Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Skin Graft Fixation Using Hydrofiber (Aquacel® Extra)

Background The traditional method of skin graft fixation is with tie-over bollus dressing. The use of splints in the extremities for skin graft fixation is a common practice. However, these splints are heavy and uncomfortable and contribute considerably to our overall medical waste. Hydrofiber (Aquacel® Extra) has a strong fluid absorption property and fixates well to the underlying wound once applied. In this study, we used hydrofiber for fixation, avoiding the use of splints after skin grafting. Methods A total of 56 patients reconstructed with split-thickness skin graft that was fixated only with hydrofiber between March 2015 and March 2016 were included in this retrospective study. Results There were 44 men and 12 women with a mean age of 61 ± 18 years. The defect size ranged from 1 × 1 cm for fingertips to 30 × 12 cm for lower limb defects. The average defect size was 61 ± 78 cm2. The mean skin graft take was 96% ± 6%. Because splints were not required, we saved around 48 kg of medical waste over the space of 1 year. Conclusions The use of hydrofiber for skin graft fixation was effective and technically very simple. Splints were not required with this method, decreasing the medical waste created and increasing patient comfort. We suggest that this is an excellent alternative for skin graft fixation while at the same time decreasing our carbon footprint as surgeons.
Normalizing or equalizing? Characterizing Facebook campaigning

The article analyzes whether Facebook campaigning is consistent with the Normalization or Equalization hypothesis, drawing on data from the election campaigns for the 20th Israeli Parliament in 2015. We looked at six indicators of Facebook activity (number of fans, number of posts, and scope of engagement [likes, comments, shares, and overall engagement]) of all parties running for the Knesset as well as candidates with realistic electability rankings. We found that a comparison between dominant and peripheral parties across all indicators is consistent with the Normalization hypothesis, but when it is framed in terms of expectations and is forward-looking rather than backward-looking, that is, the difference in Facebook performance is between parties that expect to gain a significant number of seats in the parliament, and those that do not anticipate significant parliamentary achievements.
Rotary spectra analysis applied to static stabilometry

Static stabilometry is a technique aimed at quantifying postural sway during quiet standing in the upright position. Many different models and many different techniques to analyze the trajectories of the Centre of Pressure (CoP) have been proposed. Most of the parameters calculated according to these different approaches are affected by a relevant intra- and inter-subject variability or do not have a clear physiological interpretation. In this study we hypothesize that CoP trajectories have rotational characteristics, therefore we decompose them in clockwise and counter-clockwise components, using the rotary spectra analysis. Rotary spectra obtained studying a population of healthy subjects are described through the group average of spectral parameters, i.e., 95% spectral bandwidth, mean frequency, median frequency, and skewness. Results are reported for the clockwise and the counter-clockwise components and refer to the upright position maintained with eyes open or closed. This study demonstrates that the approach is feasible and that some of the spectral parameters are statistically different between the open and closed eyes conditions. More research is needed to demonstrate the clinical applicability of this approach, but results so far obtained are promising.
Rapid calculation of maximum particle lifetime for diffusion in complex geometries

Diffusion of molecules within biological cells and tissues is strongly influenced by crowding. A key quantity to characterize diffusion is the particle lifetime, which is the time taken for a diffusing particle to exit by hitting an absorbing boundary. Calculating the particle lifetime provides valuable information, for example, by allowing us to compare the timescale of diffusion and the timescale of reaction, thereby helping us to develop appropriate mathematical models. Previous methods to quantify particle lifetimes focus on the mean particle lifetime. Here, we take a different approach and present a simple, rapid, simulation-free method for calculating the maximum particle lifetime. This is the time after which only a small specified proportion of particles in an ensemble remain in the system. Our approach produces accurate estimates of the maximum particle lifetime, whereas the mean particle lifetime always underestimates this value compared with data from stochastic simulations. Furthermore, we find that differences between the mean and maximum particle lifetimes become increasingly important when considering diffusion hindered by obstacles.
Context‐dependent functional dispersion across similar ranges of trait space covered by intertidal rocky shore communities

Abstract Functional diversity is intimately linked with community assembly processes, but its large‐scale patterns of variation are often not well understood. Here, we investigated the spatiotemporal changes in multiple trait dimensions (“trait space”) along vertical intertidal environmental stress gradients and across a landscape scale. We predicted that the range of the trait space covered by local assemblages (i.e., functional richness) and the dispersion in trait abundances (i.e., functional dispersion) should increase from high‐ to low‐intertidal elevations, due to the decreasing influence of environmental filtering. The abundance of macrobenthic algae and invertebrates was estimated at four rocky shores spanning ca. 200 km of the coast over a 36‐month period. Functional richness and dispersion were contrasted against matrix‐swap models to remove any confounding effect of species richness on functional diversity. Random‐slope models showed that functional richness and dispersion significantly increased from high‐ to low‐intertidal heights, demonstrating that under harsh environmental conditions, the assemblages comprised similar abundances of functionally similar species (i.e., trait convergence), while that under milder conditions, the assemblages encompassed differing abundances of functionally dissimilar species (i.e., trait divergence). According to the Akaike information criteria, the relationship between local environmental stress and functional richness was persistent across sites and sampling times, while functional dispersion varied significantly. Environmental filtering therefore has persistent effects on the range of trait space covered by these assemblages, but context‐dependent effects on the abundances of trait combinations within such range. Our results further suggest that natural and/or anthropogenic factors might have significant effects on the relative abundance of functional traits, despite that no trait addition or extinction is detected.
Cortical Bone Trajectory Screws in Posterior Lumbar Interbody Fusion: Minimally Invasive Surgery for Maximal Muscle Sparing—A Prospective Comparative Study with the Traditional Open Technique

Introduction A prospective comparative study between classical posterior interbody fusion with peduncular screws and the new technique with divergent cortical screws was conducted. Material and Methods Only patients with monosegmental degenerative disease were recruited into this study. We analyzed a cohort of 40 patients treated from January 2015 to March 2016 divided into 2 groups (20 patients went to traditional open surgery and 20 patients under mini-invasive strategy). Primary endpoints of this study are fusion rate and muscular damage; secondary endpoints analyzed were three different clinical scores (ODI, VAS, and EQ) and the morbidity rate of both techniques. Results There was no significant difference in fusion rate between the two techniques. In addition, a significant difference in muscular damage was found according to the MRI evaluation. Clinical outcomes, based on pain intensity, Oswestry Disability Index status, and Euroquality-5D score, were found to be also statistically different, even one year after surgery. This study also demonstrated a correlation between patients' muscular damage and their clinical outcome. Conclusions Cortical bone trajectory screws would provide similar outcomes compared to pedicle screws in posterior lumbar interbody fusion at one year after surgery, and this technique represents a reasonable alternative to pedicle screws.
Water-balance approach for assessing potential for smallholder groundwater irrigation in Sub-Saharan Africa

Strategies for increasing the development and use of groundwater for agriculture over much of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are urgently needed. Expansion of small-scale groundwater irrigation offers an attractive option to smallholder farmers to overcome unreliable wet-season rainfall and enhance dry-season production. This paper presents a simple, generic groundwater-balance-based methodology that uses a set of type-curves to assist with decision making on the scope for developing sustainable groundwater irrigation supplies, and to help understand how cropping choices influence the potential areal extent of irrigation. Guidance to avoid over-exploitation of the resource is also provided. The methodology is applied to 2 sites in West Africa with contrasting climatic and subsurface conditions. At both sites the analysis reveals that there is significant potential for further groundwater development for irrigation whilst allowing provisions for other sectoral uses, including basic human needs and the environment.
Monitoring pulmonary fibrosis by fusing clinical, physiological, and computed tomography features

Advances in medical imaging and screening tests have made possible the detection and diagnosis of many diseases in their early stages. Those advances have enabled more effective planning, execution, and monitoring of a treatment plan. However, early detection has also resulted in an increase of the number of longitudinal radiographs requested for most patients, thus increasing the risk for potential long-term effects of ionizing radiation exposure and increasing the cost associated with a specific treatment plan. The aim of this paper is to study the associations between clinical measurements and quantitative image features in patients with pulmonary fibrosis. The association between these multi-modal features could be used to more accurately determine the state of the disease and could potentially be used to predict many of the longitudinal image features when CT images are not available. Our results show how textural image features are highly correlated with the severity of fibrosis, how clinical variables can be combined to monitor progression, and how simple blood features can be used to predict statistical image attributes of the lungs.
Defect and Variation Issues on Design Mapping of Reconfigurable Nanoscale Crossbars

High defect density and extreme process variation for nanoscale self-assembled crossbar-based architectures have been expected to be as fundamental design challenges. Consequently, defect and variation issues must be considered on logic mapping on nanoscale crossbars. In this paper, we investigate a greedy algorithm for the variation and defect aware logic mapping of crossbar arrays. Based on Mont-Carlo simulation, we compare the proposed technique with other logic mapping techniques such as variation unaware and exhaustive search mapping in terms of accuracy as well as runtime.
Antitumor effect of D-erythrose in an abdominal metastatic model of colon carcinoma

Traditional chemotherapy drugs against colorectal cancer possess little or no specificity, leading to severe intolerable side-effects. Therefore, it is necessary to develop additional specific therapeutic strategies. It has been suggested that D-erythrose may specifically inhibit the growth of tumor cells. However, the in vivo antitumor effect of D-erythrose against colorectal cancer remains unknown. Thus, the present study investigated the antitumor effect of D-erythrose in an abdominal metastatic model of colon carcinoma. Intraperitoneal (IP) colon carcinoma-bearing BALB/c mice received an IP injection of D-erythrose or normal saline (NS) daily for 15 days. The mice were weighed every three days. The tumor weights and the volume of ascites were evaluated following the treatment. Terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase-mediated dUTP nick end labeling assay was used to assess apoptosis in tumor tissues. The results revealed that D-erythrose significantly reduced the weight of the intraperitoneal tumor by 69.1%, markedly inhibited the development of ascites and increased tumor cell apoptosis, without any observed toxic effects. These observations suggest that D-erythrose possesses antitumor activity against colon cancer. The present study may provide a potentially effective and specific approach for colon cancer treatment.
Temperature Effects on the Magnetization and Magnetoimpedance in Ferromagnetic Glass-Covered microwires

The effect of temperature on static and dynamic magnetization in Co-based amorphous microwires was investigated with the aim of potential applications in miniature temperature sensors. The wires of two compositions with different magnetostriction and Curie temperature in glass-cover and after removing the glass layer demonstrated very different temperature behaviour of the magnetization loops and magnetoimpedance. The mechanisms of the temperature effects are related to the residual stress distribution due to fast solidification, the difference in thermal expansion coefficient of metal and glass and the proximity to the Curie temperature. The interplay of these factors may result in a very strong temperature dependence of magnetoimpedance in a moderate temperature range (room temperature −373K). Such elements may be incorporated in various composite materials for a local temperature monitoring.
Protective Effects of Hydroxychloroquine against Accelerated Atherosclerosis in Systemic Lupus Erythematosus

Cardiovascular (CV) morbidity and mortality are a challenge in management of patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Higher risk of CV disease in SLE patients is mostly related to accelerated atherosclerosis. Nevertheless, high prevalence of traditional cardiovascular risk factors in SLE patients does not fully explain the increased CV risk. Despite the pathological bases of accelerated atherosclerosis are not fully understood, it is thought that this process is driven by the complex interplay between SLE and atherosclerosis pathogenesis. Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) is a cornerstone in treatment of SLE patients and has been thought to exert a broad spectrum of beneficial effects on disease activity, prevention of damage accrual, and mortality. Furthermore, HCQ is thought to protect against accelerated atherosclerosis targeting toll-like receptor signaling, cytokine production, T-cell and monocyte activation, oxidative stress, and endothelial dysfunction. HCQ was also described to have beneficial effects on traditional CV risk factors, such as dyslipidemia and diabetes. In conclusion, despite lacking randomized controlled trials unambiguously proving the protection of HCQ against accelerated atherosclerosis and incidence of CV events in SLE patients, evidence analyzed in this review is in favor of its beneficial effect.
Antenna and pulse selection for colocated MIMO radar

Multiple input multiple output (MIMO) radar is known for its superiority over conventional radar due to its antenna and waveform diversity. However, the increased hardware cost (due to multiple transmitters and receivers), power consumption (due to multiple transmitters and pulses), and computational complexity (due to numerous pulses) form the drawbacks of MIMO radar. On one hand, a higher estimation accuracy is required, but on the other hand, a lower number of active antennas/pulses is desirable. Therefore, in this paper, by proposing a convex optimization approach for the general case of transmitter-receiver-pulse selection, we will minimize the total number of active antennas/pulses in order to guarantee a prescribed performance accuracy. The performance measure we will optimize is the Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB) for the angle and velocity estimation accuracy of two targets, which provides a trade-off between the main beamwidth and the sidelobe level (SLL) of the ambiguity function.
Mice Producing Less Reactive Oxygen Species Are Relatively Resistant to Collagen Glycopeptide Vaccination against Arthritis

The bottleneck for the induction of collagen-induced arthritis in mice is the recognition of immunodominant type II collagen (CII) peptide (CII259-273) bound to the MHC class II molecule Aq. We have shown previously that the posttranslationally glycosylated lysine at position 264 in this epitope is of great importance for T cell recognition and tolerance induction to CII as well as for arthritis development. The Ncf1 gene, controlling oxidative burst, has been shown to play an important role for immune tolerance to CII. To investigate the effect of oxidation on the efficiency of immune-specific vaccination with MHC class II/glycosylated–CII peptide complexes, we used Ncf1 mutated mice. We demonstrate that normal reactive oxygen species (ROS) levels contribute to the establishment of tolerance and arthritis protection, because only mice with a functional oxidative burst were completely protected from arthritis after administration of the glycosylated CII259–273 peptide in complex with MHC class II. Transfer of T cells from vaccinated mice with functional Ncf1 protein resulted in strong suppression of clinical signs of arthritis in B10.Q mice, whereas the Ncf1 mutated mice as recipients had a weaker suppressive effect, suggesting that ROS modified the secondary rather than the primary immune response. A milder but still significant effect was also observed in ROS deficient mice. During the primary vaccination response, regulatory T cells, upregulation of negative costimulatory molecules, and increased production of anti-inflammatory versus proinflammatory cytokines in both Ncf1 mutated and wild type B10.Q mice was observed, which could explain the vaccination effect independent of ROS.
A Novel Computational Model Predicts Key Regulators of Chemokine Gradient Formation in Lymph Nodes and Site-Specific Roles for CCL19 and ACKR4

The chemokine receptor CCR7 drives leukocyte migration into and within lymph nodes (LNs). It is activated by chemokines CCL19 and CCL21, which are scavenged by the atypical chemokine receptor ACKR4. CCR7-dependent navigation is determined by the distribution of extracellular CCL19 and CCL21, which form concentration gradients at specific microanatomical locations. The mechanisms underpinning the establishment and regulation of these gradients are poorly understood. In this article, we have incorporated multiple biochemical processes describing the CCL19–CCL21–CCR7–ACKR4 network into our model of LN fluid flow to establish a computational model to investigate intranodal chemokine gradients. Importantly, the model recapitulates CCL21 gradients observed experimentally in B cell follicles and interfollicular regions, building confidence in its ability to accurately predict intranodal chemokine distribution. Parameter variation analysis indicates that the directionality of these gradients is robust, but their magnitude is sensitive to these key parameters: chemokine production, diffusivity, matrix binding site availability, and CCR7 abundance. The model indicates that lymph flow shapes intranodal CCL21 gradients, and that CCL19 is functionally important at the boundary between B cell follicles and the T cell area. It also predicts that ACKR4 in LNs prevents CCL19/CCL21 accumulation in efferent lymph, but does not control intranodal gradients. Instead, it attributes the disrupted interfollicular CCL21 gradients observed in Ackr4-deficient LNs to ACKR4 loss upstream. Our novel approach has therefore generated new testable hypotheses and alternative interpretations of experimental data. Moreover, it acts as a framework to investigate gradients at other locations, including those that cannot be visualized experimentally or involve other chemokines.
Pathway aggregation for survival prediction via multiple kernel learning

Attempts to predict prognosis in cancer patients using high‐dimensional genomic data such as gene expression in tumor tissue can be made difficult by the large number of features and the potential complexity of the relationship between features and the outcome. Integrating prior biological knowledge into risk prediction with such data by grouping genomic features into pathways and networks reduces the dimensionality of the problem and could improve prediction accuracy. Additionally, such knowledge‐based models may be more biologically grounded and interpretable. Prediction could potentially be further improved by allowing for complex nonlinear pathway effects. The kernel machine framework has been proposed as an effective approach for modeling the nonlinear and interactive effects of genes in pathways for both censored and noncensored outcomes. When multiple pathways are under consideration, one may efficiently select informative pathways and aggregate their signals via multiple kernel learning (MKL), which has been proposed for prediction of noncensored outcomes. In this paper, we propose MKL methods for censored survival outcomes. We derive our approach for a general survival modeling framework with a convex objective function and illustrate its application under the Cox proportional hazards and semiparametric accelerated failure time models. Numerical studies demonstrate that the proposed MKL‐based prediction methods work well in finite sample and can potentially outperform models constructed assuming linear effects or ignoring the group knowledge. The methods are illustrated with an application to 2 cancer data sets.
Aiding Planning in Air Traffic Control: An Experimental Investigation of the Effects of Perceptual Information Integration

Prior research examined how controllers plan in their traditional environment and identified various information uncertainties as detriments to planning. A planning aid was designed to reduce this uncertainty by perceptually representing important constraints. This included integrating spatial information on the radar screen with discrete information (planned sequences of air traffic). Previous research reported improved planning performance and decreased workload in the planning aid condition. The purpose of this paper was to determine the source of these performance improvements. Analysis of computer interactions using loglinear modeling showed that the planning interface led to less repetitive - but more integrated - information retrieval compared with the traditional planning environment. Ecological interface design principles helped explain how the integrated information retrieval gave rise to the performance improvements. Actual or potential applications of this research include the design and evaluation of interface automation that keeps users in active control by modification of perceptual task characteristics.