Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
One stitch abdominal closure herniotomy: An alternative to Laparoscopic hernia repair in infants.

Aim: To evaluate the feasibility of one-stitch herniotomy in the management of inguinal hernia in infants. Materials and methods: Between January 2011 and June 2014, 100 children in the age group 0–14 months with unilateral inguinal hernia were prospectively enrolled for hernia repair and herniotomy was performed by one-stitch technique. The primary outcomes were the time in the operating room and cosmesis. The secondary outcomes were postoperative pain and surgical complications. Results: Of the 100 children who were included in the study, 88 were males (male/female ratio 7.3:1). The mean operating time was 14.99 ± 2.69 min with a total mean time in the operating room was 38.23 ± 9.84 min. Postoperative analgesia was required in 16% infants with only 6% requiring two or more doses over 24 h period. There were no recurrent hernias with minimal postoperative complications on follow-up. Contralateral metachronous inguinal hernia was seen in 10% children on follow-up. Cosmesis was excellent with overall reduced total procedure costs. Conclusion: One-stitch herniotomy is an excellent alternative to both conventional and laparoscopic hernia repair in children requiring less expertise and logistics with overall reduced procedure costs. Outcome in terms of cosmesis is excellent with minimal risks and complications.
Fatty acid addition and thermotolerance of Kluyveromyces marxianus

&NA; Membrane fatty acid composition has an important role in yeast stress resistance, particularly in temperature tolerance. Most studies investigating temperature and membrane fatty acids use the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae without considering other yeasts, such as Kluyveromyces marxianus, which has physiological differences and industrial advantages with respect to S. cerevisiae. One of the primary traits of K. marxianus is its thermotolerance. The effect of fatty acid addition (oleic acid, linoleic acid, linolenic acid and araquidic acid) on the thermotolerance of the K. marxianus strain SLP1 was evaluated. SLP1 yeast exhibited temperature tolerance of up to 50°C; at 55°C, viability was reduced significantly, probably due to an increase in the generation of reactive oxygen chemical species. Externally added fatty acids were incorporated in the yeast membrane, increasing their proportion to approximately 70%, thereby changing membrane fluidity. SLP1 cells supplemented with polyunsaturated fatty acids decreased cell thermotolerance and increased the degree of lipoperoxidation, while arachidic acid addition exhibited a tendency to increase yeast thermotolerance.
Specimen Preparation for Scanning Electron Microscope Using a Converted Sample Stage

This study introduces metal coating as an effective sample preparation method to remove charge-up caused by the shadow effect during ﬁ eld emission scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM) analysis of dynamic structured samples. During a FE-SEM analysis, charge-up occurs when the primary electrons (input electrons) that scan the specimens are not equal to the output electrons (secondary electrons, backscattered electrons, auger electrons, etc.) generated from the specimens. To remove charge-up, a metal layer of Pt, Au or Pd is applied on the surface of the sample. However, in some cases, charge-up still occurs due to the shadow effect. This study developed a coating method that effectively removes charge-up. By creating a converted sample stage capable of simultaneous tilt and rotation, the shadow effect was successfully removed, and image data without charge-up were obtained.
Active β-catenin is regulated by the PTEN/PI3 kinase pathway: a role for protein phosphatase PP2A

Dysregulation of Wnt/β-catenin signaling has been associated with the development and progression of many cancers. The stability and subcellular localization of β-catenin, a dual functional protein that plays a role in intracellular adhesion and in regulating gene expression, is tightly regulated. However, little is known about the transcriptionally active form of β-catenin, Active Beta Catenin (ABC), that is unphosphorylated at serine 37 (Ser37) and threonine 41 (Thr41). Elucidating the mechanism by which β-catenin is activated to generate ABC is vital to the development of therapeutic strategies to block β-catenin signaling for cancer treatment. Using melanoma, breast and prostate cancer cell lines, we show that while cellular β-catenin levels are regulated by the Wnt pathway, cellular ABC levels are mainly regulated by the PI3K pathway and are dependent on the phosphatase activity of the protein phosphatase PP2A. Furthermore, we demonstrate that although the PI3K/PTEN pathway does not regulate total β-catenin protein levels within the cell, it plays a role in regulating the subcellular localization of β-catenin. Our results support a novel functional interaction/cross-talk between the PTEN/PI3K and Wnt pathways in the regulation of the subcellular/nuclear levels of ABC, which is crucially important for the protein's activity as a transcription factor and its biological effects in health and disease.
Structural Covariance Network of Cortical Gyrification in Benign Childhood Epilepsy with Centrotemporal Spikes

Benign childhood epilepsy with centrotemporal spikes (BECTS) is associated with cognitive and language problems. According to recent studies, disruptions in brain structure and function in children with BECTS are beyond a Rolandic focus, suggesting atypical cortical development. However, previous studies utilizing surface-based metrics (e.g., cortical gyrification) and their structural covariance networks at high resolution in children with BECTS are limited. Twenty-six children with BECTS (15 males/11 females; 10.35 ± 2.91 years) and 26 demographically matched controls (15 males/11 females; 11.35 ± 2.51 years) were included in this study and subjected to high-resolution structural brain MRI scans. The gyrification index was calculated, and structural brain networks were reconstructed based on the covariance of the cortical folding. In the BECTS group, significantly increased gyrification was observed in the bilateral Sylvain fissures and the left pars triangularis, temporal, rostral middle frontal, lateral orbitofrontal, and supramarginal areas (cluster-corrected p < 0.05). Global brain network measures were not significantly different between the groups; however, the nodal alterations were most pronounced in the insular, frontal, temporal, and occipital lobes (FDR corrected, p < 0.05). In children with BECTS, brain hubs increased in number and tended to shift to sensorimotor and temporal areas. Furthermore, we observed significantly positive relationships between the gyrification index and age (vertex p < 0.001, cluster-level correction) as well as duration of epilepsy (vertex p < 0.001, cluster-level correction). Our results suggest that BECTS may be a condition that features abnormal over-folding of the Sylvian fissures and uncoordinated development of structural wiring, disrupted nodal profiles of centrality, and shifted hub distribution, which potentially represents a neuroanatomical hallmark of BECTS in the developing brain.
Incentivizing Wi-Fi Network Crowdsourcing: A Contract Theoretic Approach

Crowdsourced wireless community network enables the individual users to share their private Wi-Fi access points (APs) with each other, hence it can achieve a large Wi-Fi coverage with a small deployment cost via crowdsourcing. This paper presents a novel contract-based incentive framework to incentivize such a Wi-Fi network crowdsourcing under incomplete information (where each user has certain private information such as mobility pattern and Wi-Fi access quality). In the proposed framework, the network operator designs and offers a set of contract items to users, each consisting of a Wi-Fi access price (that a user can charge others for accessing his AP) and a subscription fee (that a user needs to pay the operator for joining the community). Different from the existing contracts in the literature, in our contract model, each user’s best choice depends not only on his private information but also on other user’s choices. This greatly complicates the contract design, as the operator needs to analyze the equilibrium choices of all users, rather than the best choice of each single user. We first derive the feasible contract that guarantees the user’s truthful information disclosure based on the equilibrium analysis of the user choice, and then derive the optimal (and feasible) contract that yields a maximal profit for the operator. Our analysis shows that a user who provides a higher Wi-Fi access quality is more likely to choose a higher Wi-Fi access price and subscription fee, regardless of the user mobility pattern. Simulation results further show that when increasing the average Wi-Fi access quality of users, the operator can gain more profit, but (counter-intuitively) offer lower Wi-Fi access prices and subscription fees for users.
Association Between Treatment by Locum Tenens Internal Medicine Physicians and 30-Day Mortality Among Hospitalized Medicare Beneficiaries

Importance Use of locum tenens physicians has increased in the United States, but information about their quality and costs of care is lacking. Objective To evaluate quality and costs of care among hospitalized Medicare beneficiaries treated by locum tenens vs non–locum tenens physicians. Design, Setting, and Participants A random sample of Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries hospitalized during 2009-2014 was used to compare quality and costs of hospital care delivered by locum tenens and non–locum tenens internal medicine physicians. Exposures Treatment by locum tenens general internal medicine physicians. Main Outcomes and Measures The primary outcome was 30-day mortality. Secondary outcomes included inpatient Medicare Part B spending, length of stay, and 30-day readmissions. Differences between locum tenens and non–locum tenens physicians were estimated using multivariable logistic regression models adjusted for beneficiary clinical and demographic characteristics and hospital fixed effects, which enabled comparisons of clinical outcomes between physicians practicing within the same hospital. In prespecified subgroup analyses, outcomes were reevaluated among hospitals with different levels of intensity of locum tenens physician use. Results Of 1 818 873 Medicare admissions treated by general internists, 38 475 (2.1%) received care from a locum tenens physician; 9.3% (4123/44 520) of general internists were temporarily covered by a locum tenens physician at some point. Differences in patient characteristics, demographics, comorbidities, and reason for admission between locum tenens and non–locum tenens physicians were not clinically relevant. Treatment by locum tenens physicians, compared with treatment by non–locum tenens physicians (n = 44 520 physicians), was not associated with a significant difference in 30-day mortality (8.83% vs 8.70%; adjusted difference, 0.14%; 95% CI, −0.18% to 0.45%). Patients treated by locum tenens physicians had significantly higher Part B spending ($1836 vs $1712; adjusted difference, $124; 95% CI, $93 to $154), significantly longer mean length of stay (5.64 days vs 5.21 days; adjusted difference, 0.43 days; 95% CI, 0.34 to 0.52), and significantly lower 30-day readmissions (22.80% vs 23.83%; adjusted difference, −1.00%; 95% CI −1.57% to −0.54%). Conclusions and Relevance Among hospitalized Medicare beneficiaries treated by a general internist, there were no significant differences in overall 30-day mortality rates among patients treated by locum tenens compared with non–locum tenens physicians. Additional research may help determine hospital-level factors associated with the quality and costs of care related to locum tenens physicians.
Solving Inverse Computational Imaging Problems Using Deep Pixel-Level Prior

Signal reconstruction is a challenging aspect of computational imaging as it often involves solving ill-posed inverse problems. Recently, deep feed-forward neural networks have led to state-of-the-art results in solving various inverse imaging problems. However, being task specific, these networks have to be learned for each inverse problem. On the other hand, a more flexible approach would be to learn a deep generative model once and then use it as a signal prior for solving various inverse problems. In this paper, we show that among the various state-of-the-art deep generative models, autoregressive models are especially suitable for our purpose for the following reasons. First, they explicitly model the pixel level dependencies and hence are capable of reconstructing low-level details, such as texture patterns and edges better. Second, they provide an explicit expression for the image prior, which can then be used for MAP-based inference along with the forward model. Third, they can model long range dependencies in images which make them ideal for handling global multiplexing as encountered in various compressive imaging systems. We demonstrate the efficacy of our proposed approach in solving three computational imaging problems: Single Pixel Camera, LiSens, and FlatCam. For both real and simulated cases, we obtain better reconstructions than the state-of-the-art methods in terms of perceptual and quantitative metrics.
Human-in-the-Loop Synthesis for Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes

We study planning problems where autonomous agents operate inside environments that are subject to uncertainties and not fully observable. Partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) are a natural formal model to capture such problems. Because of the potentially huge or even infinite belief space in POMDPs, synthesis with safety guarantees is, in general, computationally intractable. We propose an approach that aims to circumvent this difficulty: in scenarios that can be partially or fully simulated in a virtual environment, we actively integrate a human user to control an agent. While the user repeatedly tries to safely guide the agent in the simulation, we collect data from the human input. Via behavior cloning, we translate the data into a strategy for the POMDP. The strategy resolves all nondeterminism and non-observability of the POMDP, resulting in a discrete-time Markov chain (MC). The efficient verification of this MC gives quantitative insights into the quality of the inferred human strategy by proving or disproving given system specifications. For the case that the quality of the strategy is not sufficient, we propose a refinement method using counterexamples presented to the human. Experiments show that by including humans into the POMDP verification loop we improve the state of the art by orders of magnitude in terms of scalability.
Ray optics of generalised lenses ( glenses )

We study the ray optics of glenses, ideal thin lenses generalised to have different objectand image-sided focal lengths, and the most general light-ray-direction-changing surfaces that stigmatically image any point in object space to a corresponding point in image space. Gabor superlenses [Gabor, UK Patent 541,753 (1940); Hembd-Sölner et al., J. Opt. A: Pure Appl. Opt. 1, 94 (1999)] can be seen as pixellated realisations of glenses. Our analysis is centred on the nodal point. Whereas the nodal point of a thin lens always lies in the lens plane, that of a glens can lie anywhere on the optical axis. Utilising the nodal point, we derive simple equations that describe the mapping between object and image space and the light-raydirection change. We demonstrate our findings with the help of ray-tracing simulations. Glenses allow novel optical instruments to be realised, at least theoretically, and our results facilitate the construction and analysis of such devices. © 2016 Optical Society of America
Inclusion Characterization in High Strength Low Alloy Steel for Pipeline Application

In this work several methods including sulphur printing,modified spark spectrum analysis and SPEED-SEM-EDX methods were used to study the morphology,composition and distribution of inclusions in pipeline steel.The procedure for the last-mentioned method includes:metal sample preparation using Selective Potentiostatic Etching by Electrolytic Dissolution (SPEED) together with inclusion observation and detection using SEM-EDX equipment.The results of sulphur printing and spark spectrum analysis showed that there was a well-defined centerline containing relatively high concentrations of sulphur in the steel slab studied in this work.The results of SEM study showed that most inclusions found in the steel samples were globular in morphology,and roughly 2-5 micrometers in size.The inclusions were rich in sulphur and manganese.Some inclusions with a bright globular shape contained Al,Ca,Mn and S,and were likely composed of MnS,CaS and calcium aluminate.It was concluded that sulphur printing is a convenient and inexpensive method for inclusion analysis,Spark Spectrum Analysis provides a complete and self-contained technique for inclusion detection,and the SPEED-SEM-EDX procedure is best suited for in-situ and three-dimensional observation of inclusions.
Why do people move? Enhancing human mobility prediction using local functions based on public records and SNS data

The quality of life for people in urban regions can be improved by predicting urban human mobility and adjusting urban planning accordingly. In this study, we compared several possible variables to verify whether a gravity model (a human mobility prediction model borrowed from Newtonian mechanics) worked as well in inner-city regions as it did in intra-city regions. We reviewed the resident population, the number of employees, and the number of SNS posts as variables for generating mass values for an urban traffic gravity model. We also compared the straight-line distance, travel distance, and the impact of time as possible distance values. We defined the functions of urban regions on the basis of public records and SNS data to reflect the diverse social factors in urban regions. In this process, we conducted a dimension reduction method for the public record data and used a machine learning-based clustering algorithm for the SNS data. In doing so, we found that functional distance could be defined as the Euclidean distance between social function vectors in urban regions. Finally, we examined whether the functional distance was a variable that had a significant impact on urban human mobility.
Efficient Virtual Memory Sharing via On-Accelerator Page Table Walking in Heterogeneous Embedded SoCs

Shared virtual memory is key in heterogeneous systems on chip (SoCs) that combine a general-purpose host processor with a many-core accelerator, both for programmability and performance. In contrast to the full-blown, hardware-only solutions predominant in modern high-end systems, lightweight hardware-software co-designs are better suited in the context of more power- and area-constrained embedded systems and provide additional benefits in terms of flexibility and predictability. As a downside, the latter solutions require the host to handle in software synchronization in case of page misses as well as miss handling. This may incur considerable run-time overheads. In this work, we present a novel hardware-software virtual memory management approach for many-core accelerators in heterogeneous embedded SoCs. It exploits an accelerator-side helper thread concept that enables the accelerator to manage its virtual memory hardware autonomously while operating cache-coherently on the page tables of the user-space processes of the host. This greatly reduces overhead with respect to host-side solutions while retaining flexibility. We have validated the design with a set of parameterizable benchmarks and real-world applications covering various application domains. For purely memory-bound kernels, the accelerator performance improves by a factor of 3.8 compared with host-based management and lies within 50% of a lower-bound ideal memory management unit.
The Outcome of Endoscopic Optic Nerve Decompression for Bilateral Traumatic Optic Neuropathy

Objective: To investigate the outcomes of endoscopic optic nerve decompression (EOND) for bilateral traumatic optic neuropathy (TON). Methods: A retrospective analysis was conducted in 5 patients with bilateral TON, between January 2003 and December 2013. All the patients underwent preoperative ophthalmological evaluation, flash visual-evoked potentials, computed tomography scan, and systemic corticosteroid therapy. All the patients required an EOND surgery, due to poor response to medical therapy, and the remainder one was only treated with corticosteroid due to operative contraindication. Results: Of the 5 patients (10 eyes) undergoing EOND, visual acuity improved in 30% of eyes (n = 3) with a mean follow-up of 3 months. The remainder 7 eyes still had no light perception. All of the 5 patients undergoing EOND had no operative complications. Conclusion: Treatment for bilateral TON should not be limited on the length of time to injury and visual-evoked potentials results. If surgical conditions permit and with no contraindications, patients should receive active surgical treatment as soon as possible.
Warm Experts in the age of Mandatory e-Government: Interaction Among Danish Single Parents Regarding Online Application for Public Benefits

Citizens’ adoption of e-government channels has been the focus of both academic studies and public policy for over a decade. Current efforts seek to reduce citizens’ interaction with caseworkers through traditional channels in favor of increased use of e-government self-service channels. To increase adoption rates and reduce the costs of public administration, the Danish e-government strategy has made e-government self-service channels mandatory thereby attempting to turn citizens into their own caseworkers. The channel choice branch of e-government studies how citizens and businesses choose interaction channels in a public service encounter. Until now, studies of citizens’ channel choice have taken place at the level of the individual and ignored the influence of group processes. Moreover, although the importance of digital literacy has been widely recognized in relation to citizen channel choice and e-government adoption, citizens’ knowledge of public administration and administrative processes has received less attention. To cover this gap, we conducted a qualitative study of how citizen-to-citizen interaction influences channel choice in public service encounters, and how citizens share advice for seeking public benefits. The study entailed five focus group discussions and nine followup individual semi-structured interviews with Danish single parents who receive public benefits. We employ domestication theory and the concept of ‘the warm expert’ to inform our analysis. Our findings show that the interaction and advice sharing among citizens extends beyond the choice of channels and also covers how the selected channels are used and evaluated. In addition to helping each other with how to use e-government self-service channels, citizens also share practices for negotiating with public authorities. This negotiation requires the use of traditional channels and concerns areas such as increasing the likelihood of being granted benefits and ways of getting around the mandatory requirement for e-government self-service channels. Based on our findings we present contributions to the channel choice field and offer suggestions for how to expand and update a previous channel choice process model.