Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Chronic subdural hematoma: evaluation of the clinical significance of postoperative drainage volume.

OBJECT A wide variation in postoperative drainage volumes is observed during treatment of chronic subdural hematoma (CSDH) with twist-drill or burr-hole craniostomy and closed-system drainage. In this study the authors investigate the causes of the variation, the clinical significance thereof, and its influence on treatment outcome. METHODS A total of 175 cases were investigated between January 1991 and December 1997. Of these, 145 patients had surgery for CSDH, of whom 30 had bilateral lesions. The cases of CSDH were divided into five subtypes (low-density, isodense, high-density, mixed-density, and layering types) on the basis of the brain computerized tomography (CT) findings. Burr-hole craniostomies with closed-system drainage were performed in all patients and the drainage was maintained for 5 days, during which daily amounts of fluid were measured. The mean drainage volume over 5 days was 320 ml, with the largest volume (413 ml) seen in the low-density type and the smallest (151 ml) in the mixed-density type of CSDH. There were recurrences in six patients (seven instances, 4%). The mixed-density type had the highest recurrence rate (8.6%), whereas there was no recurrence for the low-density type. There were no recurrences in 81 patients in whom the total drainage volumes for 5 days were more than 200 ml, but there were recurrences in six (seven instances) of 94 patients in whom the total drainage volume was less than 200 ml. CONCLUSIONS The postoperative drainage volumes varied greatly because of differences in the outer membrane permeability of CSDH, and such variation seems to be related to the findings on the CT scans obtained preoperatively. Patients with CSDH in whom there is less postoperative drainage than expected should be carefully observed, with special attention paid to the possibility of recurrence.
Identifying performance deviations in thread pools

Large-scale software systems handle increasingly larger workloads by implementing highly concurrent and distributed design patterns. The thread pool pattern uses pools of pre-existing and reusable threads to limit thread lifecycle over-head (thread creation and destruction) and resource thrashing (thread proliferation). However, these advantages are weighed against performance issues caused by concurrency risks, like synchronization errors or deadlock, and thread pool-specific risks, like poorly tuned pool size or thread leakage. Detecting these performance issues during load testing requires a thorough understanding of how thread pools behave, yet most performance analysts have limited knowledge of the system and are flooded with terabytes of data from load tests. We propose a methodology to identify threads with performance deviations in thread pools. Our methodology ranks threads based on the dissimilarity of their resource usage metrics. A case study on a large-scale industrial software system shows that our methodology can identify threads with performance deviations with an average precision of 100% and an average recall of 76.61%. Our methodology performs very well when ranking long-lived deviations, such as memory leaks, but more work is needed to rank short-lived deviations, such as CPU spikes.
Documentality, Emotions, and Motivations. Why We Need a Kind of Internal Memory

Memory, as is well known, makes up a large part of our identity (even though the criterion of this “identity” is controversial). Documents – understood as inscriptions – make up our external memory in a peculiar way: they constitute both a stable anchor and a reference-point for our personal transformations over time. There is, however, also an internal memory, residing in our brain. This is based in part on external documentation; but it is of course not exclusively tied thereto. Rather it evolves dynamically over time, in part reflecting ethical debates which we carry on within ourselves and which is influenced also by emotional factors, for example as we try to erase memories that are unpleasant. If, for example, the internal memory of some offense against our person is erased, then the motivation to testify against those who offended against us no longer exists or is greatly reduced, and this is so even though the documents that record the offense remain. Our motivations here depend on the emotional factor in our memories; once this has been lost, even though the autobiographical, episodic memory still remains, then the value-significance of the event fades from our view, and with it the impulse to act. Emotions are in large part responsible for creating a bond with documents; they make it possible for our internal and external memories to have significance. There must be some degree of emotional resonance in inscriptions relating to events in the past, which arises out of our own experience of these events and from our memory of these experiences, for these inscriptions to have significance in our lives. Documents are thus fundamental. But for ourselves and for our social lives, they must be supplemented by internal memories.
Rank 2 intersection types for local definitions and conditional expressions

We propose a rank 2 intersection type system with new typing rules for local definitions (let-expressions and letrec-expressions) and conditional expressions (if-expressions and match-expressions). This is a further step towards the use of intersection types in "real" programming languages.The technique for typing local definitions relies entirely on the principal typing property (i.e. it does not depend on particulars of rank 2 intersection), so it can be applied to any system with principal typings. The technique for typing conditional expressions, which is based on the idea of introducing metrics on types to "limit the use" of the intersection type constructor in the types assigned to the branches of the conditionals, is instead tailored to rank 2 intersection. However, the underlying idea might also be useful for other type systems.
Different Environmental Drivers of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza H5N1 Outbreaks in Poultry and Wild Birds

A large number of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1 outbreaks in poultry and wild birds have been reported in Europe since 2005. Distinct spatial patterns in poultry and wild birds suggest that different environmental drivers and potentially different spread mechanisms are operating. However, previous studies found no difference between these two outbreak types when only the effect of physical environmental factors was analysed. The influence of physical and anthropogenic environmental variables and interactions between the two has only been investigated for wild bird outbreaks. We therefore tested the effect of these environmental factors on HPAI H5N1 outbreaks in poultry, and the potential spread mechanism, and discussed how these differ from those observed in wild birds. Logistic regression analyses were used to quantify the relationship between HPAI H5N1 outbreaks in poultry and environmental factors. Poultry outbreaks increased with an increasing human population density combined with close proximity to lakes or wetlands, increased temperatures and reduced precipitation during the cold season. A risk map was generated based on the identified key factors. In wild birds, outbreaks were strongly associated with an increased Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and lower elevation, though they were similarly affected by climatic conditions as poultry outbreaks. This is the first study that analyses the differences in environmental drivers and spread mechanisms between poultry and wild bird outbreaks. Outbreaks in poultry mostly occurred in areas where the location of farms or trade areas overlapped with habitats for wild birds, whereas outbreaks in wild birds were mainly found in areas where food and shelters are available. The different environmental drivers suggest that different spread mechanisms might be involved: HPAI H5N1 spread to poultry via both poultry and wild birds, whereas contact with wild birds alone seems to drive the outbreaks in wild birds.
Exploring User Attitudes Towards Different Approaches to Command Recommendation in Feature-Rich Software

Feature-rich software applications offer users hundreds of commands, yet most people use only a very small fraction of the available command set. Command recommenders aim to increase awareness of an application's capabilities by generating personalized recommendations for new commands. A primary distinguishing characteristic of these recommenders concerns the manner in which they determine command relevance. Social approaches do so by analyzing community usage logs, whereas, task-based approaches mine web documentation for logical command clusters. Through a qualitative study with sixteen participants, in this work we explored user attitudes towards these different approaches and the supplemental information they enable.
From Utopian Dreaming to Communal Reality: Co-operative Lifestyles in Australia. Bill Metcalf (ed), 198 pages, Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 1995, $29.95.

For most of us the concept of communal living is something that belonged to the Sixties and Seventies, with remnants occa'iionally making the news as sites of successful drug busts. Bill Metcalf in From Utopian Dreaming to Communal Reality seeks to correct these misconceptions. By providing a brief historical overview of communal living in Australia, and by allowing ten people with long term participation in diverse communes to speak, Metcalf attempts to bring alternative lifestyles out of the realms of ageing hippies and into the present and future as viable alternatives to the failings of contemporary society. In doing so he has produced a highly readable book, appealing particularly to those interested in communes as well as those with an interest in history, biography and the workings of human nature. The historical overview of the long history of communal living in Australia provided an inkling of the fates and contexts of early settlements. This section contained just enough information to whet the appetite and I found it difficult to reconcile this historical material with the following chapters: the overview seemed to have little purpose other than general interest. The chapters, written by the 'elders' from diverse communes, offer very personal views on their choice of lifestyles. These mini autobiographical accounts give fascinating insights into the practical experience of communal living, including some of the pitfalls and lessons learnt. There is a sense of openness and honesty in these chapters; both problems and achievements are discussed, albeit by those who have successfully managed the former. While not attempting to be prescriptive, many of the writers offer useful insights into methods of holding the community together. These may have applications beyond the audience of prospective communalists in workplaces and team projects, for example. Some of the individual views on human nature are also interesting. I particularly liked the engineer's notion of there being 'a negative correlation' between the levels of frequency and intensity of people's interactions (43). Surely only an engineer would say this! In the concluding chapter, the differences and similarities identified by Metcalf provide some valuable pointers to the issues and challenges which intending communalists will have to address. Metcalf also provides some clues as to how these communities have met the 'one generation' benchmark of success. (They seem to have little in common with the characteristics of Hernnhut, Australia's first and longest la'iting commune.) However there is a disappointing lack of critical analysis of the material. This is perhaps explained by the author's promotion of alternative lifestyles as agents of personal and social change. But I expected more from Australia's leading expert than a final exhortation to 'Just do it' .
Ambivalent Biographies in Adolescence

Despite the fact that vocational adolescents are in a disadvantaged position regarding their post-secondary high school routes, research has highlighted the resistant and innovative ways they set in motion so as to grapple with their estranging schooling experiences. Our article aims to contribute to this research area by focusing on how adolescents’ narration of their schooling frames their life planning. In particular, we explore a major finding of our research—namely, their defending of vocational training—by means of the notion of ambivalent biographical identity. We argue (a) that today’s adolescents do not openly reject vocational training, and they try to transform the unofficial skills and knowledge obtained in their cultures into official cultural capital capable of making them enter the job market and (b) that their life planning is tied up with a biographical identity formation through which they try to coherently reconcile their embodied cultures with the vocational qualifications they aspire to acquire.
Active Contours Driven by the Salient Edge Energy Model

In this brief, we present a new indicator, i.e., salient edge energy, for guiding a given contour robustly and precisely toward the object boundary. Specifically, we define the salient edge energy by exploiting the higher order statistics on the diffusion space, and incorporate it into a variational level set formulation with the local region-based segmentation energy for solving the problem of curve evolution. In contrast to most previous methods, the proposed salient edge energy allows the curve to find only significant local minima relevant to the object boundary even in the noisy and cluttered background. Moreover, the segmentation performance derived from our new energy is less sensitive to the size of local windows compared with other recently developed methods, owing to the ability of our energy function to suppress diverse clutters. The proposed method has been tested on various images, and experimental results show that the salient edge energy effectively drives the active contour both qualitatively and quantitatively compared to various state-of-the-art methods.
Glioblastoma patients in Slovenia from 1997 to 2008

Abstract Background. Glioblastoma is the most common primary brain tumour. It has a poor prognosis despite some advances in treatment that have been achieved over the last ten years. In Slovenia, 50 to 60 glioblastoma patients are diagnosed each year. In order to establish whether the current treatment options have any influence on the survival of the Slovenian glioblastoma patients, their data in the period from the beginning of the year 1997 to the end of the year 2008 have been analysed. Patients and methods. All patients treated at the Institute of Oncology Ljubljana from 1997 to 2008 were included in the retrospective study. Demographics, treatment details, and survival time after the diagnosis were collected and statistically analysed for the group as a whole and for subgroups. Results. From 1997 to 2008, 527 adult patients were diagnosed with glioblastoma and referred to the Institute of Oncology for further treatment. Their median age was 59 years (from 20 to 85) and all but one had the diagnosis confirmed by a pathologist. Gross total resection was reported by surgeons in 261 (49.5%) patients; good functional status (WHO 0 or 1) after surgery was observed in 336 (63.7%) patients, radiotherapy was performed in 422 (80.1%) patients, in 317 (75.1%) of them with radical intent, and 198 (62.5 %) of those received some form of systemic treatment (usually temozolomide). The median survival of all patients amounted to 9.7 months. There was no difference in median survival of all patients or of all treated patients before or after the chemo-radiotherapy era. However, the overall survival of patients treated with radical intent was significantly better (11.4 months; p < 0.05). A better survival was also noticed in radically treated patients who received additional temozolomide therapy (11.4 vs. 13.1 months; p = 0.014). The longer survival was associated with a younger age and a good performance status as well as with a more extensive tumour resection. In patients treated with radical intent, having a good performance status, and receiving radiotherapy and additional temozolomide therapy, the survival was significantly longer, based on multivariate analysis. Conclusions. We observed a gradual increase in the survival of glioblastoma patients who were treated with radical intent over the last ten years. Good functional surgery, advances in radiotherapy and addition of temozolomide all contributed to this increase. Though the increased survival seems to be more pronounced in certain subgroups, we have still not been able to exactly define them. Further research, especially in tumour biology and genetics is needed.
Asymptotic Analysis of the Laminar Viscous Flow Over a Porous Bed

We consider the laminar viscous channel flow over a porous surface. The size of the pores is much smaller than the size of the channel, and it is important to determine the effective boundary conditions at the porous surface. We study the corresponding boundary layers, and, by a rigorous asymptotic expansion, we obtain Saffman's modification of the interface condition observed by Beavers and Joseph. The effective coefficient in the law is determined through an auxiliary boundary-layer type problem, whose computational and modeling aspects are discussed in detail. Furthermore, the approximation errors for the velocity and for the effective mass flow are given as powers of the characteristic pore size $\ep$. Finally, we give the interface condition linking the effective pressure fields in the porous medium and in the channel, and we determine the jump of the effective pressures explicitly.
The Network Paradigm in Criminal Justice: An exploratory mixed methods study of the barriers to its integration into Europol’s analysis environment

This doctoral thesis examined the paradoxically difficult integration of Social Network Analysis (SNA), as a principal analytical approach, in the supranational intelligence and law enforcement environment of Europol. This real-world problem was systematically investigated with the use of an exploratory mixed methods design. Initially, a questionnaire survey, focussing on the perceptions of the whole population of Europol’s operational analysts (N=77) and achieving a high response rate of 75% (n=58), helped identify key barriers to SNA integration. Thereafter, in-depth thematic analysis of five semi-structured interviews contributed to better understanding of the identified barriers. Lastly, a topical literature review facilitated the theoretical application of empirical results. In this way, the study traced the possible causes of the research problem and shed light into the highly constrained operational role of Europol making two important theoretical contributions: the “basic work phenomenon” and the “input (procedural) legitimacy-innovation” hypothesis. Specifically, it was found that Europol’s transformation into an EU Agency in 2010 – with a “light” criminal information role and a preoccupation with elementary intelligence production and input (procedural) legitimacy gains – actually weakened its epistemic authority and output legitimacy, impeding the integration of the innovative network paradigm. Alternative explanations, such as Europol analysts’ anti-epistemic inclinations and resistance to change, did not account for the magnitude of the observed phenomenon. The thesis fills an empirical and theoretical gap in extant literature on EU Agency governance and furthers understanding of the inner workings of Europol. Based on novel and quite informative evidence, the study argues that the dominance of Eurosceptic views and national sovereignty concerns has raised high political and bureau-political barriers sidelining Europhile orientations in the sensitive area of EU law enforcement cooperation. The findings suggest that the main policy challenge for this EU Agency is to find a better balance between its political and epistemic authority and input (procedural) and output legitimacy.
Utilization of commercial laboratory results in management of hyperandrogenism in women.

OBJECTIVE To compare results from testosterone radioimmunoassay kits commonly used by commercial laboratories as well as their reference ranges and to analyze the scientific literature for ranges of serum testosterone levels in normal women and those with hyperandrogenism. METHODS We reviewed quality assurance reports of various testosterone ligand challenges from four groups of laboratories and summarized testosterone data from 17 published reports about normal women and 14 studies of hyperandrogenic women. RESULTS A significant variability was demonstrated between the radioimmunoassay kits at all concentrations (for example, a sample with a mean testosterone level of 96.1 ng/dL was reported by some laboratories as containing 71.8 ng/dL and by others as 123.4 ng/dL). All laboratories provide essentially the same "reference range" (approximately 10 to 90 ng/dL) but do not report how the range was established. The scientific literature clearly shows a significant separation in serum testosterone levels between normal (that is, not hyperandrogenic) and hyperandrogenic women. Most hyperandrogenic women had testosterone levels >50 ng/dL, whereas most normal control subjects had levels <40 ng/dL. Thus, most of these women with hyperandrogenism would have been considered to have normal testosterone levels if the reference ranges of commercial laboratories were used. CONCLUSION These data illustrate the difficulty that physicians face when they are required to use different commercial laboratories to measure serum testosterone levels. We propose that (1) reference ranges be established on a clinically defined population for each hormone and method used, (2) laboratory reports include information about method and reference range population, and (3) physicians be allowed to choose which laboratories are used for their patients' hormone determinations, for consistency of results.
Accessory cell-T lymphocyte interactions. Antigen-dependent and - independent clustering

Previous work documented the capacity of dendritic cells (DC) to stimulate primary immune responses and to physically cluster with the responding lymphocytes. Rapid cell-cell aggregation assays were used here to study the interaction of DC and other types of APC with T lymphocytes. Graded doses of APC were sedimented with T cells that had been primed to alloantigens, soluble proteins, or lectin, and then labeled with carboxyfluorescein diacetate. The number of clustered T cells was measured after 10 min at 4 or 37 degrees C. At 4 degrees, binding was antigen-dependent and included greater than 50% of the added T cells. Clustering was mediated by all types of APC tested, including DC, macrophages, B lymphocytes, and fresh Langerhans cells, although DC were the most effective. Specificity was evident in the findings that alloreactive T lymphoblasts bound to allogeneic but not syngeneic APC; KLH- and OVA-reactive T cells bound to syngeneic APC in the presence of specific protein: and Con A blasts needed lectin to cluster. A 30 min pretreatment with chloroquine, a drug known to inhibit APC activity, markedly blocked the specific binding of alloreactive and protein-specific T blasts at 4 degrees C. Since Lyt-2- alloreactive blasts should specifically recognize Ia, presentation of Ia seems to be altered by chloroquine. Binding assays at 37 degrees C gave similar results to those performed at 4 degrees C, with one exception. When DC were used as APC, striking antigen-independent clustering occurred. DC could efficiently cluster primed T cells in the absence of alloantigen, soluble protein, or lectin. We suggest that antigen-independent binding contributes to the distinctive capacity of DC to prime T cells in the afferent limb of the immune response, whereas antigen-dependent binding between other APC and sensitized lymphocytes is critical in the efferent limb.