Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Risk Factors for Postoperative Surgical Site Infection in Patients Undergoing Spinal Tumor Surgery

Study Design: A retrospective comparative case-control study. Objective: The aim of this study was to determine the risk factors for postoperative surgical site infection (SSI) in patients with spinal tumors requiring reoperation during the perioperative period. Summary of Background Data: SSI is a common postoperative complication of spinal surgery. The occurrence of SSI not only increases the mortality rate but prolongs the patient’s hospital stay and increases the medical cost. Methods: Included in this study were 202 patients with spinal tumors who received surgical treatment between January 2008 and December 2018, of whom 101 patients who developed SSI and underwent secondary surgery were used as the SSI group, and the other 101 patients with no SSI who were matched with the SSI group by age (±10), pathologic diagnosis (malignant/no-malignant), tumor site (C/T/L/S), surgical approach (anterior/posterior/combined), and surgical team were used as the control group. The clinical data of the 202 patients in both groups were analyzed by logistic regression modeling to identify SSI-associated risk factors. Results: Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that the revision status (B=1.430, P=0.028), the number of spinal levels fused ≥4 (B=0.963, P=0.006), and the use of bone cement (B=0.739, P=0.046) were significantly associated with the increased risk of developing postoperative SSI. Conclusions: This study identified the revision status, the number of spinal levels fused ≥4, and the use of bone cement as independent risk factors for SSI in patients with spinal tumors who underwent reoperation during the perioperative period.
The Gain Estimation of a Fabry-Perot Cavity (FPC) Antenna with a Finite Dimension

In this paper, we have presented an equation for estimating the gain of a Fabry-Perot cavity (FPC) antenna with a finite dimension. When an FPC antenna has an infinite dimension and its height is half of a wavelength, the maximum gain of that FPC antenna can be obtained theoretically. If the FPC ant.
Synthetic biology in multicellular organisms: Opportunities in nematodes

Synthetic biology has mainly focused on introducing new or altered functionality in single cell systems: primarily bacteria, yeast, or mammalian cells. Here, we describe the extension of synthetic biology to nematodes, in particular the well‐studied model organism Caenorhabditis elegans, as a convenient platform for developing applications in a multicellular setting. We review transgenesis techniques for nematodes, as well as the application of synthetic biology principles to construct nematode gene switches and genetic devices to control motility. Finally, we discuss potential applications of engineered nematodes.
Proterozoic Acquisition of Archaeal Genes for Extracellular Electron Transfer: A Metabolic Adaptation of Aerobic Ammonia-Oxidizing Bacteria to Oxygen Limitation

Abstract Many aerobic microbes can utilize alternative electron acceptors under oxygen-limited conditions. In some cases, this is mediated by extracellular electron transfer (or EET), wherein electrons are transferred to extracellular oxidants such as iron oxide and manganese oxide minerals. Here, we show that an ammonia-oxidizer previously known to be strictly aerobic, Nitrosomonas communis, may have been able to utilize a poised electrode to maintain metabolic activity in anoxic conditions. The presence and activity of multiheme cytochromes in N. communis further suggest a capacity for EET. Molecular clock analysis shows that the ancestors of β-proteobacterial ammonia oxidizers appeared after Earth's atmospheric oxygenation when the oxygen levels were >10−4pO2 (present atmospheric level [PAL]), consistent with aerobic origins. Equally important, phylogenetic reconciliations of gene and species trees show that the multiheme c-type EET proteins in Nitrosomonas and Nitrosospira lineages were likely acquired by gene transfer from γ-proteobacteria when the oxygen levels were between 0.1 and 1 pO2 (PAL). These results suggest that β-proteobacterial EET evolved during the Proterozoic when oxygen limitation was widespread, but oxidized minerals were abundant.
Rethinking Benefit and Responsibility in the Context of Diversity: Perspectives from the Front Lines of Precision Medicine Research

Introduction: Federal agencies have instituted guidelines to prioritize the enrollment and retention of diverse participants in precision medicine research (PMR). Prior studies examining participation of minoritized communities have shown that potential benefits represent a key determinant. Human subject research guidance, however, conceptualizes potential benefits narrowly, emphasizing generalized advances in medical knowledge. Further, few studies have provided qualitative data that critically examine how the concept of “benefit” is interpreted or challenged in the context of research practice. This paper examines the experiences of PMR investigators and frontline research staff to understand how standard approaches to benefit are received, contested, and negotiated “on the ground. ” Methods: Findings are drawn from a qualitative project conducted across five US-based, federally funded PMR studies. Data collection included 125 in-depth interviews with a purposive sample of investigators, research staff, community advisory board members, and NIH program officers associated with these PMR studies. Results: Researchers report that the standard approach to benefit – which relies on the premise of altruism and the promise of incrementally advancing scientific knowledge – is frequently contested. Researchers experience moral distress over the unmet clinical, psychosocial, and material needs within the communities they are engaging. Many believe the broader research enterprise has a responsibility to better address these needs. Conclusion: Researchers frequently take issue with and sometimes negotiate what is owed to participants and to their communities in exchange for the data they provide. These experiences of moral distress and these improvisations warrant systematic redress, not by individual researchers but by the broader research ethics infrastructure.
Temporal community detection based on symmetric nonnegative matrix factorization

To understand time-evolving networks, researchers should not only concentrate on the community structures, an essential property of complex networks, in each snapshot, but also study the internal evolution of the entire networks. Temporal communities provide insights into such mechanism, i.e., how the communities emerge, expand, shrink, merge, split and decay over time. Based on the symmetric nonnegative matrix factorization (SNMF), we present a dynamic model to detect temporal communities, which not only could find a well community structure in a given snapshot but also demands the results bear some similarity to the partition obtained from the previous snapshot. Moreover, our method can handle the situation that of the number of community changes in the networks. Also, a gradient descent algorithm is proposed to optimize the objective function of the model. Experimental results on both the synthetic and real-world networks indicate that our method outperforms the state-of-art methods for temporal community detection.
Predictive Performance for Hospital Mortality of SAPS 3, SOFA, ISS, and New ISS in Critically Ill Trauma Patients: A Validation Cohort Study

Background: It is not known whether anatomical scores perform better than general critical care scores for trauma patients admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU). We compare the predictive performance for hospital mortality of general critical care scores (SAPS 3 and SOFA) with anatomical injury-based scores (Injury Severity Score [ISS] and New ISS [NISS]). Methods: Retrospective cohort study of patients admitted to a specialized trauma ICU from a tertiary hospital in São Paulo, Brazil between May, 2012 and January, 2016. We retrieved data from the ICU database for critical care scores and calculated ISS and NISS from chart data and whole body computed tomography results. We compared the predictive performance for hospital mortality of each model through discrimination, calibration, and decision-curve analysis. Results: The sample comprised 1053 victims of trauma admitted to the ICU, with 84.2% male patients and mean age of 40 (±18) years. Main injury mechanism was blunt trauma (90.7%). Traumatic brain injury was present in 67.8% of patients; 43.3% with severe TBI. At the time of ICU admission, 846 patients (80.3%) were on mechanical ventilation and 644 (64.3%) on vasoactive drugs. Hospital mortality was 23.8% (251). Median SAPS 3 was 41; median maximum SOFA within 24 h of admission, 7; ISS, 29; and NISS, 41. AUROCs (95% CI) were: SAPS 3 = 0.786 (0.756-0.817), SOFA = 0.807 (0.778-0.837), ISS = 0.616 (0.577-0.656), and NISS = 0.689 (0.649-0.729). In pairwise comparisons, SAPS 3 and SOFA did not differ, while both outperformed the anatomical scores (p < .001). Maximum SOFA within 24 h of admission presented the best calibration and net benefit in decision-curve analysis. Conclusions: Trauma-specific anatomical scores have fair performance in critically ill trauma patients and are outperformed by SAPS 3 and SOFA. Illness severity is best characterized by organ dysfunction and physiological variables than anatomical injuries.
Design of a high-performance metal–insulator–metal plasmonic demultiplexer

Abstract. We propose a four-channel plasmonic demultiplexer based on gold–air–gold structure. To do so, an add-drop filter is first proposed consisting of an H-shaped resonant cavity, which is designed to drop a distinct wavelength to other waveguides. Since the selected wavelength depends on the structural parameters of the resonant cavity, two- and four-channel demultiplexers are presented by adding H-shape cavities with different sizes. The results of numerical simulations show that for the total structure, spacing about 50 nm and an average transmission more than 95% for channels are obtained. The proposed device exhibits high-transmission efficiency along with the low channel spacing. The average calculated cross talk is calculated about −18.6 dB.
Skill assessment of different ensemble generation schemes for retrospective predictions of surface freshwater fluxes on inter and multi-annual timescales

The long term variability and its predictability of the monthly mean oceanic surface net freshwater fluxes is compared in a set of retrospective predictions. All are using the same model setup, and only differ in the implemented ocean initialisation method and ensemble generation method. The basic aim is to deduce the differences between the initialization/ensemble generation methods in view of the uncertainty of the verifying observational data sets. The analysis will give an approximation of the uncertainties of the net freshwater fluxes, which up to now appear to be one of the most uncertain products in observational data and model outputs. All ensemble generation methods are implemented into the MPI-ESM earth system model in the framework of the ongoing MiKlip project (www.fona-miklip.de). Hindcast experiments are initialised annually between 2000–2004, and from each start year 8 ensemble members are run for 10 years forward. Four different ensemble generation methods are compared: (i) a method based on the Anomaly Transform method in which the initial oceanic perturbations represent orthogonal and balanced anomaly structures in space and time and between the variables taken from a control run, (ii) one-day-lagged ocean states from the MPI-ESM-LR Baseline 1 system, (iii) one-day-lagged ocean and atmospheric states with preceding full-field nudging to re-analysis in the atmospheric and anomaly nudging in the oceanic component of the system – the Baseline MPI-ESM-LR system, (iv) an Ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF) implemented into oceanic part of MPI-ESM, assimilating monthly subsurface oceanic temperature and salinity using the Parallel Data Assimilation Framework and full-field nudging in the atmosphere. The hindcasts are evaluated probabilistically using freshwater flux data set from NCEP-R2. On the global scale the physically motivated methods (i) and (iv) provide probabilistic hindcasts to some extent higher correlation and reliability than the lagged initialization methods (ii)/(iii) despite the large uncertainties in the verifying observations and in the simulations. We suggest similar approaches for further evaluations of other variables of decadal hindcasts systems.
Developing a Machine Learning Risk-adjustment Method for Hospitalizations and Emergency Department Visits of Nursing Home Residents With Dementia

Background: Long-stay nursing home (NH) residents with Alzheimer disease and related dementias (ADRD) are at high risk of hospital transfers. Machine learning might improve risk-adjustment methods for NHs. Objectives: The objective of this study was to develop and compare NH risk-adjusted rates of hospitalizations and emergency department (ED) visits among long-stay residents with ADRD using Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) and logistic regression. Research Design: Secondary analysis of national Medicare claims and NH assessment data in 2012 Q3. Data were equally split into the training and test sets. Both XGBoost and logistic regression predicted any hospitalization and ED visit using 58 predictors. NH-level risk-adjusted rates from XGBoost and logistic regression were constructed and compared. Multivariate regressions examined NH and market factors associated with rates of hospitalization and ED visits. Subjects: Long-stay Medicare residents with ADRD (N=413,557) from 14,057 NHs. Results: A total of 8.1% and 8.9% residents experienced any hospitalization and ED visit in a quarter, respectively. XGBoost slightly outperformed logistic regression in area under the curve (0.88 vs. 0.86 for hospitalization; 0.85 vs. 0.83 for ED visit). NH-level risk-adjusted rates from XGBoost were slightly lower than logistic regression (hospitalization=8.3% and 8.4%; ED=8.9% and 9.0%, respectively), but were highly correlated. Facility and market factors associated with the XGBoost and logistic regression-adjusted hospitalization and ED rates were similar. NHs serving more residents with ADRD and having a higher registered nurse-to-total nursing staff ratio had lower rates. Conclusions: XGBoost and logistic regression provide comparable estimates of risk-adjusted hospitalization and ED rates.
Likelihood-Based Tests of Species Tree Hypotheses

Abstract Likelihood-based tests of phylogenetic trees are a foundation of modern systematics. Over the past decade, an enormous wealth and diversity of model-based approaches have been developed for phylogenetic inference of both gene trees and species trees. However, while many techniques exist for conducting formal likelihood-based tests of gene trees, such frameworks are comparatively underdeveloped and underutilized for testing species tree hypotheses. To date, widely used tests of tree topology are designed to assess the fit of classical models of molecular sequence data and individual gene trees and thus are not readily applicable to the problem of species tree inference. To address this issue, we derive several analogous likelihood-based approaches for testing topologies using modern species tree models and heuristic algorithms that use gene tree topologies as input for maximum likelihood estimation under the multispecies coalescent. For the purpose of comparing support for species trees, these tests leverage the statistical procedures of their original gene tree-based counterparts that have an extended history for testing phylogenetic hypotheses at a single locus. We discuss and demonstrate a number of applications, limitations, and important considerations of these tests using simulated and empirical phylogenomic data sets that include both bifurcating topologies and reticulate network models of species relationships. Finally, we introduce the open-source R package SpeciesTopoTestR (SpeciesTopology Tests in R) that includes a suite of functions for conducting formal likelihood-based tests of species topologies given a set of input gene tree topologies.
On Log-Inverse Weibull Distribution and Its Properties

SYNOPTIC ABSTRACT In this article, we consider a wide class of life time distributions; namely, the log-inverse Weibull distribution and investigate some of its important theoretical properties. We obtain a location-scale extension of the distribution and discuss the estimation of its parameters by method of maximum likelihood. We have fitted the proposed models to certain real life data sets for illustrating their usefullness, and have conducted a brief simulation study for examining the performance of the maximum likelihood estimators of the parameters of the distribution.
Influence of Running Shoe Longitudinal Bending Stiffness on Running Economy and Performance in Trained and National Level Runners

ABSTRACT Introduction/purpose Previous results about shoe longitudinal bending stiffness (LBS) and running economy (RE) show high variability. This study aimed to assess the effects of shoes with increased LBS on RE and performance in trained and national runners. Methods Twenty-eight male runners were divided into two groups according to their 10-km performance times (trained, 38–45 min and national runners, <34 min). Subjects ran 2 × 3 min (at 9 and 13 km·h−1 for trained, and 13 and 17 km·h−1 for national runners) with an experimental shoe with carbon fiber plate to increase the LBS (Increased LBS) and a control shoe (without carbon fiber plate). We measured energy cost of running (W·kg−1) and spatiotemporal parameters in visit one and participants performed a 3000 m time trial (TT) in two successive visits. Results Increased LBS improved RE in the trained group at slow (11.41 ± 0.93 W·kg−1 vs 11.86 ± 0.93 W·kg−1) and fast velocity (15.89 ± 1.24 W·kg−1 vs 16.39 ± 1.24 W·kg−1) and only at the fast velocity in the national group (20.35 ± 1.45 W·kg−1 vs 20.78 ± 1.18 W·kg−1). The improvements in RE were accompanied by different changes in biomechanical variables between groups. There were a similar improvement in the 3000 m TT test in Increased LBS for trained (639 ± 59 vs 644 ± 61 s in control shoes) and national runners (569 ± 21 vs 574 ± 21 s in control shoes) with more constant pace in increased LBS compared with control shoes in both groups. Conclusions Increasing shoe LBS improved RE at slow and fast velocities in trained runners and only at fast velocity in national runners. However, the 3000 m TT test improved similarly in both levels of runners with increased LBS. The improvements in RE are accompanied by small modifications in running kinematics that could explain the difference between the different levels of runners.
Sustained release gel (polymer-free) of itraconazole-loaded microemulsion for oral candidiasis treatment: time-kill kinetics and cellular uptake

Abstract Itraconazole (ICZ) was prepared in a self-microemulsifying (SM) gel. This gel was intended for use in the oral mucosa, where low volume and flow of saliva result in limited solubility and absorption of drugs that are poorly water-soluble. The drug-loaded gel formulation (ICZ-SM) was selected as a clear solution in the ternary phase diagram to improve the solubility of ICZ. Seven ratios (S1–S7) were prepared by mixing polyoxyl 35 castor oils (P35), a medium chain with a blend of mono-, di-, and triglycerides (MCT), and water. Phase separation of large-sized emulsions by countering with artificial saliva were observed in dilution tests for the formulation contained MCT, P35, and water at the ratios of 70:20:10 (S1), 10:80:10 (S3), and 20:60:20 (S4). Formulations in the ratios of 15:50:35 (S5) and 19:43:38 (S6) produced strong ICZ-SM gels, as shown by rheology tests, whereas the formulations at the ratios of 30:60:10 (S2) and 10:43:47 (S7) exhibited no elasticity. A model of zero-order kinetic (S5) and first-order kinetic (S6) were found to best fit the release kinetics of ICZ from the gels. Time-killing assays revealed that S5 and S6 required less time compared with S2 and the ICZ solution. Furthermore, S5 exhibited the highest increase in cell uptake compared with S2, S6, and the ICZ solution. These findings suggest that the ICZ-SM gel was a free polymer capable of delivering an ICZ for the treatment of oral candidiasis, and that ICZ-SM gels applied locally exhibit enhanced absorption into cells.
Monte Carlo Simulations Corroborate PET-Measured Discrepancies in Activity Assessments of Commercial 90Y Vials

In a recent multicenter study, discrepancies between PET/CT-measured activity and vendor-calibrated activity for 90Y glass and resin microspheres were found. In the present work, the origin of these discrepancies was investigated by Monte Carlo (MC) simulations. Methods: Three vial configurations, containing 90Y-chloride, 90Y-labeled glass microspheres, and 90Y-labeled resin microspheres, were modeled with GAMOS, and the electric signal generated in an activity meter was simulated. Energy deposition was scored in the activity meter–active regions and converted into electric current per unit activity. Internal bremsstrahlung (IB) photons, always accompanying β-decay, were simulated in addition to 90Y decays. The electric current per source activity obtained for 90Y glass and resin microspheres, Iglass and Iresin, was compared in terms of relative percentage difference with that of 90Y-chloride (εglass and εresin) and each other (δ). The findings of this work were compared with the ones obtained through PET measurements in the multicenter study. Results: With the inclusion of IB photons as primary particles in MC simulations, the εglass and εresin results were 24.6% ± 3.9% and −15.0% ± 2.2%, respectively, whereas δ was 46.5% ± 1.9%, in very good agreement with the values reported in the multicenter study. Conclusion: The MC simulations performed in this study indicate that the discrepancies recently found between PET/CT-measured activity and vendor-calibrated activity for 90Y glass and resin microspheres can be attributed to differences in the geometry of the respective commercial vials and to the metrologic approach adopted for activity meter calibration with a 90Y-chloride liquid source. Furthermore, IB photons were shown to play a relevant role in determining the electric current in the activity meter.
Aiming Movement After Stroke: Do Time-Since-Injury and Impairment Severity Influence Ipsilateral Performance?

In this cross-sectional study, we evaluated post-stroke ipsilesional (less affected) upper limb aiming movement in individuals whose strokes were either 2–5 months (n = 16) or >6 months (n = 17) prior to our testing; we also compared both stroke groups to a control group of healthy individuals (n = 14). We evaluated the participants’ level of movement impairment in the contralateral upper limb from the site of the cerebrovascular lesion as an indicator of the severity of the participants’ impairment. Participants were asked to move a stylus on a tablet with their ipsilesional upper limb according to a visual stimulus seen on a monitor. Those who had experienced more recent strokes showed poorer movement planning and execution, regardless of their impairment level. Since the stroke occurred, the amount of time was significantly associated with the ipsilesional aiming movement, and improvement over time brought performance levels closer to that of healthy controls.