Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Eight-Year Clinical and Radiological Follow-Up of the Bryan Cervical Disc Arthroplasty

Study Design. Single institution, prospective cohort study of 21 patients who underwent single- or bilevel cervical disc arthroplasty for radiculopathy. Objective. To evaluate the long-term outcome of cervical disc arthroplasty. Summary of Background Data. There is an increasing trend in the use of cervical arthroplasty; however, no long-term outcome studies exist to verify their safety, functionality, and durability. Methods. A total of 21 patients underwent 27 total disc arthroplasties using the Bryan cervical disc (Medtronic Sofamor Danek Inc, Memphis, TN) after anterior cervical discectomy. Clinical and radiological data were obtained from the 8-year postoperative review. Results. Nineteen of twenty-one patients were able to perform daily activities without limitation. Twenty of twenty-one patients reported fair to excellent outcome according to Odom criteria and 21 of 27 (78%) operated segments were mobile. Functional prostheses moved an average of 10.6°, which was similar to the range of movement of the adjacent nonoperated segments of the cervical spine. Heterotopic ossification was evident in 13 of the 27 (48%) operated segments and restricted movement of the prosthesis in nine cases. Five of the six patients who received bilevel arthroplasties developed heterotopic ossification. There was one case of posterior migration of the prosthesis, which did not have any clinical repercussion. No other case showed evidence of migration, subsidence, loosening, or wear. Radiological evidence of adjacent segment degeneration was observed in four patients (19%); however, each of these patients had pre-existing degenerative disc disease at these levels on preoperative imaging. Conclusion. At 8-year follow-up, the Bryan cervical disc arthroplasty maintains favorable clinical and radiological results, with preservation of movement and satisfactory clinical outcome in the majority of cases. However, the incidence of heterotopic ossification causing restricted range of movement of the prosthesis appears to increase with time, especially in bilevel procedures.
deepSA at SemEval-2017 Task 4: Interpolated Deep Neural Networks for Sentiment Analysis in Twitter

In this paper, we describe our system implementation for sentiment analysis in Twitter. This system combines two models based on deep neural networks, namely a convolutional neural network (CNN) and a long short-term memory (LSTM) recurrent neural network, through interpolation. Distributed representation of words as vectors are input to the system, and the output is a sentiment class. The neural network models are trained exclusively with the data sets provided by the organizers of SemEval-2017 Task 4 Subtask A. Overall, this system has achieved 0.618 for the average recall rate, 0.587 for the average F1 score, and 0.618 for accuracy.
Electron microscopic study of the differentiation of rat white subcutaneous adipocytes in situ.

UNLABELLED In the present study we investigated the process of differentiation of rat subcutaneous white adipocytes in situ using electron microscopy. MATERIAL AND METHODS Rat fetuses (Wistar rat) at 15 - 21 days of pregnancy were used. Sections of the subcutaneous tissue of a hind leg were prepared for examination with transmission electron microscopy by routine techniques. RESULTS The electron microscopic study showed that the embryonal differentiation of rat subcutaneous white adipose cells in situ started on the 15 - 16th day of gestation and was expressed by lipid accumulation and concomitant changes in the cell organelles. We observed the following in the differentiating adipocytes: 1. abundant glycogen granules; 2. appearance and accumulation of lipid droplets with gradual formation of several lipid droplets or one large lipid drop which pushed the nucleus to the periphery and rounded the cell; 3. large elongated mitochondria with densely packed transverse cristae; disintegration of cristae, swelling and vacuolization occurring in some of the mitochondria; 4. well developed endoplasmic reticulum with elongated and dilated cisternae; the initial predominance of rough endoplasmatic reticulum being superseded by prevalence of smooth endoplasmatic reticulum. The ultrastructural analysis we did revealed the consecutive stages in the adipocyte differentiation and the formation of adipocyte phenotype during the embryonal development of the rat.
A modified Attitude Determination Algorithm using low-cost sensors

According to the specific application of the Micro Air Vehicle (MAV), a modified Attitude Determination Algorithm is proposed. The presented system consists of a three-axis magnetometer, a three-axis accelerometer and a single-antenna Global Position Systems (GPS) receiver. Firstly, the earth's magnetic and specific force in the body and navigation frame is employed to establish the attitude quaternion. Subsequently, in order to improve performance, a standard linear measurement equation and a state equation about quaternion error is developed for Extend Kalman Filter (EKF). Finally, the proposed algorithm is verified by simulation using data collected from the low-cost sensors. The performance of the suggested algorithm is shown to have significantly restrained the estimation errors.
Selective Leaching of Valuable Metals from Waste Printed Circuit Boards

Abstract This study was carried out to recover valuable metals from the printed circuit boards (PCBs) of waste computers. PCB samples were crushed to smaller than 1 mm by a shredder and initially separated into 30% conducting and 70% nonconducting materials by an electrostatic separator. The conducting materials, which contained the valuable metals, were then used as the feed material for magnetic separation, where it was found that 42% of the conducting materials were magnetic and 58% were nonmagnetic. Leaching of the nonmagnetic component using 2 M H2SO4 and 0.2 M H2O2 at 85 °C for 12 hr resulted in greater than 95% extraction of Cu, Fe, Zn, Ni, and Al. Au and Ag were extracted at 40 °C with a leaching solution of 0.2 M (NH4)2S2O3, 0.02 M CuSO4, and 0.4 M NH4OH, which resulted in recovery of more than 95% of the Au within 48 hr and 100% of the Ag within 24 hr. The residues were next reacted with a 2 M NaCl solution to leach out Pb, which took place within 2 hr at room temperature.
Cancer Therapy : Preclinical Cellular Uptake of Imatinib into Leukemic Cells Is Independent of Human Organic Cation Transporter 1 ( OCT 1 )

Purpose: In addition to mutated BCR-ABL1 kinase, the organic cation transporter 1 (OCT1, encoded by SLC22A1) has been considered to contribute to imatinib resistance in patients with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). As data are conflicting as to whether OCT1 transports imatinib andmay serve as a clinical biomarker, we used a combination of different approaches including animal experiments to elucidate comprehensively the impact of OCT1 on cellular imatinib uptake. Experimental Design: Transport of imatinib was studied using OCT1-expressing Xenopus oocytes, mammalian cell lines (HEK293, MDCK, V79) stably expressing OCT1, human leukemic cells, and Oct1-knockout mice. OCT1 mRNA and protein expression were analyzed in leukemic cells from patients with imatinib-na€ ve CML as well as in cell lines. Results: Transport and inhibition studies showed that overexpression of functional OCT1 protein in Xenopus oocytes ormammalian cell lines did not lead to an increased cellular accumulation of imatinib. The CML cell lines (K562, Meg-01, LAMA84) and leukemic cells from patients expressed neither OCT1 mRNA nor protein as demonstrated by immunoblotting and immunofluorescence microscopy, yet they showed a considerable imatinib uptake. Oct1 deficiency in mice had no influence on plasma and hepatic imatinib
Increasing population levels of physical activity through primary care: GPs' knowledge, attitudes and self-reported practice.

BACKGROUND GPs have the potential to increase population levels of activity and thus produce important health gains. OBJECTIVES AND METHODS The aim of this questionnaire survey was to determine the knowledge, attitudes and self-reported practice of GPs towards promoting regular physical activity and to assess the likely impact of GPs on population levels of physical activity. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS A high response rate to the questionnaire was obtained and the results suggest that GPs have a good level of knowledge of the health benefits of regular physical activity and the levels required to achieve these, but do not promote activity in a way that will have an impact on the population level.
Analysis and Modelling of Mixed-Data Systems with Frequency Translation using Multisine Excitations

In mixed-data systems, such as switched-capacitor circuits, several conversions between continuous and discrete-time occur by samplers and zero-order hold interpolators. These circuits exhibit frequency translations (aliasing) when sampling the continuous-time input signal, that does not obey the Shannon-Nyquist sampling theorem. The concept of multisine excitation signals and the best-linear approximation are extended to estimate both the linear behaviour and the nonlinear distortions of these mixed-data systems, including the frequency translations. The proposed technique is illustrated on both simulations and measurements of a switched-capacitor filter.
The effects of indoor air quality on performance, behaviour and productivity

This paper describes a series of laboratory simulation experiments with exposures of up to five hours in which the performance of simulated office work was increased by removing common indoor sources of air pollution (floor-coverings and personal computers), or by increasing the rate at which clean outdoor air was supplied per person. Outdoor air supply rates from 3-30 l/s/p were studied. The resulting pollutant levels did not affect the perception of air quality by the occupants themselves, but they affected the headache and difficulty in thinking clearly they reported and the perception of air quality by visitors. These findings were validated in two 8-week field intervention experiments, which were carried out in call-centres in northern Europe and in the hot humid Tropics. They have far-reaching implications for productivity, the life cycle costing of buildings, and the efficient use of energy.
Adaptive Aid on Targeted Robot Manipulator Movements in Tele-Assistance

Abstract The teleoperation of robot manipulators over the internet suffers from variable delays in the communications. Here we address a tele-assistance scenario, where a remote operator assists a disabled or elderly user on daily life tasks. Our behavioral approach uses local environment information from robot sensing to help enable faster execution for a given movement tolerance. This is achieved through a controller that automatically slows the operator down before having collisions, using a set of distributed proximity sensors. The controller is made to gradually increase the assistance in situations similar to those where ollisions have occurred in the past, thus adapting to the given operator, robot and task-set. Two controlled virtual experiments for tele-assistance with a 5 DOF manipulator were performed, with 300 ms and 600 ms mean variable round-trip delays. The results showed significant improvements in the median times of 12.6% and 16.5%, respectively. Improvements in the subjective workload were also seen with the controller. A first implementation on a physical robot manipulator is described.
Breathing movements in the frog Rana pipiens. I. The mechanical events associated with lung and buccal ventilation.

The normal pattern of breathing movements in Rana pipiens has been studied by recording pressure and volume changes in the buccal cavity and lungs, and electromyograms from the muscles involved in this activity. Two types of breathing movement were obtained, one concerned with ventilation of the buccal cavity (buccal cycles) and the other with lung ventilation (lung cycles). Only in the latter type of movement were the nares and glottis actively involved. During buccal cycles the nares remained open and the glottis closed, so although excursions of the buccal floor were some two-thirds of the magnitude of those occurring during lung cycles, only low pressures were generated. The onset of a lung cycle was signalled by activity in the laryngeal dilator muscle. When the glottis opened, lung pressure and volume decreased, and buccal cavity pressure and volume increased. After closure of the nares, the buccal floor was rapidly elevated by the activity of the breathing muscles and air was forced into the lungs .
Mean square stabilizability of linear systems with limited feedback data rates and Markovian packet losses

This paper studies the mean square stabilizability of linear discrete-time systems over a lossy digital communication channel. The packet losses process of the channel is modeled as a time-homogeneous binary Markov process. The temporal correlations of the channel and stochastically time-varying data rate due to packet losses pose a significant challenge, which is solved by developing a randomly sampled system approach. It is shown that the number of additional bits to counter effects of the Markovian packet losses on stabilizability is exactly quantified by the magnitude of the unstable mode and the transition probabilities. Our result contains existing results on data rate and packet dropout rate for stabilizability of linear systems as special cases. Necessary and sufficient conditions on the minimum data rate problem for vector systems are also provided respectively and shown to be optimal for some special cases.
Your Role in Informed Consent: Part 1

As critical care nurses, we all participate in the informed consent process, whether for a routine procedure or surgery or for a research study or clinical trial. This first article of a 2-part series discusses the critical care nurse's role concerning informed consent for surgery or other invasive procedures, including nursing procedures. Part 2 will discuss the critical care nurse's role concerning informed consent for clinical trials.
Effects of Magnesium on Mechanical Properties of Human Bone

The human bone is multiphase material consisting of collagenous matrix interspread with mineral crystals. Magnesium participates in the normal formation and remodelling of bone. Magnesium deficiency has been associated with a number of clinical disorders including osteoporosis. The present investigation focuses on quantitative estimation of magnesium, an inorganic constituent of bone and determination of mechanical strength associated with magnesium namely tensile, compression, bending, torsion and shear loads. In particular, this investigation shows that bending strength in human bone is highly dependent on magnesium content of the bone. A correlation is developed to establish relationship between mechanical strength and magnesium composition. The study shows that quantity of magnesium present in the bone and ageing process are interdependent and are highly correlated.
Classification Analysis of P-Glycoprotein Substrate Specificity

Prediction of P-glycoprotein substrate specificity (SPGP) can be viewed as a constituent part of a compound's “pharmaceutical profiling” in drug design. This task is difficult to achieve due to several factors that raised many contradictory opinions: (i) the disparity between the SPGP values obtained in different assays, (ii) the confusion between Pgp substrates and inhibitors, (iii) the confusion between lipophilicity and amphiphilicity of Pgp substrates, and (iv) the dilemma of describing class-specific relationships when Pgp has no binding sites of high ligand specificity. In this work, we compiled SPGP data for 1000 compounds. All data were represented in a binary format, assigning SPGP=1 for substrates and SPGP=0 for non-substrates. Each value was ranked according to the reliability of experimental assay. Two data sets were considered. Set 1 included 220 compounds with SPGP from polarized transport across MDR1 transfected cell monolayers. Set 2 included the entire list of 1000 compounds, with SPGP values of generally lower reliability. Both sets were analysed using a stepwise classification structure–activity relationship (C-SAR) method, leading to derivation of simple rules for crude estimation of SPGP values. The obtained rules are based on the following factors: (i) compound's size expressed through molar weight or volume, (ii) H-accepting given by the Abraham's β (that can be crudely approximated by the sum of O and N atoms), and (iii) ionization given by the acid and base pKa values. Very roughly, SPGP can be estimated by the “rule of fours”. Compounds with (N+O)≥8, MW>400 and acid pKa > 4 are likely to be Pgp substrates, whereas compounds with (N+O)≤4, MW<400 and base pKa<8 are likely to be non-substrates. The obtained results support the view that Pgp functioning can be compared to a complex “mini-pharmacokinetic” system with fuzzy specificity. This system can be described by a probabilistic version of Abraham's solvation equation, suggesting a certain similarity between Pgp transport and chromatographic retention. The chromatographic model does not work in the case of “marginal” compounds with properties close to the “global” physicochemical cut-offs. In the latter case various class-specific rules must be considered. These can be associated with the “amphiphilicity” and “biological similarity” of compounds. The definition of class-specific effects entails construction of the knowledge base that can be very useful in ADME profiling of new drugs.
Surface Micromachinable Accelerometer using Fringe Electrical Field of Penetrating Ferroelectric Substrate and its Characterization

This paper reports fabrication and characterization of a high sensitive surface micromachinable accelerometer using ferroelectric material having a large dielectric constant, such as bulk PZT (epsivr = 2600). The measuring principle is based on detecting capacitance change with respect to the dielectric mass movement in the fringe electrical field. High sensitivity of several sub pF/g is confirmed, which is increased several hundreds times compared with author's previous sensor using polymer Parylene (epsivr = 3.15). It is proven that the accelerometer bandwidth is much lower than the mechanical resonant frequency of the Parylene structure by FEM simulation and experimental investigation, the reason of which is also discussed.
Probabilistic analysis of a group failure detection protocol

A group membership failure (in short, a group failure) occurs when one of the group members crashes. A group failure detection protocol has to inform all the non-crashed members of the group that this group entity has crashed. Ideally, such a protocol should be live (if a process crashes, then the group failure has to be detected) and safe (if a group failure is claimed, then at least one process has crashed). Unreliable asynchronous distributed systems are characterized by the impossibility for a process to get an accurate view of the system state. Consequently, the design of a group failure detection protocol that is both safe and live is a problem that cannot be solved in all runs of an asynchronous distributed system. We analyse a group failure detection protocol whose design naturally ensures its liveness. We show that by tuning appropriately some of its duration-related parameters, the safety property can be guaranteed with a probability as close to 1 as desired. This analysis shows that, in real distributed systems, it is possible to achieve failure detection with a negligible probability of wrong suspicions.
Marine Environment Influence on Fiber Optic Systems Operation

Optic communications are increasingly used in many areas, including traffic and maritime nowadays. There is a lack of researches about environmental parameters impact to the operation of fibers in traffic systems, i.e. ships, cars, aircraft or port logistics. This paper investigates environmental influence on three-layer fiber optic system. The two-layer optic system is also analyzed for the comparison purposes. Several environmental factors were simulated, including temperature, pressure, and humidity for all three IR windows. In the three layer optic system, the environmental influence is brought through the air’s refractivity index. The final goal is to determine if the change of the environmental factor(s) can change or lose some of the modes used for communication in some specific application.
Sildenafil for portopulmonary hypertension in a patient undergoing liver transplantation

Liver transplantation (LT) may be indicated in cirrhotic patients with underlying pulmonary artery hypertension. However, severe pulmonary artery hypertension with mean pulmonary artery pressure (mPAP) above 50 mmHg has even been considered a contraindication to LT. We present a cirrhotic patient with an mPAP of 56 mmHg measured using right heart catheterization (RHC) and with severely compromised physical capacity. She was first treated with sildenafil (Viagra®), a potent novel vasodilator, and successfully transplanted later. The mPAP decreased with sildenafil to the level of 28–31 mmHg and her general condition improved markedly. An LT using piggyback technique was performed 16 weeks later. Despite 2 reoperations for bleeding, the outcome has been excellent. In conclusion, treatment of severe portopulmonary hypertension (PHT) with sildenafil is effective. If a decrease in mPAP is achieved with sildenafil, it may improve the result of LT, even though no evidence of reversibility of PPHTN exists. (Liver Transpl 2004;10:945–950.)
Quality improvement for patient safety: Project-level versus program-level learning

Background: Improving quality and patient safety is of increasing strategic importance to health care organizations. However, simply increasing the volume of quality improvement (QI) activity does not necessarily improve patient outcomes. There is a need for greater understanding of QI success factors. Purpose: This study looked for differences in QI implementation across hospitals with a range of performance on Patient Safety Indicators. Methods: We conducted an exploratory comparative case study of 4 Veterans Health Administration hospitals including site visits and interviews with leaders and staff. Findings: Two themes emerged. Project-level QI learning is assessing and modifying specific QI projects relative to expectations. Program-level QI learning is assessing and modifying the overall QI endeavor. The nature of project-level QI learning was similar across sites, whereas we identified qualitative differences across organizations in program-level QI learning. The highest performing organization was evaluating and refining its overall approach to QI, whereas the others were learning how to build and control QI programs. Practice Implications: Program-level QI learning may be key if a QI program is to succeed in improving patient outcomes. This type of organizational learning entails a big-picture, organization-wide view of QI. It also entails second-order organizational learning based on assessment not only of whether QI is being done correctly but also whether the right QI activities are being done, for the right reasons. The organization is “learning to learn. ” In addition to gaining mastery and control of QI, leaders regularly engage with staff in rethinking QI and experimenting with new approaches. Leaders also assess how QI activity fits in the organization’s developmental journey and how it supports realization of strategy.