Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Characteristics of Brain Arteriovenous Malformations Presenting with Seizures without Acute or Remote Hemorrhage

We report on the predictors of seizure presention in unruptured brain arteriovenous malformations (AVMs). Between 1999 and 2008, 302 consecutive patients with AVMs were referred to our institution for endovascular treatment. Seventy-four patients (24.5%) experienced seizures without hemorrhage before treatment. We tested for statistical associations between angioarchitectural characteristics and seizure presentation. When we compared the 74 patients with seizures without hemorrhage with the 228 patients who did not experience seizures initially (total of 302 patients), male sex, cortical AVM location, AVM size of more than 3 cm, superficial venous drainage and presence of varices in the venous drainage were statistically associated with seizures (P=0.016, P=0.002, P=0.022, P=0.005, and P=0.022, respectively). Posterior fossa and deep locations and coexisting aneurysms were statistically associated with no seizures. The angioarchitectural characteristics of AVM associated with seizure presentation include male sex, cortical AVM location, AVM size of more than 3 cm, superficial venous drainage and presence of varices in the venous drainage.
Measures of Participation in Global Value Chains and Global Business Cycles

This paper makes two methodological contributions. First, it proposes a framework to decompose total production activities at the country, sector, or country-sector level, to different types, depending on whether they are for pure domestic demand, traditional international trade, simple GVC activities, and complex GVC activities. Second, it proposes a pair of GVC participation indices that improves upon the measures in the existing literature. We apply this decomposition framework to a Global Input-Output Database (WIOD) that cover 44 countries and 56 industries from 2000 to2014 to uncover evolving compositions of different production activities. We also show that complex GVC activities co-move with global GDP growth more strongly than other types of production activities.
Model predictive control for five-level current source converter with DC current balancing capability

Multilevel current source converter (MCSC) is an effective way to increase the power rating of conventional current source-fed motor drive, especially its current rating. However, there are still several challenges existing in this configuration, which mainly focus on its modulation and control techniques, and the inherent DC current imbalance issue. In this paper, a model predictive control (MPC) scheme with DC current balancing capability is proposed for a five-level current source converter (5L-CSC). The optimal space vectors for 5L-current source rectifier (5L-CSR) and current source inverter (CSI) are selected for their respective control objects. Moreover, the DC-side model of a 5L-CSC is analyzed, which is used for DC current prediction based on the applied switching states at both 5L-CSR and CSI sides. Finally, optimal switching states are selected and applied to realize DC current balancing. The proposed MPC scheme is verified on a (2MW/4160V/278A) back-to-back 5L-CSC system through simulation.
Younger Dryas cooling and the Greenland climate response to CO2

Greenland ice-core δ18O-temperature reconstructions suggest a dramatic cooling during the Younger Dryas (YD; 12.9–11.7 ka), with temperatures being as cold as the earlier Oldest Dryas (OD; 18.0–14.6 ka) despite an approximately 50 ppm rise in atmospheric CO2. Such YD cooling implies a muted Greenland climate response to atmospheric CO2, contrary to physical predictions of an enhanced high-latitude response to future increases in CO2. Here we show that North Atlantic sea surface temperature reconstructions as well as transient climate model simulations suggest that the YD over Greenland should be substantially warmer than the OD by approximately 5 °C in response to increased atmospheric CO2. Additional experiments with an isotope-enabled model suggest that the apparent YD temperature reconstruction derived from the ice-core δ18O record is likely an artifact of an altered temperature-δ18O relationship due to changing deglacial atmospheric circulation. Our results thus suggest that Greenland climate was warmer during the YD relative to the OD in response to rising atmospheric CO2, consistent with sea surface temperature reconstructions and physical predictions, and has a sensitivity approximately twice that found in climate models for current climate due to an enhanced albedo feedback during the last deglaciation.
[Relationship between the operation time of multiple fractures with system inflammation changes and clinical outcomes].

OBJECTIVE To investigate the relationship between the operation time of femur shaft fracture with post-operation system inflammation changes and clinical outcomes for those multiple fractures. METHODS This investigation was designed as a prospective, nonrandomized cohort study. From April 2005 to August 2007, all 78 hospitalized patients were divided into 3 groups by an inclusion criteria: multiple fractures with opened fracture of femur shaft (group A, n = 26), multiple fractures with closed fracture of femur shaft (group B, n = 23), single closed fracture of femur shaft (group C, n = 29). In the group A, damage control orthopaedics (DCO) procedure were performed. In the group B and C, all the femur shaft fractures were performed intramedullary nail fixation early (< 24 h). From serially sampled venous blood, inflammatory reaction index were estimated by measured the concentration of IL-6, TNF-alpha surround the operation, and the conditions of multiple organs were estimated by assayed PaO2/FiO2, total bilirubin (TBIL), creatinine (Cr) levels, the postoperation complication rates were analyzed among each groups. The extent of inflammation changes, multiple organs damage conditions and postoperation complication rates were compared and analyzed among the 3 groups. RESULTS In the group A, the median increase values of IL-6,TNF-alpha after the secondary surgery were 59 ng/L and 85 ng/L, whereas they were 154 ng/L and 250 ng/L respectively in the group B, there was a significant difference between the 2 groups (P < 0.01). In addition, the median increase values of IL-6, TNF-alpha after the first surgery in group A and in group C were both significantly less than group B (P < 0.01). Correspondingly, the abnormal rates of PaO2/ FiO2, TBIL, Cr levels occurred in the group B were all greater than group A after the 2 surgery procedures (P < 0.05), and in the aspects of average ventilation days, ICU staying days, duration of positive fluid balance (input/output > 500 ml/24 h), the group B were all greater than group A after the second surgery ( P < 0.01). Compared with group A after the first surgery, group B showed a longer average ventilation days, but it had no significant difference in average ICU stay days and duration of positive fluid balance. In addition, for group C, all the aspects above were less than group B (P < 0.01). Concerned with the complications after surgery in each groups, fat embolism and MODS rate between group A and B had no significant difference (11.5% vs 13.0% ,P > 0.05), but higher than which of group C (P < 0.01). CONCLUSIONS The early intramedullary nail fixation of femur shaft fracture in multiple fractures may lead to a significant system inflammation changes, and may develop the subclinical changes of multiple organs. However, these changes are less in those surgery procedures later performed, namely intramedullary nail fixation of femur shaft fracture in multiple fractures as a primary definitive treatment has a potential risk, and should be carefully evaluated.
Alleviating Poverty in the United States: The Critical Role of SNAP Benefits

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is one of the largest safety net programs in the United States, serving 44.7 million individuals in an average month in 2011. We used Current Population Survey data to examine the effect of SNAP on poverty from 2000 to 2009, by adding program benefits to income and calculating how SNAP benefits affected the prevalence, depth, and severity of poverty. We found an average decline of 4.4 percent in the prevalence of poverty due to SNAP benefits, while the average decline in the depth and severity of poverty was 10.3 and 13.2 percent, respectively. SNAP benefits had a particularly strong effect on child poverty, reducing its depth by an average of 15.5 percent and its severity by an average of 21.3 percent from 2000 to 2009. SNAP's antipoverty effect peaked in 2009, when benefit increases were authorized by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Our analysis shows that SNAP significantly improves the welfare of low-income households.
High Prevalence, Coinfection Rate, and Genetic Diversity of Retroviruses in Wild Red Colobus Monkeys (Piliocolobus badius badius) in Taï National Park, Côte d'Ivoire

ABSTRACT Simian retroviruses are precursors of all human retroviral pathogens. However, little is known about the prevalence and coinfection rates or the genetic diversity of major retroviruses—simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), simian T-cell lymphotropic virus type 1 (STLV-1), and simian foamy virus (SFV)—in wild populations of nonhuman primates. Such information would contribute to the understanding of the natural history of retroviruses in various host species. Here, we estimate these parameters for wild West African red colobus monkeys (Piliocolobus badius badius) in the Taï National Park, Côte d'Ivoire. We collected samples from a total of 54 red colobus monkeys; samples consisted of blood and/or internal organs from 22 monkeys and additionally muscle and other tissue samples from another 32 monkeys. PCR analyses revealed a high prevalence of SIV, STLV-1, and SFV in this population, with rates of 82%, 50%, and 86%, respectively. Forty-five percent of the monkeys were coinfected with all three viruses while another 32% were coinfected with SIV in combination with either STLV or SFV. As expected, phylogenetic analyses showed a host-specific pattern for SIV and SFV strains. In contrast, STLV-1 strains appeared to be distributed in genetically distinct and distant clades, which are unique to the Taï forest and include strains previously described from wild chimpanzees in the same area. The high prevalence of all three retroviral infections in P. b. badius represents a source of infection to chimpanzees and possibly to humans, who hunt them.
Comparison of Air Travel Demand Forecasting Methods

Accurate forecasts of future passenger demand are essential to effective revenue management system. The seat inventory control leans on predictions about the bookings to come to optimally allocate aircraft seats among the various booking classes. Forecasting for airline revenue management systems is inherently difficult because of complex nature of air travel demand which is highly stochastic. The problem is further complicated because of usually great number of origin destination pairs, each with its own seasonal and weekly effects, the economic environment and external factors like competition or special events. The paper describes general problem of forecasting airline demand and compares traditional methods of forecasting (moving averages, exponential smoothing, etc.) against neural networks as a forecasting method. All the methods are compared on the basis of standard error measures.
The role of nitric oxide in an experimental necrotising enterocolitis model

Background: Necrotising enterocolitis (NEC) causes a significant life-threatening gastrointestinal system (GIS) disease with severe mortality and morbidity, particularly in premature infants. Nitric oxide (NO) has many functions in the GIS. Therefore, in the present study, we evaluated the effects of NO in experimentally induced NEC of newborn 1-day-old rats following hypoxia/reoxygenation (HR). Materials and Methods: Thirty Wistar albino rats (weight, 5-8 g) were randomly divided into three groups: group 1 (HR), group 2 (HR + nitroglycerine), and group 3 (control). HR was achieved by placing the rat in carbon dioxide (CO2) for five minutes at 22°C, which was followed by five minutes of 100% oxygen. After HR, nitroglycerine was administered for three days at 50 μg/Kg/day. On day 4, the rats were decapitated and the intestines between the duodenum and sigmoid colon were resected and histopathologically examined. Results: The histopathological findings of groups 1 and 2 were characteristic of NEC. Intestinal injury in group 1 was significantly more prevalent than that in group 2 (χ2 = 21.55, P = 0.000). The intestinal injury score in group 3 was significantly lower than that in the other groups (P < 0.05). Conclusions: NO treatment was effective for treating experimentally induced NEC.
iMUTE: Energy-optimal update policy for perishable mobile contents

Mobile applications that provide ever-changing information such as social media and news feeds applications are designed to consistently update their contents in the background. This operation, often called “prefetching”, provides the users with immediate access to up-to-date contents. However, such updates often result in the unwanted side-effect of draining the battery of mobile devices. It is considered as pure waste when updated contents are not accessed before being renewed. In this paper, we develop an optimal strategy to update the contents in the background under a given energy constraint. The key challenge is to predict when the user will access the contents in a probabilistic manner from the statistics of the accessed patterns in the past. We model our problem as a constrained Markov decision process (C-MDP) and propose to tackle its high complexity with a two-step solution that combines: (1) a threshold-based backward induction algorithm for the Lagrangian relaxation of our C-MDP, and (2) an iterative root finding algorithm, iMUTE (iterative Method for optimal UpdaTe policy with Energy constraint). We prove that iMUTE converges superlinearly to the optimal solution of the original C-MDP under a mild condition. We also experimentally verify that iMUTE outperforms the periodic policy as well as the additive and multiplicative increase policies that are adopted in the Doze mode of Android systems and HUSH, in terms of user experience and energy saving.
Severely injured geriatric population: morbidity, mortality, and risk factors.

BACKGROUND With an increasing life expectancy and more active elderly population, management of geriatric trauma patients continues to evolve. The aim was to describe the mechanism and injuries of severely injured geriatric patients and to identify risk factors associated with mortality. METHODS The Trauma Registry at a Canadian Level I trauma center was queried for all trauma patients older than 65 years and injury severity score >15 from 2004 to 2006, resulting in a retrospective chart review of 276 patients. The data were subsequently analyzed using univariate and multivariate analysis. RESULTS Average age was 81.5 years (mean injury severity score of 25). Most common comorbid illness was hypertension (57.3%) and most frequent mechanism of injury was falls (72.3%). The overall mortality was comparable with the US National Trauma Data Bank (26.8% vs. 32.0%, confidence interval, 0.00-0.10). Geriatric patients requiring intubation, blood transfusions, or suffering from head, C-spine, or chest trauma had an increased likelihood of death. In-hospital respiratory, gastrointestinal, or infectious complications also had higher likelihood of death. CONCLUSIONS Falls continue to be the most frequent mechanism of injury in severely injured geriatric patients. Risk factors associated with a higher likelihood of death are identified. More research is needed to better understand this important and increasing group of trauma patients.
DNA Barcode, una alternativa para identificar especies del Complejo Midas Cichlidae en Nicaragua

El complejo midas cichlidae (especies del genero Amphilophus) ha sido objeto de discusion entre diferentes grupos de cientificos debido a que desde los primeros intentos de su clasificacion taxonomica presento problemas dada la similitud morfologica entre especies del Complejo. Inicialmente se penso que era solamente una especie polimorfica pero, luego de realizar diferentes estudios, se sabe que son diferentes especies. DNA Barcode (Codigo de Barras genetico) es una tecnica moderna que se esta implementando en el Centro de Biologia Molecular, y que pretende identificar las diferentes especies del Complejo Midas Ciclhidae utilizando una secuencia relativamente corta del gen mitocondrial COI.
Baroreflex Control of Heart Rate in Man Awake and during Enflurane and Enflurane—Nitrous Oxide Anesthesia

Baroreflex control of heart rate was assessed by means of a pressor test in two groups of subjects while awake and at two levels of anesthesia with enflurane (Group I) and enflurane—nitrous oxide (Group II). In the awake control situation, calculated mean slopes (±SD) were 23 ± 8 (Group I) and 25 ± 11 (Group II). There was no significant difference between the groups. During enflurane anesthesia (Group I) mean slopes were significantly depressed to 5 ± 5 at 1 MAC and 6 ± 6 at 0.8 MAC. During enflurane-nitrous oxide anesthesia (Group II), slopes were significantly depressed to 5 ± 3 at 1 MAC and 6 ± 4 at 0.9 MAC. There was no significant difference between the extents of depression in the two groups. It is concluded that both enflurane anesthesia and enflurane- nitrous oxide anesthesia at 1 MAC produce significant depression of baroreflex control of heart rate in man.
The Natural History of Age-related Disc Degeneration: The Pathology and Sequelae of Tears

Study Design. A quasi 3-dimensional pathologic survey of tears in the L4–L5 disc. Objective. To seek accurate information on the pathogenesis and outcomes of tears to facilitate correlation with radiologic imaging and biomechanical testing; and to improve laboratory models for testing hypotheses of disc function and failure. Summary of Background Data. Tears are evidence of structural failure involving the anulus. There are substantial differences in the structure and function of the anterior and posterior anulus and the nonlamellar “nucleus” is much smaller than generally conceptualized and modeled. Method. Microscopy of sections prepared from 5-mm-thick parallel sagittal slices of 70 L4–L5 discs was used to construct maps of tears in each slice and record other features of interest. A template was used to classify data for analysis. Results. Multiple-level analysis detected 20% more tears than in a single disc section. Concentric, perinuclear, and radiating tears often appeared first in the posterior disc and were numerous throughout life. However, rim lesions, transdiscal tears, endplate separations, and Schmorl's nodes were infrequent in young discs. Rim lesions and transdiscal tears markedly increased in the older discs while the other tears showed modest growth. In elderly discs, many tears acquired blood vessels accompanied by nerves capable of transmitting pain. Apart from about 15% of rim lesions, healing of tears by scar tissue was absent. Links between various types of tears result in complex discographic images from older discs and the cavitation of transdiscal tears lead to segmental instability. Conclusion. Tears in the L4–L5 disc show different patterns of incidence with aging, which can be explained by current biomechanical concepts. Tears may not only perturb disc function and cause segmental instability, but the frequency of neovascularization accompanied by neoinnervation indicates that pain originating within the degenerate disc should not be dismissed as the frequent evidence of bleeding into the tear lumen indicates the susceptibility of the vessels to trauma.
Human capital and returns to education

The evaluation of the returns to investments in human capital has been at the core of the economics of education since the seminal work of Theodore Schultz published in 1961. The most significant methodological advances have come in parallel with more general developments in applied microeconometrics, such as the particular interest in issues of causality and unobserved heterogeneity. The new empirical findings document a widespread decline in rates of return to education over time. In this chapter we review some developments and present new international comparative results on the heterogeneity of returns to education. Apart from reviewing endogeneity and heterogeneity issues, we also pay attention to the main findings on return to early years education and returns to overeducation.
The P54‐cleaved form of the tyrosine kinase Lyn generated by caspases during BCR‐induced cell death in B lymphoma acts as a negative regulator of apoptosis

Engagement of the B cell receptor antigen (BCR) triggers apoptosis on immature B cell lines. We report here that BCR triggering leads to caspase activation followed by Lyn cleavage and induction of apoptosis. The cleavage process is mitochondrion‐dependent and involves caspases 9 and 7. Stable expression of the cleaved form of Lyn (Lyn‐Δ‐N) in Ramos B cells impairs BCR‐mediated apoptosis as judged by loss of Δψm, caspase activation and PARP cleavage. Activation of the main survival pathways upon BCR‐triggering was unaltered in both cell variants. However, the PI3‐K inhibitor Ly294002 resensitizes Lyn‐Δ‐N cells to apoptosis. Selected cDNA expression arrays revealed that anti‐IgM modulates the expression of ∼20 genes in both cell variants. Among them, only c‐Myc was found to be differentially regulated, which suggests a role for c‐Myc in the B cell apoptotic response. Interestingly, c‐Myc expression decreased more rapidly in Lyn‐Δ‐N compared with Lyn‐WT cells during the first hours of anti‐IgM stimulation. Nevertheless, rapid down‐regulation of c‐Myc following BCR engagement seems to correlate with the resistance of B cells to apoptosis. Thus, the soluble form of Lyn generated by caspases following BCR triggering acts as an inhibitor of B lymphocyte death likely through the modulation of c‐Myc expression.
Research on an improved DC-side snubber for suppressing the turn-off overvoltage and oscillation in high speed SiC MOSFET application

Due to the high switching speed of SiC MOSFET, the parasitic parameters and the low damping in the circuit, the turn-off overvoltage and oscillation of the freewheeling diode and SiC MOSFET are very severe. Based on the terminal impedances during the turn-off transition of the freewheeling diode and SiC MOSFET, the mechanism of the turn-off overvoltage and oscillation are analyzed and the suppressing method is researched in this paper. The DC-side snubber, which is the high-frequency decoupling capacitor in parallel with the phase-leg configuration, is a simple suppressing method but will lead to the low-frequency oscillation overlaying the high-frequency oscillation on the turn-off voltage. In order to improve the suppressing effectiveness of the simple DC-side snubber to suppress the low-frequency oscillation on the turn-off voltage, this paper proposes an improved DC-side snubber, which is the high-frequency decoupling capacitor in parallel with the capacitor-damping branch. The theoretical derivation and simulation of the improved DC-side snubber are presented. Finally, the experimental verification is carried out based on the double-pulse test circuit to prove the validity and effectiveness.