Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Alterations of the Characteristics of the Circadian Rest‐Activity Rhythm of Cancer In‐Patients

The aim of the present study was to evaluate the characteristics of the circadian rest‐activity rhythm of cancer patients. Thirty‐one in‐patients, consisting of 19 males and 12 females, were randomly selected from the Regional Cancer Center, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College, Raipur, India. The rest‐activity rhythm was studied non‐invasively by wrist actigraphy, and compared with 35 age‐matched apparently healthy subjects (22 males and 13 females). All subjects wore an Actiwatch (AW64, Mini Mitter Co. Inc., USA) for at least 4–7 consecutive days. Fifteen‐second epoch length was selected for gathering actigraphy data. In addition, several sleep parameters, such as time in bed, assumed sleep, actual sleep time, actual wake time, sleep efficiency, sleep latency, sleep bouts, wake bouts, and fragmentation index, were also recorded. Data were analyzed using several statistical techniques, such as cosinor rhythmometry, spectral analysis, ANOVA, Duncan's multiple‐range test, and t‐test. Dichotomy index (I<O) and autocorrelation coefficient (r24) were also computed. The results validated a statistically significant circadian rhythm in rest‐activity with a prominent period of 24 h for most cancer patients and control subjects. Results of this study further revealed that cancer patients do experience a drastic alteration in the circadian rest‐activity rhythm parameters. Both the dichotomy index and r24 declined in the group of cancer patients. The occurrence of the peak (acrophase, Ø) of the rest‐activity rhythm was earlier (p<0.001) in cancer patients than age‐ and gender‐matched control subjects. Results of sleep parameters revealed that cancer patients spent longer time in bed, had longer assumed and actual sleep durations, and a greater number of sleep and wake bouts compared to control subjects. Further, nap frequency, total nap duration, average nap, and total nap duration per 1 h awake span were statistically significantly higher in cancer patients than control subjects. In conclusion, the results of the present study document the disruption of the circadian rhythm in rest‐activity of cancer in‐patients, with a dampening of amplitude, lowering of mean level of activity, and phase advancement. These alterations of the circadian rhythm characteristics could be attributed to disease, irrespective of variability due to gender, sites of cancer, and timings of therapies. These results might help in designing patient‐specific chronotherapeutic protocols.
World Society Theory and the Development of Irish Higher Education (1960-2010)

This thesis examines the major changes which have occurred in Irish higher education over the last five decades using World Society theory as an analytical framework. In doing so, it provides an alternative perspective to the realist economic or critical discourses which currently dominate the literature on changes in this sector. The premise is that the transformation that has taken place in that sector - its rapid expansion and diversification, its increased centrality in a knowledge based economy and the deep changes in governance arrangements at state and organisational level - are better understood in the context of similar advances that have taken in place in higher education throughout the world over the same time period. World society theory posits that these global changes, and the diffusion of particular policies and organisational forms, is a consequence of emerging global structures and an increasingly rationalised world culture that impacts on all nation-states and social domains such as higher education. International organisations are a key element of these global structures and play a pivotal role in the creation of models that delineate actors, purpose and structure within particular social domains (Boli & Thomas, 1997). The thesis assesses the degree to which Irish higher education has been shaped by that broader world culture and examines the interactions between actors in Irish higher education and two agencies involved in forming global models of higher education, namely the European Union and the OECD. The study extends over a period of five decades which allows for an analysis of the co-evolution of models promoted by these agencies and the structural changes taking place in Irish higher education. The impact of change is examined at the multiple levels of state, system and individual institute so as to assess the broad cultural effects suggested by World Society theory. The study finds a strong and increasing convergence between such global models and Irish higher education policies, and the belief systems informing them. It also identifies some persistent differences around structure and organisational practices. From a theoretical perspective, these findings appear to support World Society theory’s assumption of organisations being shaped by global social and cultural forces. The findings also contribute to the discussion concerning societal context and organisational heterogeneity (Hasse & Krucken, 2008) and the need to span the boundaries, that exist within sociological institutionalism, between the macro-perspective of World Society theory and the meso-perspective of inter-organisational or field theory.
Posterior Cervical Lateral Mass Screw Fixation: Analysis of 1026 Consecutive Screws in 143 Patients

Objective: This study evaluates the results and complications of 1026 consecutive lateral mass screws inserted in 143 patients by a single surgeon. Methods: Over a 50-month period, a total of 1026 lateral mass screws were placed in 143 patients ages 12-96 years (56 females and 87 males), with these records retrospectively reviewed. Screw position was evaluated by computed tomography (CT) scanning postoperatively, with screw positions assessed for facet, foraminal, or foramen transversarium violation. Results: All screws were placed by a modification of the Anderson technique, but 20 screws were converted to Roy-Camille trajectories because of screw pullout. No patients experienced neural injury or vertebral artery injury as a result of screw placement. Three patients had screw pullouts using the Axis system, which did not require reoperation. Most patients had 14-mm screws placed. Postoperative CT scanning showed no compromise of the foramen transversarium or neural foramen. A total of 94 C7 lateral mass screws were placed without the need for pedicle screws at this level. Forty-four cases were performed with a screw/plate construct with the remainder performed using a polyaxial screw/rod construct. One patient had a symptomatic adjacent-level disc herniation that required surgical intervention. One patient required extension of laminectomy for residual compression. Conclusions: Lateral mass screw fixation is a safe and effective stabilization technique. This study demonstrates the safety and efficacy of lateral mass cannulation for a range of cervical pathologies with the largest reported series of consecutive lateral mass screws in the literature. In most cases of subaxial disease, nonconstrained plate/screw systems provide a reasonable alternative to polyaxial screw/rod constructs. Most patients can be fixated with 14-mm length × 3.5-mm diameter screws. The C7 lateral mass can be drilled with an adjusted trajectory.
In Vivo Laser Tissue Welding in the Rabbit Maxillary Sinus

Background One of the challenges in the current expansion of endoscopic sinonasal surgery is the ability to adequately reconstruct the skull base. Laser tissue welding (LTW) uses laser energy coupled to a biological solder to produce tissue bonds with burst thresholds exceeding human intracranial pressure. This technology could be used to reduce the rate of postoperative cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) leak. We performed this study to determine whether LTW can create durable tissue bonds in sinonasal mucosa that support normal wound healing and produce minimal collateral thermal injury. Methods Bilateral maxillary sinus mucosal incisions were made in 20 New Zealand white rabbits and one side was repaired using LTW. Burst pressure thresholds were measured on postoperative days 0, 5, and 15 and were compared with control using a two- way ANOVA and a post hoc Tukey test. Welds were examined histologically for thermal injury, inflammation, and fibroplasia and graded on a 4-point scale by three blinded observers. Results The burst pressures of the LTW group were significantly higher than control on postoperative day 0 (120.85 mm Hg, N = 4, SD = 47.84 versus 7.85 mm Hg, N = 4, SD = 0.78), and day 5 (132.56 mm Hg, N = 8, SD = 24.02 versus 41.7 mm Hg, N = 8, SD = 7.2; p < 0.05). By postoperative day 15 there was no significant difference between LTW (169.64 mm Hg, N = 8, SD = 18.49) and control (160.84 mm Hg, N = 8, SD = 14.16) burst thresholds. There was no evidence of thermal injury to the surrounding tissue in any group as well as no difference between experimental group and control with respect to inflammation or fibroplasia. Conclusion This is the first in vivo study showing that LTW is capable of producing tissue bonds exceeding human intracranial pressure with negligible thermal injury in sinonasal tissue. Welding can be performed endoscopically using a fiberoptic cable and may be useful in CSF leak and skull base repair.
Effect of carbohydrate ingestion on exercise-induced alterations in metabolic gene expression.

Skeletal muscle possesses a high degree of plasticity and can adapt to both the physical and metabolic challenges that it faces. An acute bout of exercise is sufficient to induce the expression of a variety of metabolic genes, such as GLUT4, pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase 4 (PDK-4), uncoupling protein-3 (UCP3), and peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-gamma coactivator 1 (PGC-1). Reducing muscle glycogen levels before exercise potentiates the effect of exercise on many genes. Similarly, altered substrate availability induces transcription of many of these genes. The purpose of this study was to determine whether glucose ingestion attenuates the exercise-induced increase in a variety of exercise-responsive genes. Six male subjects (28 +/- 7 yr; 83 +/- 3 kg; peak pulmonary oxygen uptake = 46 +/- 6 ml.kg(-1). min(-1)) performed 60 min of cycling at 74 +/- 2% of peak pulmonary oxygen uptake on two separate occasions. On one occasion, subjects ingested a 6% carbohydrate drink. On the other occasion, subjects ingested an equal volume of a sweet placebo. Muscle samples were obtained from vastus lateralis at rest, immediately after exercise, and 3 h after exercise. PDK-4, UCP3, PGC-1, and GLUT4 mRNA levels were measured on these samples using real-time RT-PCR. Glucose ingestion attenuated (P < 0.05) the exercise-induced increase in PDK-4 and UCP3 mRNA. A similar trend (P = 0.09) was observed for GLUT4 mRNA. In contrast, PGC-1 mRNA increased following exercise to the same extent in both conditions. These data suggest that glucose availability can modulate the effect of exercise on metabolic gene expression.
Effect of preoperative opioid administration on postoperative pain.

physiological although, as Dr Read points out, the model does not allow for tissues of different electrical conductivity such as bone and fat. In a clinical situation, a choice of either insulated or uninsulated needles may be made provided that the pattern of stimulation as the needle approaches the nerve is recognized by the user. Other factors may determine the choice of needle, such as tip design and cost.
A novel weights generating approach for multiple attribute decision making under interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy environment

The aim of this paper is to investigate the multiple attribute decision making problems with interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy information, in which the information about experts weights and attribute weights are completely unknown, and the attribute values take the form of interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy number. We developed a multiple attribute decision making method by computing the scores of all alternatives in interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy setting, by which the attribute weights and experts weights can be determined. A new score function is constructed to evaluate the alternatives. Finally, an example is presented to highlight the procedure of the proposed algorithm.
Automatización del acceso léxico: ¿es posible desde el lenguaje integrado? Is it possible from within Whole Language?

ResumenEn este articulo, se reflexiona sobre las criticas hechas por Emilio Sanchez al Lenguaje Integrado. Estas criticas sugieren la necesidad de abrir parentesis educativos donde se ensene al nino a automatizar los procesos de reconocimiento de palabras, aspecto que no tiene en cuenta este movimiento. Sin embargo, veremos como la ensenanza aislada de estas habilidades ignora, por una parte, que la lectura y la escritura suponen adquirir conocimientos que van mas alla del reconocimient o de palabras, y por otra, que dicho reconocimient o no se da solo por via fonologica, sino que precisa de otras vias de acceso lexico que funcionen en paralelo para que el reconocimiento sea efectivo en los procesos de comprension de textos. Veremos como las actividades que propone el L.I. son las ideales para desarrollar estas habilidades.
Briakinumab for Treatment of Crohn's Disease: Results of a Randomized Trial

Background:This study assessed the efficacy and safety of briakinumab, a human anti-IL-12/23p40 monoclonal antibody, compared with placebo for the induction and maintenance of remission in patients with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease. Methods:In this phase 2b, multicenter, double-blind, parallel group study, 246 patients stratified by prior tumor necrosis factor–antagonist use and response, were randomized (1:1:1:3) to 4 intravenous induction regimens: placebo, 200, 400, or 700 mg briakinumab, at weeks 0/4/8. At week 12, responders in the placebo or 400-mg induction groups entered the maintenance phase with the same regimen, whereas responders in the 700-mg induction group were rerandomized (1:1:1) to receive placebo, 200, or 700 mg briakinumab at weeks 12/16/20. At week 24, patients in remission stopped receiving study drug (withdrawal phase) until relapse. Patients experiencing relapse, nonresponders, and nonremitters could enter the open-label phase. Results:The primary end point of clinical remission at week 6 was not met. There were numerically greater rates of remission and response at 6, 12, or 24 weeks in patients treated with briakinumab. The safety and tolerability profile of briakinumab was similar in the induction and maintenance phases of the trial. Conclusions:Briakinumab showed a similar safety and tolerability profile to placebo in the induction and maintenance phases, and comparable rates of serious adverse events, adverse events leading to discontinuation, and malignancy. These data provide support for the potential efficacy of briakinumab and other IL-12/23 inhibitors in the treatment of moderate-to-severe Crohn's disease.
Autonomous Component Carrier Selection for 4G Femtocells — A Fresh Look at an Old Problem

This paper addresses the interference management problem in the context of LTE-Advanced femtocells. Due to the expected large number of user-deployed cells, centralized network planning becomes increasingly less viable. Consequently, we consider an architecture of autonomous decision makers. Our main contribution in this paper, denominated Generalized Autonomous Component Carrier Selection (G-ACCS), is a distributed carrier-based inter-cell interference coordination scheme that represents one step towards cognitive radio networks. The algorithm relies on expected rather than sensed interference levels. This approach facilitates scheduler-independent decisions, however, it can lead to overestimation of the interference coupling among cells when the resources are not fully utilized. Acknowledging this fact, G-ACCS leverages the power domain to circumvent the restrictive nature of expected interference coupling. This work focuses on the downlink and also provides an extensive characterization of the network performance as a function of the topology as well as the often overlooked temporal traits of traffic. We compare G-ACCS with other carrier-based solutions, including the simplest universal reuse strategy. The encouraging simulation results demonstrate that G-ACCS achieves an efficient and fair distribution of resources in all considered traffic and deployment conditions. More importantly, this is attained in a truly autonomous fashion, without any explicit parametrization.
Measuring the Global Phase Coherence of an image

The Fourier phase spectrum of an image is well known to contain crucial information about the image geometry, in particular its contours. In this paper, we show that it is also strongly related to the image quality, in particular its sharpness. We propose a way to define the Global Phase Coherence (GPC) of an image, by comparing the likelihood of the image to the likelihood of all possible images sharing the same Fourier power spectrum. The likelihood is measured with the total variation (Rudin-Osher-Fatemi implicit prior), and the numerical estimation is realized by a Monte-Carlo simulation. We show that the obtained GPC measure decreases with blur, noise, and ringing, and thus provides a new interesting sharpness indicator, that can be used for parametric blind deconvolution, as demonstrated by experiments.
Recognising the constraints that affect professional women’s choices:how do Australian women develop and grow in their professional lives?

This study explored the way women of different age groups experience development and growth in their professional lives and how they made sense of that development and growth. Narrative research methods were used to analyse the dialogue that the women in this study present as significant to their development and growth. Differences and similarities in the ways women of two groups told their stories are analysed based on narrative data and gender literature that provides a basis to understand how women have grown in their careers and work. The findings suggest that women of different life stages emphasise different choices and constraints that relate to the ways they are recognised in their work and each woman in this study was seen to offer a unique story about her experience of development and growth. Behind the dominant narrative of career progression there was a gender-specific counter narrative; that of coming to terms with a male-dominated work culture. This was particularly the case for the older group of women (the senior life stage). The findings indicate that women at different life stages define effectiveness and value differently, and that groups (who belong to a particular professional role and age range) share collective experiences concerning what it means to be effective in their work. The narrative approach used here has highlighted the significance of reflective practice and the important role workplace culture plays in constructing social discourses. Life stage appears to have an effect on the career progression of women and the culture in which stories are constructed affects development and growth of women in the Australian workplace.
Proxy-Guided Load Balancing of Graph Processing Workloads on Heterogeneous Clusters

Big data decision-making techniques take advantage of large-scale data to extract important insights from them. One of the most important classes of such techniques falls in the domain of graph applications, where data segments and their inherent relationships are represented as vertices and edges. Efficiently processing large-scale graphs involves many subtle tradeoffs and is still regarded as an open-ended problem. Furthermore, as modern data centers move towards increased heterogeneity, the traditional assumption of homogeneous environments in current graph processing frameworks is no longer valid. Prior work estimates the graph processing power of heterogeneous machines by simply reading hardware configurations, which leads to suboptimal load balancing. In this paper, we propose a profiling methodology leveraging synthetic graphs for capturing a node's computational capability and guiding graph partitioning in heterogeneous environments with minimal overheads. We show that by sampling the execution of applications on synthetic graphs following a power-law distribution, the computing capabilities of heterogeneous clusters can be captured accurately (<;10% error). Our proxy-guided graph processing system results in a maximum speedup of 1.84x and 1.45x over a default system and prior work, respectively. On average, it achieves 17.9% performance improvement and 14.6% energy reduction as compared to prior heterogeneity-aware work.
Thiazolidinediones Induce Osteocyte Apoptosis by a G Protein-coupled Receptor 40-dependent Mechanism*

Background: Thiazolidinediones (TZDs) mediate osteocyte apoptosis and sclerostin up-regulation by an unknown mechanism. Results: Osteocyte apoptosis is mediated through activation of Erk1/2 and p38, whereas sclerostin up-regulation is through peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-γ (PPARγ) signaling. Conclusion: TZDs signal not exclusively through PPARγ, as thought, but also via a surface receptor called GPR40. Significance: Learning how TZDs signal in bone cells is crucial to prevent adverse effects associated with the use of these drugs. Thiazolidinediones (TZDs) represent an interesting treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus. However, adverse effects such as heart problems and bone fractures have already been reported. Previously, we reported that pioglitazone and rosiglitazone induce osteocyte apoptosis and sclerostin up-regulation; however, the molecular mechanisms leading to such effects are unknown. In this study, we found that TZDs rapidly activated Erk1/2 and p38. These activations were mediated through Ras proteins and GPR40, a receptor expressed on the surface of osteocytes. Activation of this pathway led only to osteocyte apoptosis but not sclerostin up-regulation. On the other hand, TZDs were capable of activating peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-γ, and activation of this signaling pathway led to sclerostin up-regulation but not osteocyte apoptosis. This study demonstrates two distinct signaling pathways activated in osteocytes in response to TZDs that could participate in the observed increase in fractures in TZD-treated patients.
Activated carbon fibers modified with sulfur-containing functional groups

Activated carbon fibers (ACFs) made from polyacrylonitrile and viscose were treated with the sulfur vapor at the temperatures of 500–800 °C in an argon flow. Obtained materials were oxidized by 30% H<inf>2</inf>O<inf>2</inf> water solution in order to convert S-containing surface moieties into SO<inf>3</inf>H-groups. The samples were studied using Boehm titration, thermogravimetric analysis and temperature-programmed desorption with a mass spectrometric registration of gaseous desorption products. According to obtained data, the surface layer of synthesized samples contains grafted SO<inf>3</inf>H-groups and different functional groups formed at the carbon oxidation. The decomposition of SO<inf>3</inf>H-groups occurs in the temperature range of 75–590 °C. Two peak maxima at 200±30 °C and 300±30 °C were registered on all SO<inf>2</inf> desorption profiles. These maxima are assigned to two forms of surface SO<inf>3</inf>H groups having a different chemical environment. Testing of the catalytic activity shows that SO<inf>3</inf>H-functionalized carbon fibers are high active in the model reaction of propan-2-ol dehydration. The total conversion of propan-2-ol to propene is observed at 145–220 °C. The lowest temperature of total conversion was registered for the ACFs prepared from polyacrylonitrile being treated with the sulfur vapor at 500 °C. All SO<inf>3</inf>H-functionalized samples maintain their activity after repeated use.