Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Compression Screw Fixation of the Syndesmosis

Background: Screw fixation of syndesmotic injuries facilitates ligament healing and restoration of ankle stability, but little information regarding screw performance is available. This study quantified the reduction obtained with three common 2-screw configurations using different methods of reduction and novel methods of subsequently provoking and measuring diastasis. Methods: Seven fresh-frozen lower extremities were subjected to 100 N medial and lateral tibia loads with the talus restrained. Tibia displacement, indicative of ankle clear space, was recorded. The syndesmosis and distal interosseous ligament were disrupted and measurements repeated. A pressure sensor was inserted into the syndesmosis and three 2-screw fixation methods were evaluated in each specimen: 3.5-mm screws engaging both fibula cortices and the lateral tibial cortex, inserted while using a clamp to achieve syndesmosis reduction; 3.5-mm lag screws engaging both tibia cortices; and 4.5-mm lag screws engaging both tibia cortices. One thousand 100 N medial and lateral loads were applied and clear space and syndesmosis compression were quantified every 100 cycles. Results: Normal ankle clear space averaged 1.98 mm and increased to 3.02 mm after syndesmosis disruption. Fixation decreased the clear space to 1.36 mm, 1.22 mm, and 1.19 mm for the 3.5-mm tricortical, 3.5-mm lag, and 4.5-mm lag screws, respectively, remaining steady throughout cyclic loading. Syndesmosis compression dropped markedly from 61N to 23 N on clamp release after tricortical screw insertion. The 3.5-mm and 4.5-mm lag screws exerted 112 N and 131 N, respectively, after insertion, and maintained compression several-fold greater than the tricortical screws during cyclic loading. No difference was demonstrable between the two lag screw sizes. Conclusion: While all screw configurations successfully reduced ankle clear space, syndesmosis reduction was more effectively maintained by lag screws than by tricortical screws inserted with clamp reduction. The transient nature of compression achieved by the reduction clamp suggests that use of lag screws for this application may more reliably maintain syndesmosis reduction in vivo. Clinical Relevance: Optimizing reduction of syndesmosis injuries is critical for favorable outcomes. This study offers concrete information on screw performance in this application.
What are quality of life measurements measuring?

Abstract It is now widely acknowledged that the personal burden of illness cannot be described fully by measures of disease status such as size of infarction, tumour load, and forced expiratory volume. Psychosocial factors such as pain, apprehension, restricted mobility and other functional impairments, difficulty fulfilling personal and family responsibilities, financial burden, and diminished cognition must also be encompassed. The area of research that has resulted from this recognition is termed “health related quality of life. ” It moves beyond direct manifestations of illness to study the patient's personal morbidity—that is, the various effects that illnesses and treatments have on daily life and life satisfaction. Although quality of life assessment was almost unknown 15 years ago, it has rapidly become an integral variable of outcome in clinical research; over 1000 new articles each year are indexed under “quality of life. ” Although the importance of quality of life is broadly acknowledged, scepticism and confusion remain about how quality of life should be measured and its usefulness in medical research. These responses may reflect important conceptual and methodological limitations of the current concept of quality of life. We offer a simple framework that describes the core elements of quality of life related to health and use this to evaluate quality of life measurement as it is currently conducted. Summary points Measures of disease status alone are insufficient to describe the burden of illness; quality of life factors such as pain, apprehension, depressed mood, and functional impairment must also be considered Two operational definitions of quality of life are identified—objective functioning and subjective wellbeing Assessments of objective functioning and subjective wellbeing convey different information, they also present different problems in relation to validation Assessment of functioning derived from questionnaires must be validated against measures of directly observed behavioural performance Subjective appraisal of wellbeing may be influenced substantially by psychological factors unrelated to health or to changes over time in patients' criteria for appraising wellbeing Whether and how quality of life researchers respond to these obstacles and deficiencies will probably determine the quality of their work in the future
Growing bioengineered teeth from single cells: potential for dental regenerative medicine

Background: The ultimate goal of regenerative therapy is to develop fully functioning bioengineered organs that can replace organs lost or damaged due to disease, injury or aging. Dental regenerative medicine has made the most progress and is the most useful model for the consideration of strategies in future organ replacement therapies. Objective: This review describes strategies that have been pursued to date and experiments currently being conducted to bioengineer teeth in anticipation of the production of fully functional organs. Methods: To realize the practical application of ‘bioengineered tooth’ transplantation therapy, four major hurdles must be overcome. The present status of the hurdles to this therapy are described and discussed in this review. Results/conclusion: The bioengineering techniques developed for tooth regeneration will in the future make substantial contributions to the ability to grow primordial organs in vitro and also to grow fully functioning organs, such as the liver, kidney and heart.
Can online user behavior improve the performance of sales prediction in E-commerce?

How to forecast product sales effectively and efficiency in E-commerce is a significant task for E-commerce producers to manage product inventory and design marketing strategies. However, under the uncertainty of product demand, sales prediction is a complex task. This paper presents a novel data mining framework for sales prediction based on online user behavior data. Under the framework, the relationship of sales data and online user behavior data is well modelled, and the optimal lag of online user behavior data for sales prediction is also identified. In terms of evaluation criteria, a number of books are used for sales prediction. The empirical results show the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed framework and also revealed that among different categories of books, the forecasting performance of some categories including Finance and Exam heavily relies on online user behavior information. So, it indicates that the proposed framework can be used as a potential alternative to analyze the sales trend, and help managers in E-commerce companies for inventory optimization and customer relationship management.
Efficacy and safety of doxepin 3 and 6 mg in a 35-day sleep laboratory trial in adults with chronic primary insomnia.

STUDY OBJECTIVES To evaluate the efficacy and safety of doxepin (DXP) 3 mg and 6 mg in adults diagnosed with primary insomnia. DESIGN AND METHODS The study was a randomized, double-blind, parallel-group, placebo-controlled trial. Patients meeting DSM-IV-TR criteria for primary insomnia were randomized to 35 days of nightly treatment with DXP 3 mg (n=75), DXP 6 mg (n=73), or placebo (PBO; n=73), followed by 2 nights of single-blind PBO to evaluate discontinuation (DC) effects. Efficacy was assessed using polysomnography (PSG) and patient reports. Efficacy data were examined for Night (N) 1, N15, and N29. Safety assessments were conducted throughout the study. RESULTS Compared with PBO, DXP 3 and 6 mg significantly improved wake time after sleep onset (WASO) on N1 (3 mg and 6 mg; P<0.0001), N15 (3 mg P=0.0025; 6 mg P=0.0009), and N29 (3 mg P=0.0248; 6 mg P=0.0009), latency to persistent sleep (LPS) on N1 (3 mg P=0.0047; 6 mg P=0.0007), and total sleep time (TST) on N1 (3 mg and 6 mg P<0.0001), N15 (6 mg P=0.0035), and N29 (3 mg P=0.0261; 6 mg P<0.0001). In terms of early morning awakenings, DXP 3 and 6 mg demonstrated significant improvements in SE in the final quarter of the night on N1, N15, and N29, with the exception of 3 mg on N29 (P=0.0691). Rates of discontinuation were low, and the safety profiles were comparable across the 3 treatment groups. There were no significant next-day residual effects, and there were no spontaneous reports of memory impairment, complex sleep behaviors, anticholinergic effects, weight gain, or increased appetite. Additionally, there was no evidence of rebound insomnia after DXP discontinuation. CONCLUSIONS Five weeks of nightly administration of DXP 3 mg and 6 mg to adults with chronic primary insomnia resulted in significant and sustained improvements in sleep maintenance and early morning awakenings (with the exception of SE in the final quarter of the night on N29 for 3 mg [P=0.0691]). These sleep improvements were not accompanied by next-day residual effects or followed by rebound insomnia or withdrawal effects upon discontinuation. These findings confirm the unique profile of sleep maintenance efficacy and safety of DXP observed in prior studies.
The case for earlier cochlear implantation in postlingually deaf adults

Abstract Objective: This paper aimed to estimate the difference in speech perception outcomes that may occur due to timing of cochlear implantation in relation to the progression of hearing loss. Design: Data from a large population-based sample of adults with acquired hearing loss using cochlear implants (CIs) was used to estimate the effects of duration of hearing loss, age, and pre-implant auditory skills on outcomes for a hypothetical standard patient. Study sample: A total of 310 adults with acquired severe/profound bilateral hearing loss who received a CI in Melbourne, Australia between 1994 and 2006 provided the speech perception data and demographic information to derive regression equations for estimating CI outcomes. Results: For a hypothetical CI candidate with progressive sensorineural hearing loss, the estimates of speech perception scores following cochlear implantation are significantly better if implantation occurs relatively soon after onset of severe hearing loss and before the loss of all functional auditory skills. Conclusions: Improved CI outcomes and quality of life benefit may be achieved for adults with progressive severe hearing loss if they are implanted earlier in the progression of the pathology.
An Object-Oriented Database System Jasmine: Implementation, Application, and Extension

We have devised an object oriented DBMS called Jasmine for advanced applications. The paper describes the implementation, application and extension of Jasmine in detail. We focus on the impact of the design of its object oriented model and language on database implementation technology. We describe what part of traditional relational database technology we extend to handle object oriented features such as object identifiers, complex objects, class hierarchies, and methods. We introduce nested relations to efficiently store and access clustered complex objects. We use hash based methods to efficiently access nonclustered complex objects. We provide user defined functions directly evaluated on page buffers to efficiently process method invocation. We devise object oriented optimization of queries including class hierarchies, complex objects, and method invocation. We incorporate dedicated object buffering to allow efficient access to objects through object identifiers. We also describe nontrivial applications of Jasmine and discuss the validity of object oriented databases. We focus on a constraint management facility, which can be implemented by taking advantage of the extensibility of Jasmine. The facility includes constraint rules, called design goals, for automatic database population required by engineering applications. Finally, we describe a view facility for schema integration also needed by engineering applications in distributed environments. We focus on how we extend Jasmine to implement the facility.
The Evolution of Anatomic Pathology

Science advances both by conceptual leaps and by improved observational and analytic tools. Mechanism and function in biological systems can best be understood in the context of the complex microenvironments in which they occur, and for this purpose morphologic analysis can be critical. Technological advances in cell and tissue imaging are currently finding application in a wide variety of basic, translational, and clinical biomedical studies. “Biophotonics in Pathology” was designed as a multi-authored work to describe the various kinds of imaging strategies that have been developed as computational power keeps increasing. Some of these overlap with radiologic techniques and others do not. The field is continuously evolving, and in this commentary I will touch on additional techniques for morphology-based interrogation of cells and tissues that have recently been described. However, it is important to note that though we are expanding our armamentarium as pathologists, our radiological colleagues have been doing this for many years. Clearly, they have embraced new imaging techniques to a greater extent than have pathologists. This commentary discusses some of the factors responsible for this, and suggests that pathology and radiology are converging towards a more holistic approach to diagnostic imaging.
A new approach to learning in neuromorphic hardware

This thesis presents a novel, highly flexible approach to plasticity and learning in brain-inspired computing systems. A classical digital processor was combined with local analog processing to achieve flexibility and efficiency. In particular, this allows for the implementation of modulated spike-timing dependent plasticity. The approach was formalized into an abstract hybrid hardware model. This model was used to simulate a reward-based learning task to estimate the effect of hardware constraints. To investigate the feasibility of the proposed architecture, a synthesizeable plasticity processor was designed and tested using the CoreMark general purpose benchmark (best score: 1.89 per MHz). The processor was also produced as part of a 65 nm proto- type chip, requiring 0.14 mm2 of die-area, and reaching a maximum clock frequency of 769 MHz. In a preparatory step a non-programmable plasticity implementation was developed, that is now part of the operational BrainScaleS wafer-scale system. This design was later extended with the plasticity processor to implement the proposed hybrid architecture. Simulations show a speed improvement of 42 % over the non- programmable variant. By preparation for production, the area requirement for the digital part is estimated to be 6.2 % of total area.
Bidirectional breadth-first algorithms for the decoding of convolutional codes

Bidirectional multiple-path tree searching algorithms for the decoding of convolutional codes are presented. These suboptimal coding algorithms use a multiple-path breadth-first bidirectional tree exploration procedure and long-memory convolution codes. It is shown that, compared to the usual M-algorithm, the bidirectional exploration considerably reduces the bit error propagation due to correct path loss. Computer simulations using rate-1/2 codes over binary symmetric channels are used to analyze the effect of the number of path extensions, code memory, and frame length on the bit error probability. The results show that with a bit error probability of 10/sup -5/, coding gains on the order of 2 dB over the M-algorithm and 1 dB over a Viterbi decoder of equivalent complexity can be achieved. >
Phase 1 Study of Pandemic H1 DNA Vaccine in Healthy Adults

Background A novel, swine-origin influenza A (H1N1) virus was detected worldwide in April 2009, and the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global pandemic that June. DNA vaccine priming improves responses to inactivated influenza vaccines. We describe the rapid production and clinical evaluation of a DNA vaccine encoding the hemagglutinin protein of the 2009 pandemic A/California/04/2009(H1N1) influenza virus, accomplished nearly two months faster than production of A/California/07/2009(H1N1) licensed monovalent inactivated vaccine (MIV). Methods 20 subjects received three H1 DNA vaccinations (4 mg intramuscularly with Biojector) at 4-week intervals. Eighteen subjects received an optional boost when the licensed H1N1 MIV became available. The interval between the third H1 DNA injection and MIV boost was 3–17 weeks. Vaccine safety was assessed by clinical observation, laboratory parameters, and 7-day solicited reactogenicity. Antibody responses were assessed by ELISA, HAI and neutralization assays, and T cell responses by ELISpot and flow cytometry. Results Vaccinations were safe and well-tolerated. As evaluated by HAI, 6/20 developed positive responses at 4 weeks after third DNA injection and 13/18 at 4 weeks after MIV boost. Similar results were detected in neutralization assays. T cell responses were detected after DNA and MIV. The antibody responses were significantly amplified by the MIV boost, however, the boost did not increased T cell responses induced by DNA vaccine. Conclusions H1 DNA vaccine was produced quickly, was well-tolerated, and had modest immunogenicity as a single agent. Other HA DNA prime-MIV boost regimens utilizing one DNA prime vaccination and longer boost intervals have shown significant immunogenicity. Rapid and large-scale production of HA DNA vaccines has the potential to contribute to an efficient response against future influenza pandemics. Trial Registration Clinicaltrials.gov NCT00973895
Keynote 1

Abstract Title of HEPA 2022 Keynote presentation Leveraging Citizen Science as part of an Ecosystem Approach to Health-Enhancing Physical Activity. Description of HEPA 2022 Keynote presentation During the past 50 years, the positive effects of health-enhancing physical activity have continued to expand exponentially; yet many populations worldwide remain insufficiently active and, thus, unable to fully realize the benefits that regular physical activity offers. While a substantial number of evidence-based physical activity interventions have been successfully tested, few have specifically targeted the local environmental contexts that have a key impact on daily physical activity levels across the life course. A major focus of this presentation is to describe a technology-enabled participatory research model, called the Our Voice global citizen science research initiative, which actively engages community residents worldwide in assessing, analyzing, and building practical solutions to local environmental barriers to health-enhancing physical activity. Current results of Our Voice projects, which span six continents and have included residents ages 9 to >95, indicate that community residents themselves, irrespective of circumstances, age, or culture, may in fact be the planet’s most valuable “renewable resource” for helping to change local environments for active and healthy living.
Modification of optical properties of spin-coated TiO2 film by heat treatments

In this report, effects of heat treatment conditions on the transmittance of titanium dioxide, TiO2, films were examined. The colloidal solution of TiO2 in two different solvents – isopropanol, IPA, and sulfuric acid, H2SO4, were deposited via a spin-coating method onto clean glass substrates. The films were subsequently annealed and cooled down, either quickly or slowly, before being measured for their optical transmittances in the visible region. Three points were noted: Firstly, when the films were quickly cooled down after annealed, their transmittance depended on their annealing temperature. In IPA and H2SO4, the transmittance decreased and increased, respectively, when the annealing temperature increased. Secondly, when the films were slowly cooled down after annealed, their transmittance seemed to be independent from the annealing temperature, where the films had roughly equal transmittance regardless of annealing temperature. Lastly, the TiO2 films with H2SO4 provided higher transmittance than those with IPA. All the three stated characteristics were the same for all wavelengths in the visible region. These results were believed to result from the dispersibility of the TiO2 in each solvent and the cooling-down processes. Such results could be further developed to select a suitable heat treatment process for a spin-coated TiO2 film with a desired optical transmittance.
The First 7 Days of a Quit Attempt Predicts Relapse: Validation of a Measure for Screening Medications for Nicotine Dependence

Objectives:There is a critical need for the development of novel treatments for nicotine dependence. Because the majority of smokers who make a quit attempt fail within 7 days, medication screening procedures that focus on this early cessation period may provide an indicator of treatment efficacy. To establish the clinical validity of this paradigm, it is critical to demonstrate the association of early abstinence with longer-term abstinence. We tested the number of days of abstinence during the first week after the target quit date (TQD) as a predictor of point prevalence abstinence in 3 independent pharmacotherapy trials for nicotine dependence. Methods:This was a secondary data analysis of 3 randomized clinical trials: a placebo-controlled trial of transdermal nicotine (N = 545); an open-label nicotine replacement therapy (patch vs spray) trial (N = 566); and a bupropion placebo-controlled trial (N = 538). In separate logistic regression models, the maximum number of consecutive days of abstinence during the first week after the TQD was used to predict biochemically verified 7-day point prevalence abstinence at the end of treatment (EOT) and 6 months post-TQD. Results:Across the 3 trials, the number of days of abstinence significantly predicted abstinence at EOT and 6 months (odds ratios > 1.4; Ps < 0.0001). Likewise, not having any lapse during the first week predicted abstinence at EOT and 6 months (odds ratios > 4.7; Ps < 0.0001). Conclusions:The first week of abstinence was highly predictive of EOT and long-term abstinence. Medication screening procedures that focus on this early abstinence period (ie, 6 or 7 days of consecutive abstinence) represent a valid tool for assessing the presence of a signal for medication efficacy.
Traffic Signal Coordination for Effective Flow of Traffic: A Review

A coordination of vehicles flows is usually reached by a cyclic operation of traffic lights and by synchronizing these cycles. During the past decades metro cities grows rapidly with industrialization, urbanization. This leads to the development of cities and a nation as well. Traffic jams, congestion becomes a major problem these days due to increase in number of vehicles. To cater these problems many approaches has been put forward to reduce the delays, congestion, stops and reduce the fuel consumption also. Particularly there is large fluctuations in number of vehicles arriving at green times which are too short or too long. In these paper attempt has been made to study various intersections so as to minimize the delays, stops and reduce fuel consumption to make a safe and healthy environment to some extend.