Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Prospective Study of a Cementless, Mobile-Bearing, Third Generation Total Ankle Prosthesis

Background: The SALTO total ankle prosthesis is a nonce-mented mobile bearing anatomic design characterized by dual Ti-HA coating. This study reviews our results with this prosthesis. Materials and Methods: Between 2001 and 2007, 413 consecutive SALTO prostheses were implanted in our institution in 215 women and 198 men, aged 57.1 ± 11.9 years. At the last visit, 401 implants (47% in the left ankle) were available with a mean followup of 29 (range, 1 to 84) months. Results: Based on the results of the 218 patients with at least 2 years of postoperative followup, the 5-year estimated survivorship, with the primary end-point being implant removal, was 86.6% and ranged from 85.1% in patients with post-traumatic osteoarthritis to 95.6% in those with rheumatoid arthritis. The AOFAS score increased from 50.9 ± 16.8 points preoperatively to 82.2 ± 14 points at followup (mean difference, 31. 1 ± 1.4, 95% confidence interval (C.I.) for the difference, 28. 3 to 33.8, p < 0.001). Visual analog scale for pain decreased from 7.4 ± 1.1 preoperatively to 2.0 ± 2.0 postoperatively (mean difference, −5.4 ± 0.7, 95% C.I. for the difference, −5.6 to −5.2, p < 0.001). Flexion/extension ROM increased from 25.2 ± 14.1 degrees to 33.1 ± 13.6 degrees at the last followup visit (mean difference, 7. 9 ± 0.5 degrees, 95% C.I. for the difference, 4. 3 to 7.2, p < 0.001), while pronation/supination ROM increased from 23.8 ± 13.7 degrees to 25.4 ± 14.5 degrees (mean difference, 1. 6 ± 0.7 degrees, 95% C.I. for the difference, 0. 9 to 2.2, p = 0.005). Conclusion: The SALTO prosthesis provided good clinical and functional results and we believe helps validate the concept of anatomic replacement. Level of Evidence: IV, Retrospective Case Series
catena-Poly[[diaquanickel(II)]-μ-7-oxabicyclo[2.2.1]heptane-2,3-dicarboxylato]

In the crystal structure of the title compound, [Ni(C8H8O5)(H2O)2]n, the NiII cation is in a Jahn–Teller-distorted octahedral coordination environment binding to two O atoms from water molecules, the bridging O atom of the bicycloheptane unit, two carboxylate O atoms from different carboxylate groups and one carboxylate O atom from a symmetry-related bridging ligand. The crystal structure is made up from layers propagating parallel to the bc plane.
Effects of Social Support by a Dog on Stress Modulation in Male Children with Insecure Attachment

Up to 90% of children with special education needs and about 40% of children in the general population show insecure or disorganized attachment patterns, which are linked to a diminished ability to use social support by others for the regulation of stress. The aim of the study was to investigate if children with insecure-avoidant/disorganized attachment can profit more from social support by a dog compared to a friendly human during a stressful task. We investigated 47 male children (age 7–11) with insecure-avoidant or disorganized attachment. Social stress was elicited via the Trier Social Stress Test for Children (TSST-C). For one group of children a friendly therapy-dog (n = 24) was present, for one control group a friendly human (n = 10) and for the other control group a toy dog (n = 13). Stress levels of the children were measured via salivary cortisol at five times (t1–t5) before, during, and after the TSST-C and subjective reports. The physiological stress response was significantly lower in the dog condition in comparison to the two other support conditions at t4, t5 and the overall stress reaction from t1 to t5 (Area Under the Curve increase; Kruskal–Wallis H-Test, pairwise post hoc comparisons via Mann–Whitney U-Tests). Cortisol levels correlated negatively (rs) with the amount of physical contact between the child and dog. We conclude that male children with insecure-avoidant or disorganized attachment profit more from the presence of a therapy-dog than of a friendly human under social stress. Our findings support the assumption that the increasing practice of animal-assisted education is reasonable and that dogs can be helpful assistants in education/special education, since stress interferes with learning and performance in students.
Processing Capability of Apatite-Mullite Glass-Ceramic Materials for the Production of Dental Restorations

Introduction: There is currently significant interest in all-ceramic dental restorations. A potential non-metallic material for such restorations is an apatite-mullite glass-ceramic that could be processed to shape using different processing techniques. The aim of this study was to assess and evaluate the ability of an apatite-mullite glass-ceramic material to be processed using three routes: lost-wax casting, hot pressing and CAD-CAM milling. Methods: A batch of glass for an apatite-mullite glass-ceramic material was produced based on the formula (4.5SiO2-3Al2O3-1.5P2O5-3CaO-0.5 CaF 2). The batch was converted into glass by heating at 1050˚C/1450˚C for two hours. The final melt was quenched to obtain a glass frit. The glass was thermally treated based on the DTA data. The sequence of crystallization and their micro structural evaluation were analysed using X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). An anatomically correct mould of an upper right first molar was selected to trial the three different manufacturing techniques. Empress II and VITA block mark II materials were used as control materials. Results: The apatite-mullite material being evaluated can be cast and milled to shape, but the ceramic form of the material is not capable of being hot pressed. Conclusion: The materials tested show great possibility as restorative materials and could be heat treated inside and outside the investment casting material to produce a crystalline microstructure of apatite and apatite-mullite. It is possible to produce acceptable restorations using the milling technique. Hot pressing the material is not recommended due to its high liquidus temperature.
Identification of Quiescent, Stem-Like Cells in the Distal Female Reproductive Tract

In fertile women, the endometrium undergoes regular cycles of tissue build-up and regression. It is likely that uterine stem cells are involved in this remarkable turn over. The main goal of our current investigations was to identify slow-cycling (quiescent) endometrial stem cells by means of a pulse-chase approach to selectively earmark, prospectively isolate, and characterize label-retaining cells (LRCs). To this aim, transgenic mice expressing histone2B-GFP (H2B-GFP) in a Tet-inducible fashion were administered doxycycline (pulse) which was thereafter withdrawn from the drinking water (chase). Over time, dividing cells progressively loose GFP signal whereas infrequently dividing cells retain H2B-GFP expression. We evaluated H2B-GFP retaining cells at different chase time points and identified long-term (LT; >12 weeks) LRCs. The LT-LRCs are negative for estrogen receptor-α and express low levels of progesterone receptors. LRCs sorted by FACS are able to form spheroids capable of self-renewal and differentiation. Upon serum stimulation spheroid cells are induced to differentiate and form glandular structures which express markers of mature Műllerian epithelial cells. Overall, the results indicate that quiescent cells located in the distal oviduct have stem-like properties and can differentiate into distinct cell lineages specific of endometrium, proximal and distal oviduct. Future lineage-tracing studies will elucidate the role played by these cells in homeostasis, tissue injury and cancer of the female reproductive tract in the mouse and eventually in man.
Cellular Imaging With MRI

Abstract Cellular magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is an evolving field of imaging with strong translational and research potential. The ability to detect, track, and quantify cells in vivo and over time allows for studying cellular events related to disease processes and may be used as a biomarker for decisions about treatments and for monitoring responses to treatments. In this review, we discuss methods for labeling cells, various applications for cellular MRI, the existing limitations, strategies to address these shortcomings, and clinical cellular MRI.
Swapping swatches: Adapting to and from an artist's palette

We describe a method for representing and manipulating the color gamuts used by different artists to explore how the color schemes employed by artists might appear to the artist or to others. The method involves modeling the visual response to color and then adapting that response to simulate how color percepts change across different states of adaptation. Analyses of paintings and nature photographs suggest that there are both important differences and regularities in the color palettes of artists and that these regularities reproduce prominent characteristics of the natural color environment. In particular, the works of many artists include a bluish-yellowish bias that is also a distinguishing feature of both the color statistics of natural images and of the neural coding of color. The algorithm adjusts the colors in an image so that they are equivalent to the colors that would be experienced by an observer adapted to a different environment, or for two observers with different spectral sensitivities but who are adapted to the same environment. This provides a novel method for visualizing how the colors in artwork are experienced by an artist or an audience, and could be generalized to explore similar questions for visual attributes beyond color.
Intraabdominal Partitioning of the Laparoscopic Sleeve Gastrectomy Remnant Optimizes the Specimen Extraction Ergonomics and Postoperative Pain and Is an Attractive Technique in Teenage Patients

Introduction: Laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy (LSG) has become an increasingly popular bariatric procedure in the pediatric population worldwide. The fear of complications, postoperative pain, and recovery remain the reservations for wider application of surgery in morbidly obese children. We present a novel technique for LSG remnant retrieval. Materials and Methods: The patient was a 16-year old girl with a body mass index of 55 kg/m and significant comorbidities who underwent LSG and liver biopsy. In the extraction technique, a specimen containing the gastric body and fundus, approximately 80% of the stomach volume, was partitioned longitudinally and intracorporeally with endoshears; subsequently, it was retrieved in one fragment via the lumen of a 15-mm port. Results: The procedure time was 65 minutes (specimen extraction time was 7 minutes). Her recovery was uneventful, and she was discharged home on the second postoperative day. At the 1-, 3-, and 6-month follow-up, she has shown all the benefits of weight loss and associated improvement in metabolic parameters and quality of life, without any complications. Conclusions: This technique for gastric remnant retrieval results in minimizing postoperative pain, reducing operative costs, and minimizing the likelihood of wound infection.
On Promptness in Parity Games

Parity games are a powerful formalism for the automatic synthesis and verification of reactive systems. They are closely related to alternating ω-automata and emerge as a natural method for the solution of the μ-calculus model checking problem. Due to these strict connections, parity games are a well-established environment to describe liveness properties such as “every request that occurs infinitely often is eventually responded”. Unfortunately, the classical form of such a condition suffers from the strong drawback that there is no bound on the effective time that separates a request from its response, i.e., responses are not promptly provided. Recently, to overcome this limitation, several parity game variants have been proposed, in which quantitative requirements are added to the classic qualitative ones.
The prevalence, awareness, and control of hypertension among workers in West Africa: a systematic review

Background Interventions in workplace settings are considered to be cost-effective in preventing cardiovascular diseases. A systematic review was conducted to assess the prevalence of hypertension and the level of awareness and control among workers in West Africa. Design A systematic search for studies on formal and informal sector workers aged ≥15 years in West Africa published between 1980 and September 2014 was undertaken using the Ovid Medline, Embase, PubMed, and Google Scholar databases. Clinical and obstetric studies and studies that did not report prevalence were excluded. Data on study settings, characteristics of workers, blood pressure (BP) levels, prevalence of hypertension, and associated demographic factors were extracted. Results A total of 45 studies from six countries were identified involving 30,727 formal and informal sector workers. In 40 studies with a common definition of hypertension, the prevalence ranged from 12.0% among automobile garage workers to 68.9% among traditional chiefs. In 15 of these studies, the prevalence exceeded 30%. Typically sedentary workers such as traders, bank workers, civil servants, and chiefs were at high risk. Among health care workers, the prevalence ranged from 17.5 to 37.5%. The prevalence increased with age and was higher among males and workers with higher socio-economic status. Complications of hypertension, co-morbidities, and clustering of risk factors were common. The crude prevalence of hypertension increased progressively from 12.9% in studies published in the 1980s to 34.4% in those published in 2010–2014. The proportion of hypertensives who were previously aware of their diagnosis, were on treatment or had their BP controlled was 19.6–84.0%, 0–79.2%, and 0–12.7%, respectively. Hypertensive subjects, including health workers, rarely checked their BP except when they were ill. Conclusions There is a high prevalence of hypertension among West Africa's workforce, of which a significant proportion is undiagnosed, severe or complicated. The clustering of risk factors, co-morbidities, and general low awareness warrant an integrated and multisectoral approach. Models for workplace health programmes aiming to improve cardiovascular health should be extended to informal sector workers.
Homography Estimation from Planar Contours

Homography estimation is an important step in many computer vision algorithms. Most existing algorithms estimate the homography from point or line correspondences which are difficult to reliably obtain in many real-life situations. In this paper we propose a technique based on correspondences of contours. Homography estimation is carried out in Fourier domain. Starting from an affine estimate, the proposed algorithm computes the projective homography in an iterative manner. This technique does not require explicit point to point correspondences; in fact such point correspondences are a by-product of the proposed algorithm. Experimental results and applications validate the use of our technique.
Laboratory experiments on diapycnal mixing in stratified fluids

Abstract : Our turbulent length scale, velocity and diffusivity scalings are compared with data from other numerical, laboratory and field experiments. Comparison is made with reference to the turbulence intensity measure epsilon/nu N squared. We showed that our turbulent length scale and velocity results are consistent with measurements from the experiments considered, and that the rms turbulent length scale L (sub t) is independent of the rate of dissipation of turbulent kinetic energy when epsilon/nu N squared > 300. A diffusivity modelled in terms of an advective buoyancy flux, b, is found to reproduce our direct measurements of K (sub rho) in the experiments considered when epsilon/nu N squared > 300. It is shown that modelling K(sub rho) as 0.2 epsilon/N squared is a poor parameterization of the advective buoyancy flux model in all the experiments considered, and that at large epsilon/nu N squared, this parameterization can over-predict the true K(sub rho) by two orders of magnitude. This over prediction is discussed in terms of a mixing efficiency and it is shown that in the experiments considered the mixing efficiency decreases rapidly with increasing epsilon/nu N squared. Finally, the application of our diffusivity scaling to other geophysical flows is discussed, and it is shown that a necessary requirement for the use of this scaling is that L)sub t) is independent of the rate of dissipation of turbulent kinetic energy.
Succession Planning: Trends Regarding the Perspectives of Chief Executive Officers in US Hospitals

A study was conducted to revisit the perceptions of chief executive officers in US hospitals regarding the origin of leadership and how they felt about internally developed successors versus externally recruited successors. Furthermore, the study sought to develop understanding of how this group of executives utilizes the succession planning process, what factors impact successor identification, what positions are applicable for succession planning activities, and who is ultimately held responsible for leadership continuity within the hospital industry. The results of this 2012 study were compared with a previous study conducted in 2007 to determine if the perceptions had changed over time.
Randomly distributed delayed communication and coherent swarm patterns

Previously we showed how delay communication between globally coupled self-propelled agents causes new spatio-temporal patterns to arise when the delay coupling is fixed among all agents [1]. In this paper, we show how discrete, randomly distributed delays affect the dynamical patterns. In particular, we investigate how the standard deviation of the time delay distribution affects the stability of the different patterns as well as the switching probability between coherent states.
Recurrent laryngeal nerve injury and hypoparathyroidism rates in reoperative thyroid surgery.

OBJECTIVE Reoperative thyroid surgery is rare and has a high complication rate. This retrospective cohort study was performed to determine the recurrent laryngeal nerve injury and hypoparathyroidism rates after reoperative thyroid surgery in two university hospitals in Benghazi, Libya. MATERIAL AND METHODS All consecutive patients who underwent reoperative thyroid surgery between January 2002 and July 2014 were included retrospectively. The cohort was divided according to whether the reoperation was in the previously operated lobe or both lobes (ipsilateral group), or only in the previously non-operated lobe (contralateral group). RESULTS Of the 73 patients, 66 were female and seven were male. The median age was 37 (19-80) years. Nine (12.3%), five (6.8%), and one (1.4%) patient developed postoperative transient hypocalcemia, transient recurrent laryngeal nerve palsy, and permanent recurrent laryngeal nerve injury, respectively. None of the patients developed permanent hypocalcemia. The ipsilateral group had a higher rate of permanent recurrent laryngeal nerve injury after reoperation than the contralateral group (3.1% vs. 0%). It also had higher rates of transient recurrent laryngeal nerve injury (12.5% vs. 2.4%) and transient hypocalcemia (28.1% vs. 0%), but the two groups did not differ in terms of permanent hypocalcemia rates (both 0%). CONCLUSION Reoperative thyroid surgery is technically challenging with a high incidence of complications. The ipsilateral group had more complications after reoperative thyroid surgery than the contralateral group. Hemi- or total thyroidectomy at the primary surgery is recommended to reduce the frequency of reoperative thyroid surgery.
Sodiomyces alkalinus, a new holomorphic alkaliphilic ascomycete within the Plectosphaerellaceae

In this study we reassess the taxonomic reference of the previously described holomorphic alkaliphilic fungus Heleococcum alkalinum isolated from soda soils in Russia, Mongolia and Tanzania. We show that it is not an actual member of the genus Heleococcum (order Hypocreales) as stated before and should, therefore, be excluded from it and renamed. Multi-locus gene phylogeny analyses (based on nuclear ITS, 5.8S rDNA, 28S rDNA, 18S rDNA, RPB2 and TEF1-alpha) have displayed this fungus as a new taxon at the genus level within the family Plectosphaerellaceae, Hypocreomycetidae, Ascomycota. The reference species of actual Heleococcum members showed clear divergence from the strongly supported Heleococcum alkalinum position within the Plectosphaerellaceae, sister to the family Glomerellaceae. Eighteen strains isolated from soda lakes around the world show remarkable genetic similarity promoting speculations on their possible evolution in harsh alkaline environments. We established the pH growth optimum of this alkaliphilic fungus at c. pH 10 and tested growth on 30 carbon sources at pH 7 and 10. The new genus and species, Sodiomyces alkalinus gen. nov. comb. nov., is the second holomorphic fungus known within the family, the first one being Plectosphaerella – some members of this genus are known to be alkalitolerant. We propose the Plectosphaerellaceae family to be the source of alkaliphilic filamentous fungi as also the species known as Acremonium alcalophilum belongs to this group.
Pilot Contamination with MITM Attack

Existing studies on the secret key generation based on physical layer wireless fading channel are largely open under active attacks. In this paper, we discuss how the man-in-the- middle (MITM) attacker, who acts as a transparent relay, attacks the training phase in wireless communication to improve the information leaked rate. We prove that the MITM attacker can intercept all of the channel information when all of the paths pass through the attacker. We present the closed-form solution of information leakage rate and achieve the optimal attack effect when the transmitter can directly communicate with receiver besides the paths by way of attacker. The results show that the MITM attack can cause new challenges for physical-layer security since it leads to higher information leakage rate. Numerical results are presented to further demonstrate the potent threat of MITM attack.
Using Dynamic Multi-Task Non-Negative Matrix Factorization to Detect the Evolution of User Preferences in Collaborative Filtering

Predicting what items will be selected by a target user in the future is an important function for recommendation systems. Matrix factorization techniques have been shown to achieve good performance on temporal rating-type data, but little is known about temporal item selection data. In this paper, we developed a unified model that combines Multi-task Non-negative Matrix Factorization and Linear Dynamical Systems to capture the evolution of user preferences. Specifically, user and item features are projected into latent factor space by factoring co-occurrence matrices into a common basis item-factor matrix and multiple factor-user matrices. Moreover, we represented both within and between relationships of multiple factor-user matrices using a state transition matrix to capture the changes in user preferences over time. The experiments show that our proposed algorithm outperforms the other algorithms on two real datasets, which were extracted from Netflix movies and Last.fm music. Furthermore, our model provides a novel dynamic topic model for tracking the evolution of the behavior of a user over time.