Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The second stiffest axis of a beam-column: implications for cervical spine trauma

The authors show the existence of a second stiffest axis of a homogeneous, isotropic beam-column. The allowable force along the second stiffest axis to cause either buckling or compression failure is delineated. The ratio of the allowable forces imposed on the second and first stiffest axes is established. The stiffness ratio of the second and first stiffest axes is also found. The safe load region for all directions of action of the force is derived. The implications of the idealized model for cervical trauma are delineated. <<ETX>>
Greater involvement and diversity of Internet gambling as a risk factor for problem gambling

Background: Concerns that Internet gambling has elevated the prevalence of problem gambling have not been substantiated; however, evidence suggests a subgroup of Internet gamblers do experience higher rates of gambling harms. Greater overall involvement in gambling appears to be predictive of harms. The purpose of this study was to examine differences between Internet gamblers with a single or multiple online gambling accounts, including their gambling behaviours, factors influencing their online gambling and risk of experiencing gambling problems. Methods: Internet gamblers (3178) responding to an online survey that assessed their gambling behaviour, and use of single or multiple online gambling accounts. Results: Results revealed that multiple account holders were more involved gamblers, gambling on more activities and more frequently, and had higher rates of gambling problems than single account holders. Multiple account holders selected gambling sites based on price, betting options, payout rates and game experience, whereas single account holders prioritized legality and consumer protection features. Conclusion: Results suggest two different types of Internet gamblers: one motivated to move between sites to optimize preferred experiences with a tendency to gamble in a more volatile manner; and a smaller, but more stable group less influenced by promotions and experiences, and seeking a reputable and safe gambling experience. As the majority of Internet gamblers use multiple accounts, more universal responsible gambling strategies are needed to assist gamblers to track and control their expenditure to reduce risks of harm.
Rigorous models for the Lorenz equations

Inspired by numerical solutions of the Lorenz equations, we model the Poincar e map of the ow by a one-parameter map of the unit interval. For a certain region in the parameter space of the Lorenz equations, we show that the corresponding one-dimensional map is chaotic, imposing only minimal conditions on its derivative. Perturbing the map, we get a two-dimensional map corresponding to a ow in three dimensions. We show that the chaotic property is preserved under certain perturbations.
Quality of life in thyroid cancer patients: a literature review

Introduction Quality of life (QoL) has received increasing interest in the last years, especially in patients with cancer. This article aims to analyze a selection of medical research papers regarding the quality of life in patients with thyroid carcinoma. We overviewed the main QoL aspects derived from several studies and highlighted those less researched issues, which could represent a solid base for future clinical studies. Method We used an integrative selection method of medical literature, choosing mostly “free access” studies, as it was considered that they could be easily viewed, searched and researched including by patients. Results After an integrative literature review, we selected 16 relevant studies. Patients with thyroid cancer have several factors influencing their QoL, with both physical and psychological impact. The decisive factors are the quality of the surgical act, radioiodine therapy, follow-up using rh-TSH vs. hormonal withdrawal, access to behavioral help and the relationship with their physician. Conclusion We must understand the emotional impact of the cancer diagnosis on the patient and we must collaborate in order to help the patient restore the psychosomatic balance and to recover the quality of life
A Community-based Eye Care Intervention in Southern Egypt: Impact on Trachomatous Trichiasis Surgical Coverage

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to measure the impact of a community-based intervention on uptake of trichiasis surgery in Southern Egypt. Methods: Four villages where trachoma is endemic were randomly selected in the Samalout district, Egypt. Two villages were selected for intervention (intervention villages) and two matched villages for nonintervention (nonintervention villages). The intervention model provided community information sessions, door-to-door health education, screening, and improvements in the clinical capacity of eye care providers. The intervention was evaluated through two pre - and post-intervention community-based surveys that included the prevalence of trachoma and the utilization of eye care services at local hospitals. All patients with trichiasis answered a questionnaire regarding surgical utilization and barriers. Results: In the baseline survey, the trachomatous trichiasis (TT) surgical coverage was 22.7% (38.9% males, 16.7% females) in all villages. Following the intervention, the TT surgical coverage increased to 68% in villages that received the intervention (81.5% males, 60% females). Nonintervention villages had a TT surgical coverage of 26.1% (37.5% males, 20% females). In the intervention villages, the prevalence of TT significantly decreased from 9.4% (5.7% males, 11.8% females) to 3.8% (1.9% males, 5.1% females) (P = 0.013), in 2008. In nonintervention villages, there was a slight, but insignificant decrease in TT from 10.1% (3.1% males, 14.4% females) to 8.2% (3% males, 11.5% females) (P = 0.580). The major barriers to uptake of TT surgical services were: “Feeling no problem” (17.3%), “fear of surgery” (12.7%) and “cost” (12.7%). Conclusion: A community-based eye health education program with door-to-door screening significantly increased the uptake of TT surgical services. Although improvements to the delivery of surgical service are essential, they did not lead to any significant improvements in the nonintervention villages.
Self-Organising Maps: An Objective Method for Clustering Complex Human Movement

In this study self-organising maps (SOM) were used to classify the coordination patterns of four participants performing three different types of basketball shot from different distances. The shots were the free throw, the three-point and the hook shot. The free throw and three-point shot were hypothesised to be more similar to one another than to the hook shot. The first analysis involved an analysis of trial trajectories visualised on a U-matrix. Two of the participants, unexpectedly, showed more similarity between the three-point shot and the hook shot, instead of the free throw. Where the first analysis was useful in showing aspects of the movement that were not obvious from viewing the computer animation of the original movement, a second SOM was trained on the appearance of the original trajectories and used to produce an output that shows the variability in coordination between all trials in the study. The second SOM showed groupings of the three shooting conditions which were unexpected. The second SOM technique may provide a more objective method than visual technique analysis for explaining movement patterning and structuring practice routines.
High pressure synthesis of diamond in Sweden in 1953

In February 1953, forty years ago, the first synthetic diamonds were made in Sweden. This was then the culmination of more than ten years’ work. In 1942, ASEA started with experiments of converting graphite into diamonds under high pressures and high temperatures. The difficulties were bigger than anyone could have imagined and grew in course of time. The author describes the equipment used and the experiments which resulted in the first diamonds, and also the development up to the commercial production ten years later.
Simplifying friendlist management

Online social networks like Facebook allow users to connect, communicate, and share content. The popularity of these services has lead to an information overload for their users; the task of simply keeping track of different interactions has become daunting. To reduce this burden, sites like Facebook allows the user to group friends into specific lists, known as friendlists, aggregating the interactions and content from all friends in each friendlist. While this approach greatly reduces the burden on the user, it still forces the user to create and populate the friendlists themselves and, worse, makes the user responsible for maintaining the membership of their friendlists over time. We show that friendlists often have a strong correspondence to the structure of the social network, implying that friendlists may be automatically inferred by leveraging the social network structure. We present a demonstration of Friendlist Manager, a Facebook application that proposes friendlists to the user based on the structure of their local social network, allows the user to tweak the proposed friendlists, and then automatically creates the friendlists for the user.
Coordinated Evolution of Influenza A Surface Proteins

Surface proteins hemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA) of the human influenza A virus evolve under selection pressure to escape the human adaptive immune response and antiviral drug treatments. In addition to these external selection pressures, some mutations in HA are known to affect the adaptive landscape of NA, and vice versa, because these two proteins are physiologically interlinked. However, the extent to which evolution of one protein affects the evolution of the other is unknown. Here we develop a novel phylogenetic method for detecting the signatures of such genetic interactions between mutations in different genes – that is, intergene epistasis. Using this method, we show that influenza surface proteins evolve in a coordinated way, with substitutions in HA affecting substitutions in NA and vice versa, at many sites. Of particular interest is our finding that the oseltamivir-resistance mutations in NA in subtype H1N1 were likely facilitated by prior mutations in HA. Our results illustrate that the adaptive landscape of a viral protein is remarkably sensitive to its genomic context and, more generally, imply that the evolution of any single protein must be understood within the context of the entire evolving genome.
An empirical model to predict temperature‐dependent thermal conductivity of amorphous polymers

Thermal conductivity in polymers has been theoretically and experimentally studied in good detail, but there is a need for more accurate models. Polymeric thermal conductivity exhibits a plateau-like transition at temperatures around 10 K, which is not well accounted for by existing models. In this work, an empirical model that can predict temperature-dependent thermal conductivity of amorphous polymers is developed. The model is based on kinetic theory and accounts for three sets of vibrational modes in polymers, and is developed using classical expressions, results of previous simulations, and experimental data. Fundamental material properties like density, monomer molecular weight, and speed of sound are the only input parameters. The model provides estimates for the locations of transitions between different sets of vibrational modes, an upper limit for the thermal conductivity, and temperature-dependent thermal conductivity, which are in good agreement with experimental data. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part B: Polym. Phys. 2017
Effect of Immunosuppressive Agents on Hepatocyte Apoptosis Post-Liver Transplantation

Introduction Immunosuppressants are used ubiquitously post-liver transplantation to prevent allograft rejection. However their effects on hepatocytes are unknown. Experimental data from non-liver cells indicate that immunosuppressants may promote cell death thereby driving an inflammatory response that promotes fibrosis and raises concerns that a similar effect may occur within the liver. We evaluated apoptosis within the liver tissue of post-liver transplant patients and correlated these findings with in vitro experiments investigating the effects of immunosuppressants on apoptosis in primary hepatocytes. Methods Hepatocyte apoptosis was assessed using immunohistochemistry for M30 CytoDEATH and cleaved PARP in human liver tissue. Primary mouse hepatocytes were treated with various combinations of cyclosporine, tacrolimus, sirolimus, or MMF. Cell viability and apoptosis were evaluated using crystal violet assays and Western immunoblots probed for cleaved PARP and cleaved caspase 3. Results Post-liver transplant patients had a 4.9-fold and 1.7-fold increase in M30 CytoDEATH and cleaved PARP compared to normal subjects. Cyclosporine and tacrolimus at therapeutic concentrations did not affect hepatocyte apoptosis, however when they were combined with MMF, cell death was significantly enhanced. Cell viability was reduced by 46% and 41%, cleaved PARP was increased 2.6-fold and 2.2-fold, and cleaved caspase 3 increased 2.2-fold and 1.8-fold following treatment with Cyclosporine/MMF and Tacrolimus/MMF respectively. By contrast, the sirolimus/MMF combination did not significantly reduce hepatocyte viability or promote apoptosis. Conclusion Commonly used immunosuppressive drug regimens employed after liver transplantation enhance hepatocyte cell death and may thus contribute to the increased liver fibrosis that occurs in a proportion of liver transplant recipients.
Synthesis and Characterization of Magnetic II-VI Nanoparticles

Magnetic semiconductor nanocrystals are being studied for their potential application in the field of spintronics as spin-injectors for spin-based transistors and spinbased storage elements for nonvolatile memories. They also have a number of biomedical engineering applications including contrast enhancing agents for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). In this study, we present a synthesis route to grow colloidal II-VI magnetic nanoparticles at room temperature with easily handled, relatively nontoxic source materials. CoSe and CrSe nanocrystals were synthesized in an aqueous solution where gelatin is used to retard the reaction. Characterization of the nanocrystals was done through transmission electron microscope (TEM) imaging and UV-Vis absorption spectroscopy. Spin-carrier relaxation times were determined using a superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) magnetometer.
Relationship between Composition and Toxicity of Motor Vehicle Emission Samples

In this study we investigated the statistical relationship between particle and semivolatile organic chemical constituents in gasoline and diesel vehicle exhaust samples, and toxicity as measured by inflammation and tissue damage in rat lungs and mutagenicity in bacteria. Exhaust samples were collected from “normal” and “high-emitting” gasoline and diesel light-duty vehicles. We employed a combination of principal component analysis (PCA) and partial least-squares regression (PLS; also known as projection to latent structures) to evaluate the relationships between chemical composition of vehicle exhaust and toxicity. The PLS analysis revealed the chemical constituents covarying most strongly with toxicity and produced models predicting the relative toxicity of the samples with good accuracy. The specific nitro-polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons important for mutagenicity were the same chemicals that have been implicated by decades of bioassay-directed fractionation. These chemicals were not related to lung toxicity, which was associated with organic carbon and select organic compounds that are present in lubricating oil. The results demonstrate the utility of the PCA/PLS approach for evaluating composition–response relationships in complex mixture exposures and also provide a starting point for confirming causality and determining the mechanisms of the lung effects.
The relationship between test coverage and reliability

Models the relationship between testing effort, coverage and reliability, and presents a logarithmic model that relates testing effort to test coverage: statement (or block) coverage, branch (or decision) coverage, computation use (c-use) coverage, or predicate use (p-use) coverage. The model is based on the hypothesis that the enumerables (like branches or blocks) for any coverage measure have different detectability, just like the individual defects. This model allows us to relate a test coverage measure directly to the defect coverage. Data sets for programs with real defects are used to validate the model. The results are consistent with the known inclusion relationships among block, branch and p-use coverage measures. We show how the defect density controls the time-to-next-failure. The model can eliminate variables like the test application strategy from consideration. It is suitable for high-reliability applications where automatic (or manual) test generation is used to cover enemerables which have not yet been tested. <<ETX>>
Combining points and lines for camera pose estimation and optimization in monocular visual odometry

In this paper, we propose a unified model for camera pose estimation and a novel strategy for pose optimization by combining points and lines in monocular visual odometry. Our proposed unified model treats point and line features equivalently, which is applicable for all the minimal cases requiring the minimum number 3 of point or/and line features and can be easily extended for various circumstances with more additional observations. The core idea is to directly retrieve all stationary points of a cost function which is minimized by the first-order optimality condition without initialization or iteration. The estimated pose is reliable due to robust geometric constraints and the reliable algebraic solver. To refine the camera pose, we propose a novel optimization strategy to minimize the unconstrained Sampson error by taking specific uncertainty for each feature into account to penalize noise more reasonably. Moreover, it is simpler than the conventional bundle adjustment by avoiding the high-dimensional parameter searching. Experimental results on simulated data and real images have sufficiently demonstrated the superiority of our proposed camera pose estimation and optimization method by comparing with state-of-the-art monocular algorithms.
A semantic obfuscation technique for the Internet of Things

Although some people might willingly reveal their location information in order to obtain location-based services, few would be comfortable having their locations collected and profiled by the billions of things envisioned in the Internet of Things (IoT), at all time and in all situations. The diffusion of wireless communication networks and the technical advancements of location positioning techniques, power things of the IoT with the capabilities of automatically sensing, communicating, and processing the information about a person's location, with a high degree of spatial and temporal precision. In this work, we address the location privacy issue by introducing the Semantic Obfuscation technique (S-Obfuscation). This technique, compared to classical geometric-based obfuscation techniques, relies on geographic knowledge to produce obfuscated locations that are harder to be detected as fake or obfuscated by an adversary. The obfuscation process is supported by our novel use of ontological classification of locations based on a geographical knowledge.
Avian population consequences of climate change are most severe for long-distance migrants in seasonal habitats

One consequence of climate change is an increasing mismatch between timing of food requirements and food availability. Such a mismatch is primarily expected in avian long-distance migrants because of their complex annual cycle, and in habitats with a seasonal food peak. Here we show that insectivorous long-distance migrant species in The Netherlands declined strongly (1984–2004) in forests, a habitat characterized by a short spring food peak, but that they did not decline in less seasonal marshes. Also, within generalist long-distance migrant species, populations declined more strongly in forests than in marshes. Forest-inhabiting migrant species arriving latest in spring declined most sharply, probably because their mismatch with the peak in food supply is greatest. Residents and short-distance migrants had non-declining populations in both habitats, suggesting that habitat quality did not deteriorate. Habitat-related differences in trends were most probably caused by climate change because at a European scale, long-distance migrants in forests declined more severely in western Europe, where springs have become considerably warmer, when compared with northern Europe, where temperatures during spring arrival and breeding have increased less. Our results suggest that trophic mismatches may have become a major cause for population declines in long-distance migrants in highly seasonal habitats.
Selection of Reference Genes for Expression Analysis Using Quantitative Real-Time PCR in the Pea Aphid, Acyrthosiphon pisum (Harris) (Hemiptera, Aphidiae)

To facilitate gene expression study and obtain accurate qRT-PCR analysis, normalization relative to stable expressed housekeeping genes is required. In this study, expression profiles of 11 candidate reference genes, including actin (Actin), elongation factor 1 α (EF1A), TATA-box-binding protein (TATA), ribosomal protein L12 (RPL12), β-tubulin (Tubulin), NADH dehydrogenase (NADH), vacuolar-type H+-ATPase (v-ATPase), succinate dehydrogenase B (SDHB), 28S ribosomal RNA (28S), 16S ribosomal RNA (16S), and 18S ribosomal RNA (18S) from the pea aphid Acyrthosiphon pisum, under different developmental stages and temperature conditions, were investigated. A total of four analytical tools, geNorm, Normfinder, BestKeeper, and the ΔCt method, were used to evaluate the suitability of these genes as endogenous controls. According to RefFinder, a web-based software tool which integrates all four above-mentioned algorithms to compare and rank the reference genes, SDHB, 16S, and NADH were the three most stable house-keeping genes under different developmental stages and temperatures. This work is intended to establish a standardized qRT-PCR protocol in pea aphid and serves as a starting point for the genomics and functional genomics research in this emerging insect model.
Asymmetric Randomized Gossip Algorithms for Consensus

Abstract Distributed averaging is a relevant problem in several application areas, such as decentralized computation, sensor networks, clock synchronization and coordinated control of mobile autonomous agents. Gossip randomized consensus algorithms provide a particular simple and efficient solution of such a problem. These algorithms however need bidirectional communication among agents and this can be a rather restrictive hypothesis in some contexts. In this contribution we analyze two important examples of asymmetric randomized consensus algorithms which do not need bidirectional communication and exhibit a speed of convergence comparable to the symmetric gossip. However, differently from the symmetric gossip, these algorithms do not converge to the average. We complete our analysis showing that under rather mild hypotheses, the displacement of the their final state from the average goes to zero as the number of agents goes to infinity.