Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mesenteric ischemia, high altitude and Hill's criteria.

Vol. 11, January-March, 2012 Annals of African Medicine Cite this article as: Al-Shraim MM, Zafer MH, Rahman GA. Acute occlusive mesenteric ischemia in high altitude of southwestern region of Saudi Arabia. Ann Afr Med 2012;11: 5-10. Source of Support: Nil, Conflict of Interest: None declared. due to extended stay at extreme altitude. J Gastroenterol Hepatol 2005;20:777-83. 18. Batellier J, Kieny R. Superior mesenteric artery embolism: Eighty-two cases. Ann Vasc Surg 1990;4:112-6. 19. Edwards MS, Cherr GS, Craven TE, Olsen AW, Plonk GW, Geary RL, et al. Acute occlusive mesenteric ischemia: Surgical management and outcomes. Ann Vasc Surg 2003;17:72-9. 20. Lock G. Acute mesenteric ischemia: Classification, evaluation and therapy. Acta Gastroenterol Belg 2002;65:220-5. 21. Tsai CJ, Kuo YC, Chen PC, Wu CS. The spectrum of acute intestinal vascular failure: a collective review of 43 cases in Taiwan. Br J Clin Pract 1990;44:603-8. 22. Berland T, Oldenburg WA. Acute mesenteric ischemia. Curr Gastroenterol Rep 2008;10:341-6. 23. Derikx JP, Matthijsen RA, de Bruine AP, van Bijnen AA, Heineman E, van Dam RM, et al. Rapid reversal of human intestinal ischemia-reperfusion induced damage by shedding of injured enterocytes and reepithelialisation. PLoS One 2008;3:e3428. 24. Klempnauer J, Grothues F, Bektas H, Pichlmayr R. Results of portal thrombectomy and splanchnic thrombolysis for the surgical management of acute mesentericoportal thrombosis. Br J Surg 1997;84:129-32. 25. Sze DY, O’Sullivan GJ, Johnson DL, Dake MD. Mesenteric and portal venous thrombosis treated by transjugular mechanical thrombolysis. AJR Am J Roentgenol 2000;175:732-4. 26. Poplausky MR, Kaufman JA, Geller SC, Waltman AC. Mesenteric venous thrombosis treated with urokinase via the superior mesenteric artery. Gastroenterology 1996;110:1633-5. 27. Thompson JS, DiBaise JK, Iyer KR, Yeats M, Sudan DL. Post-operative short bowel syndrome. J Am Coll Surg 2005;201:85-9. 28. Warshauer DM, Lee JK, Mauro MA, White GC 2nd. Superior mesenteric vein thrombosis with radiologically occult cause: A retrospective study of 43 cases. AJR Am J Roentgenol 2001;177:837-41. Al-Shraim, et al.: Acute mesenteric ischaemia, high-altitude, Southwestern Saudi Arabia
The Efficiency of Intravenous Theophylline on the Headache Which Occurs After Spinal Anesthesia

Background : Headache which occurs after spinal anesthesia is the most frequent complication (30 - 40%). In our study, we studied the efficiency of intravenous theophylline application on the patients who came with after spinal anesthesia headache (ASAH). Methods : Sixty patients were included in this study. The patients were divided into three groups. The first group was gi ven; intravenous (iv)200 mg theophylline + 1000 ml Dextrose Linger lactate (DRL) with in half hour, the 2nd, oral 100 mgcaffeine + 500 mg paracetomol + 1000 ml DRL and the 3rd, oral and iv placebo with 1000 ml DRL within half hour. These patients were asked to degree the pain before the medicine was given and one hour after it was given using The Visual Pain Scala (VPS). Results : In the first group, statistically significant difference was detected in the VPS results before and after the theophylline infusion (P 0.001). While the average VPS result was (7.34 ± 2.15) before, and (2.2 ± 2.04) after the infusion. In the second and third group, no statistically significant difference was detected in VPS (P > 0.1). Conclusion : The reason for the pain is the leak of the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) from where the injection is given and the fall of CSF pressure. The agents like theophylline which causes vasoconstriction in brain veins help get over the headache. Our results tend to show that theophylline infusion after spinal anesthesia is a method which is efficient, fast and does minimal harm during the headache therapy. doi:10.4021/jnr71e
Krabbe's Disease: Clinical Presentation of Neurological Variants

Neurological variants in clinical presentation of Krabbe's disease, the infantile and the late-onset (late infantile-juvenile) types are reviewed. The nosology of the infantile type is discussed on the basis of experiences from eighty Swedish cases in 1953-82 and a penetration of the literature. The classical irritative-hypertonic presentation with onset at three to five months of age is concluded to be the very predominant one (greater than 90%). Neonatal failure-to-thrive, infantile spasms, hemiplegic and prolonged floppy infant presentations are much more rare variants. The latter is believed to constitute a nosologic entity of its own, possibly more connected to the heterogeneous late-onset type (greater than or equal to eighteen months at onset), not observed in Sweden so far. Twenty-four late-onset cases from the literature and one personal Norwegian case are surveyed. It is concluded that the classical infantile type and the late-onset type (types) are different disease entities.
The relationship between prior night's sleep and measures of infant imitation.

We examined whether sleep quality during the night and naps during the day preceding a learning event are related to memory encoding in human infants. Twenty-four 6- and twenty-four 12-month-old infants' natural sleeping behavior was monitored for 24 hr using actigraphy. After the recording period, encoding was assessed using an imitation paradigm. In an initial baseline phase, infants were allowed to interact with the stimulus to assess spontaneous production of any target actions. Infants then watched an experimenter demonstrate a sequence of three target actions and were immediately given the opportunity to reproduce the demonstrated target actions to assess memory encoding. Analyses revealed significant correlations between nighttime sleep quality variables (sleep efficiency, sleep fragmentation) and immediate imitation in 6-month-olds, but not in 12-month-olds. High sleep quality in the preceding night was thus positively associated with next day's memory encoding in 6-month-old infants.
EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT OF THE PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL PROCESS IN LEBANON : AN EXPLORATORY STUDY

Performance appraisal has increasingly become part of a more strategic approach to integrating HR activities and business policies and may now be seen as a generic term covering a variety of activities through which organizations seek to assess employees and develop their competence, enhance performance and distribute rewards (Fletcher, 2001). Thus, both practice and research have moved away from a narrow focus on psychometric and evaluation issues to developmental performance appraisal (e.g., Fletcher, 2001; Lefkowitz, 2000; Levy and Williams, 2004; Waal, 2003), which may be defined as any effort concerned with enriching attitudes, experiences, and skills that improves the effectiveness of employees (Boswell and Boudreau, 2002). The purpose of this study was to examine the performance appraisal system in the Lebanese firms. Twelve in-depth personal interviews with Human Resource Managers in Lebanese firms were used in order to answer the following questions: What are the characteristics of the performance appraisal process used in Lebanese firms? What are the purposes of the performance appraisal systems in Lebanese firms? What are the problems produced by the performance appraisal systems in Lebanese firms? What are the different areas to be improved in the appraisal systems?
Video Retrieval System for Bridging the Semantic Gap

We propose a video ontology system to overcome semantic gap in video retrieval. The proposed video ontology is aimed at bridging of the gap between the semantic nature of user queries and raw video contents. Also, results of semantic retrieval shows not only the concept of topic keyword but also a sub-concept of the topic keyword using semantic query extension. Through this process, recall is likely to provide high accuracy results in our method. The experiments compared with keyframe-based indexing have demonstrated that this proposed scene-based indexing presents better results in several kinds of videos.
Mild Asthmatics Benefit from Music Therapy

Objective. The aim of the study was to evaluate the effectiveness of pulmonary rehabilitation with music therapy in patients with asthma. Methods. Seventy-six selected inpatients (54 women and 22 men; mean age = 56.4 years; SD = 11.8) with stable asthma underwent pulmonary rehabilitation in two groups: standard versus music therapy. Results. After the intervention, an increase in analyzed spirometric values (forced expiratory volume at the first second (FEV1), FEV1 as a percentage of vital capacity (FEV1 % FVC), forced expiratory flow at 25%, 50%, and 75% of vital capacity (FEF25, FEF50, and FEF75, respectively), and peak expiratory flow) was observed in both the groups (p < .05) but without any intergroup differences (p > .05). A greater increase of mean FEV1 % FVC, FEF50, and FEF75 values was observed only in the patients with mild asthma from the music therapy group (p < .05). In both the groups, a dyspnea reduction was noted (p < .001). However, it was influenced neither by the type of rehabilitation nor by the gender (p > .05), but the interaction of these variables was significant (p = .044). A dyspnea reduction was observed in women in both the groups (p < .001) and in men in the music therapy group only (p = .001). A change in the value of anxiety (6.43, SD = 7.73) on the 10th day compared with the first day of the study was noticed (p < .001). However, this change was not influenced by the type of rehabilitation, gender, or a combination of these two variables (p > .05). Conclusion. Music therapy improves the respiratory function in patients with mild asthma and reduces dyspnea mainly in men with asthma.
Effectiveness of nutrition education, iron supplementation or both on iron status in children.

OBJECTIVE A community-based, randomized trial was designed to compare the effect of nutrition education and/or iron supplementation (weekly) on iron status of children in an urban slum in Delhi. METHODS Four hundred and fifty one children, 9-36 months of age and their caretakers (mothers), assigned to one of the following groups were included in the cohort. Group 1, nutrition education. Group 2, supplementation (with 20 mg elemental iron). Group 3, nutrition education with supplementation (with 20 mg elemental iron) and Group 4, control given placebo. The intervention program was of four months duration, with a treatment phase of 8 wk followed by 8 wk of no treatment. RESULTS Post intervention, at 8 wk and at 16 wk, the hemoglobin change in the nutrition education, supplementation, nutrition education with supplementation and control groups was 2.9, 1.9, 3.8 and -5.9%, respectively and 2.1, -1.9, 0 and -9.3%, respectively (as compared to initial values). There was no significant effect of any of the intervention at 8 weeks. At 16 wk, there was significant positive effect of nutrition education group (p less than 0.05). The percent change in serum ferritin value at 16 wk in the nutrition education, supplementation, nutrition education with supplementation and control groups was 5.7, -2.3, -3.4 and -40%, respectively. Serum ferritin values were significantly higher for the nutrition education group (p < 0.001) as compared to the control. At 16 wk, the nutrition education group mothers showed significantly higher nutrition knowledge and the dietary iron intake of children was significantly higher than their control group counterparts (p < 0.0001). CONCLUSION The study suggests that nutrition education did have a positive effect on the iron status possibly by improving the dietary iron intake.
A RESTful and semantic framework for data integration

Companies have to deal with huge amounts of heterogeneous information, usually stored in distributed datasets that make use of different data schemas. This topic is especially crucial for enterprises that deal with new and different kinds of business data as new services are provided; they need to be able to dynamically add new datasets with new schemas to their information systems. However, even though research efforts have been applied to deal with this integration problem, there is still a lack of practical approaches ready to be implemented for industrial cases. We present a web‐based architecture and system built upon ontologies and other semantic web techniques to cope with federation of business data in real time. The scenario used to demonstrate the utility of the architecture is composed of actual data of a telecom company. Results show that our solution is more suitable, efficient and practical than other works. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Optimal software maintenance policy considering unavailable time

With the enhancement of hardware and software engineering, the effectiveness and correctness of software is less and less doubted and customers are more aware about whether software services are available or not when needed. Software maintenance is one of the main reasons that make software unavailable and it is often very expensive to perform maintenance tasks. Common approaches of studying software maintenance are to consider it as a static by-product of software operation and only the maintenance cost is covered. In this paper, software maintenance policies are studied with the consideration of unavailable service time. A non-homogeneous continuous Markov chain is adopted for modeling the software operation and maintenance process, and the cost of software unavailability that is brought in by software maintenance is investigated and analyzed for searching the optimal maintenance policy, which aims at minimizing the average maintenance time cost. The optimality of our proposed policy is shown and checked by numerical examples with discussions of its possible application perspectives. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
A context-aware matching system to improve user-perceived quality

Mobile users currently use a wide range of applications on their mobile devices due to the prevalence and growth of heterogeneous wireless network technologies. However, it is not easy for mobile users to run any application on any device without there being a negative impact in the quality of the application since different applications, content, networks and devices each have varying properties. Such variety can result in a mismatch between the application and the mobile device, and as a result, the application quality cannot be guaranteed for each user. To solve this problem, a context-aware matching system is proposed to improve user-perceived quality in heterogeneous wireless networks. The proposed system allows for applications to be easily used on a suitable mobile device by optimally matching an application to the given mobile device and controlling the quality of the content in the media application on the basis of contextual information. The results of the implementation show that the proposed context-aware matching system can match applications well to the recommended mobile devices. In addition, the proposed system significantly improves the user-perceived quality of applications by adaptively transmitting the corresponding media content.
Long term medical treatment of stable coronary disease

Chronic stable angina is a common manifestation of cardiovascular disease and represents a frequent problem encountered for medical practitioners. While percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) is routinely performed in patients with coronary artery disease (CAD), medical treatment remains the cornerstone for long term treatment. The goals of medical treatment in patients with established CAD are to: (1) reduce the frequency and severity of angina, thereby improving the quality of life; (2) reduce future cardiovascular events; and (3) improve survival. This review will specifically focus on the long term medical management of patients with chronic stable angina.
Molecular mechanics modeling of deformation and failure of super carbon nanotube networks

A generalized molecular structure mechanics (MSM) model is proposed to investigate the deformation and failure behaviors of super carbon nanotubes (SCNTs) within the quasi-static approximation. The failure mechanism of the SCNTs with Y- and X-type junctions was examined by combining a failure criterion for the breakage of the carbon–carbon bonds in the CNT networks. The carbon–carbon bonds are modeled as elastic bars with equivalent stiffness and break as their elongation ratio reaches only 19%, which means that the broken carbon–carbon bonds are ineffective in terms of the Morse potential function. It is shown that the MSM method, combined with the failure criterion of the carbon–carbon bonds, is a powerful approach to simulate the deformation and failure of both Y junctions and X junctions with different chiralities and sizes. The deformation and failure modes of these junctions which involve rotation, bending and stretching of the CNT arms are predicted using the present model and the effects of various parameters of the junctions on their mechanical behaviors are discussed.
Paleopathological and biomolecular study of tuberculosis in a medieval skeletal collection from England.

Nine human skeletons of medieval date from a rural English burial site show signs of skeletal tuberculosis. They were subject to polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assays aimed at detecting traces of DNA from infecting mycobacteria, with the purpose both of confirming the paleopathological diagnosis of tuberculosis and determining in individual cases whether disease was due to M. tuberculosis or M. bovis. In all nine cases, evidence for M. tuberculosis complex DNA was found, and in all instances it appeared that disease was due to M. tuberculosis rather than M. bovis. The significance of the findings for understanding tuberculous infection in rural agrarian communities in medieval England is discussed.
Coagulation, fibrinolysis, and recanalization after acute deep venous thrombosis.

OBJECTIVE Recanalization is common after acute deep venous thrombosis, but the factors that contribute to its variable extent are unknown. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between recanalization and plasma markers of coagulation and fibrinolysis. METHODS Subjects with an ultrasound-confirmed deep venous thrombosis had prothrombin fragment 1+2 (F 1+2), tissue plasminogen activator (t-PA) activity, plasminogen activator inhibitor (PAI-1) activity, and t-PA antigen levels determined before anticoagulation therapy. Ultrasound and plasma studies were repeated at 14 days, 1 month, and every 3 months for 1 year. RESULTS Among 71 enrolled subjects, F 1+2 levels normalized within 14 days. The mean t-PA activity was within the normal range at all follow-up intervals. However, the mean t-PA antigen (10.7 plus minus 10.5 to 13.6 plus minus 13.5 ng/mL; P =.04) and PAI-1 (9.0 plus minus 8.1 to 13.2 plus minus 17.3 U/mL; P =.05) levels increased between the time of presentation and day 14. The mean reduction in thrombus score among 44 patients who completed 9 months of follow-up was 60.9% (plus minus 42.1%). Percent recanalization was directly associated with initial t-PA activity levels (R =.4; P =.006) and inversely related to F 1+2 (R = minus sign. 5; P =.004), t-PA antigen (R = minus sign.5, P =.002), and PAI-1 (r = minus sign. 5, P =.001) levels. However, only initial F 1+2 (P =.0009) and t-PA antigen (P =.004) levels were independent predictors of the degree of recanalization. CONCLUSION Although the mechanisms by which the venous lumen is restored are still being elucidated, recanalization is inversely related to levels of activated coagulation (F 1+2) and fibrinolytic inhibition (t-PA antigen) at the time of presentation.
An Interference-Free Graph Based TDMA Scheduling Protocol for Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks

Vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs), as an important component of intelligent transportation systems (ITS), have been attracting more and more research interests for their various promising applications. Although various MAC protocols have been proposed, efficient medium access remains a significant challenge in VANETs, especially in improving the network throughput in heavy traffic vehicular networks. In this paper, we propose an interference-free graph based time-division multiple access (IG-TDMA) protocol for VANETs. In the proposed protocol, roadside units (RSUs), as centralized controllers, collect the information from active vehicles and construct the interference-free graph based on the vehicle locations and a preset interference-free threshold. We further propose a communication link selection algorithm, which can help the RSUs make efficient and effective scheduling decisions with high spatial reuse efficiency and low computational complexity. Simulations verify that the proposed IG-TDMA protocol can improve the network performance significantly compared with the IEEE 802.11p CSMA/CA based EDCA scheme and traditional TDMA protocol.
New sparse representation methods; application to image compression and indexing. (Nouvelles méthodes de représentations parcimonieuses ; application à la compression et l'indexation d'images)

A new dictionary structure is introduced called an Iteration-Tuned Dictionary (ITD). ITDs are layered structures containing a set of candidate dictionaries in each layer. ITD-based iterative pursuit decompositions are carried out using, at each iteration i, one of the candidates from the i-th layer. A general ITD framework is proposed as well as a tree-structured variant called the Tree-Structured Iteration-Tuned Dictionary (TSITD) and a constrained tree-structured variant called the Iteration-Tuned and Aligned Dictionary (ITAD). These structures are shown to outperform various state-of-the-art reference algorithms in their ability to approximate a dataset sparsely, and in the applications of image denoising and image compression. The ITAD scheme, in particular, is used to develop an image codec that outperforms JPEG2000. An approximate vector search method is also introduced which uses sparse representations to carry out low-complexity approximate nearest-neighbor image searches. The approach addresses the related instability of the sparse support when the image patch is subject to weak affine transformations. In developing this new approach, a new data conditioning scheme is introduced that succeeds in better distributing data on the unit sphere while preserving relative angles. It is shown that this new approach improves the complexity/performance tradeoff of approximate searches based on sparse representations.