Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
COMPUTED TOMOGRAPHY COLONOGRAPHY - THE PROCEDURE IN OUR DAYS. LITERATURE REVIEW KOMPIUTERINĖS TOMOGRAFIJOS KOLONOGRAFIJA ŠIANDIEN. LITERATŪROS APŽVALGA

Colorectal cancer is a common malignancy that results in significant morbidity and mortality. It is a curable disease if detected early and may be prevented if precursor adenomas are detected and removed. One of noninvasive examination methods of the colon is computed tomography colonography. Computed tomography colonography has been shown to be sufficiently accurate in detecting colorectal neoplasia. Recent data about examination was collected from MEDLINE and Pubmed databases. This article reviews current indications, contraindications and methodology of computed tomography colonography. We describe computed tomography colonography Reporting and Data System and discuss the accuracy of computed tomography colonography based on recent reports and literature data. We conclude that computed tomography colonography is safe and effective colon examination method, especially when carried out properly. Probability of complications of this procedure is very low with minimal discomfort for the patient. The noninvasive nature of computed tomography colonography may be attractive to patients, and the use of this modality may improve screening compliance and diagnostic rates.
The Importance of Haematocrit in Prediction of Severe Acute Pancreatitis

Background: Acute pancreatitis is fortunately usually a mild and self-limiting disease. About 20-25 % of patients may have severe form with mortality going to 5 30%. The microcirculation disorder is the main cause of the pancreatic necrosis. There’s higher vassal permeability inside the pancreatic tissue, which leads to a higher blood viscosity and its stasis in the microcirculation. Early identification of the risk factors in the severe acute pancreatitis development has potential advantages of aggressive treatment at intensive care unit or transfer to higher centre, by preventing or minimizing the possible complications. Haematocrit has been used as a predictor of severity of acute pancreatitis. Objectives: To study the significance of haematocrit in prediction of severity of acute pancreatitis.Methods: Patients admitted with first episode of acute pancreatitis from February 2011 to December 2014 were included. Haematocrit at admission and 24 hours of admission were compared with severity of acute pancreatitis. Mean, analysis of variance, chi square, Pearson correlation were used for statistical analysis. Results: 123 patients were included in the study with 76 (61.8%) female and 47 (38.2%) male. Haematocrit at 24 hours of admission was higher in severe acute pancreatitis (p value 0.003). Both haematocrit at admission and at 24 hours had positive correlation with severity of acute pancreatitis (r: 0.297; P value 0.029 and r: 0.543; P value 0.011) respectively. Conclusion: Haematocrit is a simple, cost effective and widely available test and can predict severity of acute pancreatitis.
Hepatocellular carcinoma: the rising tide from east to west—a review of epidemiology, screening and tumor markers

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is no longer a disease of the Eastern hemisphere. HCC incidence has tripled in the United States in the past two decades. It is the fastest rising cause of cancer mortality in the U.S. and in parts of Western Europe. In the past the HCC epidemic was fueled by the Hepatitis B virus (HBV) seen mainly in Asia via horizontal transmission. In this decade, we are experiencing a rising tide due to the maturation of the Hepatitis C epidemic related to contaminated blood products and, more importantly, intravenous drug experimentation. As the obesity epidemic sweeps across the west the incidence of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and its inflammatory component nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) are becoming the harbinger of HCC yet to come. Worldwide, the incidence of HCC equals the mortality. Five year survival is at best 12%. These grim statistics underscore the need for earlier detection through screening resulting in initiation of early treatment that has the greatest impact on survival. An understanding of the epidemiology, risk factors and screening techniques is an essential first step in achieving this goal.
Are Long Fire-free Periods Needed to Maintain the Endangered, Fire-recruiting Shrub Arctostaphylos morroensis(Ericaceae)?

Morro manazanita (Arctostaphylos morroensis) is a distinctive shrub restricted to a small area along the coast of California, USA. This endangered species faces two opposing fire-related extinction risks: (1) adults are killed by fire, and (2) recruitment opportunities only occur with fire. These strongly limit the capacity of this, as well as other obligate-seeding species, to recover from a population decline, which may result if there is an inadequate amount of time between fires for replenishment of sufficient seed populations. Using a prescribed burn, we tested whether the size of the seed bank that had accumulated in a 40-yr-old stand would prove adequate for maintaining A. morroensis population sizes through fire. Prior to the burn, we found ~11,000 seeds/m 2 in the soil, mostly in the top 5 cm. However, the number of viable seeds was substantially lower (334 seeds/m 2 ), and less than one-third of these survived the experimental fire (99 seeds/m 2 ). Germination occurred only in the first two wet seasons after the fire, and may have been adequate to replace the number of A. morroensis present before the burn. However, most seedlings did not survive their initial summer drought. After three years, the new population of A. morroensis was less than half the size of the parent population. Further mortality is expected because the remaining seedlings are highly clumped. We conclude that A. morroensis may require considerably longer than 40 years to establish an adequate seed bank to compensate for mortality and prevent population decrease or local extinction. This prolonged risk is perhaps explained by specialization of this species to a historic regime of relatively infrequent fire. There are many obligate-seeding species in fire-prone shrublands that may not be resilient to a regime of fire more frequent than that with which they evolved.
Approximate inertial manifolds for the pattern formation Cahn-Hilliard equation

— An approximate inertial manifold for an évolution équation is a finite dimensional smooth manifold such that the orbits enter, after a transient time, a very thin neighbourhood of the manifold In this paper, we consider the Cahn-Hilliard équation and we present a method which allows to construct several approximate inertial manifolds providing better and better order approximations to the orbits. These approximate inertial manifolds exist, whether an exact inertial manifold is known to exist or not
Numerical FDTD models of electromagnetic field generated by the RF coil of an MRI scanner: comparison among different solutions

Numerical models represent a very useful approach to investigate the effects of MRI on implanted medical devices. The finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method was used to model the radiofrequency (RF) field generated by a birdcage resonator. We developed four numerical models which differ in terms of RF excitations and computational complexity, but which all produce a circular-polarized magnetic field at 64 MHz: a realistic 16-leg birdcage tuned by capacitors; a 16-leg birdcage with leg currents fixed to a specified value; a 2-plane waves excitation model and a 4-plane waves excitation model. Our interest was to evaluate the computational efficiency of the models, and to compare the resulting field pattern, as well as the induced specific absorption rate (SAR). It is shown that the assumption of fixed current inside the coil's leg does not significantly affect the results only when the study involved homogeneous domain, but not in the case of implanted objects. Moreover, by using a superposition of four plane waves, it is possible to obtain a field distribution surprisingly similar to the one of a fully modelled birdcage, drastically reducing the computation effort required by the simulation.
mRNP architecture in translating and stress conditions reveals an ordered pathway of mRNP compaction

Stress granules (SGs) are non-translating mRNP assemblies that form during stress. Herein, we use multiple smFISH probes for specific mRNAs to examine their SG recruitment and spatial organization. We observed that ribosome run-off is required for SG entry with long ORF mRNAs being delayed in SG accumulation, revealing SG transcriptome changes over time. Moreover, mRNAs are ~20X compacted from an expected linear length when translating and compact ~2 fold further in a stepwise manner beginning at the 5’ end during ribosome run-off. Surprisingly, the 5’ and 3’ ends of the examined mRNAs were separated in non-stress conditions, but in non-translating conditions, the ends of AHNAK and DYNC1H1 mRNAs become close, suggesting the closed-loop model of mRNPs preferentially forms on non-translating mRNAs. These results suggest translation inhibition triggers a mRNP reorganization that brings ends closer, which has implications for the regulation of mRNA stability and translation by 3’ UTR elements and the poly(A) tail.
Development of A Passively Powered Knee Exoskeleton for Squat Lifting

This paper proposes a knee exoskeleton with passive-powering mechanism to provide power assistance to the knee joint during squat lifting of objects from the ground. It is designed to capture and store 20% of the biomechanical energy dissipated at the biological knee joint during decent phase and return the harnessed energy in the ascent phase in a squatting cycle. The effectiveness of the proposed system was verified by evaluating performance of key muscles of knee joint using surface electromyography (sEMG) signals. Statistical data from experiments revealed a reduction of peak root-mean-square averages of sEMG signals of knee extensor muscles by 30 40% during squatting.
The Public's Perception on Breast and Nipple Reconstruction: A Crowdsourcing-Based Assessment.

Background Breast reconstruction outcomes have traditionally been measured by evaluating the opinions of patients and surgeons. Objective Our goal was to assess the views of the general public. Methods A survey was designed and distributed through a crowdsourcing website called Amazon Mechanical Turk. Questions assessed participant demographics, personal experience with breast reconstruction, perceptions on breast reconstruction, and opinions regarding aesthetics results. Responses were analyzed using chi-square test. Results 992 responses were collected. Most participants were female (56.1%), White (32.1%), age 30-39 (40.4%), and had a bachelor's degree (42.0%). 44.2% had personal experience with breast reconstruction and 25.8% with nipple reconstruction. Several aesthetic and reconstructive factors were significantly favored over others across sex, ethnicity, age group, education level, and personal experience with breast reconstruction. For instance, women were more likely to prefer reconstructed nipples (p<0.0001), view a breast without a nipple as complete (p=0.024), and place less importance on nipple shape (p=0.002). Additionally, those with personal experience with nipple reconstruction were willing to undergo more procedures for a complete nipple-areolar complex (p<0.0001), to increase aesthetic results (p=0.018), and to increase chances of nipple survival (p=0.002). Conclusions Crowdsourcing can be useful in plastic surgery and has helped identify several key findings. The importance of the nipple in reconstruction has been validated, as almost ¾ of respondents did not view a breast without a nipple as complete. The aesthetic preferences seem to support bilateral nipple-sparing reconstruction when possible. Most importantly the respondents help elucidate key differences in perception of aesthetic outcomes.
Assets Growth, Foreign Ownership and Type of Industry in Multinational Companies

This empirical study explores first the relationship between type of industry and subsidiary age, export ratio and MNCs’ firm factors. Second, we examined the impact of country of origin, foreign ownership and parent’s specific factors on asset growth ratio (AGR). Based on data derived from 2500 foreign companies in Japan, the findings show that the factors of foreign ownership, experience in host market, country of origin, export and parents company’s sales and the number of employees as a proxy of firm size have significantly effect on AGR. Also our finding shows that foreign companies in manufacturing industries are more likely to be as an international joint venture with a foreign manager and higher ratio of import and greater number of foreign employees. Finally, contrary to our expectations, we found that the total asset of parent company has negatively associated with type of industry. In the other word, firms in service industries are more likely to have greater total asset than those in manufacturing sectors.
Cervical Kyphosis

Cervical kyphosis is a rare condition that can cause significant functional disability and myelopathy. Deciding the appropriate treatment for such deformities is challenging for the surgeon. Patients often present with axial neck pain, and it is not uncommon to find coexisting radiculopathy or myelopathy. The optimal approach for addressing this complex issue remains controversial. A comprehensive surgical plan based on knowledge of the pathology and biomechanics is important for kyphosis correction. Here we reviewed diagnoses of the cervical spine along with the literature pertaining to various approaches and management of cervical spine.
Virtual Integration Environment as an Advanced Prosthetic Limb Training Platform

Background: Despite advances in prosthetic development and neurorehabilitation, individuals with upper extremity (UE) loss continue to face functional and psychosocial challenges following amputation. Recent advanced myoelectric prostheses offer intuitive control over multiple, simultaneous degrees of motion and promise sensory feedback integration, but require complex training to effectively manipulate. We explored whether a virtual reality simulator could be used to teach dexterous prosthetic control paradigms to individuals with UE loss. Methods: Thirteen active-duty military personnel with UE loss (14 limbs) completed twenty, 30-min passive motor training sessions over 1–2 months. Participants were asked to follow the motions of a virtual avatar using residual and phantom limbs, and electrical activity from the residual limb was recorded using surface electromyography. Eight participants (nine limbs), also completed twenty, 30-min active motor training sessions. Participants controlled a virtual avatar through three motion sets of increasing complexity (Basic, Advanced, and Digit) and were scored on how accurately they performed requested motions. Score trajectory was assessed as a function of time using longitudinal mixed effects linear regression. Results: Mean classification accuracy for passive motor training was 43.8 ± 10.7% (14 limbs, 277 passive sessions). In active motor sessions, >95% classification accuracy (which we used as the threshold for prosthetic acceptance) was achieved by all participants for Basic sets and by 50% of participants in Advanced and Digit sets. Significant improvement in active motor scores over time was observed in Basic and Advanced sets (per additional session: β-coefficient 0.125, p = 0.022; β-coefficient 0.45, p = 0.001, respectively), and trended toward significance for Digit sets (β-coefficient 0.594, p = 0.077). Conclusions: These results offer robust evidence that a virtual reality training platform can be used to quickly and efficiently train individuals with UE loss to operate advanced prosthetic control paradigms. Participants can be trained to generate muscle contraction patterns in residual limbs that are interpreted with high accuracy by computer software as distinct active motion commands. These results support the potential viability of advanced myoelectric prostheses relying on pattern recognition feedback or similar controls systems.
A Metaheuristic Approach for Parameter Fitting in Digital Spiking Silicon Neuron Model

Copyright © 2018, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). 32 Journal of Robotics, Networking and Artificial Life, Vol. 5, No. 1 (June 2018) 32–36 ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Scheuermann’s Disease: Radiographic Pathomorphology and Association with Clinical Features

Study Design Cross-sectional analytical study. Purpose To evaluate the spinal radiological features in patients with Scheuermann’s disease and the association between the thoracic kyphosis angle and clinical presentation. Overview of the Literature Scheuermann’s disease is the most common cause of hyperkyphosis of the thoracic and thoracolumbar spine in adolescents; however, literature is limited in this area. Methods Data regarding 150 successive X-ray images of 95 males and 55 females diagnosed with Scheuermann’s disease were retrieved from the digital archives of the Maccabi Healthcare Services in Tel Aviv. Data included thoracic kyphosis angle (T3–T12), cervical lordosis (C2–C7), lumbar lordosis (L1–S1), sacral slope (SS), number and location of the anterior wedged vertebrae (AWV, minimum 5°), and C7 plumb line. Other data included age, sex, height, family history, Risser sign, self-perceived body image (rated by the Numeric Rating Scale [NRS]), and back pain during the previous week (rated by the Numeric Pain Rating Scale [NPRS]). Results Significant positive associations were observed between the Cobb angle of thoracic kyphosis and age (r =0.186, p =0.023), cervical lordosis (r =0.263, p <0.001), lumbar lordosis (r =0.576, p <0.001), SS (r =0.236, p <0.004), T10–T12 Cobb angle (r =0.319, p <0.001), and number of AWV (r =0.519, p <0.001). The highest frequency of vertebral wedging was noted in T7 (68%), followed by T8 (65%) and T9 (44%). The NPRS showed a significant association only with SS (r =0.219, p =0.014). Significant positive associations were observed between the NRS for self-perceived body image, the thoracic kyphosis (r =0.494, p <0.001), and the number of AWV (r =0.361, p <0.001). Conclusions Thoracic kyphosis was significantly associated with cervical and lumbar lordosis, SS, T10–T12 Cobb angle, and AWV number. Pain was not substantial; however, self-perceived body image, the most common complaint of patients with Scheuermann’s disease, was high and significantly associated with thoracic kyphosis and the number of AWV.
Analysis of the changes in communication and social interactions during the transformation of a traditional team into an agile team

Traditional software teams that implement agile methodologies frequently experience difficulty working efficiently as agile teams. While agile methodologies support and promote social activities and behaviors, the understanding of the social phenomena and challenges that arise during the transformation of traditional teams into agile teams is limited. We conducted an extensive 10‐month case study in a software enterprise to analyze the changes in the communication and social interactions of employees during the transformation process, and to delineate the social challenges that arise during this process. Using social interaction registers, we collected data on the communication and social interactions of employees, first when they worked as a traditional team and then as an agile team. Then, we processed the data using social network analysis methods to identify the differences between these 2 types of teams and to create graphs of communication and social interaction networks. We identified that the transformation process influences formal, informal, oral, and written communication and increases conjunctive and disjunctive social interactions. Further, from the results of interviews conducted with all the enterprise members, we identified 5 social challenges to transforming a traditional team into an agile one. The results of this research suggest that the transformation process requires broad changes in the relationships and interactions among employees.
Adaptive efficient sparse estimator achieving oracle properties

Compressed Sensing is the new trend in the signal processing context which aims to sample a compressible signal with a rate less than the Nyquist lower bound sampling rate. The main challenge arises due to the non-convex optimisation problem to be solved in the reconstruction stage. This paper introduces a suitable objective function in order to simultaneously recover the true support of the underlying sparse signal while achieving an acceptable estimation error. Inspired by the well-known Lasso objective function, we have developed an objective function based on a new penalty denoted by the Linearised Exponentially Decaying (LED) penalty. The comprehensive analysis of the LED based objective function shows that the new approach satisfies the oracle properties, as opposed to the conventional Lasso objective function. Furthermore, we have developed a Sequential Adaptive Coordinate-wise (SAC) solution for the proposed objective function. The simulation results for the proposed LED-SAC reconstruction algorithm are given and compared with other state of the art methods. It is shown that LED-SAC approaches the least mean squared error criterion. Moreover, compared to the other methods, LED-SAC has much more adaptation rate in terms of tracking the variations in the support of the underlying sparse signal.
Supplementation of a clay mineral-based product modulates plasma metabolomic profile and liver enzymes in cattle fed grain-rich diets

Grain-rich diets often lead to subacute ruminal acidosis (SARA) impairing rumen and systemic cattle health. Recent data suggest beneficial effects of a clay mineral (CM)- based product on the rumen microbiome of cattle during SARA. This study sought to investigate whether the CM supplementation can counteract SARA-induced perturbations of the bovine systemic health. The study used an intermittent diet-induced SARA-model with eight dry Holstein cows receiving either no additive as control or CM via concentrates (n=8 per treatment). Cows received first a forage diet (Baseline) for 1 week, followed by a 1-week SARA-challenge (SARA 1), a 1-week recovery phase (Recovery) and finally a second SARA-challenge for 2 weeks (SARA 2). Cows were monitored for feed intake, reticular pH and chewing behavior. Blood samples were taken and analyzed for metabolites related to glucose and lipid metabolism as well as liver health biomarkers. In addition, a targeted electrospray ionization-liquid chromatography-MS-based metabolomics approach was carried out on the plasma samples obtained at the end of the Baseline and SARA 1 phase. Data showed that supplementing the cows’ diet with CM improved ruminating chews per regurgitated bolus by 16% in SARA 1 (P=0.01) and enhanced the dry matter intake during the Recovery phase (P=0.05). Moreover, the SARA-induced decreases in several amino acids and phosphatidylcholines were less pronounced in cows receiving CM (P≤0.10). The CM-supplemented cows also had lower concentrations of lactate (P=0.03) and biogenic amines such as histamine and spermine (P<0.01) in the blood. In contrast, the concentration of acylcarnitines with key metabolic functions was increased in the blood of treated cows (P≤0.05). In SARA 2, the CM-cows had lower concentrations of the liver enzymes aspartate aminotransferase and γ-glutamyltransferase (P<0.05). In conclusion, the data suggest that supplementation of CM holds the potential to alleviate the negative effects of high-grain feeding in cattle by counteracting multiple SARA-induced perturbations in the systemic metabolism and liver health.