Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Novel Computer-Assisted Fluoroscopy System for Intraoperative Guidance: Feasibility Study for Distal Locking of Femoral Nails

Objectives Orthopaedic procedures that use fluoroscopy require intraoperative mental navigation of the surgical tools in a three-dimensional space. Moreover, because of their reliance on real-time monitoring, such procedures are frequently associated with increased x-ray exposure. The goal of this study was to develop a computer-guided surgical navigation system based on fluoroscopic images that not only facilitates direction of surgical tools within anatomy, but also provides constant feedback without the need for radiologic updates. To evaluate the feasibility of the new technology, the authors used it on cases requiring distal locking of femoral nails. Methods The hardware components of the system include an instrumented C-arm, optoelectronic position sensor, stereotactic tools, and custom-made software. Computer integration of these devices permitted C-arm alignment assistance and real-time navigation control without constant x-ray exposure. The nails were locked in a variety of media, including plastic femurs, dry human femoral specimens, human cadavers, and one clinical case. Unreamed femoral nail sizes ranged from 9/340 to 12/400. Radiographs were taken to confirm that screws were positioned correctly, and fluoroscopic time associated with the locking procedure was recorded. Results All distal holes were locked successfully. In eight (11 percent) of seventy-six holes, the drill bit touched the canal of the locking hole, albeit with no damage to the nail and no clinical consequences. The fluoroscopy time per pair of screws was 1.67 seconds. Conclusions The developed system enables the physician to precisely navigate surgical instruments throughout the anatomy using just a few computer-calibrated radiographic images. The total radiation time per procedure can be significantly reduced because additional x-ray exposure is not required for tool navigation.
A Systematic Mapping on the use of Visual Data Mining to Support the Conduct of Systematic Literature Reviews

A systematic literature review (SLR) is a methodology used to find and aggregate all relevant existing evidence about a specific research question of interest. Important decisions need to be made at several points in the review process, relating to search of the literature, selection of relevant primary studies and use of methods of synthesis. Visualization can support tasks that involve large collections of data, such as the studies collected, evaluated and summarized in an SLR. The objective of this paper is to present the results of a systematic mapping study (SM) conducted to collect and evaluate evidence on the use of a specific visualization technique, visual data mining (VDM), to support the SLR process. We reviewed 20 papers and our results indicate a scarcity of research on the use of VDM to help with conducting SLRs in the software engineering domain. However, most of the studies (16 of the 20 studies included in our mapping) have been conducted in the field of medicine and they revealed that the activities of data extraction and data synthesis, related to conducting the review phase of an SLR process, have more VDM support than other activities. In contrast, according to our SM, previous studies using VDM techniques with SLRs have not employed such techniques during the SLR’s planning and reporting phases.
Voice Recognition Robotic Dog Guides For Visually Impaired People

The primary purpose of this dog is to guide the visually impaired and elderly people to some predefined destination avoiding obstacles and traffic. It is also designed to act as an advanced multipurpose human assistance and service robot that is able recognize the words spoken by the user, talk to them and take action according to the spoken voice command. Voice commands are recognized by an android smartphone and the information is transferred to the main MCU using a Bluetooth serial port that runs Bluetooth SPP protocol stack. The robotic dog has the ability to follow a human when commanded with voice. Touch sensitive e-skin senses human finger touch and helps answering complex user requests such as time, date and weather conditions such as light and temperature. The same can be asked using voice also. It even allows the user to set wake up alarm. A built in audio playback system can play music tracks in MP3 format. One of the music tracks is kept as the alarm tone. It also plays the role of a regular watchdog during night and barks like any normal dog if it finds any abnormal activity. During the day time it can charge itself by moving around within a given region in order to find the maximum sun light, intelligently avoiding the shaded areas, thereby freeing the user completely from maintenance issues such as battery charging.
Hybrid Metaheuristics: An Emerging Approach to Optimization

Optimization problems are of great importance in many fields. They can be tackled, for example, by approximate algorithms such as metaheuristics. Examples of metaheuristics are simulated annealing, tabu search, evolutionary computation, iterated local search, variable neighborhood search, and ant colony optimization. In recent years it has become evident that a skilled combination of a metaheuristic with other optimization techniques, a so called hybrid metaheuristic, can provide a more efficient behavior and a higher flexibility. This is because hybrid metaheuristics combine their advantages with the complementary strengths of, for example, more classical optimization techniques such as branch and bound or dynamic programming. The authors involved in this book are among the top researchers in their domain. The book is intended both to provide an overview of hybrid metaheuristics to novices of the field, and to provide researchers from the field with a collection of some of the most interesting recent developments.
Potential therapeutic use of dehydroepiandrosterone and structural analogs.

221 ALTHOUGH DEHYDROEPIANDROSTERONE (DHEA) was first isolated from human urine by Butenandt and Tscherining in 1934, the biological significance of this steroid remains a mystery.1 In the first years of life, the human adrenal produces little DHEA until around age 8 (adrenarche), at which time the adrenal undergoes morphologic and functional changes giving rise to a prominent zona reticularis, the site of biosynthesis of DHEA and DHEA sulfate.2 The plasma levels of DHEA and DHEA sulfate increase quite rapidly from adrenarche, reaching their highest levels in the second decade, and thereafter decline to about one quarter of their peak level in old age, apparently as a result of a decline in the number of functional reticular cells.2,3 Cortisol plasma levels, on the contrary, progressively increase with age.4 Although not an androgen per se, DHEA is metabolized into testosterone and is weakly androgenic.5,6 However, over the past years, many investigators have demonstrated that DHEA treatment of laboratory animals produces various biologic effects, unrelated to androgenicity, that are potentially of great therapeutic importance. In numerous studies, DHEA treatment has produced cancer preventive,7 antiatherosclerotic,8 antiinflammatory,9,10 immunomodulating,11,12 as well as antiobesity13 and antidiabetic14 effects. The paper of Byrne and Bradlow15 is important since it demonstrates that DHEA treatment not only reduces plasma glucose levels in a rat model of type 2 diabetes but also attenuates the associated hypertriglyceridemia, which is an independent risk factor for coronary heart disease in type 2 diabetes.16 Interestingly, triglyceride lowering appears to be more sensitive to DHEA treatment than the reduction in plasma glucose levels. The authors took care to administer DHEAPC by osmotic infusion pump, instead of in the food, and thus avoided the reduced food consumption and weight gain seen in earlier studies with the Zucker rat.17 Coleman et al. found that dietary administration of DHEA to C57 BL/KsJ-db/db mice markedly reduced plasma glucose levels without affecting food consumption or weight,18 a finding that we subsequently confirmed.19 There is no evidence that DHEA is a ligand for a receptor belonging to the superfamily of steroid/thyroid hormone receptors, which act as ligand-activated transcription factors, and the mechanism by which DHEA exerts its biologic actions is largely unknown. The DHEA steroids, however, are potent uncompetitive inhibitors of mammalian glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PDH), the first enzyme in the pentose phosphate pathway.20,21 Inhibition of this pathway could have profound effects on the supply of 5-carbon sugars required for nucleic acid synthesis as well as on the availability of NADPH and the cellular redox state. In-
Cause-specific mortality in a population-based study of diabetes.

BACKGROUND Mortality from vascular diseases has been reported to be high in diabetic persons. METHODS To evaluate mortality from these and other specific causes, we examined cause-specific age-sex standardized mortality ratios in a geographically defined population of younger onset (diagnosed before age 30 and taking insulin, n = 1200) and older onset (diagnosed after age 30, n = 1772) diabetic persons followed for 8.5 years. Cause of death was determined from death certificates. RESULTS In younger onset persons, age-sex standardized mortality ratios were significantly high (P less than .05) for all causes of death (7.5) as well as for diabetes (191), all heart disease (9.1), ischemic heart disease (10.1), other heart disease (6.3), nephritis and nephrosis (41.2), accidents (2.9), and all other causes (3.2). In older onset persons, age-sex standardized mortality ratios were significantly high for all causes of death (2.0) as well as for diabetes (16.8), all heart disease (2.3), ischemic heart disease (2.3), other heart disease (2.1), stroke (2.0), and pneumonia and influenza (1.7). CONCLUSIONS Diabetic persons experience very high mortality, especially from vascular diseases, compared to the general population.
High salivary acetaldehyde after a moderate dose of alcohol in ALDH2-deficient subjects: strong evidence for the local carcinogenic action of acetaldehyde.

BACKGROUND Due to a point mutation, aldehyde dehydrogenase-2 (ALDH2) isoenzyme is deficient in 30% to 50% of Asians. Among Asian ALDH2-deficient heavy drinkers, the risk for digestive tract cancers is markedly increased (odds ratio 3.4-54.2). The reason for this is unknown but could be due to the local carcinogenic action of acetaldehyde. METHODS Salivary and blood acetaldehyde levels were determined in 20 healthy Asians after a moderate dose of alcohol (0.5 g/kg of body weight). Salivary acetaldehyde production capacity from ethanol in vitro was measured also. ALDH2 genotype of the Asians was determined from isolated leukocyte-deoxyribonucleic acid by polymerase chain reaction/restriction fragment length polymorphism method. Acetaldehyde content of parotid gland saliva was measured in three ALDH2-deficient Asians and three White subjects with normal ALDH2 after the same dose of ethanol. RESULTS Seven of the Asians were heterozygous for the mutant ALDH2*2 allele (flushers). They had two to three times higher salivary acetaldehyde levels than the Asians (n = 13) with normal ALDH2 throughout the follow-up period of 240 min (p < 0.001). Only in the flushers did the parotid gland contribute to salivary acetaldehyde production. The in vitro capacity of saliva to produce acetaldehyde from ethanol was equal in both groups. The flushers' blood acetaldehyde levels were only one ninth of the levels in saliva. CONCLUSIONS By using this human "knockout model" for deficient acetaldehyde removal, we found that in addition to oral microflora, acetaldehyde in saliva may also originate from the oxidation of ethanol in the parotid gland. When combined with earlier epidemiological data, these results offer a strong evidence for the local carcinogenic action of acetaldehyde in humans.
Ampullary Neuroendocrine Tumor: A Rare Cause of Recurrent Abdominal Pain

Ampullary Neuroendocrine tumor (ANET) is a rare GI malignancy, representing less than 1% of GI neuroendocrine tumors and less than 2% of ampullary tumors. Traditional treatment is often a pancreaticoduodenectomy; however, local and endoscopic resections have been successful. We report a rare case of ANET in a 21-year-old Burmese man who presented with a 6-year history of non-specific intermittent abdominal pain who was successfully managed through transduodenal ampullectomy. At 24 months postoperatively he remains disease and symptom free. ANET is a rare cause of recurrent abdominal pain, and local excision of small ANETs can be an alternative, less morbid treatment for young patients. We follow the case with a brief review of the literature.
Aging and the resting state: cognition is not obsolete

We were pleased to see that our opinion paper generated so many thoughtful comments, and while there was some disagreement as to the role resting state data should play going forward, there was also much agreement. In reply, we briefly touch on some of the keys issues brought up by the authors and reiterate our view that task-based studies offer a greater opportunity to advance the field.
Late Breaking Chromosomes

guage delays and, additionally, cognitive impairments in 27 out of 45 patients with 16p11.2 CNVs. In 2 recent studies, 3 patients with 16p11.2 CNVs and developmental verbal dyspraxia, a.k. a. childhood apraxia of speech, were reported [Newbury et al., 2013; Raca et al., 2013]. While all 16p11.2 CNVs in the 3 patients had occurred de novo, the third patient, who had also received a diagnosis of pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS) according to DSM IV, inherited an additional duplication in the chromosomal region 6q22.31 [genome coordinates from 123,527,545–124,311,813 (GRCh37/hg19)] from his clinically normal mother. This CNV was novel and did not overlap with any known CNVs in the Database of Genomic Variants [Newbury et al., 2013]. This duplication covers 2 genes: the entire coding region of triadin ( TRDN ; OMIM 603283), a ryanodine-sensitive calcium channel expressed in cardiac and skeletal muscle and the first exon of sodium/potassiumtransporting ATPase subunit beta-1-interacting protein 2 isoform 2 ( NKAIN2 ; OMIM 609758). Truncation of NKAIN2 , due to a translocation, has been described in patients with developmental delay and complex neurological impairments [Bocciardi et al., 2005; Yue et al., 2006]. Since both the duplication of TRDN and the truncation of NKAIN2 were inherited from his healthy mother, they can, by themselves, not be a sufficient cause of the childhood apraxia of speech phenotype of the patient. To explain the highly variable phenotypic outcome of recurrent and unique CNVs and other forms of gene disruptions, several mutational mechanisms can be envisaged. First, a CNV does not occur alone, but may, in concert with other unique or recurrent CNVs, contribute to complex disorders [Girirajan et al., 2010]. Different combinations of recurrent CNVs found among patients with different clinical phenotypes may aid in explaining the clinical variability among some of these developmental Late Breaking Chromosomes
Decomposing Finite-Valued Transducers and Deciding Their Equivalence

In this paper finite-valued finite transducers are investigated in connection with their inner structure. The following results are shown: A finite-valued nondeterministic generalized sequential machine (NGSM) M can be effectively decomposed into finitely many single-valued NGSMs $M_1 , \ldots ,M_N $ such that the transduction realized by M is the union of the transductions realized by $M_1 , \ldots ,M_N $. Using this decomposition, the equivalence of finite-valued NGSMs is decidable in deterministic double exponential time. By reduction, both results can be generalized to normalized finite transducers.
An Extension of the Seasonal KPSS Test

The limit theory of the seasonal KPSS test is established under the null hypothesis using seasonal dummy variables. Taking these variables into account can result in improved finite sample performance of the test. The seasonal KPSS test can be interpreted as a test of deterministic seasonality and it may be used in addition to seasonal unit root tests to analyze the dynamic properties of time series. The seasonal indicator variables provide the test with an explicit model-based regression that in itself constitutes a support for its limit theory.
Treatment of Helicobacter pylori reduces the rate of rebleeding in peptic ulcer disease.

BACKGROUND We evaluated whether therapy designed to eradicate Helicobacter pylori infection resulted in a reduction in rebleeding in patients with peptic ulcer disease. Patients presenting because of major upper gastrointestinal hemorrhage from peptic ulcer and whose ulcers healed in a study in which they were randomized to receive ranitidine alone or triple therapy plus ranitidine were followed up regularly with endoscopy. No maintenance anti-ulcer therapy was given after ulcer healing. METHODS Patients received ranitidine, 300 mg, or ranitidine plus triple therapy. Triple therapy consisted of tetracycline, 2 g; metronidazole, 750 mg; and bismuth subsalicylate, 5 or 8 tablets (151 mg bismuth per tablet), and was administered for the first 2 weeks of treatment; ranitidine therapy was continued until the ulcer had healed or 16 weeks had elapsed. After ulcer healing, no maintenance antiulcer therapy was given. Development of ulcer recurrence with or without recurrent upper gastrointestinal bleeding was evaluated. RESULTS Thirty-one patients with major upper gastrointestinal bleeding from peptic ulcer were studied; 17 received triple therapy and 14 ranitidine alone. Major rebleeding occurred significantly (p = 0.031) more often in those in the ranitidine group (28.6%), compared with none (0%) in the triple therapy group. CONCLUSION Eradication of H. pylori infection reduces the rate of ulcer recurrence and rebleeding in complicated ulcer disease.
The frustrating case of incident-reporting systems

Even for those interested in patient safety and quality improvement, incident-reporting (IR) systems often represent a source of frustration, rather than a useful tool for capturing important patient-safety and quality-of-care problems. IR systems suffer from well-known limitations.1 They detect only a small percentage of target problems,2 and the incidents that users do choose to report often include a large percentage of mundane events. Underuse of IR systems is particularly marked among physicians. In the survey reported by Farley et al (see page 416) in this issue, 86% of hospitals responded that physicians submitted “few or no” incident reports.3 This poor showing among physicians may reflect the misperception that incident reports fall under the jurisdiction of nurses and pharmacists. However, other reasons undoubtedly include the same factors that affect the use of IR systems by other healthcare professionals, including the time to fill out reports and the perceived utility of doing so.4 A more fundamental problem that bedevils the use of IR systems is that they generate numerators without denominators: X patients bled while receiving anticoagulants, and Y patients fell out of bed, without any indication of the total numbers of patients at risk for these events. In principle, hospitals could follow trends in these numerators on the assumption that the unknown denominators remain relatively constant over time. However, IR systems typically detect such small numbers of the targeted events that even small changes in reporting practices can produce large changes in the apparent incidence of events. An incident during a recent rotation as the attending physician on an inpatient teaching unit illustrates the problem. Frustration with the nurses’ inattention to one of our patients elicited from me a grumble about the quality …
Proton channels, plasma membrane potential, and respiratory burst in human neutrophils

Abstract: When confronted with invading microorganisms, neutrophils undergo a number of nearly synchronous reactions including the generation of microbicidal reactive oxygen intermediates by the NADPH oxidase. These reactions are accompanied by a slow depolarization, from resting values of – 60 mV to levels probably exceeding 0 mV. The depolarization is transient, indicating that a compensatory charge transport mechanism is activated. Activation of the oxidase system causes a massive burst of metabolic acid generation that would, if uncompensated, lower the intracellular pH of neutrophils by over 5 units, to lethal levels (pH = 2). Neutrophils must therefore possess particularly effective regulatory systems to avoid excessive cytosolic acidification. The recently described H + conductance of neutrophils may counteract both the acidification and the depolarization. Activation of the H + conductance occurs at depolarizing voltages and is promoted by cytosolic acidification, a combination that takes place during the respiratory burst. The NADPH oxidase of neutrophils is thus associated to an unusual, particularly efficient mechanism of H + export and charge compensation. The sequential activation of these two systems causes neutrophils to depolarize through the activation of an electron transport chain, and to repolarize through the activation of a H + conductance.
A Bandwidth Allocation Scheme to Improve Fairness and Link Utilization in Data Center Networks

SUMMARY Cloud computing, which enables users to enjoy various Internet services provided by data centers (DCs) at anytime and anywhere, has attracted much attention. In cloud computing, however, service quality degrades with user distance from the DC, which is unfair. In this study, we propose a bandwidth allocation scheme based on collectable information to improve fairness and link utilization in DC networks. We have conﬁrmed the eﬀectiveness of this approach through simulation evaluations.
Advances in Autism Research – The Genomic Basis of ASD

Many of the recent advances in autism research that have provided fundamental insight into this condition have come from the application of genetic/genomic approaches; these advances have been fomented by the advent of new technologies to interrogate the en‐ tire genome, such as array comparative genomic hybridization (aCGH), single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) microarrays, transcriptome sequencing, and whole genome or whole exome sequencing (WGS/WES) [1]. With the recent advancement of these technol‐ ogies over more traditional, lower-resolution technologies such as cytogenetic analysis, came the ability to interrogate the entire genome at a high-resolution. With the improve‐ ment of next-generation sequencing technology, as well as the reduction in the cost of this technique, WGS is becoming more commonplace in the search for novel diseasecausing variants in individual patients. Alternatively, many studies have utilized WES, as it is less costly than sequencing the entire genome and coding simple nucleotide var‐ iants (SNVs) can often be more readily interpreted given knowledge provided by the ge‐ netic code. While the reduced cost and more readily interpretable variation have proven to be distinct advantages of this method over whole-genome sequencing, it is well known that many other variants in non-coding or regulatory regions can be pathogenic, and they typically cannot be discerned by whole-exome sequencing, which requires a targeted-capture step to enrich for and focus analysis on the coding sequences of all an‐ notated protein-coding genes [2, 3]. Furthermore, repetitive or G-C rich regions or highly homologous sequences are often excluded by WES, and copy number variations (CNVs) usually cannot be accurately called due to the use of PCR-based sample preparation methods. Nonetheless, the utility of WGS/WES in individual patient diagnosis and man‐ agement has been demonstrated by several recent reports [4-6].