Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Risk factors for symptomatic knee osteoarthritis fifteen to twenty-two years after meniscectomy.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the influence of age, sex, body mass index (BMI), extent of meniscal resection, cartilage status, and knee load on the development of radiographically evident osteoarthritis (OA) of the knee and knee symptoms after meniscal resection. METHODS We evaluated 317 patients with no cruciate ligament injury (mean +/- SD age 54 +/- 11 years) who had undergone meniscal resection 15-22 years earlier (followup rate 70%), with radiographic and clinical examination. The Knee injury and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score was used to quantify knee-related symptoms. Sixty-eight unoperated subjects identified from national population records were included as a reference group. RESULTS Symptomatic radiographic OA (corresponding to Kellgren/Lawrence grade > or =2) was present in 83 of 305 operated knees (27%) and 7 of 68 control knees (10%) (relative risk 2.6, 95% confidence interval [95% CI] 1.3-6.1). Patients who had undergone total meniscectomy and subjects with obesity (BMI > or =30) had a greater likelihood of tibiofemoral radiographic OA than those who had undergone partial meniscal resection and those with a BMI <25, respectively. Furthermore, degenerative meniscal tear, intraoperative cartilage changes, and lateral meniscectomy were associated with radiographic OA more frequently than were longitudinal tear, absence of cartilage changes, and medial meniscectomy, respectively. Symptomatic tibiofemoral or patellofemoral radiographic OA was associated with obesity, female sex, and degenerative meniscal tear. CONCLUSION Contributing risk factors for OA development after meniscal resection are similar to risk factors for common knee OA. Systemic factors and local biomechanical factors interact. Obesity, female sex, and preexisting early-stage OA are features associated with poor self-reported and radiographic outcome. Partial meniscal resection is associated with less radiographic OA over time than is total meniscectomy.
Impact of clinical skill lab on students' learning in preclinical years.

BACKGROUND As 1st year students have no prior training in handling and facing patients, Clinical Skill Lab (CSL) is the most suitable place to avoid direct doctor/patient interaction. The objective of this study was to evaluate the performance of recently established CSL and its impact on student learning in basic science subjects. METHODOLOGY This study was carried out at the Departments of Physiology and Medical Education, Foundation University Medical College Islamabad, from January to October 2012. In this observational study, 150 of 1st year students were divided into 5 batches. Each batch attended clinical skill lab once a week. Each batch was subdivided into 6 batches of 5 students each to be facilitated by one postgraduate trainee from clinical subjects. Overall supervision was done by a consultant of status of Assistant Professor qualified to teach Medicine, Surgery and/or Physiology. Sessions were conducted for 2 hours daily (6 days a week) in which after an initial briefing, students were taught the communication skills, clinical skills and art of history taking and physical examination. Clinical integration of various modules taught in 1st year, i.e., skin, muscle and skeletal system (SMS), upper limb and breast, immunity and haematology, respiratory and cardiovascular modules was done from January to October 2012. Methods of teaching involved large group interactive sessions, small group interactive sessions, self-directed learning, tutorials, revision on computer and recordings of sessions given to students on flashes. Multiple choice questions and observed structured clinical examination were the main assessment tools. Combined assessment of 2 consecutive modules was done at the end of 2nd module making a total of 3 assessments for 1st year. Absentees were included in failures in view of impact of end of modules examinations on overall final assessment. RESULTS More than 73% students passed examination of clinical skills securing more than 50% marks in each module. Overall impact of CSL was also seen in the subjects of Anatomy and Physiology. Result of purely anatomy SMS and breast modules increased from 64% (year 2011 class) to 79% (year 2012 class). Result of purely Physiology modules (Immunity and Haematology) increased from 77% (year 2011 class) to 94% (year 2012 class). Similarly Respiratory and Cardiovascular modules result improved from 68% to 90.5%. CONCLUSION The performance of CSL in imparting clinical skills, communication skills, history taking and physical examination was satisfactory. The experience of integrating clinical teaching with basic sciences not only improved students' clinical experience reflected by evaluation, but was also rewarding in improving the results of various modules related to anatomy and physiology.
ONoC-SPL: Customized Network-on-Chip (NoC) architecture and prototyping for data-intensive computation applications

Network-on-Chip (NoC) has emerged as a promising paradigm to largely alleviate the limitations exhibited by the shared-bus based systems in current System-On-Chip (SoC). These problems include the lack of scalability, clock skew, lack of support for concurrent communication, and increasing power consumption. Based upon a packet/flit switching scheme, NoC allows a concurrent transmission of data providing a higher bandwidth and performance. In this paper, we present an optimized version of our earlier design OASIS-2, called ONoC-SPL, that employs a Short-PassLink (SPL) customization which aims to reduce the communication latency for performance enhancement in data-intensive computation applications. In order to evaluate its performance and hardware complexity accurately, we prototyped ONoCSPL on FPGA using two traffic patterns (Dimension-reversal and Hotspot) and also a real application (JPEG encoder). Evaluation results showed that ONoC-SPL reduces the execution time by 30.1% and enhances the throughput by 32.3% when compared with the earlier design. This performance improvement came with only an area utilization cost under the 5% and a slight 0.49% power overhead.
Lifelong care and control: paternalism in nineteenth-century factory communities

Avec les travaux de P. Joyce (entreprise britannique) et de L. Magnusson (entreprise suedoise) et sa propre etude sur une entreprise de textile a Brede (Danemark), l'A. montre comment les communautes d'entreprise du XIX e siecle favorisaient largement le paternalisme, non seulement comme strategie consciente de gestion mais egalement comme un moyen efficace d'assurer une force de travail stable et loyale a une epoque ou l'opposition entre les patrons et les employes se dessinaient en ville. Cependant le paternalisme n'assurait pas forcement une unite (production de plusieurs produits, division du travail). Autour de 1900, la rupture s'installa avec la creation de syndicats.
Covering Disasters, Natural or Otherwise: Media, Politics, and the Public Sphere in Post-Earthquake Turkey

On 17 August 2000, the somber first anniversary of the Marmara earthquake, the mainstream Turkish media found a sole reason for celebration. Alongside lengthy reports of vigils in remembrance of the dead and protests of the state's anemic relief efforts, the media celebrated its partnership with civil society and all but declared an end to a state that was at once heavy-handed and ineffectual. Amplifying this theme, an article that compiled a list of the earthquake's “winners” and “losers” placed the media and civil society in the former category and a host of state agencies charged with disaster response in the latter one. Hürriyet, a high-circulation mainstream newspaper, described this praise as well deserved, stating that journalists had effectively “exposed all the naked truths” of the state's inability to provide for its population.
Adaptive TORC detection for MC-CDMA wireless systems

Multi carrier code-division multiple access (MC-CDMA) is considered for beyond third generation wireless systems for its effectiveness in the presence of both multipath fading and interference. This paper analyzes MC-CDMA systems adopting an adaptive detection technique based on threshold orthogonality restoring combining (TORC). The mathematical framework here developed allows the evaluation of both the bit error probability and the bit error outage in downlink with perfect and imperfect channel state information and the derivation of the TORC threshold that optimizes the performance. The optimal threshold is analytically derived as a function of the number of subcarriers, the number of active users, and the mean signal-to-noise ratio. This enables an adaptive variation of the threshold following slow processes fluctuations. Numerical results show very good performance of TORC with optimal threshold comparing with others combining techniques with perfect and imperfect channel estimation. Results are shown both in uncorrelated Rayleigh fading as well as in time and frequency correlated fading channels.
Predicting Off-task Behaviors for Adaptive Vocabulary Learning System

In many studies, engagement has been considered as an important aspect of effective learning. Retaining student engagement is thus an important goal in intelligent tutoring systems (ITS). My current studies with collaborators on Dynamic Support of Contextual Vocabulary Acquisition for Reading (DSCoVAR) include building prediction models for students’ off-task behaviors. By extracting linguistically meaningful features and historical context information from interaction log data, these studies illustrate how some types of off-task behavior can be modeled from behavioral logs. The results of this research contribute to existing studies by providing examples of how to extract behavioral measures and predict off-task behaviors within a vocabulary learning system. Identifying off-task behaviors can improve students’ learning by providing personalized learning materials: for example, off-task behavior classifiers can be used to achieve more accurate predictions of the student’s vocabulary mastery level, which in turn can improve the system’s adaptive performance. Toward our goal of developing highly effective personalized vocabulary learning systems, this research would benefit from expert feedback on issues that include: principled approaches for adaptive assessment and feedback in a vocabulary learning system; and alternative methods for defining and generating off-task labels.
Non-Radial Pulsations and Large-Scale Structure in Stellar Winds

Almost all early-type stars show Discrete Absorption Components (DACs) in their ultraviolet spectral lines. These can be attributed to Co-rotating Interaction Regions (CIRs): large-scale spiral-shaped structures that sweep through the stellar wind. We used the Zeus hydrodynamical code to model the CIRs. In the model, the CIRs are caused by "spots" on the stellar surface. Through the radiative acceleration these spots create fast streams in the stellar wind material. Where the fast and slow streams collide, a CIR is formed. By varying the parameters of the spots, we quantitatively fit the observed DACs in HD 64760. An important result from our work is that the spots do not rotate with the same velocity as the stellar surface. The fact that the cause of the CIRs is not fixed on the surface eliminates many potential explanations. The only remaining explanation is that the CIRs are due to the interference pattern of a number of non-radial pulsations.
Chlamydial Type III Secretion System Is Encoded on Ten Operons Preceded by Sigma 70-Like Promoter Elements

ABSTRACT Many gram-negative bacterial pathogens employ type III secretion systems for infectious processes. Chlamydiae are obligate intracellular bacteria that encode a conserved type III secretion system that is likely requisite for growth. Typically, genes encoding type III secretion systems are located in a single locus; however, for chlamydiae these genes are scattered throughout the genome. Little is known regarding the gene regulatory mechanisms for this essential virulence determinant. To facilitate identification of cis-acting transcriptional regulatory elements, the operon structure was determined. This analysis revealed 10 operons that contained 37 genes associated with the type III secretion system. Linkage within these operons suggests a role in type III secretion for each of these genes, including 13 genes encoding proteins with unknown function. The transcriptional start site for each operon was determined. In conjunction with promoter activity assays, this analysis revealed that the type III secretion system operons encode σ70-like promoter elements. Transcriptional initiation by a sigma factor responsible for constitutive gene expression indicates that undefined activators or repressors regulate developmental stage-specific expression of chlamydial type III secretion system genes.
Book Review Symposium: Ann Oakley, Father and Daughter: Patriarchy, Gender and Social Science by Sasha Roseneil

I must confess: I struggled with this book. It took me two false starts before I was able to immerse myself in it and read to the end. The second time I put the book aside, after again getting little further than the end of the first chapter, I rued the day I had agreed to review it. I had willingly accepted the invitation, intrigued by the rich feminist promise of an autobiographical exploration of the intertwined lives of two ground-breaking social scientists, daughter and father Ann Oakley and Richard Titmuss, and an inquiry into ‘patriarchy, gender and social science’ through this lens. It was not for the literary pleasure of the read that I finally returned to the text and fought my way through my initial resistance; the book does not have a compelling narrative arc, and its aesthetic qualities did not seduce me. Rather I continued with what felt like a chore out of a sense of duty, a commitment to the collective, to the discipline and the institution of this journal, underpinned, perhaps, by a sense of myself as someone who tries to keep her word and meet her obligations, who is a good citizen, a responsible member of the academic community. It was my formation within the kind of communitarian value system invoked in the work of Richard Titmuss as foundational to the postSecond World War welfare state – ‘sentiments of altruism, reciprocity and social duty’ (Titmuss, 1970: 225) – that impelled me back to the book, when I would rather have given in to the sybaritism of a sunny August afternoon lazing in the garden. The moral bonds that hold together academic networks meant that it was about the maintenance of reputation among my sociological peers, as much as ‘giving something back’ to a not-for-profit British Sociological Association journal and its editors, to whom I felt grateful for publishing my work recently. Ultimately, however, I was glad that I had acquiesced to these disciplinary imperatives, for I learnt a great deal from this book about the history of the social sciences and the welfare state in Britain. Oakley offers an incisive account of the centrality of gender politics to the contestations of the 1950s and 1960s that saw social administration, social work and sociology emerge from a much more fluid interdisciplinary social science field as separate, hierarchically positioned disciplines. In this she places centre-stage her father and his homosocial band of ‘Titmice’ at the London School of Economics, as the forces driving the project of 621681 SOC0010.1177/0038038515621681SociologyBook Review Symposium research-article2015
Great, Madama Butterfly Again! How Robust Market Identity Shapes Opera Repertoires

We develop a theoretical framework to explain how two aspects of market structures—divergent and convergent audience preference and within- and between-category competition—shape market identities. We focus specifically on robust market identities, an underresearched type of identity defined as balanced membership in divergent social categories. We argue that these identities are most prevalent in markets with more divergent audiences and less within-category competition. We test our arguments in the U.S. opera market. Statistical analyses of 96 opera companies’ opera repertoires from 1995 to 2005 support our arguments: U.S. opera companies enact robust market identities by systematically balancing conventional and unconventional operas depending on the divergence of their audiences and the competitive pressure from other opera companies.
Randomized, Placebo Controlled Study of the Effect of Propentofylline on Survival Time and Quality of Life of Cats with Feline Infectious Peritonitis

Background Currently there is no drug proven to effectively treat cats with feline infectious peritonitis (FIP). Hypothesis Propentofylline (PPF) can decrease vasculitis, and therefore prolong survival time in cats with FIP, and increase their quality of life. Animals Twenty‐three privately owned cats with FIP. Methods Placebo‐controlled double‐blind trial. FIP was confirmed by histology or immunostaining of feline coronavirus (FCoV) antigen in effusion or tissue macrophages or both. The cats were randomly selected for treatment with either PPF or placebo. All cats received additional treatment with glucocorticoids, antibiotics, and low molecular weight heparin according to methods. Results There was no statistically significant difference in the survival time of cats treated with PPF (8 days, 95% CI 5.4–10.6) versus placebo (7.5 days, 95% CI 4.4–9.6). The median survival time of all cats was 8 days (4–36 days). There was neither a difference in quality of life (day 7, P = .892), in the amount of effusion (day 7, P = .710), the tumor necrosis factor‐alpha (TNF‐α) concentration (day 7, P = .355), nor in any other variable investigated in this study, including a complete blood count, and a small animal biochemistry profile. Conclusions and Clinical Importance This study did not detect an effect of PPF on the survival time, the quality of life, or any clinical or laboratory parameter in cats with FIP. Therefore, PPF does not appear to be an effective treatment option in cats with a late stage of the disease FIP.
When being wise after the event results in injustice: Evidence for hindsight bias in judges’ negligence assessments.

Research on hindsight bias has demonstrated that people perceive and evaluate events differently once they know about their outcome. One facet of hindsight bias is that people often perceive past events as more foreseeable than they do without outcome knowledge. This finding is of great importance in the legal context. Specifically, negligence judgments are based on the decision-makers’ evaluation of how foreseeable the harm that occurred was. Crucially, legal decision-making always takes place after some harm has already occurred (i.e., in hindsight). Whereas numerous studies already document a hindsight bias in laypeoples’ negligence judgments, the evidence for professional judges is sparse and inconsistent. We conducted an experiment with judges and found negligence judgments in a criminal law case to be also biased by hindsight. Judges with outcome knowledge perceived the occurred harm as significantly more foreseeable, which in turn led to a more frequent affirmation of negligence. We discuss these findings with a focus on implications and potential countermeasures.
TÜBİTAK Turkish-English submissions for IWSLT 2013

This paper describes the T ÜBİTAK Turkish-English submissions in both directions for the IWSLT’13 Evaluation Campaign TED Machine Translation (MT) track. We develop both phrase-based and hierarchical phrase-based statisti cal machine translation (SMT) systems based on Turkish wordand morpheme-level representations. We augment training data with content words extracted from itself and experiment with reverse word order for source languages. For the Turkish-to-English direction, we use Gigaword corpus as an additional language model with the training data. For the English-to-Turkish direction, we implemented a wide coverage Turkish word generator to generate words from the stem and morpheme sequences. Finally, we perform system combination of the different systems produced with differe nt word alignments.
Herausforderungen des Innovationsmanagements in Netzwerken am Beispiel des Tourismus von der Theorie zur Praxis

Innovationsmanagement im Tourismus findet meist in einem uberbetrieblichen Kontext statt. Der zusatzlich starke Einbezug des Kunden als Ko-Produzent des touristischen Erlebnisses und die Einbettung dieser Erlebnisse in einem standortspezifischen Umfeld mit einem Netzwerk von Akteuren, Organisationen und Institutionen mit eigenen naturlichen und kulturellen Ressourcen fordert eine branchenspezifische Diskussion. Der vorliegende konzeptionelle Beitrag stellt in einem ersten Hauptteil aufgrund der Besonderheiten im Tourismus die Herausforderungen an die Akteure und Organisationen dar, wenn Innovationen in Netzwerken realisiert werden. Es folgt ein genereller theoretischer Rahmen als Losungsansatz. Der zweite Hauptteil prasentiert mithilfe von praktisch erprobten Instrumenten und Methoden einen Weg fur die Praxis des uberbetrieblichen Innovationsmanagement im Tourismus. Empfehlungen fur den Transfer in weiteren Sektoren und Industrien schliessen den Beitrag.
The relationship between hand anthropometrics, total grip strength and individual finger force for various handle shapes

The design and shape of hand tool handles are critical factors for preventing musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) caused by the use of hand tools. We explored how these factors are related to total force and individual finger force in males and females with various hand anthropometrics. Using the MFFM system, we assessed four indices of anthropometry, and measured total force and individual finger force on various handle designs and shapes. Both total force and individual finger force were significant according to gender and handle shape. Total grip strength to the handle shape indicated the greatest strength with D shape and the least with A shape. From the regression analysis of hand anthropometric indices, the value of R was respectably high at 0.608–0.696. The current study examined the gender and handle shape factors affecting grip strength based on the force measurements from various handle types, in terms of influence on different hand anthropometric indices.
Host genetic determinants of vaccine-induced eosinophilia during respiratory syncytial virus infection.

In BALB/c mice, sensitization with the attachment protein (G) of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) leads to CD4+ T cell-mediated lung eosinophilia during subsequent challenge with RSV. To determine the host genetic influences on this model of lung eosinophilia, we tested 15 different inbred mouse strains. Eosinophilia developed in all H-2d (BALB/c, DBA/2n, and B10.D2), but not in H-2k (CBA/Ca, CBA/J, C3H, BALB.K, or B10.BR) mouse strains. Among H-2b mice, 129 and BALB.B developed eosinophilia, whereas C57BL/6 and C57BL/10 did not. Testing first generation crosses between sensitive and resistant strains showed that eosinophilia developed in all H-2dxk (n = 5), irrespective of background genes, but not in H-2dxb (n = 2) mice. In vivo depletion of CD8+ T cells or IFN-gamma rendered C57BL/6, but not BALB.K mice, susceptible to eosinophilia. Analysis of B10 recombinant mice showed that the Dd allele (in B10.A(5R) mice) prevented CD8+ T cell accumulation in the lung, resulting in intense lung eosinophilia. However, the Db allele (in B10.A(2R) and B10.A(4R) mice) supported CD8+ T cell expansion and prevented eosinophilia. Intracellular cytokine staining showed that lung eosinophilia correlated with reduced IFN-gamma and increased IL-10 expression in lung T cells. These results are compatible with the unifying model that Th2 cells mediate the disease but can be inhibited by CD8+ T cells secreting IFN-gamma. Our findings have important implications for the development of protective, nonpathogenic vaccines for RSV disease.