Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Diabetic Foot

Diabetic foot infections are a frequent clinical problem. About 50% of diabetic foot infections who have foot amputations die within five years. Properly managed most can be cured, but many patients needlessly undergo amputations because of improper diagnostic and therapeutic approaches. This approach along with vascular assessment help clinical decisions about which patients to hospitalize, which to send for imaging procedures or for whom to recommend surgical interventions. This paper reviewed the natural history of the diabetic foot and assessed the surgical impact of the Infectious Diseases Society of America clinical practice guideline- based care of diabetic foot infections.
A geometrical approach to the trajectory planning of a snake-like mechanism

The hyper-redundancy concept and related mechanisms are of special interest in robotics research. Trajectory planning and obstacle avoidance seem to be the main research areas where the use of hyper-redundancy is considered. However, there are few prototypes of this kind of robots. The present work is the introductory part of a larger study aiming at the construction of a hyper-redundant, snake-like robot supposed to progress as a real snake, without limbs or wheels. It represents a first approach to a simulation of a snake-like mechanism in order to get basic characteristics of a such locomotion.
Evaluation of Multi-Hop Packet Prioritization for Decentralized Congestion Control in VANETs

Decentralized congestion control (DCC) in ITS-G5 based vehicular ad hoc networks ensures that the requirements of safety and traffic efficiency applications are met even under high vehicle density and channel load conditions. In European standardization, a "gatekeeper" on top of the ITS-G5 MAC sub-layer is being considered that controls a node's packet rate as a function of the channel load. This paper studies the performance of the gatekeeper with packet prioritization and an adaptive linear control algorithm. The simulation results indicate that the gatekeeper with priority queuing (PQ) can effectively handle different packet priorities for multi-hop packets. Our gatekeeper-specific enhancements of the forwarding algorithm yield performance improvements in terms of reliability and latency compared to the plain DCC approach. Finally, we discuss the issue of packet starvation caused by the gatekeeper's PQ scheme that affects the performance of lower-priority packets.
Left ventricular hypertrophy in aortic valve stenosis: preventive or promotive of systolic dysfunction and heart failure?

AIMS In aortic stenosis (AS), left ventricular (LV) hypertrophy is considered a compensatory response helping maintain systolic function. Recent research in experimental AS suggests, however, that LV hypertrophy is not necessary to sustain LV contractions but may in fact be maladaptive. The present work aimed to clarify the role of LV hypertrophy in AS-related heart failure (HF) in man. METHODS AND RESULTS We studied 137 adult patients with isolated AS undergoing pre-operative echocardiography and cardiac catheterization. HF was diagnosed by the European criteria and LV hypertrophy by sex-specific limits of echocardiographic LV mass. The higher the LV mass was, the poorer was the LV ejection fraction (beta=-0.26, P< 0.001, linear regression) and the greater the likelihood of HF independent of the severity of AS (P< 0.001, logistic regression). In the subgroup of critical AS (valve area <0.4 cm(2)/m(2), n=85), patients with absent LV hypertrophy (n=19) had better preserved ejection fraction (mean+/-SE, 64+/-3 vs. 57+/-2%, P=0.045) and less HF (16 vs. 48%, P=0.025) than patients with LV hypertrophy (n=66). CONCLUSION In isolated AS, increased LV mass predicts the presence of systolic dysfunction and HF independent of the severity of valvular obstruction. LV hypertrophy may be maladaptive rather than beneficial in AS in man.
In vitro induction of apoptosis of neoplastic cells in low-grade non-Hodgkin's lymphomas using combinations of established cytotoxic drugs with bendamustine.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Regulation of apoptotic cell death is being increasingly recognized as a mechanisms by which cytostatic agents mediate tumor cell death. Preliminary clinical studies with bendamustine, an alkylating agent with a purine nucleus, provide strong evidence that this drug is a highly effective cytostatic in low grade lymphomas. Therefore, we investigated the in vitro activity of bendamustine in combination with other established cytotoxic drugs. DESIGN AND METHODS 2 lines (DOHH-2, WSU-NHL) and mononuclear cells (MNC) from patients with leukemic low-grade B-non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) (n=10), T-NHL (n=7) and chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) (n=12). Apoptosis (7-AAD), depolarization of mitochondrial membrane potential (MMP, JC-1), caspase-3-activity (FIENA) and cell proliferation (XTT/WST-1) were determined. Several incubation times and drug dosages (for IC(30/50/75/90)) were studied. Synergistic, additive or antagonistic effects were calculated by a median plot effect and the combination index (CI) method. RESULTS In general, combinations of bendamustine with mitoxantrone or doxorubicin resulted in antagonistic effects in the tested cell lines and the MNC from the patients. CI-calculation failed in these cases since there was not a sufficient dose response. On the other hand, the combination of bendamustine with 2-CdA showed synergistic in vitro activity on the tested cell lines, neoplastic lymphocytes from patients with peripheral T-cell lymphomas and partially on MNC from patients with CLL and B-NHL. The antagonism of the combination of bendamustine and anthracyclines appeared to be due to inhibition of depolarization of mitochondrial-membrane potential and caspase-3-activity during apoptosis of the studied cell lines. INTERPRETATION AND CONCLUSIONS In conclusion, our results suggest that schedules using combinations of bendamustine and anthracyclines should not be recommended for the treatment of low-grade NHL, whereas bendamustine combined with 2-CdA could be considered for the development of future treatment strategies.
Phylogenetic Analysis of Dioecy in Monocotyledons

Surveys of plant breeding systems in angiosperm families have shown a significant association between monoecy and dioecy, and researchers have proposed that dioecy has tended to evolve from monoecy. We evaluated this hypothesis in the context of a phylogeny of 918 monocotyledons assembled from 19 published trees. Binary and multistate breeding system characters were mapped onto a set of composite trees, and alternative models of character change were compared using maximum likelihood. Over a range of tree topologies and optimizations, we found three to eight times as many changes from hermaphroditism to dioecy as we did from monoecy to dioecy. Also, the rate at which monoecy gave rise to dioecy was not significantly higher than the rate at which hermaphroditism gave rise to dioecy. Our analysis implies that the correlation of monoecy and dioecy in angiosperm families does not reflect a preponderance of changes from monoecy to dioecy. Instead, we postulate that the family‐level correlation results from the clustering of breeding system changes in the underlying phylogeny. Our results suggest renewed attention to modeling the transition from hermaphroditism to dioecy, possibly involving transient intermediates such as gynodioecy.
O A ] 1 0 A pr 2 00 8 Approximation of Center-Valued Betti-Numbers

A useful tool to calculate L-Betti-numbers is an approximation theorem which is proved in its original version by W. Lück. It shows that L-Betti-numbers β (2) n (X̃) of the universal covering X̃ of a CW complex X , with residually finite fundamental group π , can be approximated by the Betti-numbers of the finite subcovers β (2) n (X̃/πi) . Since then, the the approximation theorem has been generalized in several steps and is now proven for a large class of groups containing e.g. all extensions of residually finite groups with amenable quotients, all residually amenable groups and free products of these. However, there is also a finer invariant than L-Betti-numbers: the so called universal or center-valued Betti-numbers β . They measure the dimension of the homology, using the center-valued trace tr N (G) of the finite von Neumann algebra N (G) , instead of the usual C-valued trace tr N (G). In this paper we generalize the ordinary approximation theorem to an approximation theorem for universal Betti-numbers.
Hypercontractivity, sum-of-squares proofs, and their applications

We study the computational complexity of approximating the 2-to-q norm of linear operators (defined as |A|2->q = maxv≠ 0|Av|q/|v|2) for q > 2, as well as connections between this question and issues arising in quantum information theory and the study of Khot's Unique Games Conjecture (UGC). We show the following: For any constant even integer q ≥ 4, a graph G is a small-set expander if and only if the projector into the span of the top eigenvectors of G's adjacency matrix has bounded 2->q norm. As a corollary, a good approximation to the 2->q norm will refute the Small-Set Expansion Conjecture --- a close variant of the UGC. We also show that such a good approximation can be obtained in exp(n2/q) time, thus obtaining a different proof of the known subexponential algorithm for Small-Set-Expansion. Constant rounds of the "Sum of Squares" semidefinite programing hierarchy certify an upper bound on the 2->4 norm of the projector to low degree polynomials over the Boolean cube, as well certify the unsatisfiability of the "noisy cube" and "short code" based instances of Unique-Games considered by prior works. This improves on the previous upper bound of exp(logO(1) n) rounds (for the "short code"), as well as separates the "Sum of Squares"/"Lasserre" hierarchy from weaker hierarchies that were known to require ω(1) rounds. We show reductions between computing the 2->4 norm and computing the injective tensor norm of a tensor, a problem with connections to quantum information theory. Three corollaries are: (i) the 2->4 norm is NP-hard to approximate to precision inverse-polynomial in the dimension, (ii) the 2->4 norm does not have a good approximation (in the sense above) unless 3-SAT can be solved in time exp(√n poly log(n)), and (iii) known algorithms for the quantum separability problem imply a non-trivial additive approximation for the 2->4 norm.
Sagittal Craniosynostosis: Cognitive Development, Behaviour, and Quality of Life in Unoperated Children*

30 patients (23 m/7 f) with untreated, isolated sagittal craniosynostosis (ISC) were re-evaluated at an average age of 9.25 years (2.5 - 25.5). Assessed were neurological status, head shape, school performance, behaviour (with Child Behavior Checklist CBCL), quality of life (TACQOL questionnaire), and a detailed neuropsychological testing (30 patients, 17 siblings as controls). Almost all patients/parents were pleased with the current situation. The aesthetic appearance seemed less obvious compared to photos in infancy. Psychological adjustment as measured by the CBCL was well within normal range. There was a slight tendency for increased internalizing symptoms. TACQOL revealed a lower score for positive emotions. Total score and subscores of test batteries assessing general intellectual performance were in the average range. 6 patients had below average scores in subtests for learning and memory. 12 children had below average scores in one or more subtests for attention. These "deficits" were obviously not of functional importance as all children attended regular school classes (1 exception, an immigrant child of low socio-economic status). These reassuring results regarding school performances, behaviour, and quality of life as well as aesthetic outcome may be helpful when discussing the indication for surgical correction of ISC.
Ligand Binding and Activation of PPARγ by Firemaster® 550: Effects on Adipogenesis and Osteogenesis in Vitro

Background: The use of alternative flame retardants has increased since the phase out of pentabromodiphenyl ethers (pentaBDEs). One alternative, Firemaster® 550 (FM550), induces obesity in rats. Triphenyl phosphate (TPP), a component of FM550, has a structure similar to that of organotins, which are obesogenic in rodents. Objectives: We tested the hypothesis that components of FM550 are biologically active peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ (PPARγ) ligands and estimated indoor exposure to TPP. Methods: FM550 and its components were assessed for ligand binding to and activation of human PPARγ. Solvent mapping was used to model TPP in the PPARγ binding site. Adipocyte and osteoblast differentiation were assessed in bone marrow multipotent mesenchymal stromal cell models. We estimated exposure of children to TPP using a screening-level indoor exposure model and house dust concentrations determined previously. Results: FM550 bound human PPARγ, and binding appeared to be driven primarily by TPP. Solvent mapping revealed that TPP interacted with binding hot spots within the PPARγ ligand binding domain. FM550 and its organophosphate components increased human PPARγ1 transcriptional activity in a Cos7 reporter assay and induced lipid accumulation and perilipin protein expression in BMS2 cells. FM550 and TPP diverted osteogenic differentiation toward adipogenesis in primary mouse bone marrow cultures. Our estimates suggest that dust ingestion is the major route of exposure of children to TPP. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that FM550 components bind and activate PPARγ. In addition, in vitro exposure initiated adipocyte differentiation and antagonized osteogenesis. TPP likely is a major contributor to these biological actions. Given that TPP is ubiquitous in house dust, further studies are warranted to investigate the health effects of FM550. Citation: Pillai HK, Fang M, Beglov D, Kozakov D, Vajda S, Stapleton HM, Webster TF, Schlezinger JJ. 2014. Ligand binding and activation of PPARγ by Firemaster® 550: effects on adipogenesis and osteogenesis in vitro. Environ Health Perspect 122:1225–1232; http://dx.doi. org/10.1289/ehp.1408111
Chayandinskoye field is the project of new technologies implementation in East Siberia

s. – P. 150–152. Please cite this article in English as: Davydov A.V. , Pogretckii A.V. , Smirnov O.A. , Lukashov A.V. , Pravdukhin A.P., Kurchikov A.R. , Borodkin V.N. Chayandinskoye field is the project of new technologies implementation in East Siberia. Perm Journal of Petroleum and Mining Engineering, 2017, vol.16, no.2, pp.113-128. DOI: 10.15593/2224-9923/2017.2. 2 Просьба ссылаться на эту статью в русскоязычных источниках следующим образом: Чаяндинское месторождение – проект внедрения новых технологий в Восточной Сибири / А. В. Давыдов, А. В. Погрецкий, О. А. Смирнов, А. В. Лукашов, А. П. Правдухин, А. Р. Курчиков, В. Н. Бородкин // Вестник Пермского национального исследовательского политехнического университета. Геология. Нефтегазовое и горное дело. – 2017. – Т. 16, No 2. – С. 113–128. DOI: 10.15593/2224-9923/2017.2. 2
The Economics of Football

The second edition of this popular book presents a detailed economic analysis of professional football at club level, with new material included to reflect the development of the economics of professional football over the past ten years. Using a combination of economic reasoning and statistical and econometric analysis, the authors build upon the successes and strengths of the first edition to guide readers through the economic complexities and peculiarities of English club football. It uses a wide range of international comparisons to help emphasize both the broader relevance as well as the unique characteristics of the English experience. Topics covered include some of the most hotly debated issues currently surrounding professional football, including player salaries, the effects of management on team performance, betting on football, racial discrimination and the performance of football referees. This edition also features new chapters on the economics of international football, including the World Cup.
Cardiovascular Aging Is Associated With Vitamin E Increase

Background—Aging is an independent risk factor for the development of cardiovascular disease. Therefore, therapies to delay vascular aging may have enormous medical consequences. In this context, vitamin E is of particular interest, mainly because of its antioxidative properties. Methods and Results—In 3-year-old rats, which are not susceptible to atherosclerosis, vitamin E levels, as measured by reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography, were markedly increased both in plasma and in major organs (P <0.01 to P <0.0001). The highest increase (at least 70-fold) was found in the aortic wall. Conclusions—This unexpected accumulation of vitamin E appears to be a compensatory mechanism that attempts to counterbalance age-associated oxidative stress and that may represent a self-regulatory protective adaptation.
DME interference mitigation for LDACS1 based on decision-directed noise estimation

L-band digital aeronautical communication system type 1 (LDACS1), a broadband system based on Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is the most promising candidate for the future air-to-ground (A/G) communications. LDACS1 is operating as an inlay system and limited to the 500 kHz spectral gap between the two adjacent distance measuring equipment (DME) channels of bandwidth 1 MHz. In this paper, a decision directed noise estimation (DDNE) approach to mitigating the pulsed interference from DME for LDACS1 system is proposed. The proposed method removes the effect of inter-carrier interference (ICI) which is a major problem with the conventional pulse blanking method for LDACS1 system. The simulation results highlight the impact of DME interference onto the LDACS1 system and show the performance improvement of the proposed method compared to conventional interference mitigation methods in terms of bit error rate (BER).
Urinary biomarkers--silver bullets to faster drug development and nephron protection.

Correspondence and offprint requests to: Peter R. Mertens; E-mail: peter.mertens@med.ovgu. de Comment on: 1. ) Dieterle F, Perentes E, Cordier A et al. Urinary clusterin, cystatin C, beta2-microglobulin and total protein as markers to detect druginduced kidney injury. Nat Biotechnol 2010; 28: 463–469. 2. ) Yu Y, Jin H, Holder D et al. Urinary biomarkers trefoil factor 3 and albumin enable early detection of kidney tubular injury. Nat Biotechnol 2010; 28: 470–477. 3. ) Vaidya VS, Ozer JS, Dieterle F et al. Kidney injury molecule-1 outperforms traditional biomarkers of kidney injury in preclinical biomarker qualification studies. Nat Biotechnol 2010; 28: 478–485. 4. ) Ozer JS, Dieterle F, Troth S et al. A panel of urinary biomarkers to monitor reversibility of renal injury and a serum marker with improved potential to assess renal function. Nat Biotechnol 2010; 28: 486–494.
Attitude and self-reported practice regarding prognostication in a national sample of internists.

BACKGROUND Since prognostication appears increasingly important in clinical practice, especially in end-of-life care, we examined physicians' experiences and attitudes regarding it. METHODS We mailed a survey to a national sample of 1311 internists, yielding 697 responses that were analyzed with multivariate models and other means. Findings were supplemented by qualitative comments from 162 physicians and by interviews with 20. RESULTS On an annual basis, the typical internist addressed the question "How long do I have to live? " 10 times, withdrew or withheld life support 5 times, and referred 5 patients to hospice. Nevertheless, physicians disdain prognostication: 60.4% find it "stressful" to make predictions; 58.7% find it "difficult"; 43.7% wait to be asked by a patient before offering predictions; 80.2% believe patients expect too much certainty; 50.2% believe that if they were to make an error, patients might lose confidence; 89.9% believe they should avoid being too specific; and 56.8% report inadequate training in prognostication. With respect to the key concept of "terminal" illness, physicians on average believe that such patients should have 13.5+/-11.8 weeks to live, but responses varied substantially from 1 to 75 weeks. CONCLUSIONS Physicians (1) commonly encounter situations that require prognostication, (2) feel poorly prepared for prognostication, (3) find it stressful and difficult to make predictions, (4) believe that patients expect too much certainty and might judge them adversely for prognostic errors, and (5) vary in how they regard the key concept of being "terminally ill. " These observations may have significant consequences for patient care.
Edinburgh Research Explorer Differential Forms for Target Tracking and Aggregate Queries in Distributed Networks Differential Forms for Target Tracking and Aggregate Queries in Distributed Networks

General rights Copyright for the publications made accessible via the Edinburgh Research Explorer is retained by the author(s) and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. Take down policy The University of Edinburgh has made every reasonable effort to ensure that Edinburgh Research Explorer content complies with UK legislation. If you believe that the public display of this file breaches copyright please contact openaccess@ed.ac. uk providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Abstract—Consider mobile targets in a plane and their movements being monitored by a network such as a field of sensors. We develop distributed algorithms for in-network tracking and range queries for aggregated data (for example returning the number of targets within any user given region). Our scheme stores the target detection information locally in the network, and answers a query by examining the perimeter of the given range. The cost of updating data about mobile targets is proportional to the target displacement. The key insight is to maintain in the sensor network a function with respect to the target detection data on the graph edges that is a differential form such that the integral of this form along any closed curve C gives the integral within the region bounded by C. The differential form has great flexibility making it appropriate for tracking mobile targets. The basic range query can be used to find a nearby target or any given identifiable target with cost O(d) where d is the distance to the target in question. Dynamic insertion, deletion, coverage holes and mobility of sensor nodes can be handled with only local operations, making the scheme suitable for a highly dynamic network. It is extremely robust and capable of tolerating errors in sensing and target localization. Targets do not need to be identified for the tracking, thus user privacy can be preserved. In this article, we only elaborate the advantages of differential forms in tracking of mobile targets. Similar routines can be applied for organizing many other types of informations, for example streaming scalar sensor data (such as temperature data field), to support efficient range queries. We demonstrate through analysis and simulations that this scheme compares favorably with existing schemes that use location services for answering aggregate range queries of target detection data.
Connected Network Dominating Set of an Interval Graph

dominating sets are useful in the computation of routing for mobile ad-hoc networks. A connected dominating set is used as a backbone for communications, and nodes that are not in this set communicate by passing messages through neighbors that are in the set. Recent advances in technology have made possible the creation of Wireless Sensor Networks. Although there is no physical backbone infrastructure, a virtual backbone can be formed by constructing a Connected Dominating Set (CDS). In this paper we present an algorithm for finding minimal connected network dominating set(MCNDS) of an interval graph.