Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cost-minimisation analysis of three conservative treatment programmes in 180 patients sick-listed for acute low-back pain.

OBJECTIVE To perform a cost-minimization analysis of three conservative treatment regimes for acute low-back pain (LBP). DESIGN A prospective randomized clinical trial. Patients were assigned at random to one of three treatment programmes: General Practitioner Programme (GPP-) controls, Manual Therapy Programme (MTP) or Intensive Training Programme (ITP). SETTING Primary care and physiotherapists in Stockholm, Sweden. PATIENTS 180 patients sick-listed for acute LBP. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Direct, indirect and total costs for three treatment programmes. RESULTS The direct costs for treatment were lowest in the GPP group -- 2744 Swedish crowns (SEK) per patient. More patients in the MTP and ITP underwent operations for disk hernia and radiological investigations than in the GPP. Indirect costs, defined as sick-leave for LBP represent about 90% of the total cost. CONCLUSIONS With respect to total costs, the findings were similar between the three treatment programmes. The GPP had the lowest direct costs. It is not possible to conclude which treatment programme is to be recommended as a least cost alternative. The strong effect of indirect costs on the total cost stresses that further studies should focus on methods of shortening sick-leave.
Study on Core Capabilities of Tourism Networks

Tourism business networks are becoming more and more popular in the development of tourism industry. This article analyses the coordination of cooperative activities in tourism business networks by challenging the sustainability of the ‘ manipulating’ demand approach in favor of the Value System Continuum in them. It is hypothesized that local tourism businesses must develop new key capabilities in order to face future global competition. The paper focuses on five key capabilities required to manage tourim business networks. The author put forward that capabilities need in tourism business network managing includes: the coordination of cooperation in tourism business networks, value adding relational value production, building the network brand identity, accumulating necessary knowledge and skills, relative independence and multirole of network node,etc. KeywordsCore Capabilities; Tourism Networks; Network Node; Value-adding; Coordination
Voiced-unvoiced-silence detection using the Itakura LPC distance measure

One of the most difficult problems in speech analysis is reliable discrimination among silence, unvoiced speech, and voiced speech which has been transmitted over a telephone line. Although several methods have been proposed for making this 3-level decision, these schemes have met with only modest success. In this paper a novel approach to the voiced-unvoiced-silence detection problem is proposed in which a spectral characterization of each of the 3 classes of signal is obtained during a training session, and an LPC distance metric and an energy distance are nonlinearly combined to make the final discrimination. This algorithm has been tested over conventional switched telephone lines, across a variety of speakers, and has been found to have an error rate of about 5%, with the majority of the errors (about 2/3) occurring at the boundaries between signal classes. The algorithm is currently being used in a speaker independent word recognition system.
Menopausal Transition Symptoms in Midlife Women Living With Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue

We aimed to determine how menopausal transition symptoms cluster across 216 midlife women with fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndromes (FMS/CFS), or both and subsequently to compare symptom factor severity scores by menopausal status among these women and compare symptom reporting with prior community-based samples of women without obvious illness. We designed a cross-sectional telephone survey of 216 women aged 35 to 55, diagnosed with FMS/CFS, symptomatic in the prior 6 months, and without hysterectomy. Thirty-six of 61 symptoms loaded on five factors: aroused/anxious mood, depressed mood/withdrawal, musculoskeletal, gastrointestinal (GI), and vasomotor. Peri- and postmenopausal women had higher symptom severity scores for musculoskeletal, GI, and vasomotor factors but not mood factors. Symptoms for the women we studied who had FMS/CFS clustered similar to those in previous community-based samples of midlife women without major illness; however, the number of women experiencing symptoms was much higher among our sample.
High-resolution animation of next-generation dynamics

The try- and take- the clothes- on virtual surfaces is a long-continuing journey including many processes in itself. This continuum starts from the new generation of surfaces up to the last end of the tailor-fitting for an animation. We initiated the long-running design by seaming up of the inter-seams betwixt the pieces and proceeding with combining out the figures with these parts, and make the finalé with an unprecedent outfitting ability, respectively. We recreated and animated our models for having an up-front superiority over the other on-shelf rivals wherefore this directly originates from the unmatched realism by ours. It's highly-refined in realism terms and also in the context of recent-fineness perspectives, it's recently at the highest-standards with the chain of proposed-technics we offer. We've qualified our workflow-scheme providing much more realistic results that have ever been presented in one design & simulation system until now.
A solid-state NMR index of helical membrane protein structure and topology.

The secondary structure and topology of membrane proteins can be described by inspection of two-dimensional (1)H-(15)N dipolar coupling/(15)N chemical shift polarization inversion spin exchange at the magic angle spectra obtained from uniformly (15)N-labeled samples in oriented bilayers. The characteristic wheel-like patterns of resonances observed in these spectra reflect helical wheel projections of residues in both transmembrane and in-plane helices and hence provide direct indices of the secondary structure and topology of membrane proteins in phospholipid bilayers. We refer to these patterns as PISA (polarity index slant angle) wheels. The transmembrane helix of the M2 peptide corresponding to the pore-lining segment of the acetylcholine receptor and the membrane surface helix of the antibiotic peptide magainin are used as examples.
Structural elucidation and identification of a new derivative of phenethylamine using quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry.

RATIONALE In recent years, the phenomenon of uncontrolled distribution of new psychoactive substances that were marketed without prior toxicological studies has been observed. Because many designer drugs are related in chemical structure, the potential for misidentifying them is an important problem. It is therefore essential to develop an analytical procedure for unequivocal elucidation of the structures of these compounds. The issue has been discussed in the context of 25I-NBMD [2-(4-iodo-2,5-dimethoxyphenyl)-N-[(2,3-methylenedioxyphenyl)methyl]ethanamine], a psychoactive substance first discovered on the drug market in 2012. METHODS The substance was extracted from blotter papers with methanol. Separation was achieved via liquid chromatography. Analysis was conducted by electrospray ionization quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (ESI-QTOFMS). Identification of the psychoactive component was supported by electron impact gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/EI-MS). RESULTS The high accuracy of the LC/ESI-QTOFMS method allowed the molecular mass of the investigated substance (M(exp) = 441.0438 Da; mass error, ∆m = 0.2 ppm) and the formulae of ions formed during fragmentation to be determined. The main ions were recorded at m/z = 135.0440, 290.9876 and 305.9981. Structures of the obtained ions were elucidated in the tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) experiments by comparing them to mass spectra of previously detected derivatives of phenethylamine. CONCLUSIONS The performed study indicated the potential for using LC/QTOFMS method to identify new designer drugs. This technique can be used supplementary to standard GC/MS. Prior knowledge of the fragmentation mechanisms of phenethylamines allowed to predict the mass spectra of the novel substance--25I-NBMD.
Review: Clinical Management of Helicobacter pylori Infection in China

Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) infection has been associated with gastric disorders. The situation of H. pylori infection in China—where a high prevalence of H. pylori infection, a high incidence of gastric cancer, and widespread resistance to clarithromycin, metronidazole, and levofloxacin exist—is quite different from that in Western countries. In order for Chinese clinicians to better manage H. pylori infection, a Chinese Study Group on H. pylori published four consensus reports regarding the management of H. pylori infection in China between 1999 and 2012. The eradication rate with standard triple therapy was <80% in most areas of China. Bismuth is available in China, and bismuth‐containing quadruple therapy has been shown to produce a high eradication rate; thus, bismuth quadruple therapy could be recommended both as an initial and as a rescue therapy in China. There is no advantage of sequential therapy over triple therapy in Chinese patients, but the efficacy of concomitant therapy must be studied further. This review introduces the epidemiology, diagnosis, indicators, and therapies for the eradication of H. pylori in China in recent years.
Region-based Vessel Segmentation Using Level Set Framework

This paper presents a novel region-based snake method for vessel segmentation. According to geometric shape analysis of the vessel structure with different scale, an efficient statistical estimation of vessel branches is introduced into the energy objective function, which applies not only the vessel intensity information, but also geometric information of line-like structure in the image. The defined energy function is minimized using the gradient descent method and a new region-based speed function is obtained, which is more accurate to the vessel structure and not sensitive to the initial condition. The narrow band algorithm in the level set framework implements the proposed method, the solution of which is steady, The segmentation experiments are shown on several images. Compared with other geometric active contour models, the proposed method is more efficient and robust.
Distinctive p53 and mdm2 Immunohistochemical Expression Profiles Suggest Different Pathogenetic Pathways in Poorly Differentiated Endometrial Carcinoma

SummaryEndometrial serous carcinoma (ESC) and FIGO (International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics) grade 3 endometrioid adenocarcinoma (EC) are high-grade endometrial tumors that have different clinical and morphologic attributes. Alteration of p53 tumor suppressor protein function has been implicated in the pathogenesis of both tumors, although the mechanisms may differ. We sought to investigate this difference by comparing immunohistochemical expression of p53 and mdm2. p53 immunoreactivity often correlates with gene mutation, whereas increased mdm2 expression is linked to complex formation with wild-type p53 resulting in its inactivation. Twenty cases of ESC and 21 cases of EC were evaluated and an immunoreactivity score (IRS) was assigned using both the percentage of cells stained and the intensity of staining. The overall IRSs were significantly different in ESCs versus ECs for both p53 and mdm2 (p <0.001 and p <0.01, respectively). Strong mean immunoreactivity for p53 was detected in 15 (75%) ESCs as compared to only weak mean immunoreactivity in 17 (81%) ECs. Conversely, for mdm2 expression, 17 (81%) ECs had moderate mean immunoreactivity whereas 9 (45%) ESCs showed only weak mean immunoreactivity. mdm2 expression more closely correlated with p53 expression in ECs than in ESCs. In ECs, mdm2 was detected in 16 of 17 (94%) p53-positive tumors but in only 1 of 3 (33%) p53-negative tumors (p <0.025). In ESCs, mdm2 was detected in 9 of 15 (60%) p53-positive tumors but in none of the 5 p53-negative tumors (p <0.10). Overall, our results demonstrate an inverse relationship between the expression of p53 and mdm2 in ESC versus high-grade EC. Specifically, strong p53 immunoreactivity is associated with weak mdm2 expression in ESC and weak p53 expression is associated with moderate mdm2 expression in EC. These results suggest different pathogenetic pathways resulting in loss of normal p53 function in these two tumors: by p53 gene mutation (strong p53 overexpression) in ESCs, or by mdm2 complex formation and inactivation of p53 in high-grade ECs.
Uniform Complementary Resistive Switching in Tantalum Oxide Using Current Sweeps

Tantalum oxide (TaOx) is an advantageous material system to realize complementary resistive switches, but the ON-window starts to shrink after a few cycles in the voltage sweep mode. A power analysis reveals the presence of power boosts during conventional voltage sweeps in the nonswitching part cell. This power stress is significantly reduced by the use of current sweeps with voltage compliance, leading to very reproducible switching. The endurance is raised to >; 30000 cycles.
Recognising and retrieving the meaning of Thirukkural from speech utterances

Tamil is one of the oldest languages of the world with a rich collection of literature. The state of Tamil Nadu in India and Sri Lanka have vast populations of indigenous Tamil speakers. The Thirukkural is a classical Tamil Sangam Literature, penned by the famous Tamil poet, Thiruvalluvar. Kural is a very short Tamil Poetic form consisting of two lines. Thirukkural contains many important messages, speaking about the moral and ethical values to be followed by everyone. Up to now, speech Recognition has not been applied to this literature. This paper proposes a system which will recognize and retrieve the meaning of Thirukkural from speech utterances. This is achieved by extracting the MFCC feature vectors from the input speech (kural) and building the acoustic models by using Gaussian Mixture Model(GMM). This speaker independent system aims to convert the input speech Thirukkural into text and display the meaning in Tamil along with the chapter number, name and kural number. The system will also synthesize the meaning of the Thirukkural(text to speech). This will be useful to students and visually challenged people to learn Thirukkural in an interactive way. This will be a great help in encouraging more people to take an interest in and learn the Thirukkural. Experiments were conducted by collecting the corpus from 25 people (2000 kural samples) for one chapter of Thirukkural named “Seynandri Aridhal”. The performance of the system was evaluated by building models for different mixture components and retrieving the meaning. It was found to give 100 % accurate results for 128 mixture component models.
All-Optical Low-Power 2 $\,\times\,$2 Cross/Bar Switch With a Single Semiconductor Optical Amplifier

An all-optical 2 × 2 cross/bar switch is demonstrated exploiting nonlinear polarization rotation in a single semiconductor optical amplifier. The proposed architecture allows operation with packets at the same input wavelengths and does not require high-speed clock control pump signals. Bit-error-rate measurements at the switch output ports for both cross/bar configurations and for both cases of one and two packet signals connected to the input ports are performed. A maximum of 2.3 dB of power penalty was observed in the worst case. The switching energy was as low as about 400 fJ per bit at 10 Gb/s.
A 12.7dBm IIP3, 1.34dB NF, 4.9GHz–5.9GHz 802.11a/n LNA in 0.13 µm PD-SOI CMOS with Body-Contacted transistor

This paper presents a fully integrated 802.11a/n LNA. Unlike published SOI LNAs, Body-Contacted transistor has been chosen for its superior linearity performance. Traditional drawback of Body-Contacted transistor is Gate to Body parasitic capacitance impacting the NF; it has been minimized through optimized layout. The paper highlights Body-Contact interest before going through LNA optimization, including transistor sizing, high Q inductors implementation and layout. The LNA is processed in STMicroelectronics 0.13-μm partially-depleted silicon-on-insulator (PD-SOI) CMOS with 1.2V supply voltage. The LNA provides 12.7dBm IIP3 high linearity, for a 9dB gain, 1.34dB NF for 9.6mW power consumption.
Rhizodegradation of Hydrocarbon from Oily Sludge

Rhizoremediation involves the use of plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) to remove organic pollutants from terrestrial environment. The main objective of this study was to evaluate the efficiency of rhizoremediation through inoculation of hydrocarbon degrading bacterial strains with and without nutrients in the rhizosphere sporadically become contaminated with oily sludge. Bacterial strains viz. Bacillus cereus (Acc KF859972), Bacillus altitudinis (Acc KF859970), comamonas (Acc KF859971) and Stenotrophomonas maltophilia (Acc KF859973) were isolated from various oily waste pits of oil fields. Autoclaved soil was treated with oily sludge at 7:3 ratio and Alfalfa plant was inoculated with individual plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) with and without diammonium phosphate and ammonium nitrate. The different saturates and total hydrocarbon was extracted by Soxhelt extraction and was analyzed by GC-FID at 0, 5 and 10 d of incubation. The inoculation 30% sludge with B. altitudinis accelerated the rate of degradation of n-alkanes and some methyl branched than un-inoculated soils. Oily sludge inoculated with B. altitudinis indicated that more than 80% of hydrocarbons were degraded at day 5 of incubation. No further degradation was observed till the end of the incubation period. B. altitudinis is capable of degrading straight chain hydrocarbons rapidly than any other strains. Alfalfa is a N-symbiotic plant and increased nutrient content under the rhizosphere promote degradation of n-alkanes. All other bacterial strains also showed significant interaction with alfalfa for the biodegradation of oily sludge but the rate of degradation remained slow than with B. altitudinis. Inoculation with B. altitudinis accelerated the rehabilitation process and within 5 days the rehabilitation occurs.
The effect of advance information about the sequence of a to-be-signaled motor response on corticospinal excitability during the foreperiod

We investigated the effect of advance information about the sequence of a to-be-signaled motor response on corticospinal excitability during the foreperiod in healthy humans. Advance information about the sequence of a to-be-signaled motor response was provided by a precue signal 600 ms before a response signal during a warned choice reaction task. The precue signal indicated the sequence of one of three to-be-signaled motor responses: simple, repetitive, or sequential motor responses. The amplitude of the motor-evoked potential (MEP) decreased significantly 100 ms before the response signal in both the first dorsal interosseous (FDI) and abductor pollicis brevis (APB) muscles, but a significant decrease was present only in the APB muscle 300 ms before the response signal. The decrease in the MEP amplitude 100 ms before the response signal induced by the precue signal indicating the repetitive motor response was significantly smaller than that induced by the precue signal indicating the simple or sequential motor response in the FDI muscle, and was significantly smaller than that induced by the precue signal indicating the sequential motor response in the APB muscle. The decrease in corticospinal excitability in the middle foreperiod is larger when the advance information about a to-be-signaled motor response is unrelated to the muscle tested, and the decrease in the late foreperiod is affected by advance information about the sequence of a to-be-signaled motor response.
Trophinin and tastin, a novel cell adhesion molecule complex with potential involvement in embryo implantation.

Two human epithelial cell lines, trophoblastic teratocarcinoma HT-H and endometrial adenocarcinoma SNG-M cells, adhere to each other at their respective apical cell surfaces in a divalent cation-independent manner. Two novel molecules responsible for the adhesion between these two cell types were identified by expression cDNA cloning. One, named trophinin, is an intrinsic membrane protein and mediates homophilic self-binding. Another, named tastin, is a cytoplasmic protein and is necessary for trophinin to function as a cell adhesion molecule. Trophinin and tastin appear to be associated with the cytoskeleton in HT-H and SNG-M cells. These molecules are normally not expressed in various types of human cells in tissues, with the exception of macrophages. Strong expression of these molecules was detected in the trophectoderm surface of monkey blastocyst. These molecules are also expressed in human endometrial surface epithelium on day 16/17 at the early secretory phase of human endometrium, the time consistent with that expected for the "implantation window. "
A comparison between several Software Defined Networking controllers

The networking industry faces nowadays with the emergence of a somewhat revolutionary paradigm that is intended to rethink network architectures, with the intention to mitigate the limitations that appeared in the traditional networks: Software Defined Networking (SDN). This paper illustrates differences between some SDN controllers, which represent the “brains” of the network. POX, Ryu, ONOS and OpenDaylight are the SDN controllers for which a comparison between their performances is made, using the mininet simulation environment.
Integrating Sensor Networks for Energy Monitoring with Service-Oriented Architectures

More accurate predictions of energy consumption are a strong motivator for utility providers to deploy a smart grid infrastructure. However, measurements which only reflect the consumption of a household lose the details associated with the behaviour of individual devices. Finding a flexible and efficient way to process these readings is essential. Using standard application techniques to integrate device-oriented sensor networks and data-oriented applications is a serious challenge due to the architectural gap between the different approaches. Additionally, this device-level information should be shared with the end-users in a trusted manner to increase their energy awareness. We propose a novel platform for the smart grid which enables the seamless integration of sensor networks with a service-oriented architecture approach. The platform hides the device-specific details from the applications and transforms data into a device-independent format. Specifically, we present an in-depth description of the architecture of our platform and a full implementation and evaluation of it in a live residential energy management deployment.
DNA Methylation Dynamics and Cocaine in the Brain: Progress and Prospects

Cytosine modifications, including DNA methylation, are stable epigenetic marks that may translate environmental change into transcriptional regulation. Research has begun to investigate DNA methylation dynamics in relation to cocaine use disorders. Specifically, DNA methylation machinery, including methyltransferases and binding proteins, are dysregulated in brain reward pathways after chronic cocaine exposure. In addition, numerous methylome-wide and candidate promoter studies have identified differential methylation, at the nucleotide level, in rodent models of cocaine abuse and drug seeking behavior. This review highlights the current progress in the field of cocaine-related methylation, and offers considerations for future research.