Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Ski Boots Do Not Impair Standing Balance by Restricting Ankle-Joint Mobility

Objective: This study was undertaken in order to provide new insight into sensorimotor control of posture when wearing high-shaft (HS) boots as ski boots. Background: Previous studies into the effects of HS boots on postural control have produced controversial results. Some studies reported postural control impairments with ski boots in bipedal postural tasks due to ankle movement restrictions without quantifying the actual restrictive effect of these boots and specifying the adaptations of the postural control system. Method: Eighteen young healthy subjects took part in the experiment. Bilateral postural control was assessed on stable and unstable surfaces, while standing barefoot or wearing ski boots. Center of pressure (COP) parameters, ankle, knee, and hip joints movements were calculated and EMG activity from main postural muscles was recorded. Results: Ski boots did not restrict the amplitude of ankle angular movements and largely impacted COP parameters and EMG activity on stable ground. In conditions of mediolateral instability, COP data illustrated an enhanced postural control in the frontal plane when wearing ski boots. Conclusions: Ski boots do not affect bipedal postural balance by restricting the ankle angular motions but induce complex adaptations of the postural control system which combine factors of a mechanical, motor, and sensorial nature. They impede postural control mainly when standing on stable ground without producing similar deleterious effects on unstable surfaces. Application: Our results show that HS boots as ski boots can improve lateral balance on unstable surfaces, which can contribute to prevent fall risk and ankle sprain.
A Novel Algebraic Geometry Compiling Framework for Adiabatic Quantum Computations

Adiabatic Quantum Computing (AQC) is an attractive paradigm for solving hard integer polynomial optimization problems. Available hardware restricts the Hamiltonians to be of a structure that allows only pairwise interactions. This requires that the original optimization problem to be first converted -- from its polynomial form -- to a quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) problem, which we frame as a problem in algebraic geometry. Additionally, the hardware graph where such a QUBO-Hamiltonian needs to be embedded -- assigning variables of the problem to the qubits of the physical optimizer -- is not a complete graph, but rather one with limited connectivity. This "problem graph to hardware graph" embedding can also be framed as a problem of computing a Groebner basis of a certain specially constructed polynomial ideal. We develop a systematic computational approach to prepare a given polynomial optimization problem for AQC in three steps. The first step reduces an input polynomial optimization problem into a QUBO through the computation of the Groebner basis of a toric ideal generated from the monomials of the input objective function. The second step computes feasible embeddings. The third step computes the spectral gap of the adiabatic Hamiltonian associated to a given embedding. These steps are applicable well beyond the integer polynomial optimization problem. Our paper provides the first general purpose computational procedure that can be used directly as a $translator$ to solve polynomial integer optimization. Alternatively, it can be used as a test-bed (with small size problems) to help design efficient heuristic quantum compilers by studying various choices of reductions and embeddings in a systematic and comprehensive manner. An added benefit of our framework is in designing Ising architectures through the study of $\mathcal Y-$minor universal graphs.
No-Reference Measurement of the Integral Contrast of Complex Monochrome Images

The problem of measuring the integral contrast of complex monochrome images for quantitative assessment of their objective quality is considered. Various approaches to the no-reference measurement of the complete and incomplete integral contrast of a complex multi-element image are considered. A new histogram-based method for the no-reference measurement of the integral contrast of a complex image in automatic mode is proposed based on estimating the distribution of brightness at the boundaries of the objects and background and limiting the influence of objects with excessive contrast. A comparative analysis of the proposed and known histogram-based methods for the no-reference measurement of the complete and incomplete integral contrast of complex images to assess their objective quality is carried out.
Advances in the Treatment of Hemophilia: Implications for Laboratory Testing.

BACKGROUND Until recently, clinical laboratories have monitored hemophilia treatment by measuring coagulation factors before/after infusion of human-derived or recombinant factors. Substantial changes are expected in the near future based on new therapeutic approaches that have been or are being developed. CONTENT Hemophilia treatment includes replacement therapy with human-derived/recombinant factors or treatment with bypassing agents for patients without or with inhibitors, respectively. Accordingly, laboratory methods for monitoring include one-stage clotting or chromogenic assays meant to measure either factor VIII/IX or global coagulation tests to measure the effect of bypassing agents. Recently, modified long-acting coagulation factors have been introduced for which discrepant results may be expected when measurement is performed with one-stage clotting or chromogenic assays. Currently, novel drugs not based on coagulation factors are under development and are being tested in clinical studies. These drugs do require new methods and therefore laboratory evaluation of hemophilia will undergo dramatic changes in the near future. SUMMARY From the analysis of the current practice and literature, we draw the following conclusions: (a) Thrombin generation or thromboelastometry are the logical candidate assays to monitor bypassing agents. (b) Considerable differences are expected when measuring modified long-acting coagulation factors, depending on whether one-stage or chromogenic assays are used. Although no definitive conclusions can presently be drawn, chromogenic assays are probably more suitable than one-stage clotting. (c) Novel drugs not based on coagulation factors such as emicizumab, fitusiran, or concizumab that are entering the market do require alternative methods that are not yet well established.
Efficient decoding of block turbo codes

Block turbo codes (BTCs) under iterative decoding are product codes showing excellent performance with reasonable complexity, whose component codes are conventionally decoded in two stages. The Chase algorithm is employed in the first stage to make a list of candidate codewords from the received vector, while the extrinsic information for iterative decoding is generated in the second stage. In this paper, we propose an efficient decoding algorithm for BTCs. The proposed algorithm can avoid a number of unnecessary hard-decision decoding operations by imposing two conditions on the Chase algorithm. Also, it simply computes the extrinsic information for the decision codeword. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm has not only much lower computational complexity, but also a little better performance than the conventional decoding scheme based on the Chase algorithm. Furthermore, it can provide a trade-off between the performance and the computational complexity of BTCs by properly selecting a decoding parameter.
Investigating Random Linear Coding from a Pricing Perspective

In this paper, we study the implications of using a form of network coding known as Random Linear Coding (RLC) for unicast communications from an economic perspective by investigating a simple scenario, in which several network nodes, the users, download files from the Internet via another network node, the sender, and the receivers as users pay a certain price to the sender for this service. The mean packet delay for a transmission scheme with RLC is analyzed and applied into an optimal pricing model to characterize the optimal admission rate, price and revenue. The simulation results show that RLC achieves better performance in terms of both mean packet delay and revenue compared to the basic retransmission scheme.
Risky Alcohol Use: The Impact on Health Service Use

Objective: To examine health services use on the basis of alcohol consumption. Material and Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out on patients visiting the Primary Health Care (PHC) settings in Catalonia during 2011 and 2012; these patients had a history of alcohol consumption. Information about outpatient visits in the PHC setting, hospitalizations, specialists’ visits and emergency room visits for the year 2013 was obtained from 2 databases (the Information System for the Development of Research in PHC and the Catalan Health Surveillance System). Risky drinkers were defined as those who consumed more than 280 g per week for men or more than 170 g per week for women, or any amount of alcohol while being involved in a high risk work activity, or taking medication that significantly interferes with alcohol or when being pregnant. Binge drinkers (> 60 g in men or > 50 g in women in a short amount of time more than once a month) were also considered risky drinkers. Results: A total of 606,948 patients reported consuming alcohol (of which 10.5% were risky drinkers). Risky drinkers were more likely to be admitted to hospitals or emergency departments (range of ORs 1.08–1.18) compared to light drinkers. Male risky drinkers used fewer PHC services than male light drinkers (OR 0.89, 95% CI 0.87–0.92). In general, risky alcohol users used services more and had longer hospital stays. When stratifying by socioeconomic level of the residential area, we found that risky drinking failed significance, while current or past cigarette smoking was associated with higher healthcare use. Conclusions: Risky drinkers use more expensive services, such as hospitals and emergency rooms, but not PHC services, which may suggest that prevention strategies and alcohol interventions should also be implemented in those settings.
Hybrid Model For Text Classification

Increasing popularity of social media sites (e.g., Twitter, Facebook) leads to the increasing amount of online data. Student's casual talks on these social media sites can be used to know their educational experiences i.e. their worries, opinions, feelings, and emotions about the learning process. However, the main challenge is to analyze this informal data. Because of the complexity of the student's posts on the social media sites, it requires human understanding. But, it is practically not possible to perform human interpretation on such increasing scale of data. Hence, there is a demand for pre-programmed data analysis methods. In this paper, a hybrid approach is used to analyze these large scale and informal data. We have considered engineering student's Twitter posts to know their concerns and difficulties in their learning experiences. We have carried out a qualitative analysis on the data of about 25,000 tweets of engineering student's educational problems and studied that many students face problems such as heavy study load, diversity problem, lack of social engagement, their negative emotions and lack of sleep. Considering these analysis, we have implemented a hybrid model by combining two most popular machine learning algorithms viz. Naïve Bayes classifier and Support Vector Machine to classify tweets regarding student's problems. The result shows that there is a significant reduction in training time and shows an increase in the classification accuracy when compared to individual Naïve Bayes classifier and Support Vector Machine.
Atrial Fibrillation in a Patient With an Accessory Pathway

A 24-year-old man with history of unspecified arrhythmia presented with palpitations and chest pain. Initial electrocardiogram (ECG) revealed irregular tachycardia with varying QRS width: 150 to 200 beats per minute for narrow complexes and 300 beats per minute for wide complexes. Following cardioversion, ECG revealed sinus tachycardia with a preexcitation pattern of positive delta waves in the anterolateral leads and negative delta waves in inferior leads. The patient remained in sinus rhythm and underwent successful ablation of a right posteroseptal accessory pathway. Subsequent ECG showed upright T waves in the leads I, aVL, and V2-6, large inverted T waves in leads III and aVF, and no delta waves. This case serves as an important reminder that atrial fibrillation (AF) in the presence of an accessory pathway may present with confounding ECG features, potentially leading to incorrect diagnoses and treatments that may be life threatening. Despite 10% to 30% prevalence of AF in the presence of an accessory pathway and the relative awareness of Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome among general internal medicine providers, the clinical recognition of Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome may be hindered in the presence of preexcited AF.
Feature Extraction By Using Deep Learning: A Survey

Deep learning is presently an effective research area in machine learning technique and pattern classification association. This has achieved big success in the areas of application namely computer vision, speech recognition, and NLP. This paper gives the impact of feature extraction that used in a deep learning technique such as Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). The purpose of this paper presents an emerged survey of actual literatures on feature extraction methods since past five years. As the raising of application demand increases, a large study and analysis in the feature extraction field became very efficient. In this paper, we presented a detailed study on deep learning, and a described some of existing methodology of feature extraction.
V2X Content Distribution Based on Batched Network Coding With Distributed Scheduling

Content distribution is an application in intelligent transportation system to assist vehicles in acquiring information such as digital maps and entertainment materials. In this paper, we consider content distribution from a single roadside infrastructure unit to a group of vehicles passing by it. To combat the short connection time and the lossy channel quality, the downloaded contents need to be further shared among vehicles after the initial broadcasting phase. To this end, we propose a joint infrastructure-to-vehicle (I2V) and vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication scheme based on batched sparse (BATS) coding to minimize the traffic overhead and reduce the total transmission delay. In the I2V phase, the roadside unit (RSU) encodes the original large-size file into a number of batches in a rateless manner, each containing a fixed number of coded packets, and sequentially broadcasts them during the I2V connection time. In the V2V phase, vehicles perform the network coded cooperative sharing by re-encoding the received packets. We propose a utility-based distributed algorithm to efficiently schedule the V2V cooperative transmissions, hence reducing the transmission delay. A closed-form expression for the expected rank distribution of the proposed content distribution scheme is derived, which is used to design the optimal BATS code. The performance of the proposed content distribution scheme is evaluated by extensive simulations that consider multi-lane road and realistic vehicular traffic settings, and shown to significantly outperform the existing content distribution protocols.
Trans-Sellar Trans-Sphenoidal Herniation of Third Ventricle with Cleft Palate and Microophthalmia: Report of a Case and Review of Literature

Trans -sellar trans-sphenoidal encephalocele is an extremely rare entity. We present the case of an 18-month old boy who presented with a trans-sellar, trans-sphenoidal encephalocele associated with cleft lip, cleft palate and microphthalmia. This patient was treated successfully by a trans-cranial extra-dural route. In this paper, we discuss the clinico-radiological findings as well as various surgical options in managing these rare lesions and briefly review the literature.
Drowsy Driver Alerting System

In this speeding world, the fatigue level of people has increased and their sleeping time has decreased. Various studies have registered that 20 % of all the road accidents are fatigue related. The drowsy driver alerting system is a vehicular safety system which will help to prevent accidents that are caused by drivers getting drowsy. This paper aims to use the behavior of the driver, including eye closure and head position. They are monitored by a camera and the driver is alerted if any of these drowsiness symptoms are detected. The software simulation is done through a witty MATLAB code to implement image processing methods for edge detection and determining the complexity value for the image. This code is converted into Simulink block which is further converted into a Verilog code using HDL coder. This gives the modeled hardware architecture which can be integrated as co-processor along with Nios II processor controlling the whole system flow, on a system based on Altera FPGA device. Altera FPGA processes the data in parallel and pipelined manner.
An Evaluation of the Relationship Between Peri-implant Soft Tissue Biotype and the Severity of Peri-implantitis: A Cross-Sectional Study.

PURPOSE This cross-sectional study aimed to analyze the relation between peri-implant soft tissue biotype (STB) and different levels of peri-implantitis severity, and to identify the possible risk indicators that affect the severity of peri-implantitis with regard to STB around dental implants. MATERIALS AND METHODS Eighty-seven patients with 229 implants were diagnosed with peri-implantitis and recruited to the study. Clinical and radiographic parameters including Plaque Index (PI), probing depth (PD), bleeding on probing (BOP), gingival/mucosal recession (GR/MR), clinical attachment level (CAL), and marginal bone loss (BL) were analyzed. The periodontal status was assessed, and the levels of peri-implantitis severity were defined. These parameters were compared among the peri-implant STB groups (thick and thin biotype). To evaluate the effect of possible risk indicators on the levels of severity of peri-implantitis, univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were conducted for thick and thin biotype groups. RESULTS The mean values of BOP, MR, CAL, and marginal BL were significantly lower for the thick group compared with the thin group (P < .05). For PI and PD values, no significant differences were found between the groups (P > .05). Moreover, multivariate analysis revealed statistically significant associations between peri-implantitis severity and the risk indicators maintenance therapy compliance and current periodontitis for the thin group (P < .05). CONCLUSION The thin biotype could be more prone to increase in the severity of peri-implantitis. Maintenance therapy compliance and current periodontitis could be important risk indicators that affect the progression of the severity of peri-implantitis for implants where keratinized mucosa is thin or absent.
Sex Differences in the Associations of Obesity With Hypothyroidism and Thyroid Autoimmunity Among Chinese Adults

There is an intensive link between obesity and thyroid dysfunction, but this relationship in Asians is still unclear. This study was conducted to define the impact of obesity on risk of hypothyroidism and thyroid autoimmunity among Chinese adults. A population-based, cross-sectional study was carried out, which enrolled a total of 2,808 Chinese adults. To assess the associations of obesity with hypothyroidism and thyroid autoimmunity, odds ratio (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (95%CIs) were calculated through logistic regression model, and the correlations of body mass index (BMI) with TPOAb and TGAb were also analyzed. Obese females had higher risk of hypothyroidism (22.7 vs. 15.0%; OR = 1.66, 95%CI 1.10–2.53; P = 0.02) and higher risk of subclinical hypothyroidism (22.1 vs. 13.4%; OR = 1.83, 95%CI 1.20–2.80; P = 0.005) than non-obese females. Multivariate logistic regression analysis found significant associations of obesity with hypothyroidism (Adjusted OR = 1.54, 95%CI 1.00–2.38; P = 0.05) and subclinical hypothyroidism (Adjusted OR = 1.69, 95%CI 1.09–2.63; P = 0.02) in females after adjustment for confounding factors. No association between obesity and hypothyroidism was observed in male participants. Spearman's correlation analysis suggested BMI was significantly and positively correlated with TPOAb (Spearman's r = 0.062, P = 0.022) in men but not in women. Linear regression analysis suggested an obviously positive correlation of BMI with TPOAb in men (β = 0.018, P = 0.015) and an obviously negative correlation of BMI with TGAb in women (β = −0.025, P = 0.012), respectively. The study suggests sex differences in the associations of obesity with hypothyroidism and thyroid autoimmunity among Chinese adults. Further studies are needed to better understand the exact mechanism of sex difference in the obesity-thyroid relationship.
Binding of platinum derivative, oxaliplatin to deoxyribonucleic acid: structural insight into antitumor action

Abstract Platinum-derived chemodrugs constitute an active class in cancer therapeutics. Besides being potent against various solid tumors, oxaliplatin has been recognized as the first platinum compound to be approved for the treatment of colorectal cancer. Structurally, oxaliplatin consists of a platinum metal complexed to oxalate and diaminocyclohexane (DACH) and exert its anticancer action by inhibiting DNA replication and transcription. The present study highlights the binding properties of oxaliplatin with calf thymus DNA using spectroscopic methods to comprehend its binding mechanism at molecular level to overcome associated cellular resistance and side effects. Attenuated total reflection-Fourier transform infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectroscopic outcomes confirm that oxaliplatin is a covalent binding agent and also provide sequence specificity in DNA molecule. Infrared spectral results further indicate that oxaliplatin alkylates purine nitrogenous bases majorly guanine residues (G) in the major groove via formation of either interstrand or intrastrand guanine–guanine d(GpG) and guanine–adenine d(GpA) (N7 position) crosslinks accompanied with a slight external binding to sugar–phosphate backbone. Again, circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopic results suggest subtle conformational changes in DNA molecule due to its complexation with oxaliplatin and duplex attains an intermediate conformational state, having characteristics of both B- and C-forms. Further, a moderate binding strength of 4.12 ± 0.2 × 104 M−1 for the interaction has been estimated via ultraviolet–visible spectroscopy. The inferences obtained from these investigations are encouraging and can form the basis for further exploration in the field of rational drug development based on platinum compounds possessing preferential binding for nucleic acid with improved competence. Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma