Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Scapular body fractures—should we be fixing more of these?

The question of whether we should be fixing more scapular body fractures originates from the historical preference for nonoperative management of these fractures. Recently, there has been a renewed interest in operative management due to the recognition that scapular malunion can cause significant disability. While the treatment pendulum has shifted away from benign neglect, finding the right balance of surgical aggression remains controversial. In general, the majority of scapula fractures can successfully be treated nonoperatively with excellent functional results. However, numerous case studies exist demonstrating poor outcomes of scapular body or neck fractures with increased deformity. The literature suggests that a glenopolar angle (GPA) less than 20 degrees can lead to a significant decrease in shoulder function. Additionally, retrospective studies using lateral border offset (LBO) greater than >2 cm and angulation >45 degrees as a surgical indication demonstrate functional outcomes with near normal strength and range of motion and low complication rates. While numerous cut-offs for surgical indications have been recommended, all indications are considered relative and treatment should be individualized based on patient characteristics
Dynamic Regulation of β-Adrenergic Receptors by Endothelin-1 in Smooth-Muscle Cells

Elevated endothelin-1 (ET-1) levels are found in atherosclerosis, myocardial ischemia, and heart failure, and are correlated with increased mortality rates. Contrary to expectations, elevations of endogenous ET-I levels in transgenic mice are not associated with increases in arterial blood pressure or with vasospasm, although these effects can be observed after i.v. ET-I administration. The aim of this study was to determine the regulatory effects of ET-1 on the expression of vasodilator β-adrenergic receptors and their ability to activate adenylyl cyclase. Smooth-muscle cells were incubated with ET-1 (10 -7 mol/L) for 3 days. The density of ET-I or β-adrenergic receptor binding sites was determined using a radioligand binding procedure. Adenylyl cyclase activity was measured to assess any functional changes in the β-adrenergic receptor density. ET-I incubation reduced ET-1 binding sites by 70%. In contrast, the β-adrenergic receptor density increased from 354 ± 35 to 538 ± 50 fmol/mg protein (p < 0.01; n = 7) after 3 days. ET-I increased β-adrenergic receptors dose-dependently. Incubation with ET-I for different periods of time showed an initial decrease of 30% after 6 h of ET-1 incubation. However, after 24 h ET-I induced an increase of β-adrenergic receptors. reaching a maximal amount after 48 h. An increased stimulation of β-adrenergic receptor-activated adenylyl cyclase was observed after 3-day ET-I incubation compared to controls. These data demonstrate that chronic ET receptor activation by ET-I results in a functionally significant increase in β-adrenergic receptor density and adenylyl cyclase activity.
Principles of Physiology of Lipid Digestion

The processing of dietary lipids can be distinguished in several sequential steps, including their emulsification, hydrolysis and micellization, before they are absorbed by the enterocytes. Emulsification of lipids starts in the stomach and is mediated by physical forces and favoured by the partial lipolysis of the dietary lipids due to the activity of gastric lipase. The process of lipid digestion continues in the duodenum where pancreatic triacylglycerol lipase (PTL) releases 50 to 70% of dietary fatty acids. Bile salts at low concentrations stimulate PTL activity, but higher concentrations inhibit PTL activity. Pancreatic triacylglycerol lipase activity is regulated by colipase, that interacts with bile salts and PTL and can release bile salt mediated PTL inhibition. Without colipase, PTL is unable to hydrolyse fatty acids from dietary triacylglycerols, resulting in fat malabsorption with severe consequences on bioavailability of dietary lipids and fat-soluble vitamins. Furthermore, carboxyl ester lipase, a pancreatic enzyme that is bile salt-stimulated and displays wide substrate reactivities, is involved in lipid digestion. The products of lipolysis are removed from the water-oil interface by incorporation into mixed micelles that are formed spontaneously by the interaction of bile salts. Monoacylglycerols and phospholipids enhance the ability of bile salts to form mixed micelles. Formation of mixed micelles is necessary to move the non-polar lipids across the unstirred water layer adjacent to the mucosal cells, thereby facilitating absorption.
Synergistic Interactions between Habitat Fragmentation and Fire in Evergreen Tropical Forests

Abstract: The growing prevalence of fragmentation and fire in tropical forests makes it imperative to quantify changes in these disturbances and to understand the ways in which they interact across the landscape. I used a multitemporal series of Landsat images to study the incidence and coincidence of fire and fragmentation in two areas of Pará state in the eastern Brazilian Amazon: Tailândia and Paragominase. In both areas, deforestation and forest fires were quantified for time series of 6–10 years. The Tailândia study area typifies a landscape with the herringbone pattern of government‐settled colonists, and the Paragominas area is dominated by large cattle ranches. In both areas, over 90% of the forests affected by fire were associated with forest edges. Although most burned forest occurred within 500 m of forest edges, some fires occurred in deep forest, several kilometers from any edge. The obvious synergism between forest fragmentation and fire poses serious risks to tropical ecosystems and has important implications for land management.
Dynamics of Emotional Intelligence and Empowerment: The Perspectives of Middle Managers

This study examines employee perspectives of leader behavior to better understand how these perspectives influence and shape employee work experiences. Creating empowering work environments in today’s workplace is an ongoing challenge for leaders and managers. Research has shown that leaders who work to build interpersonal relationships with workplace subordinates are using emotional intelligence (EI) to lead individuals to work more effectively, and thereby increase overall job satisfaction. We employed a qualitative descriptive design using in-depth interviews to elicit and explore managers’ perceptions of their leader’s behaviors and their own sense of empowerment in the workplace. We present the findings within two major categories: perception of leader’s behavior and feelings of empowerment. This study adds to the body of evidence that demonstrates how the use of leadership skills that focus on the EI construct is necessary to build relationships and empower employees, thus creating conditions for creativity in the workplace.
Forecasting fish distribution along stream networks: brown trout (Salmo trutta) in Europe

Species inhabiting fresh waters are severely affected by climate change and other anthropogenic stressors. Effective management and conservation plans require advances in the accuracy and reliability of species distribution forecasts. Here, we forecast distribution shifts of Salmo trutta based on environmental predictors and examine the effect of using different statistical techniques and varying geographical extents on the performance and extrapolation of the models obtained.
NF-κB Activation Mediates Doxorubicin-induced Cell Death in N-type Neuroblastoma Cells*

Neuroblastoma is the most common extracranial solid tumor of childhood. N-type neuroblastoma cells (represented by SH-SY5Y and IMR32 cell lines) are characterized by a neuronal phenotype. N-type cell lines are generally N-myc amplified, express the anti-apoptotic protein Bcl-2, and do not express caspase-8. The present study was designed to determine the mechanism by which N-type cells die in response to specific cytotoxic agents (such as cisplatin and doxorubicin) commonly used to treat this disease. We found that N-type cells were equally sensitive to cisplatin and doxorubicin. Yet death induced by cisplatin was inhibited by the nonselective caspase inhibitor z-Val-Ala-Asp-fluoromethylketone or the specific caspase-9 inhibitor N-acetyl-Leu-Glu-His-Asp-aldehyde, whereas in contrast, caspase inhibition did not prevent doxorubicin-induced death. Neither the reactive oxygen species nor the mitochondrial permeability transition appears to play an important role in this process. Doxorubicin induced NF-κB transcriptional activation in association with I-κBα degradation prior to loss of cell viability. Surprisingly, the antioxidant and NF-κB inhibitor pyrrolidine dithiocarbamate blocked doxorubicin-induced NF-κB transcriptional activation and provided profound protection against doxorubicin killing. Moreover, SH-SY5Y cells expressing a super-repressor form of I-κB were completely resistant to doxorubicin killing. Together these findings show that NF-κB activation mediates doxorubicin-induced cell death without evidence of caspase function and suggest that cisplatin and doxorubicin engage different death pathways to kill neuroblastoma cells.
Multisensor Tracking of Lane Boundaries based on Smart Sensor Fusion

Lane detection plays a crucial role in any autonomous driving system. Currently commercialized vehicles offer lane keep assist and lane departure warning via integrated smart cameras, deployed for road markings detection. These sensors alone, however, do not generally ensure adequate performance for higher autonomy levels. In this paper, a multi-sensor tracking approach for generic lane boundaries is proposed. This solution is based on well-established filtering techniques and supports a flexible clothoid spline representation. It relies on fine-tuned measurement models, tailored on collected data from both off-the-shelf and prototype smart sensors. The implementation takes into account real-time constraints and ADAS ECUs scarcity of resources. The result is finally validated against lane-level ground truth and experimental data acquisitions.
Surfactant effects on the dynamics of a thin liquid sheet

The dynamics of a free-surface slender two-dimensional stream (liquid sheet) issuing from a nozzle in the gravitational field in still air, under the effect of surface-active agents, are analysed experimentally. The particular test section geometry (the liquid is forced to assume a bidimensional form between two vertical guides and a horizontal plate placed at a certain variable distance from the nozzle exit section) employed in this study gives rise to various flow regimes depending on the governing parameters: liquid flow rate, sheet height, surface pressure, gravity. Two basic phenomena are observed: thinning of the sheet (with recirculating motion inside it) and sheet-threadlines transition. For a certain surfactant (bulk) concentration, there exists a minimum critical flow rate value for which the sheet is seen to thin starting at both of the sheet bottom corners. A ridge, usually referred to as a Reynolds ridge in the literature, separates the sheet from the thin-film regions. The thin films exhibit recirculating flows (caused by the onset of surfactant-induced surface-pressure-driven convection in the gravitational field) and extend to the entire rectangular interface as the flow rate is reduced. At zero flow rate the thinned sheet resembles a plane vertical soap film showing a recirculating cellular structure. These phenomena are linked to the presence of surface-active material adsorbed at the liquid-air interface and occur when the sheet height exceeds a critical value. Otherwise, at a critical flow rate value the liquid sheet breaks up into an array of (more or less regularly distributed) discrete threadlines (vertical jets), whose spacing depends on the surface tension of the test liquid.
The physiological responses of Nouelia insignis towards drought and low temperature

Climate change was increased the frequency and magnitude of drought events in southwest China, particularly in winter and spring. However, the effects of drought and low temperature on physiological characteristics of the endangered Nouelia insignis whose natural regeneration is poor are not clear. Seedlings subjected to each drought treatment (achievement by withholding irrigation for 0, 5 and 9 d, respectively) were randomly divided into three groups and treated at 25, 5 and -5 °C for 1.5 h, respectively. Leaf relative water content, effective quantum yield of PSII-Y(II), photochemical quenching coefficient (qp) and electron transport rate (ETR) decreased significantly and superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity increased significantly with the duration of withholding water. Pigment content, malondialdehyde (MDA) content, peroxidase (POD) activity and proline content increased significantly and maximum quantum yield of photosystem II (Fv/Fm) decreased significantly for seedlings subjected to severe drought. Y(II), qP and ETR decreased with the duration of withholding water for seedlings treated at 5 and -5°C. Fv/Fm, Y(II), qp and ETR decreased significantly, by 26.02%, 35.90%, 27.37% and 37.33%, respectively and MDA content increased significantly by 26.19% for seedlings subjected to 5°C. Fv/Fm of drought-stressed seedlings recovered to the original level after 2 d of recovery but that of freezing-treated seedlings did not recover which decreased with the duration of withholding water. In conclusion, photosynthetic activities and membrane of N. insignis were negatively affected by both severe drought and freezing temperature and the seedlings were more tolerant to drought than freezing temperature which might be due to the increased activities of antioxidant enzymes and accumulation of some osmolytes. Additionally, tolerance of N. insignis to low temperature was not enhanced by pretreatment of seedlings with drought and even diminished after being subjected to severe drought. Therefore, extreme drought and low temperature, particularly their combination, might be the important factors which limited natural regeneration of N. insignis.
Hybridization of Enhanced Orthogonal and Uncorrelated Locality Preserving Projection for Dimensionality Reduction: An HEOULPP Strategy

: A recent development of a linear dimension reduction (DR) algorithm that is often used in face recognition and other applications has been used to preserve the Locality preserving projection algorithm (LPP). However, in LPP the projection matrix is not orthogonal, so rendering and other apps are not easily reconstructed. Hybridization of Enhanced Orthogonal and Uncorrelated Locality Preserving Projection (HEOULPP) attempts to discover the subspace that best distinguishes distinct face classes by maximizing the gap and reducing the uncertainty within class. In the design of a similarity matrix, HEOULPP algorithm assumes both local data and label data, and needs statistically improved and orthogonal output-base vectors, in order to enhance the OLPP life grade extraction performance. We propose HEOULPP to minimize the locality in an orthogonal projection matrix and to maximize the globality. This investigation is conducted using three datasets, such as YALE face dataset, ORL face dataset, and AR face dataset. Our proposed HEOULPP techniques achieves higher facial recognition rate under three conditions such as occlusion by 70.6%, noise by 69.1% and original by 76.2% than the existing techniques. In addition, dimensionality also reduced in proposed HEOULPP method comparing with traditional methods, including PCA, LPP, OLPP, ULPP and FOLPP. Experimental findings indicated a stronger depiction of data and much greater accuracy in the suggested HEOULPP method.
Synchronization of senescence and desynchronization of flowering in Arabidopsis thaliana

Abstract In a recent publication, we proposed that adjusting lifespan in order to synchronize senescence is important for timing of reproduction, and we quantified the synchrony of reproductive timing relative to germination timing. Here, in a second sequential seeding experiment (SSE), the germination timing of Arabidopsis thaliana accessions was manipulated and plants were then grown under two different temperature regimes. Life stage traits of plants in each temperature regime were analysed and it was evaluated whether the cohorts were grouped according to age and/or environmental conditions. While flowering-related traits showed desynchrony among cohorts, striking synchrony in the timing of senescence among cohorts for each group was found. A quantitative trait locus (QTL) analysis using a genotyped population of ‘Cvi/Ler’ recombinant inbred lines (RILs) was then conducted. Novel and known loci were assigned to flowering and senescence timing. However, senescence synchrony resulted in low variation in senescence time and weak QTL detection for flowering termination. Overlapping flowering and senescence genes with loci affecting either of those traits were found and suggest a potential interdependency of reproductive traits.
Comparative 16S rDNA sequence analysis of some alkaliphilic bacilli and the establishment of a sixth rRNA group within the genus Bacillus

Comparative sequence analysis of the 16S rDNA of 14 alkaliphilic or alkalitolerant, Gram-positive, aerobic, endo-spore forming bacterial strains was performed. Bacillus alcalophilus DSM 485T and Bacillus cohnii DSM 6307T were included to represent the two validly described alkaliphiles assigned to the genus Bacillus. The majority of isolates (8 strains) clustered with B. alcalophilus DSM 485T forming a distinct phylogenetic group (rRNA group 6) within the radiation of the genus Bacillus and related taxa. Bacillus cohnii DSM 6307T and two of the isolates, DSM 8719 and DSM 8723, grouped with B. fastidiosus and B. megaterium and are allocated to rRNA group 1. The remaining two strains DSM 8720 and DSM 8721 show an equidistant relationship to both groups.
Cloud-based middleware for supporting batch and stream access over smart healthcare wearable device

In IoT-based smart healthcare services, the heterogeneity of connected wearable sensing devices open up a wide opportunity to develop various healthcare services. However, it also poses an interoperability challenge since each sensing device and application may have different communication mechanisms. Considering that challenge, web platform can be seen as a promising candidate for providing an interoperability layer as we can abstract various devices as single representation i.e. web resource. In this paper, we propose the design of middleware for enabling efficient web of things access over healthcare wearable devices. The proposed middleware consists of three components: gateway-to-cloud device, messaging service and data access interface. The gateway-to-cloud device has a role to perform low level sensor data collection from various wearable sensing device through bluetooth low energy (BLE) communication protocol. Collected data are then relayed to the cloud IoT platform using a lightweight MQTT messaging protocol. In order to provide device abstraction along with access to the stored data, the system offers two kind of interfaces: the Restful HTTP identified by unique universal resource locator (URL) for batch access and MQTT websocket interface identified by unique topic to accommodate access on sensing data in near real time stream manner.
Male Siamese Fighting Fish, Betta splendens, Increase Rather than Conceal Courtship Behavior when a Rival is Present

The impact of social environment on mating success is especially pronounced in species where both intraspecific and interspecific selection influence reproduction, such as the Siamese fighting fish. Males alter male–male interactions when either a male or female audience is present, but how males change their behavior toward a female when a rival male is present is unknown. This study addresses whether males alter their behavior toward a female in a way that would prevent a rival male from interrupting courtship. The behavior of male Siamese fighting fish toward a dummy female was examined under various degrees of visual cover, both in the presence and absence of a rival male, to investigate whether males use concealment provided by the structural environment to their advantage. While males did not use barriers to conceal courtship as hypothesized, males altered their behavior by increasing courtship and monitoring their nest when a rival was visible. This increase in courtship is in contrast to most studies on courtship in the presence of a rival that find a reduction in courtship behavior. Males spent more time opercular gill flaring when no barriers were present, suggesting that males may be trying to court the female and communicate to the rival simultaneously. There was also a trend for aggression toward the female and the rival to decrease as screen length increased. Thus, males compensate for the presence of a rival by adjusting their courtship and aggressive behaviors, which could have important implications for courtship success.
Synergistic Growth Stimulatory Effects of Mixed Culture Bacterial Inoculations on the Early Growth of Triticum aestivum Var Inqlab 91 under NaCl Stress.

Salt tolerant bacteria were used to assess their potential for stimulating the growth of Triticum aestivum var. Inqlab 91. Certified seeds of Triticum aestivum var. Inqlab 91 were inoculated with monocultures (ST-1, ST-2, ST-3, ST-4, rhizosphere bacteria; HT-1, HT-2, HT-3, histoplane bacteria) and different combinations of mixed cultures of bacteria. Inoculated and non-inoculated seeds were germinated and grown under NaCl stress (0, 100 mM NaCl) for 10 days. After that growth measurements (length and weight parameters) were taken and Na/K contents, soluble protein content, auxin content and enzyme activities (peroxidase and acid phosphatase) were determined. Generally, with the application of NaCl, reduction in germination and growth parameters, whereas increase in Na/K contents, auxins content, soluble protein content as well as enzymes activities were observed. Bacterial inoculations stimulated germination and growth, over non-inoculated respective treatments, especially under saline conditions. Mixed culture inoculation with rhizosphere bacteria (some combinations) and histoplane bacteria was more effective in stimulating seedling growth than monoculture inoculations at 100 mM NaCl. Bacterial inoculations also enhanced fresh weight per seedling, auxin, soluble protein and K contents of seedlings. Whereas decreases in dry weight accumulation, Na content and activity of enzymes, at 100 mM NaCl with bacterial inoculations were recorded. From these results improved growth of seedlings could be related with increased auxin content but decreased dry weight increment, Na content and enzyme activities.
The Effects of Board Structure on Corporate Performance: Evidence from East African Frontier Markets

Abstract The effectiveness of the well-known corporate governance practices may not be universal due to fundamental differences in the environments under which firms operate. By using hand-collected data from all the non-financial firms listed on the unexplored East African frontier markets (i.e., Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda), we examine the effect of board characteristics on the performance of firms. Our results show that board size has a negative and significant effect on firm performance. The presences of foreigners and civil servants on the board play positive roles on financial performance, where the agency and resource dependence theories apply. Further, we find that board members with higher education also contribute to firm performance. These findings still hold when we consider the 2008–2009 financial crisis period. Overall, we show that in a business climate where ownership is largely dominated by few shareholders, the conventional governance mechanisms do not work effectively.