Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Incidence of Achilles and Patellar Tendinopathy in Adolescent Elite Athletes

Abstract The study investigated the incidence of Achilles and patellar tendinopathy in adolescent elite athletes and non-athletic controls. Furthermore, predictive and associated factors for tendinopathy development were analyzed. The prospective study consisted of two measurement days (M1/M2) with an interval of 3.2±0.9 years. 157 athletes (12.1±0.7 years) and 25 controls (13.3±0.6 years) without Achilles/patellar tendinopathy were included at M1. Clinical and ultrasound examinations of both Achilles (AT) and patellar tendons (PT) were performed. Main outcome measures were incidence tendinopathy and structural intratendinous alterations (hypo-/hyperechogenicity, vascularization) at M2 [%]. Incidence of Achilles tendinopathy was 1% in athletes and 0% in controls. Patellar tendinopathy was more frequent in athletes (13%) than in controls (4%). Incidence of intratendinous alterations in ATs was 1-2% in athletes and 0% in controls, whereas in PTs it was 4-6% in both groups (p>0.05). Intratendinous alterations at M2 were associated with patellar tendinopathy in athletes (p≤0.01). Intratendinous alterations at M1, anthropometric data, training amount, sports or sex did not predict tendinopathy development (p>0.05). Incidence of tendinopathy and intratendinous alterations in adolescent athletes is low in ATs and more common in PTs. Development of intratendinous alterations in PT is associated with tendinopathy. However, predictive factors could not be identified.
Factors associated with diversity, quantity and zoonotic potential of ectoparasites on urban mice and voles

Wild rodents are important hosts for tick larvae but co-infestations with other mites and insects are largely neglected. Small rodents were trapped at four study sites in Berlin, Germany, to quantify their ectoparasite diversity. Host-specific, spatial and temporal occurrence of ectoparasites was determined to assess their influence on direct and indirect zoonotic risk due to mice and voles in an urban agglomeration. Rodent-associated arthropods were diverse, including 63 species observed on six host species with an overall prevalence of 99%. The tick Ixodes ricinus was the most prevalent species, found on 56% of the rodents. The trapping location clearly affected the presence of different rodent species and, therefore, the occurrence of particular host-specific parasites. In Berlin, fewer temporary and periodic parasite species as well as non-parasitic species (fleas, chiggers and nidicolous Gamasina) were detected than reported from rural areas. In addition, abundance of parasites with low host-specificity (ticks, fleas and chiggers) apparently decreased with increasing landscape fragmentation associated with a gradient of urbanisation. In contrast, stationary ectoparasites, closely adapted to the rodent host, such as the fur mites Myobiidae and Listrophoridae, were most abundant at the two urban sites. A direct zoonotic risk of infection for people may only be posed by Nosopsyllus fasciatus fleas, which were prevalent even in the city centre. More importantly, peridomestic rodents clearly supported the life cycle of ticks in the city as hosts for their subadult stages. In addition to trapping location, season, host species, body condition and host sex, infestation with fleas, gamasid Laelapidae mites and prostigmatic Myobiidae mites were associated with significantly altered abundance of I. ricinus larvae on mice and voles. Whether this is caused by predation, grooming behaviour or interaction with the host immune system is unclear. The present study constitutes a basis to identify interactions and vector function of rodent-associated arthropods and their potential impact on zoonotic diseases.
Swine-Derived Probiotic Lactobacillus plantarum Inhibits Growth and Adhesion of Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli and Mediates Host Defense

Weaning stress renders piglets susceptible to pathogen infection, which leads to post-weaning diarrhea, a severe condition characterized by heavy diarrhea and mortality in piglets. Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) is one of typical strains associated with post-weaning diarrhea. Thus, prevention and inhibition of ETEC infection are of great concern. Probiotics possess anti-pathogenic activity and can counteract ETEC infection; however, their underlying mechanisms and modes of action have not yet been clarified. In the present study, the direct and indirect protective effects of Lactobacillus plantarum ZLP001 against ETEC infection were investigated by different methods. We found that bacterial culture and culture supernatant of L. plantarum ZLP001 prevented ETEC growth by the Oxford cup method, and ETEC growth inhibition was observed in a co-culture assay as well. This effect was suggested to be caused mainly by antimicrobial metabolites produced by L. plantarum ZLP001. In addition, adhesion capacity of L. plantarum ZLP001 to IPEC-J2 cells were observed using microscopy and counting. L. plantarum ZLP001 also exhibited a concentration-dependent ability to inhibit ETEC adhesion to IPEC-J2 cells, which mainly occurred via exclusion and competition mode. Furthermore, quantitative real time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) analysis showed that L. plantarum ZLP001 upregulated the expression of host defense peptides (HDPs) but did not trigger an inflammatory response. In addition, L. plantarum ZLP001 induced HDP secretion, which enhanced the potential antimicrobial activity of IPEC-J2 cell-culture supernatant after incubation with L. plantarum ZLP001. Our findings demonstrate that L. plantarum ZLP001, an intestinal Lactobacillus species associated with piglet health, possesses anti-ETEC activity. L. plantarum ZLP001 might prevent ETEC growth, inhibit ETEC adhesion to the intestinal mucosa, and activate the innate immune response to secret antimicrobial peptides. L. plantarum ZLP001 is worth investigation as a potential probiotics.
Digital health and the biopolitics of the Quantified Self

Recent years have witnessed an intensive growth of systems of measurement and an increasing integration of data processes into various spheres of everyday life. From smartphone apps that measure our activity and sleep, to digital devices that monitor our health and performance at the workplace, the culture of measurement is currently on the rise. Encouraged by movements such as the Quantified Self, whose motto is ‘self knowledge through numbers’, a growing number of people across the globe are embracing practices of self-quantification and tracking in the spirit of improving their wellbeing and productivity or charting their fitness progress. In this article, I examine the biopolitical aspects of the Quantified Self practices, exploring some of the ideologies and rationalities underlying self-tracking culture. I argue that such practices represent an instantiation of a ‘biopolitics of the self’ whereby the body is made amenable to management and monitoring techniques that often echo the ethos of neoliberalism. Rather than being restricted to an individualized form, self-tracking practices are also becoming part of a biosocial and communal phenomenon in which individuals are incited to share with others information about their physical activities and biodata. In exploring some examples of this data sharing culture, I critically address the extent to which the sharing of personal physical data can be seen as a ‘solidaristic’ act that can contribute to a larger Big Data ecosystem and inform the wider medical community and healthcare research and policy. I link this discussion to debates on ‘data philanthropy’, highlighting the emerging tension between philanthropic discourses of data sharing and issues of privacy. From here, I go on to discuss further ethical and political concerns, particularly in relation to data security and the marked shifts in healthcare responsibilities.
Diffusion Scattering Transforms on Graphs

Stability is a key aspect of data analysis. In many applications, the natural notion of stability is geometric, as illustrated for example in computer vision. Scattering transforms construct deep convolutional representations which are certified stable to input deformations. This stability to deformations can be interpreted as stability with respect to changes in the metric structure of the domain. In this work, we show that scattering transforms can be generalized to non-Euclidean domains using diffusion wavelets, while preserving a notion of stability with respect to metric changes in the domain, measured with diffusion maps. The resulting representation is stable to metric perturbations of the domain while being able to capture "high-frequency" information, akin to the Euclidean Scattering.
Observation of current filaments in IGBTs with thermoreflectance microscopy

In this paper, we demonstrate for the first time experimentally measured current filaments in IGBTs under repetitive Short-Circuit (SC) events. These current filaments were discovered with the help of Thermo-Reflectance Microscopy (TRM). The destruction current as function of the applied collector-emitter voltage (VCE) was determined for two differently wire-bonded 15A-1200V IGBT chips. The repetitive SC events in combination with TRM measurement indicate a wide range of non-destructive current filaments at different VCE. Similar filament formation under short-circuit conditions were observed in supporting TCAD device simulations based on multi-cell IGBT structure. These filaments have similar dimensions to the current filaments measured by TRM.
An investigation of vehicle wind turbine system

Wine turbine applications such as battery charging for auxiliary power for boats or to power traffic warning signs. Wind turbines are becoming an increasingly important source. A wind turbine is a device that converts kinetic energy from the wind into electrical power. The Generator supplies the electricity by connecting to the pulley system of engine of vehicle generally. In order to investigate energy-saving efficiency, a wind turbine of 400w was mounted to the front bumper of vehicle. In the experiment, there are two choices of charge types for vehicle. An electromagnetic clutch was designed for cutting charge system by wind turbine with a button in the car. Fuel consumption can be reduced using wind turbine. Generator is driven by engine pulley system when vehicle starts, it will be occupied about 30% fuel consumption by this type generally. The generator can be switched driven by wind turbine while the vehicle moves at a stable speed on road, fuel consumption can be reduced about 15% by the wind turbine. The charge type can be set to wind turbine system when car speed is higher than 50kilometers, and the higher, the more efficiency. While wine turbine system will self-stop when wind speed is too high at car speed more than 120 kilometers for safety. The road experiment results revealed that proposed vehicle wind turbine system saved about 15% fuel consumption when car speed is higher than 80 kilometers.
Manuscript Text Line Detection and Segmentation Using Second-Order Derivatives

In this paper, we explore the use of second-order derivatives to detect text lines on handwritten document images. Taking advantage that the second derivative gives a minimum response when a dark linear element over a bright background has the same orientation as the filter, we use this operator to create a map with the local orientation and strength of putative text lines in the document. Then, we detect line segments by selecting and merging the filter responses that have a similar orientation and scale. Finally, text lines are found by merging the segments that are within the same text region. The proposed segmentation algorithm, is learning-free while showing a performance similar to the state of the art methods in publicly available datasets.
Sources of variability in hospital administrative data: Clinical coding of postoperative ileus

Background: Multiple studies have questioned the validity of clinical codes in hospital administrative data. We examined variability in reporting a postoperative ileus (POI). Objective: We aimed to analyse sources of coding variations to understand how clinical coding professionals arrive at POI coding decisions and to verify existing knowledge that current clinical coding practices lack standardised applications of regulatory guidelines. Method: Two medical records (cases 1 and 2) were provided to 15 clinical coders employed by a midsize nonprofit hospital in the northwest region of the United States. After coding these cases, the study participants completed a survey, reported on the application of guidelines, and participated in a focus group led by a health information management regulatory compliance expert. Results: Only 5 of the 15 clinical coders correctly indicated no POI complication in case 1 where the physician documentation did not establish a link between the POI as a complication of care and the surgery. In contrast, 13 of the 15 study participants correctly coded case 2, which included clear physician documentation and contained the clinical parameters for the coding of the POI as a complication of care. Clinical coder education, credentials, certifications, and experience did not relate to the coding performance. The clinical coders inconsistently prioritised coding rules and valued experience more than education. Conclusion and implications: The application of International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification; coding conventions; Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services coding guidelines; and American Hospital Association coding clinic advice was subject to the clinical coders’ interpretation; they perceived them as conflicting guidance. Their reliance on subjective experience in dealing with this conflicting guidance may limit the accuracy of reporting outcomes of clinical performance.
Apoptosis as a Mechanism of the Cancer Chemopreventive Activity of Glucosinolates: a Review

Cruciferous vegetables are a rich source of glucosinolates that have established anti-carcinogenic activity. Naturally-occurring glucosinolates and their derivative isothiocyanates (ITCs), generated as a result of their enzymatic degradation catalysed by myrosinase, have been linked to low cancer incidence in epidemiological studies, and in animal models isothiocyanates suppressed chemically-induced tumorigenesis. The prospective effect of isothiocyanates as anti-carcinogenic agent has been much explored as cytotoxic against wide array of cancer cell lines and being explored for the development of new anticancer drugs. However, the mechanisms of isothiocyanates in inducing apoptosis against tumor cell lines are still largely disregarded. A number of mechanisms are believed to be involved in the glucosinolate-induced suppression of carcinogenesis, including the induction of apoptosis, biotransformation of xenobiotic metabolism, oxidative stress, alteration of caspase activity, angiogenesis, histone deacytylation and cell cycle arrest. The molecular mechanisms through which isothiocyanates stimulate apoptosis in cancer cell lines have not so far been clearly defined. This review summarizes the underlying mechanisms through which isothiocyanates modify the apoptotic pathway leading to cell death.
CFXGBoost: Topic phrase extraction based on context features and XGBoost for knowledge base question answering

Topic phrase extraction is a core component for many NLP(Natural Language Processing) applications including Knowledge Base Question Answering(KBQA). In this paper, we propose a topic phrase extraction method based on context features and XGBoost(CFXGBoost) to detect the topic phrase given an input question. Our method first finds all of the phrases which appear in the question through the pre-constructed phrase dictionary, then extracts rich context features of the phrases to train a XGBoost model to detect the topic phrase in the question. Experimental results evidence that our approach achieves outstanding topic phrase extraction performance in KBQA system.
Evaluation of routability-driven macro placement with machine-learning technique

Macro placement is an important step in floor-plan. Macros' location directly affects the next steps, cells placement and wires routing. However, it is a time-consuming work to evaluate macro placement's result. To address this problem, we propose an effective evaluation method with machine learning technique. Our methodology predicts HPWL and routing congestion after macro placement, rather than after cells placement and global routing. Therefore, it takes much short time that we can get HPWL and routing congestion. Experiment results show that our evaluation is accurate and effective.
Multi-keywords carrier-free text steganography based on part of speech tagging

Steganography has attracted more and more attentions in protecting information security. Previous studies achieved by modifying the carriers can't effectively resist the steganalysis methods and attacks. To address this problem, by combining big data with steganography, a novel multi-keywords carrier-free text steganography method based on part of speech tagging is proposed in this paper. In our method, the hidden tags are selected from all the Chinese character components of words. And the POS (Part of Speech) is used to hiding the number of keywords to enhance the hiding capacity. Meanwhile, the redundancy of hidden tags in extraction process is eliminated by ensuring the uniqueness of hidden tags in every stego-text. Also, the way of joint retrieval is used for hiding multi-keywords. The experimental results show that with appropriate hidden tags and large scale of big text data, the proposed method has good performance in the hiding capacity, the success rate of hiding, the extraction accuracy and the time efficiency.
Exploring the acceptability and feasibility of a preconception and diabetes information app for women with pregestational diabetes: A mixed-methods study protocol

Background Women with diabetes are at increased risk of adverse maternal and fetal outcomes. Preconception care can improve pregnancy outcomes and is paramount to minimise complications, but, current provision is sub-optimal. Mobile technology, particularly smartphones and apps have the potential to improve preconception care provision but research is lacking in this area. The need to use modern technologies to improve preconception care knowledge and awareness led to the development of a preconception and diabetes information app in Stage A of this study. Objective The aim of this paper, Stage B of the study, is to explore the feasibility and acceptability of the Preconception and Diabetes Information app to improve preconception care knowledge and attitudes in women with diabetes, and explore the potential for wider implementation. Methods A mixed-methods study design adopting a quasi-experimental approach will assess women's knowledge and attitudes related to preconception care, and level of patient activation (knowledge and confidence for self-management of health) before and after the three-month intervention period. A log of activity will be used to determine engagement with the app and semi-structured interviews will explore women's experiences. Conclusions This is the first study to explore the acceptability and feasibility of a preconception and diabetes information app for women with diabetes. The app has potential to change the way preconception care is delivered, improve pregnancy outcomes and be widely implemented both in developed and developing countries. This is important given the considerable shortfalls in current preconception care services in the United Kingdom and around the world.
Distributed Monitoring of Smart Buildings with Cloud Backend Infrastructure

As Internet of Things applications have increased significantly over the last period in both research and industry there is an increased need for end-to-end robust demonstrators which can drive further adoption and technology developments in this field. The paper presents the application of a wireless sensor network system for distributed sensing in a smart building. The main objective has been to allow the reliable collection, storage and presentation of the collected data aimed at improving the quality of life of occupants in office environments. This includes both comfort conditions as well as dangerous situations which can appear given high concentrations of gases in the indoor setting. Special consideration has also been given to enabling scalability for integration of a large number of heterogenous sensor nodes and development of a cloud-based processing pipeline for advanced data analytics. This ranges from data visualisation and statistical indicators for dynamic thresholding towards machine learning inspired approaches, deployed within the cloud infrastructure. The key advantages and challenges of the presented solution are also discussed.
Mini Review of TiO2‐Based Multifunctional Nanocomposites for Near‐Infrared Light–Responsive Phototherapy

Phototherapy with the properties of specific spatial/temporal selectivity and minimal invasiveness has been acknowledged as one of the most promising cancer therapy types. Among all the photoactive substance for phototherapy, titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanomaterials are paid more and more attention due to their outstanding photocatalytic properties, prominent biocompatibility, and excellent chemical stability. However, the wide bandgap (3.0–3.2 eV) of TiO2 limits its absorption only to the ultraviolet (UV) light region. For a long time, UV light–stimulated TiO2 was applied in the phototherapy researches of tumors located in the skin layer, while it is unsatisfactory for most deep‐tissue tumors. Due to the maximum penetration into tissue existing in the near‐infrared (NIR) region, how to use NIR light to trigger photochemical reaction of TiO2 remains a big challenge. In this review, two strategies to develop and construct NIR‐triggered TiO2‐based nanocomposites (NCs) for phototherapy are summarized, and the relevant mechanism and background knowledge of TiO2‐based phototherapy are also given in order to better understand the application value and current situation of TiO2 in phototherapy. Finally, the challenges and research directions of TiO2 in the future clinic phototherapy application are also discussed.
Analysis of Undergraduate Biology Laboratory Manuals

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the undergraduate biology laboratory manuals of Ethiopian Universities. It focuses on assessing how they promote the basic and integrated science process skills that are involved in scientific inquiry with seven levels of Laboratory Task Analysis Instrument (LAI). A total of 22 undergraduate biology laboratory manuals were collected from three sample universities with different age. Manipulating materials, measuring and using numbers and pre - lab activities were common activities, and were found in every manual and in every university. However, students rarely asked to plan and design and to communicate and interpret the results. The results also show high percentage rate of basic science process skills (75.4%) as compared to the integrated science process skills (24.6%). Implications for universities and the Ministry of Education should develop standard harmonized biology laboratory manuals with all the necessary scientific skills that would promote the students’ use of much integrated scientific skills. Key words : Scientific skills; undergraduate biology laboratory manuals; laboratory task analysis instrument