral adaptive teleoperation control approach involving a contact force driven compensation with an auto‐switching function, which utilizes a biologically motivated compliance function. Based on sensed contact force, the switching function can adjust its slave control input to decide how much robotic intelligences should intervene in the system by switching modes. Other schemes for robotic intelligence, robotic impedances and compensators, are investigated to guarantee good transparency without warranting human error and maintain a stable contact, based on the force feedback, in constrained motion while a communication delay exists.Findings – The simulation and experimental results demonstrate transparency and contact stability in the presence of constant and time‐varying communication delays, respectively. The prop.
3D-board: a whole-body remote collaborative whiteboard

This paper presents 3D-Board, a digital whiteboard capable of capturing life-sized virtual embodiments of geographically distributed users. When using large-scale screens for remote collaboration, awareness for the distributed users' gestures and actions is of particular importance. Our work adds to the literature on remote collaborative workspaces, it facilitates intuitive remote collaboration on large scale interactive whiteboards by preserving awareness of the full-body pose and gestures of the remote collaborator. By blending the front-facing 3D embodiment of a remote collaborator with the shared workspace, an illusion is created as if the observer was looking through the transparent whiteboard into the remote user's room. The system was tested and verified in a usability assessment, showing that 3D-Board significantly improves the effectiveness of remote collaboration on a large interactive surface.
Assessing operator strategies for adjusting replan alerts in controlling multiple unmanned vehicles

Abstract This study examined the impact of allowing an operator to adjust the rate of prompts to view automation-generated plans on operator performance and workload when supervising a decentralized network of heterogeneous unmanned vehicles. Background: Future unmanned vehicles systems will invert the operator-to-vehicle ratio so that one operator can control multiple vehicles with different capabilities, connected through a decentralized network. A previous experiment showed that higher rates of replan prompting led to higher workload and lower system performance. Poor performance was associated with a lack of operator consensus for when to accept the automation's suggested prompts for new plan consideration. Method: Three initial rates of replanning were tested on an existing, multiple unmanned vehicle simulation environment that leverages decentralized algorithms for vehicle routing and task allocation, in conjunction with human supervision. Operators were provided with the ability to adjust the rate of replanning. Results: The majority of the operators chose to adjust the rate at which they were prompted to replan. Operators favored particular replan intervals, no matter which initial replan interval they started at. It was found that different initial replan intervals produced differences in mission performance. In addition, increasing amounts of replanning caused the system to destroy more targets but do a poorer job at tracking targets. Conclusion: Operators have preferences for the rate at which they prefer to view automation-generated plans. Allowing operators to institute these preferences influenced the overall mission performance. Further research is necessary to determine the full impact of the operators’ strategies for changing the replan intervals on net mission performance. Application: Future unmanned vehicles systems designs should incorporate the flexibility to allow operators to adjust the frequency at which the automation generates new plans for approval.
A cross-layer on-demand routing protocol for delay-sensitive applications

Nowadays, the cross-layer design approach is an important concept in mobile ad-hoc networks which is adopted to solve several open issues. It aims to overcome MANET performance problems by allowing protocols belonging to different layers to cooperate and share network status information while still maintaining separated layers. Indeed, the mechanisms on how to access the radio channel are extremely important in order to guarantee QoS and improve application performance. In this work, we present a cross layer routing protocol called CLAE which is based on the cooperation between the on-demand AODV routing protocol and the new IEEE 802.11e MAC protocol (EDCA). This proposal aims to find the best path according to application requirements in terms of delay, bandwidth, route stability, etc. Without loss of generality, this paper focuses only on determining the path with the lowest delay. Each node periodically estimates the average transmission delay for each class of service defined by 802.11e. This information is injected into routing requests and replies crossing each node. The sender is then able to select the best path which fits its delay requirement. Furthermore, in order to overcome transient network characteristics due to new communications set up and mobility, we develop a new buffer management scheme for the audio class of service that aims to discriminate audio packets according to their tolerated end-to-end transfer delay and their current experienced delay. The simulation results demonstrate that our proposal improves the performance of delay-sensitive applications while maintaining a good packet delivery ratio of other traffics
Trees over Infinite Structures and Path Logics with Synchronization

We provide decidability and undecidability results on the model-checking problem for infinite tree structures. These tree structures are built from sequences of elements of infinite relational structures. More precisely, we deal with the tree iteration of a relational structure M in the sense of Shelah-Stupp. In contrast to classical results where model-checking is shown decidable for MSO-logic, we show decidability of the tree model-checking problem for logics that allow only path quantifiers and chain quantifiers (where chains are subsets of paths), as they appear in branching time logics; however, at the same time the tree is enriched by the equal-level relation (which holds between vertices u, v if they are on the same tree level). We separate cleanly the tree logic from the logic used for expressing properties of the underlying structure M. We illustrate the scope of the decidability results by showing that two slight extensions of the framework lead to undecidability. In particular, this applies to the (stronger) tree iteration in the sense of Muchnik-Walukiewicz.
Impact of a change in antibacterial prophylaxis on bacteremia and hospitalization rates following outpatient autologous peripheral blood stem cell transplantation for multiple myeloma

Levofloxacin is routinely used for the prevention of invasive bacterial infections during autologous peripheral blood stem cell transplantation (APBSCT). However, increasing rates of bacterial sepsis were noted at our institution among multiple myeloma (MM) patients undergoing outpatient APBSCT with melphalan‐based chemotherapy and levofloxacin prophylaxis. We assessed the impact of a change in antibacterial prophylaxis from oral levofloxacin (Period 1) to sequential oral levofloxacin followed by ertapenem (Period 2).
Speech understanding in noise with an eyeglass hearing aid: Asymmetric fitting and the head shadow benefit of anterior microphones

Abstract Objective: To test speech understanding in noise using array microphones integrated in an eyeglass device and to test if microphones placed anteriorly at the temple provide better directivity than above the pinna. Design: Sentences were presented from the front and uncorrelated noise from 45, 135, 225 and 315°. Study Sample: Fifteen hearing impaired participants with a significant speech discrimination loss were included, as well as 5 normal hearing listeners. Results: The device (Varibel) improved speech understanding in noise compared to most conventional directional devices with a directional benefit of 5.3 dB in the asymmetric fit mode, which was not significantly different from the bilateral fully directional mode (6.3 dB). Anterior microphones outperformed microphones at a conventional position above the pinna by 2.6 dB. Conclusions: By integrating microphones in an eyeglass frame, a long array can be used resulting in a higher directionality index and improved speech understanding in noise. An asymmetric fit did not significantly reduce performance and can be considered to increase acceptance and environmental awareness. Directional microphones at the temple seemed to profit more from the head shadow than above the pinna, better suppressing noise from behind the listener. Sumario Objetivo: Examinar la comprensión del lenguaje en ruido utilizando una selección de micrófonos integrados en un dispositivo de gafas y probas si los micrófonos colocados anteriormente a la sien permiten una mejor direccionalidad que colocados arriba de la oreja. Diseño: En cada sujeto. Las oraciones fueron presentadas desde el frente y con ruido no relacionado desde 45, 135, 225 y 315o. Muestra: Se incluyeron quince hipoacúsicos con una pobre discriminación del lenguaje, así como cinco normoyentes. Resultados: El dispositivo (Varibel) mejoró la comprensión del lenguaje en ruido comparado con los dispositivos direccionales convencionales, con un beneficio direccional de 5.3 dB en el modo asimétrico de adaptación; esto no fue significativamente diferente al modo bilateral direccional completo (6.3 dB). Los micrófonos anteriores superaron a los micrófonos en la posición convencional arriba de la oreja por 2.6 dB. Conclusiones: Cuando se integran micrófonos en los anteojos, es posible utilizar una selección larga que resulta en un índice de direccionalidad mayor y así mejorar la comprensión del habla en ruido. Una composición asimétrica no redujo significativamente el desempeño y se puede considerar que si incrementó la aceptación y la conciencia ambiental. Los micrófonos direccionales en la sien parecen ser mejor aprovechados por la sombra de la cabeza que cuando están arriba de la oreja, y suprimen mejor el ruido que viene de atrás del oyente.
Extending Marking Menus With Integral Dimensions: Application to the Dartboard Menu

Marking menus have many benefits, including fast selection time, low error rate and fast transition to expert mode, but these are mitigated by a practical limit of 8 items per menu. Adding hierarchical levels increases capacity, but at the expense of longer selection times and higher error rates. In this paper we introduce Extended Marking Menus, a variant of marking menus that increases their width without sacrificing performance. Extended marking menus organize the items in several rings or layers. Selection is achieved by simultaneous control of direction, as in traditional marking menus, and another dimension such as distance, speed or pressure. We examine the design space of these new menus and study the Distance Extended Marking Menu, or Dartboard Menu, in more detail. We report on two experiments, one to calibrate the sizes of the rings, the other showing that it performs faster than the Zone and Flower menus but is less accurate than the Zone menu.
Expression of the Wdr9 gene and protein products during mouse development

Human WDR9 has been mapped to chromosome 21, within one of the Down syndrome (DS) critical regions. Here, we study the expression pattern of the murine Wdr9 gene and its protein product. We show that Wdr9 is broadly expressed in the mouse embryo by means of in situ hybridization and immunohistochemistry. Wdr9 expression levels are dynamic during embryonic development as revealed by Northern blot analysis. We further show that WDR9 is a nuclear protein associated with BRG1, a SWI/SNF complex component. We also demonstrate that a polyglutamine‐containing region of the protein functions as a transcriptional activation domain. We propose that WDR9 is a transcriptional regulator involved in chromatin remodeling through the action of two bromodomains and contacts to the SWI/SNF complex. These results may provide a molecular basis for the association of WDR9 with DS. Developmental Dynamics 227:608–614, 2003. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
CA-AQM: Channel-Aware Active Queue Management for Wireless Networks

In a wireless network, data transmission suffers from varied signal strengths and channel bit error rates. To ensure successful packet reception under different channel conditions, automatic bit rate control schemes are implemented to adjust the transmission bit rates based on the perceived channel conditions. This leads to a wireless network with diverse bit rates. On the other hand, TCP is unaware of such rate diversity when it performs flow rate control in wireless networks. Experiments show that the throughput of flows in a wireless network are driven by the one with the lowest bit rate, (i.e., the one with the worst channel condition). This does not only lead to low channel utilization, but also fluctuated performance for all flows independent of their individual channel conditions. To address this problem, we conduct an optimization-based analytical study of such behavior of TCP. Based on this optimization framework, we present a joint flow control and active queue management solution. The presented channel-aware active queue management (CA-AQM) provides congestion signals for flow control not only based on the queue length but also the channel condition and the transmission bit rate. Theoretical analysis shows that our solution isolates the performance of individual flows with diverse bit rates. Further, it stabilizes the queue lengths and provides a time-fair channel allocation. Test- bed experiments validate our theoretical claims over a multi-rate wireless network testbed.
Effects of the holding technique for restraint of aggression in children in residential care

The purpose of the present study was to further understanding of the therapeutic value of the holding technique for children who exhibit extreme uncontrolled behavior. The data collection in this study was from reports on the use of the holding technique and a questionnaire based on the RAF (regulation, assessment, follow-up) Method, which includes three subscales of a Teacher's Report Form questionnaire (TRF): Social Problems, Aggressive Behavior and Anxious/Depression. The RAF questionnaires were administered to 91 children in a residential care facility of which 51 underwent holding. The questionnaires were administered twice with an intervening period of one year indicating no improvement in the indices examined, including aggressive behavior, but suicide attempts in children who were held declined.