Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Performance and Return to Sport After Thumb Ulnar Collateral Ligament Surgery in National Football League Players

Background: Acute ruptures of the ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) of the thumb are common injuries in sports. Surgical repair of complete tears has yielded excellent results in elite athletes. Methods: National Football League (NFL) players who underwent thumb UCL surgery and matched controls were identified. Demographic and performance data were collected. Performance scores were calculated using a standardized scoring system. Return to sport (RTS) in the NFL was defined as playing in at least 1 NFL game after thumb UCL surgery. Comparisons between case and control groups and preoperative and postoperative time points were made using paired-samples Student t tests. Results: Twenty-three players were identified (mean age: 28.8 ± 3.4 years and mean experience in the NFL: 5.9 ± 3.4 years). Twenty-two players (95.7%) were able to return to sport in the NFL at an average of 132.2 ± 126.1 days. The overall 1-year NFL career survival rate of players undergoing thumb UCL surgery was 87.0%. There was not a statistically significant decrease in games per season and career length for any position following surgery. No positions had a significant difference in postoperative performance when compared with preoperative performance, and there was no significant performance difference postoperatively when compared with matched controls. Conclusions: There is a high rate of RTS in the NFL following thumb UCL surgery. Players who underwent thumb UCL surgery played in a similar number of games per season and had similar career lengths in the NFL as controls. No position group had any significant postoperative performance score differences when compared with postindex matched controls.
Measurement of the radiative branching ratio for the Hoyle state using cascade gamma decays

A new setup consisting of four 5” by 5” NaI scintillators and an array of particle detectors is being developed. Proton-gamma-gamma coincidences will be measured using the 12 C (p, p ′)12 C reaction at 10.5 MeV energy. The new setup will be used for the measurement of the electromagnetic decay rate of the Hoyle state via two E2 transitions. We report the initial experimental results for singles gamma and gamma-proton coincidences through inelastic scattering of protons on a 12 C target.
Domain Specific Design Patterns: Designing For Conversational User Interfaces

Designing conversational user interface experience is complicated because conversation comes with many expectations. When these expectations are met, we feel the interface is natural, but once violated, we feel something is amiss. The last decade witnessed human language technologies and behaviours to enable humans converse with software using spoken dialogue to access, create and process information. Less is known about the practicalities of designing chatbot interactions. In this paper, we introduce the nature of conversational user interfaces (CUIs) and describe the underlying technologies they are based on. Moreover, we define guidelines for designing conversational interfaces in various domains. This paper particularly focuses on classifying the elements and techniques used in CUI design patterns. After concluding certain challenges with CUI, we discuss important features and chatbot states to be considered in CUI design for specific domain. We envisage this study to support CUI researchers to design tailored chatbots applicable into certain domain and improve the current state of research challenges in the field of Artificial Intelligence and conversational agents.
Are 802.11 link quality broadcast measurements always reliable?

This paper describes an unexpected finding concerning link quality measurements carried out through broadcast frames. We found out that, with experimental equipments/drivers widely used by the scientific community (Atheros WLAN cards with MADWiFi driver), broadcast-based link quality measurements seem to be affected by a NIC-proprietary power saving mode. The striking conclusion is that some packet losses, typically attributed to bad channel characteristics, rather may depend on the broadcast measurement methodology. Unicast measurements are shown to be exempt from such a problem. A very simple test is furthermore proposed to verify whether measurement results are affected by the described phenomenon.
Immunotherapy for the treatment of Hodgkin lymphoma

ABSTRACT Introduction: Most patients with Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) enjoy durable remissions following front-line treatment but 30% of patients are refractory or relapse after first line therapy. Salvage chemotherapy followed by autologous stem cell transplantation (ASCT) can cure an additional 50–55% of relapsing patients but new treatments are needed for patients with HL who are refractory or relapse after ASCT. Immunotherapy has emerged as a promising treatment for the management of these patients. The availability of the anti-CD30 antibody brentuximab vedotin and new targeted drugs such as immune checkpoint inhibitors, show promising clinical activity in patients with HL and are important milestones for the management of patients with HL particularly for those who have progressed after standard initial therapy and ASCT. Areas covered: Overview of the results from the most relevant clinical trials including monoclonal antibody-based therapy in HL. Phase 2 and phase 3 trials including brentuximab vedotin and immune checkpoints inhibitors in patients with Hodgkin lymphoma have been reviewed. In addition, the potential impact of these new therapies in the management of patients with newly diagnosed HL has also been addressed. Expert commentary: Anti-CD30 antibody brentuximab vedotin and immune checkpoint inhibitors have shown promising results in patients with relapsed and refractory HL. Administration of these therapies earlier in the course of the disease might reduce the proportion of relapsed or refractory patients and, subsequently, minimize the number of patients undergoing high-dose therapy and autologous stem cell transplantation. We have little doubt that this will have substantial effects on the outcome for future generations of HL patients.
Optimizing Interactive Systems via Data-Driven Objectives

Effective optimization is essential for real-world interactive systems to provide a satisfactory user experience in response to changing user behavior. However, it is often challenging to find an objective to optimize for interactive systems (e.g., policy learning in task-oriented dialog systems). Generally, such objectives are manually crafted and rarely capture complex user needs in an accurate manner. We propose an approach that infers the objective directly from observed user interactions. These inferences can be made regardless of prior knowledge and across different types of user behavior. We introduce Interactive System Optimizer (ISO), a novel algorithm that uses these inferred objectives for optimization. Our main contribution is a new general principled approach to optimizing interactive systems using data-driven objectives. We demonstrate the high effectiveness of ISO over several simulations.
Homocysteine and Cerebral Atrophy: The Epidemiology of Dementia in Singapore Study.

BACKGROUND Plasma homocysteine levels are increasingly studied as a potential risk factor for dementia. Elevated homocysteine levels have been linked with gray and white matter volume reduction among individuals with mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease. However, the effects of homocysteine on brain changes in preclinical stages of dementia remain unexplored. OBJECTIVE To examine the association of elevated homocysteine levels with markers of neurodegeneration, i.e., white and gray matter volume in an elderly population. METHODS The study included 768 participants (mean age: 69.6±6.5 years, 51.3% women) from the Epidemiology of Dementia In Singapore study. Participants underwent a brain MRI scan and blood tests. Serum homocysteine was measured using competitive immunoassay. Cortical thickness and subcortical structural volume were quantified using FreeSurfer whereas white matter volume was quantified using a previous validated method. RESULTS Higher homocysteine levels were significantly associated with decreased global white matter volume [mean difference (β) in volume (ml) per micromole per liter (μmol/l) increase in homocysteine levels: - 0.555, 95% Confidence Interval (CI): - 0.873; - 0.237], decreased parietal cortical thickness [β in thickness (μm) per μmol/l increase in homocysteine levels:- 1.429, 95% CI: - 2.781; - 0.077], and smaller volumes of the thalamus [β: - 0.017, 95% CI: - 0.026; - 0.008], brainstem [β: - 0.037, 95% CI: - 0.058; - 0.016], and accumbens [β: - 0.004, 95% CI: - 0.006; - 0.002]. CONCLUSION Higher homocysteine levels were associated with cerebral atrophy. Further studies are required to assess whether lowering plasma homocysteine levels may prevent neurodegenerative changes or delay progression of clinical symptoms before the development of dementia.
Freeze Dried Blueberry Powder Fortification Improves the Quality of Gluten Free Snacks

Since Quinoa flour is an excellent source of natural antioxidant compounds and blueberries are rich in polyphenolic anthocyanins, this study was undertaken to improve and evaluate the quality of two blueberry powder fortified gluten free products, muffins and cookies. Control products were made with 100% Rice flour and Rice flour was replaced by 50% and 100% Quinoa flour to prepare muffin and cookies. 10% freeze dried Blueberry powder was used for fortification. Effect of flour replacements and Blueberry fortification on moisture content, water activity, antioxidant value, shelf life, sensory quality and textural properties were studied. Blueberry fortification improved the shelf life of the baked products, since, no significant increase in water activity and moisture content and no microbial growth were observed during 3 months of storage. Fortified Quinoa muffins and cookies were significantly harder because of the high fiber content of the Quinoa flour found by a Textural profile analysis using TA.XT plus Texture Analyzer. Although, baking reduced the antioxidant content to some extent, the total antioxidant activity, phenolic content and anthocyanin content were significantly increased with Blueberry fortification. Freeze dried blueberry powder fortified 100% Rice flour muffins and 100% Quinoa flour cookies were considered as the most acceptable products by consumer Sensory analysis using a 9-point hedonic scale. The study suggests that Quinoa flour is a good gluten free alternative and Blueberry fortification to snack products is a simple way to increase phytochemical and antioxidant content in diet.
Including Phenotypic Causal Networks in Genome-Wide Association Studies Using Mixed Effects Structural Equation Models

Background Phenotypic networks describing putative causal relationships among multiple phenotypes can be used to infer single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) effects in genome-wide association studies (GWAS). In GWAS with multiple phenotypes, reconstructing underlying causal structures among traits and SNPs using a single statistical framework is essential for understanding the entirety of genotype-phenotype maps. A structural equation model (SEM) can be used for such purposes. Methods We applied SEM to GWAS (SEM-GWAS) in chickens, taking into account putative causal relationships among body weight (BW), breast meat (BM), hen-house production (HHP), and SNPs. We assessed the performance of SEM-GWAS by comparing the model results with those obtained from traditional multi-trait association analyses (MTM-GWAS). Results Three different putative causal path diagrams were inferred from highest posterior density (HPD) intervals of 0.75, 0.85, and 0.95 using the inductive causation algorithm. A positive path coefficient was estimated for BM→BW, and negative values were obtained for BM→HHP and BW→HHP in all implemented scenarios. Further, the application of SEM-GWAS enabled the decomposition of SNP effects into direct, indirect, and total effects, identifying whether a SNP effect is acting directly or indirectly on a given trait. In contrast, MTM-GWAS only captured overall genetic effects on traits, which is equivalent to combining the direct and indirect SNP effects from SEMGWAS. Conclusions Although MTM-GWAS and SEM-GWAS use the same probabilistic models, we provide evidence that SEM-GWAS captures complex relationships and delivers a more comprehensive understanding of SNP effects compared to MTM-GWAS. Our results showed that SEM-GWAS provides important insight regarding the mechanism by which identified SNPs control traits by partitioning them into direct, indirect, and total SNP effects.
Game theoretic reasoning in multi-agent coordination by negotiation with a trusted third party

In multi-agent coordination, one would normally like to find a satisfactory solution that is stable, fair and optimal to all agents. According to traditional game theory, Prisoner’s dilemma, no or more than one Nash equilibrium games are situations that are difficult to find such a satisfactory solution. In human society, it often involves a trusted third party in the negotiation process among agents to ensure the cooperation and commitment of agents. In this paper, we describe how the trusted third party can be involved in the negotiation of multi-agent coordination to deal with many difficult game situations. We introduce two communication actions into the traditional game-theoretical reasoning: asking guarantee and offering compensation for agents to use in negotiation. Asking guarantee from agents and depositing it at the trusted third party can ensure the agents to keep their commitments, while offering compensation can allow finding a fair and compromised solution for all agents. We show how the negotiation communication protocols can be proceeded using these two communication actions to reach a compromised and stable agreement in all different game situations.
Structure of NiP Melts by X-Ray Diffraction

für Naturforschung in cooperation with the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Dieses Werk wurde im Jahr 2013 vom Verlag Zeitschrift für Naturforschung in Zusammenarbeit mit der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften e.V. digitalisiert und unter folgender Lizenz veröffentlicht: Creative Commons Namensnennung 4.0 Lizenz. Structure of Ni-P Melts by X-Ray Diffraction B. Sedelmeyer 3 and S. Steeb Max-Planck-Institut für Metallforschung, Seestr. 92, D-70174 Stuttgart a Alcatel SEL, 70430 Stuttgart
An efficient and scalable algorithm for clustering XML documents by structure

With the standardization of XML as an information exchange language over the Internet, a huge amount of information is formatted in XML documents. In order to analyze this information efficiently, decomposing the XML documents and storing them in relational tables is a popular practice. However, query processing becomes expensive since, in many cases, an excessive number of joins is required to recover information from the fragmented data. If a collection consists of documents with different structures (for example, they come from different DTDs), mining clusters in the documents could alleviate the fragmentation problem. We propose a hierarchical algorithm (S-GRACE) for clustering XML documents based on structural information in the data. The notion of structure graph (s-graph) is proposed, supporting a computationally efficient distance metric defined between documents and sets of documents. This simple metric yields our new clustering algorithm which is efficient and effective, compared to other approaches based on tree-edit distance. Experiments on real data show that our algorithm can discover clusters not easily identified by manual inspection.
Validation of Cycloserine Efficacy in Treatment of Multidrug-Resistant and Extensively Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis in Beijing, China

ABSTRACT Cycloserine (Cs) is recommended by the World Health Organization as a second-line drug to treat multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB); however, its efficacy has never been sufficiently evaluated. To gain some insights into the value of cycloserine for MDR-TB treatment, in vitro bacteriostatic effect was determined and patient validations were performed prospectively. The in vitro activity of Cs against 104 wild-type Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains was determined, and serum Cs concentrations were measured for 73 MDR TB patients 2 h after administration. The treatment outcomes for 27 MDR-TB patients who had baseline isolates and were treated with Cs-containing regimens were followed up. The MICs for 90% of the recruited 104 wild-type strains were below 32 μg/ml. Eighteen out of 52 patients had peak serum concentrations (Cmax) below 20 μg/ml at the dosage of 500 mg daily, while 13 out of 21 patients had peak serum concentrations higher than 35 μg/ml at the dosage of 750 mg daily. The percentage of favorable treatment outcomes among patients with a Cmax/MIC ratio of ≥1 was statistically significantly higher than that among the group with a Cmax/MIC ratio of <1 (P = 0.022). The epidemiological cutoff value for Cs susceptibility testing was 32 μg/ml. A high percentage of patients receiving the recommended dosage of 10 mg/kg for Cs administration could not acquire desirable blood concentrations; therefore, adjusting the dosage according to drug concentration monitoring is necessary. The Cmax/MIC ratio might be a good indicator for predicting the treatment outcome for patients with MDR-TB or extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB) who are being administered Cs-containing regimens.
An interpolation-based method for the verification of security protocols

Interpolation has been successfully applied in formal methods for model checking and test-case generation for sequential programs. Security protocols, however, exhibit such idiosyncrasies that make them unsuitable to the direct application of interpolation. We address this problem and present an interpolation-based method for security protocol verification. Our method starts from a protocol specification and combines Craig interpolation, symbolic execution and the standard Dolev-Yao intruder model to search for possible attacks on the protocol. Interpolants are generated as a response to search failure in order to prune possible useless traces and speed up the exploration. We illustrate our method by means of concrete examples and discuss the results obtained by using a prototype implementation.
Sexual functioning mirrors overall men's health status, even irrespective of cardiovascular risk factors

Erectile dysfunction has been described as a sentinel marker of co‐existing and undetected cardiovascular disease. Beside cardiovascular diseases, a correlation between erectile dysfunction and other major comorbidities has been also reported. The study was aimed to analyze the association between sexual functioning and overall men's health in sexually active, Caucasian‐European men with new‐onset sexual dysfunction. Data from the last 881 consecutive patients seeking first medical help for sexual dysfunction were cross‐sectionally analyzed. The International Classification of Diseases, 9th revision, Clinical Modification was used to classify health‐significant comorbidities, which were scored with the Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI). A modified CCI score from which all potential cardiovascular risk factors (CCI‐CV) were subtracted was then calculated for every patient. Patients were requested to complete the International Index of Erectile Function (IIEF). The main outcome of the study was the association between the IIEF domain scores and CCI, which scored health‐significant comorbidities even irrespective of cardiovascular risk factors (CCI‐CV). The final sample included 757 patients (85.9%) (Median age: 48 years; IQ range: 37–59). Overall, erectile dysfunction was found in 540 (71.4%) patients. Of these, 164 (21.6%) had a CCI ≥ 1 and 138 (18.2%) had a CCI‐CV ≥ 1, respectively. At the analysis of variance, IIEF‐Erectile Function (EF) scores significantly decreased as a function of incremental CCI and CCI‐CV scores (all p < 0.01). At multivariable logistic regression analysis, both IIEF‐EF and IIEF‐total score achieved independent predictor status for either CCI ≥ 1 or CCI‐CV ≥ 1, after accounting for potential confounders (p < 0.01). We report novel findings of a significant association between erectile dysfunction severity and overall men's health, even irrespective of cardiovascular risk factors. Thereof, erectile dysfunction severity could serve as a proxy for general men's health, thus encouraging physicians to comprehensively assess patients complaining of sexual dysfunction in the real‐life everyday clinical practice.
Efficient, High Aspect Ratio Microhole Drilling with Rapidly Repeated Pulses

LEHMAN, TED EUGENE. High Aspect Ratio Microhole Drilling with Rapidly Repeated Pulses. (Under the direction of Juei-Feng Tu.) The necessity for micro holes spans across a wide range of industrial applications with nearly endless boundaries. From electronics and X-Ray apertures to micro fluidics and heat transfer phenomenon, the advancement of precision ablation will undoubtedly be of benefit. Currently, three major techniques are employed in the fabrication of micro-holes: Conventional drilling methods, electrical discharge machining (EDM), and laser drilling. The flexibility to drill a wide range of materials with a single device in combination with high consistency and accuracy lead many applications to the necessity of laser drilling. Major drawbacks of laser ablation are low material removal rates and heat affected zones around the holes. Much research has been performed in the picoand femtosecond paradigm with less insight into longer pulse durations. Investigation was conducted into four variables affecting microsecond pulses on the material removal of steel: pulse length, high power density spikes, pulsing frequency, as well as group multiple pulsing. The optimal pulse length of 3 μs created unblocked holes with aspect ratios of 6 and depths of 196 μm. Multiple pulsing increased the aspect ratio to 10, deepening the cavity to 236 μm. Optimum depth occurred with the maximum number of pulses tested, 10; producing an aspect ratio of 12 and a depth of 295 μm. A major drawback produced by 10 pulses was the signs of hole blockage. A process anatomy of hole creation explains causes of the blockage. The second variable, high power density spike exhibited by the laser increased hole depth 5% over instances lacking this spike. Major improvements in depth were demonstrated as the pulsing frequency was increased to a laser capable maximum of 48.7 kHz. Holes created under this condition experienced major blockage near the exit. Group multiple pulsing deepened the hole to 438 μm with three sets of ten pulses at 48.7 kHz. Holes exhibited extreme blockage throughout their depths. Efficient, High Aspect Ratio Microhole Drilling with Rapidly Repeated Pulses by Ted Eugene Lehman A thesis submitted to the Graduate Faculty of North Carolina State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science Mechanical Engineering Raleigh, North Carolina