Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Recurrence of Acute Charcot Neuropathic Osteoarthropathy After Conservative Treatment

Background: Charcot neuropathic osteoarthropathy (CN) is a chronic, progressive-destructive process affecting the feet of patients with sensory neuropathy. Data on CN recurrence are underrepresented in the literature. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the rate of CN recurrence after its treatment and to find predisposing factors. Methods: Fifty-two patients (age 59 ± 11 years, 16 female) with acute CN with 57 affected feet were enrolled. Comorbidities, localization, and stage of disease at first diagnosis as well as ulcerations, need for surgery, noncompliance, and subsequent treatment (orthopedic footwear or orthotic treatment) during the course of therapy were recorded. During follow-up, the incidence of recurrence of CN was observed. Mean follow-up was 47 ± 40 months. Results: Diabetes was the most common reason for sensory neuropathy (79%). Recurrence of CN was seen in 13 feet (23%) with an interval of 27 ± 31 months (range, 3-102 months) after the end of initial immobilization. Patients with recurrence were immobilized for a shorter period of time and had a more advanced stage of CN at time of first diagnosis. Predictors of recurrence were noncompliance (odds ratio 19.7; confidence interval, 4.1-94.4; P < .001) and obesity (odds ratio 6.4; confidence interval, 1.6-25.9; P = .06). Conclusions: Recurrence of osteoarthropathic activity is a possible complication after conservative treatment of CN. Obesity and noncompliance are strong predictors for the recurrence of CN. Level of Evidence: Level III, retrospective comparative study.
Supply-Voltage Scaling Close to the Fundamental Limit Under Process Variations in Nanometer Technologies

The fundamental limit on the minimum allowable supply voltage of a complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) logic gate for binary signal discrimination is Vdd, min ≅ 2(ln2)kT/q. With the theoretical analysis of our proposed circuit technique, we demonstrate an ultralow-voltage operation with two 1000-stage inverter chains fabricated in 130- and 65-nm technologies, which can work all the way down to a supply voltage of 50 and 60 mV (with output swings of 42 and 43 mV), respectively, and are close to the fundamental limit of logic operation. For the first time, we present a measured minimum dynamic-switching energy of 21.3 aJ/cycle. This is accomplished by modulating the effective β-ratio to balance the p-channel and n-channel MOS transistors in strength, enabling the operation of standard CMOS logic at ultralow voltages. We also discuss 41-stage ring oscillators, which clearly show the existence of different optimal β-ratios in different regions of operation in terms of performance and robustness under process variations.
Situation Awareness Recovery

Objective: We describe a novel concept, situation awareness recovery (SAR), and we identify perceptual and cognitive processes that characterize SAR. Background: Situation awareness (SA) is typically described in terms of perceiving relevant elements of the environment, comprehending how those elements are integrated into a meaningful whole, and projecting that meaning into the future. Yet SA fluctuates during the time course of a task, making it important to understand the process by which SA is recovered after it is degraded. Method: We investigated SAR using different types of interruptions to degrade SA. In Experiment 1, participants watched short videos of an operator performing a supervisory control task, and then the participants were either interrupted or not interrupted, after which SA was assessed using a questionnaire. In Experiment 2, participants performed a supervisory control task in which they guided vehicles to their respective targets and either experienced an interruption, during which they performed a visual search task in a different panel, or were not interrupted. Results: The SAR processes we identified included shorter fixation durations, increased number of objects scanned, longer resumption lags, and a greater likelihood of refixating on objects that were previously looked at. Conclusions: We interpret these findings in terms of the memory-for-goals model, which suggests that SAR consists of increased scanning in order to compensate for decay, and previously viewed cues act as associative primes that reactivate memory traces of goals and plans.
H-NS and genomic bridge building: lessons from the human pathogen Salmonella Typhi

The H-NS protein has emerged as one of the leading causes of transcriptional repression in Gram-negative bacteria. In a paper published in this issue, De la Cruz and colleagues shed new light on the role of DNA curvature in the repressive mechanism, using a porin gene promoter from the human pathogen Salmonella Typhi as their experimental system (De la Cruz et al., 2009). Their data help to deepen our understanding of the importance of local DNA structure in facilitating the interaction of H-NS with its target sites in DNA and in establishing an effective nucleoprotein complex for the repression of transcription.
Facework and trust in facilitating health-focused housing interventions

The link between housing and health is of increasing importance in the UK policy and practice context, in which poor housing is often accepted as a social determinant of poor health. Service users’ experiences of, and outcomes from, a British information, advice, support and guidance service focused on the relationship between housing problems and health issues were explored. This service facilitates home improvements for privately housed residents with housing issues exacerbating or causing health problems. In-depth interviews with occupants of 15 households which received the service were completed. The findings highlighted three key themes: the need for participants’ person-home fit to reflect and adapt to any degeneration in health conditions; the facilitation of knowledge and access to housing and other support available to them; and perceived positive health and wellbeing outcomes from the receipt of personalised advice and support. The delivery of these outcomes by a named officer of the service team, and the relationship this developed with the service user, are considered within the context of facework, whereby they became a trusted source of guidance in navigating a complex system of assistance. These findings add to the growing knowledge base on housing and health, and also highlight the critical importance of a facework approach in allowing service users to navigate complex systems in order to achieve beneficial outcomes.
Some Issues in the Art Image Database Systems

In this paper we illustrate several aspects of art databases, such as: the spread of the multimedia art images; the main characteristics of art images; main art images search models; unique characteristics for art image retrieval; the importance of the sensory and semantic gaps. In addition, we present several interesting features of an art image database, such as: image indexing; feature extraction; analysis on various levels of precision; style classification. We stress color features and their base, painting analysis and painting styles. We study also which MPEG-7 descriptors are best for fine painting images retrieval. An experimental system is developed to see how these descriptors work on 900 art images from several remarkable art periods. On the base of our experiments some suggestions for improving the process of searching and analysis of fine art images are given.
Bearing the challenge of multidisciplinarity by business rules- based system analysis

System analysis is a top-down approach to create transparency for the following problem solution. Being a highly abstract approach, it is usually applied either as a proceeding framework or in search of a solution to a general problem. This paper argues that focusing on business rules concept for system analysis can efficiently facilitate the communication between business and informational technology (IT)- based approaches and provide a necessary framework for solving managerial problems. Proceeding and elements of such system analysis are shown and described. Potential benefits of this approach and further challenges are outlined.
ON DOCUMENT POPULATIONS AND MEASURES OF IR EFFECTIVENESS

Work on the statistical validity of experimental results in retrieval tests has concentrated on treating the topics as a sample from a population, but regarding the collection of documents as fixed. This paper raises the argument that we should also consider the documents as having been sampled from a population. It follows that we should regard a per-topic measurement as also having a per-topic noise or error associated with it, which may depend critically on the number of relevant documents for that topic. Some of the common measures used in retrieval testing are re-examined from this point of view. The examination is essentially theoretical, supported by limited simulation experiments.
Delay Analysis of Car-to-Car Reliable Data Delivery Strategies Based on Data Mulling with Network Coding

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANET) aims to enhance vehicle navigation safety by providing an early warning system: any chance of accidents is informed through the wireless communication between vehicles. For the warning system to work, it is crucial that safety messages be reliably delivered to the target vehicles in a timely manner and thus reliable and timely data dissemination service is the key building block of VANET. Data mulling technique combined with three strategies, network codeing, erasure coding and repetition coding, is proposed for the reliable and timely data dissemination service. Particularly, vehicles in the opposite direction on a highway are exploited as data mules, mobile nodes physically delivering data to destinations, to overcome intermittent network connectivity cause by sparse vehicle traffic. Using analytic models, we show that in such a highway data mulling scenario the network coding based strategy outperforms erasure coding and repetition based strategies.
[Isolation and identification of a pathogenic Plesiomonas shigelloides from diseased grass carp].

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study is to identify strain JX-09 and confirmed that the strain is the pathogen of diseased grass carp (Ctenopharyngodon idellus). METHODS A pathogenic strain JX-09 was isolated from the diseased grass carp. The strain was identified based on physiological and biochemical characteristics, and the sequence analysis of 16S rRNA. Virulence of strain JX-09 to healthy grass carp was also tested. Furthermore, drug sensitivity was detected RESULTS Strain JX-09 was identified as Plesiomonas shigelloides by with Kirby-Bauer's agar diffusion method. biochemical analysis and molecular biology. The P. shigelloides strain was re-isolated from the artificial infected grass carp, and the LD50 was about 6.4 x 10(4) cfu/g. Drug sensitive tests showed that strain JX-09 was susceptible to aztreonam, cefazolin, cephalothin and ceftriaxone, and resistant to kanamycin, medicamycin, vancomycin and piperacillin. CONCLUSION Strain JX-09 was the pathogen of grass carp with muscle erosive disease. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report that P. shigelloides as the pathogenic strain of grass carp.
Effect of mu Agonists on Long-Term Survival and Recurrence in Nonsmall Cell Lung Cancer Patients

AbstractOpioids are widely used for postoperative analgesia. Morphine may have an effect on cell replication, migration, and cancer recurrence. However, the association of postoperative mu agonists with outcome of nonsmall cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients has not been fully investigated.We retrospectively evaluated the impact of postoperative mu agonists on overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS) in early stage NSCLC patients. Patients and relevant medical information were selected from the Bio-Bank of Shandong Provincial Hospital. Difference of clinicopathologic information in postoperative mu agonists group and no mu agonists group was analyzed by &khgr;2 test. Univariate and multivariate Cox regression analysis were conducted and represented as hazards ratio and 95% confidence interval form. The primary endpoint was OS and secondary endpoint was DFS.This retrospective study included 984 consecutive NSCLC patients who underwent surgery between January 2006 and December 2011. No significant difference existed between postoperative mu agonists usage group and no mu agonists usage group in clinicopathologic information except operation type (P = 0.041). Postoperative mu agonists usage was related to shorter OS (HR 1.514, 95% CI 1.197–1.916, P = 0.001) and shorter DFS (HR 1.415, 95% CI 1.123–1.781, P = 0.003) in the multivariate Cox regression model. For the patients who received postoperative chemotherapy or radiotherapy postoperative mu agonists also predict shorter survival (HR 1.437, 95% CI 1.041–1.982, P = 0.027). Subgroup analysis showed that administration of postoperative mu agonists was related to shorter OS, especially in males, more smoking, poor differential degree, bilobectomy or pneumonectomy, and stage III subgroup, respectively.Administration of postoperative mu agonists was related to shorter OS and DFS for the NSCLC patients who underwent surgery.
Demand estimation in dense and efficient small cell architectures

We consider a heterogeneous network scenario where macro cells provide continuous coverage and many small cells with short transmission ranges within the coverage area of each macro cell provide high capacity access. We focus on scenarios where most small cells can be put on the sleep mode and macro cell capacity is sufficient for serving a large fraction of user population. Few users generate high demand and thus a small fraction of small cell base stations (SC-BS) that can serve these users should be ideally powered on to offload the macro cell base station (MC-BS). As different sets of users create demand surge over time, a network controller should keep track of peak demand locations and power on a minimal number of SC-BSs. We propose a new solution to this end. Our solution iteratively determines which SC-BSs should be turned on and performs power control to dictate the coverage area of each SC-BS. We use the flow byte counters on the MC-BS and active SC-BSs to form a system of linear equations and use linear optimization using L1 norm of the demand vector as the objective function to localize the demand. Our evaluations indicate that the solution is quite effective in tracking the peak demand locations. For instance in one particularly challenging scenario with heavy-tailed i.i. d. spatial distribution for peak demand, 80% of the peak demand locations were identified correctly more than 90% of the time using less than 7% of the SC-BSs.
Adequacy and reporting of allocation concealment: review of recent trials published in four general medical journals

In randomised controlled trials, allocation concealment (separating the process of randomisation from the recruitment of participants) is important for rigorously designed trials.1–4 In 1996 many major medical journals adopted the CONSORT statement (whereby researchers have to include a short checklist of essential items and a flow diagram when reporting trials),5 and this move encouraged the reporting of allocation concealment. We reviewed the prevalence of adequate allocation concealment and its association with the statistical significance of trial results. We searched by hand four general medical journals (the BMJ, JAMA , the Lancet , and the New England Journal of Medicine ) to identify randomised controlled trials published from January 2002 to December 2002. We included articles if the authors reported that participants were randomised and if the trial was published as a full report with the results of the main analyses. We categorised articles according to whether allocation concealment was adequate (the person who executed the allocation sequence was different from the person who recruited …
Probabilistic Prototype Model for Serendipitous Property Mining

Besides providing the relevant information, amusing users has been an important role of the web. Many web sites provide serendipitous (unexpected but relevant) information to draw user traffic. In this paper, we study the representative scenario of mining an amusing quiz. An existing approach leverages a knowledge base to mine an unexpected property then find quiz questions on such property, based on prototype theory in cognitive science. However, existing deterministic model is vulnerable to noise in the knowledge base. Therefore, we instead propose to leverage probabilistic approach to build a prototype that can overcome noise. Our extensive empirical study shows that our approach not only significantly outperforms baselines by 0.06 in accuracy, and 0.11 in serendipity but also shows higher relevance than the traditional relevance-pursuing baseline using TF-IDF.
Semi-automatic assembly of real cross-cut shredded documents

This paper introduces a semi-automatic approach for cross-cut shredded document reassembly. Automatic algorithms are proposed for segmenting and orienting individual shreds from a scanned shred image, as well as for computing features and ranking potential matches for each shred. Additionally, a human-computer interface is designed to allow semi-automatic assembly of the shreds using the computed feature and match information. Our document de-shredding system was tested on puzzles from the DARPA Shredder Challenge, allowing successful reconstruction of multiple shredded documents and demonstrating the effectiveness of the automatic algorithms.
Small Rodent Cardiac Phantom for Preclinical Ultrasound Imaging

Imaging phantoms play a valuable role in the quality control and quality assurance of medical imaging systems. However, for use in the relatively new field of small-animal preclinical imaging, very few have been described in the literature, and even less or none at all are available commercially. Yet, preclinical small animal phantoms offer the possibility of reducing the need for live animals for test and measurement purposes. Human scale cardiac phantoms, both reported in the literature and available commercially, are typically complex devices. Their designs include numerous flow control valves, pumps, and servo motors. These devices are coupled to tissue mimicking materials (TMMs) shaped to replicate the form of cardiac chambers and valves. They are then operated in such a way as to cause the replica TMM heart to move in a lifelike manner. This paper describes the design and construction of a small rodent preclinical cardiac phantom, which is both of a simple design and construction. Using only readily available materials and components, it can be manufactured without the use of workshop facilities, using only hand-tools. Drawings and pictures of the design are presented along with images of the phantom in operation, using a high-frequency preclinical ultrasound scanner.
Literal inter-language use case driven modularization

Use cases are a practically proven choice to concisely and precisely express what highly interactive systems do. Several attempts have been made to modularize code according to use cases. None of these approaches is able to gather all the code related to a use case in one module and to reflect its steps. However, to allow for code to be modularized according to use case flows and their steps, an instrumentation environment is necessary. In this paper, literal multi-language use case coding based on defragmentation is proposed. The approach aims at fully preserving use case flows in as comprehensible form as possible. The steps of use case flows appear directly in the code as comments. Despite being comments, the steps are active, which is achieved by a dedicated preprocessor and framework. The detailed step implementation gathers all the code fragments of each step each of which may be in a different programming language.
Évaluation de la prise en charge thérapeutique de l’insuffisance cardiaque chronique à fraction d’éjection réduite par les médecins généralistes en Gironde

Introduction: heart failure (HF) with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) (≤40%) is a serious chronic disease that is increasing. The major challenge lies partly in therapeutic optimization in accordance with European recommendations. We studied the therapeutic coverage of these patients through the general practitioner (GP). Knowing its central place in chronic pathologies, does it have a role in the therapeutic management of IC patients? Objective: to evaluate medication management of patients with HFrEF by general practitioners (GPs) in Gironde. Methods: observational and descriptive study. 50 general practitioners were randomized; 24 replied to the survey. Results : 51 patients were collected in total. Beta-blocker, ACE inhibitor or angiotensin-2 receptor antagonist (ARB) therapy, Sacubitril / Valsartan and mineralocorticoid receptor antagonist (MRA) are prescribed at 90%, 55%, 31% and 35% respectively. More than 40% of beta-blockers and ACE inhibitors / ARA2 are prescribed at more than 50% of the target dose. Only 25% of Sacubitril / Valsartan is prescribed at more than 50% of the target dose. A triple therapy defined by the combination of drugs mentioned above, is prescribed to 23.5% of the patients. Age, location, and mode of exercise do not influence treatment management. The analysis of the prescribing brake has shown that age, chronic renal failure and blood pressure are the main culprits. Conclusion: our study highlights a satisfactory therapeutic coverage of patients with reduced ejection fraction. However, it is incomplete and insufficient for obtaining targeted doses. The role of the general practitioner could be redefined and replaced by specialized structures to ensure therapeutic optimization.