Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Application of CUBE-STIR MRI and high-frequency ultrasound in contralateral cervical 7 nerve transfer surgery

Abstract Objective The objective of the study was to investigate the feasibility of CUBE-SITR MRI and high-frequency ultrasound for the structural imaging of the brachial plexus to exclude neoplastic brachial plexopathy or structural variation and measure the lengths of anterior and posterior divisions of the C7 nerve, providing guidelines for surgeons before contralateral cervical 7 nerve transfer. Methods A total of 30 patients with CNS and 20 with brachial plexus injury were enrolled in this retrospective study. All patients underwent brachial plexus CUBE-STIR MRI and high-frequency ultrasound, and the lengths of the anterior and posterior divisions of C7 nerve were measured before surgery. Precise length of anterior and posterior divisions of contralateral C7 nerve was measured during surgery. Results MRI-measured lengths of anterior and posterior divisions of C7 nerves were positively correlated with that measured during surgery (anterior division, r = 0.94, p < .01; posterior division, r = 0.92, p < .01). High agreement was found between MRI-measured and intra-surgery measured length of anterior and posterior divisions of C7 nerve by BLAD-ALTMAN analysis. Ultrasonography could feasibly image supraclavicular C7 nerve and recognize small variant branches derived from middle trunk of C7 nerve root, which could be dissected intra-operatively and confirmed by electromyography during the procedure of contralateral C7 nerve transfer. Conclusion CUBE-STIR MRI had advantages for the imaging of the brachial plexus and measurement of the length of root-trunk-anterior/posterior divisions of C7 nerve. The clinical role of ultrasonography may be a simple way of evaluating general condition of C7 nerve and provide guidelines for contralateral C7 nerve transfer surgery.
KIBS AND NTBF IN MEXICO: COMBINING GVC AND RIS TO STUDY MARKET ENTRY MECHANISMS AND UPGRADING

Knowledge-Intensive Business Services (KIBS) and New Technology-Based Firms (NTBF) demand large investments in knowledge capital. Particularly critical for their market entry and upgrading are their linkages within the Regional Innovation System (RIS) and with Multinational Enterprises (MNE), since both linkages reduce structural lacks. On one side, MNE are among the most important carriers of knowledge and for technology transfer across countries and regions, through FDI knowledge spillovers, by investing in human capital, training and development skills in technicians, engineers and managers in the multinational, therefore employees become direct agents of technology transfer, because when they move out to another company or create their own firm, they brought with them learning, knowledge and skills (Blomströn, Globerman and Kokko, 1999:12). And on the other, upgrading in high-tech firms in Mexico is associated with the development and maturation of RIS, through the science, technology, and innovation policies (STI). Additionally, since the implementation of NAFTA, a high percentage of FDI inflows has produced important knowledge spillovers and promoted technological capabilities (SE, 2016:1517; UNCTAD, 2015:202). In this paper we analyze the market entry mechanisms and upgrading of KIBS and NTBF, either Startups or Spinoffs, in Mexico. We combine two commensurable approaches: Global Value Chains (Gereffi, Humphrey and Sturgeon, 2005) and Regional Innovation Systems (Cooke, Uranga and Etxebarria, 1997; Cooke, 2001). We found at least four points of convergence by combining these perspectives: 1) user-producer interactive learning to product innovations; 2) upgrading; 3) building technological capabilities, and; 4) RIS institutional arrangement influence the GVC governance. We tested three hypotheses about market entry and upgrading using Probit models on a database of 100 Spinoffs and Startups firms collected in 11 Mexican cities.
Secrecy Performance of TAS/SC-Based Multi-Hop Harvest-to-Transmit Cognitive WSNs Under Joint Constraint of Interference and Hardware Imperfection

In this paper, we evaluate the secrecy performance of multi-hop cognitive wireless sensor networks (WSNs). In the secondary network, a source transmits its data to a destination via the multi-hop relaying model using the transmit antenna selection (TAS)/selection combining (SC) technique at each hop, in the presence of an eavesdropper who wants to receive the data illegally. The secondary transmitters, including the source and intermediate relays, have to harvest energy from radio-frequency signals of a power beacon for transmitting the source data. Moreover, their transmit power must be adjusted to satisfy the quality of service (QoS) of the primary network. Under the joint impact of hardware imperfection and interference constraint, expressions for the transmit power for the secondary transmitters are derived. We also derive exact and asymptotic expressions of secrecy outage probability (SOP) and probability of non-zero secrecy capacity (PNSC) for the proposed protocol over Rayleigh fading channel. The derivations are then verified by Monte Carlo simulations.
Search-based 3D Planning and Trajectory Optimization for Safe Micro Aerial Vehicle Flight Under Sensor Visibility Constraints

Safe navigation of Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) requires not only obstacle-free flight paths according to a static environment map, but also the perception of and reaction to previously unknown and dynamic objects. This implies that the onboard sensors cover the current flight direction. Due to the limited payload of MAVs, full sensor coverage of the environment has to be traded off with flight time. Thus, often only a part of the environment is covered.We present a combined allocentric complete planning and trajectory optimization approach taking these sensor visibility constraints into account. The optimized trajectories yield flight paths within the apex angle of a Velodyne Puck Lite 3D laser scanner enabling low-level collision avoidance to perceive obstacles in the flight direction. Furthermore, the optimized trajectories take the flight dynamics into account and contain the velocities and accelerations along the path.We evaluate our approach with a DJI Matrice 600 MAV and in simulation employing hardware-in-the-loop.
Cytologia 71(4): 399–406, 2006

Mouse H-1 (ES) cells (H-1 cells) were examined for polyploidization by demecolcine and K-252a. H-1 cells were highly polyploidized by both demecolcine and K-252a, and died 3 d after their addition, suggesting that polyploidized H-1 cells are sensitive to these drugs. The polyploidized H-1 cells showed alkaline phosphatase activity, suggesting that the pluripotent potential of H-1 cells was maintained through out polyploidization. Although the polyploidized H-1 cells became tentatively diploid or tetraploid after the drug removal, the tetraploid H-1 cells reverted to diploid cells within a month.
Trajectory Design for Cellular-Connected UAV Under Outage Duration Constraint

In this paper, we study the trajectory design for a cellular-connected unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with given initial and final locations, while communicating with the ground base stations (GBSs) along its flight. We consider delay-limited communications between the UAV and its associated GBSs, where a given signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) target needs to be satisfied at the receiver. However, in practice, due to various factors such as quality-of-service (QoS) requirement, GBSs' availability and UAV mobility constraints, the SNR target may not be met at certain time periods during the flight, each termed as an outage duration. In this paper, we aim to optimize the UAV trajectory to minimize its mission completion time, subject to a constraint on the maximum tolerable outage duration in its flight. To tackle this non-convex problem, we first transform it into a more tractable form and thereby reveal some useful properties of the optimal trajectory solution. Based on these properties, we then further simplify the problem and propose efficient algorithms to check the feasibility of the problem as well as to obtain its optimal and high-quality suboptimal solutions, by leveraging graph theory and convex optimization techniques. Numerical results show that our proposed trajectory designs outperform the conventional method based on dynamic programming, in terms of both performance and complexity.
An isolated round goby population in the upper Elbe: population characteristics and short-term impacts on the native fish assemblage

The round goby Neogobius melanostomus is a small invasive benthic fish that has caused multiple and variable impacts in freshwaters. One of the most recent round goby introductions occurred in the upper Elbe in 2015. In this case, the new population was isolated from other populations both by land and by at least 600 river km. Monitoring of this population has provided a unique opportunity to describe the characteristics of round gobies naturally spreading from a single introduction point and to examine its effects on native fish. Passive downstream dispersal of early life stages has played a central role in population spread, with the proportion of small fish increasing downstream and decreasing with time. The sex ratio of the novel population was strongly female-biased and with no apparent spatial structure. Round goby introduction appears to have had a negative impact on native 0+ fish abundance and species richness. Relationships with ≥ 1+ fish were more diverse, ranging from a significant decrease in chub Squalius cephalus abundance to a significant increase in European eel Anguilla anguilla abundance as goby abundance increased. As no impacts on these species have been reported before, the study appears to provide further evidence for case-specificity in round goby impact.
Molecular Optical Switches and Waveguides new concepts for tiny photonic Devices

Complementary metal oxide semiconductor technology, i.e. CMOS chip structures, currently have dimensions of about 40 nm. For the progression of Moore’s law which states that the transistor density of semiconductor chips will double roughly every 18 months size reductions down to the molecular level are required. Further miniaturization introduces fundamental physical limitations. Optical interconnections and optical integrated circuits will provide a way out of the limitations to computational speed and complexity. In optical computers, photons will travel on optical fibers or thin films instead of electrons to perform the appropriate functions. Further down the road, for both electronic computers and optical computers the building blocks could reach molecular dimensions: Molecular (optical) switches and wires or waveguides could pave the way towards single-molecule optical data storage and readout.
To Lump or To Split: Does Strain Lineage for Clostridioides difficile Matter?

Since 2001, numerous descriptive ecological studies of Clostridioides difficile infections (CDI) have identified a single lineage (BI/NAP1/027) associated with the epidemics of CDI, increased severity of CDI, and increased likelihood of incident CDI to become recurrent. Establishing causality between the clinical severity and outcomes for CDI and the lineages of the infecting strains, however, has proved elusive, with many conflicting results in previous observational studies. ABSTRACT Since 2001, numerous descriptive ecological studies of Clostridioides difficile infections (CDI) have identified a single lineage (BI/NAP1/027) associated with the epidemics of CDI, increased severity of CDI, and increased likelihood of incident CDI to become recurrent. Establishing causality between the clinical severity and outcomes for CDI and the lineages of the infecting strains, however, has proved elusive, with many conflicting results in previous observational studies. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Microbiology, J. R. Garneau, C. N. Abou Chakra, L. -C. Fortier, A. -C. Labbé, et al. (J Clin Microbiol 57:e01724-18, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1128/JCM.01724-18) performed multilocus variable-number tandem-repeat analysis (MLVA) on 450 isolates from epidemic strain CDI arising in 10 Canadian centers during a previously well-described epidemic to assess the hypothesis that subpopulations of this lineage are associated with adverse clinical outcomes. The authors’ key finding, however, was that MLVA genotyping grouped infections closely with associated hospital centers; CDI severity was not associated with any particular sublineage by MLVA. While the study does not support any causal inferences about strain-specific virulence of CDI, it does highlight the power of MLVA, a genotyping tool that remains valuable in tracking the geospatial transmission dynamics of CDI.
Defining Metabolic Rewiring in Lung Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Metabolomics based on untargeted flow infusion electrospray ionization high-resolution mass spectrometry (FIE-HRMS) can provide a snap-shot of metabolism in living cells. Lung Squamous Cell Carcinoma (SCC) is one of the predominant subtypes of Non-Small Cell Lung Cancers (NSCLCs), which usually shows a poor prognosis. We analysed lung SCC samples and matched histologically normal lung tissues from eight patients. Metabolites were profiled by FIE-HRMS and assessed using t-test and principal component analysis (PCA). Differentially accumulating metabolites were mapped to pathways using the mummichog algorithm in R, and biologically meaningful patterns were indicated by Metabolite Set Enrichment Analysis (MSEA). We identified metabolic rewiring networks, including the suppression of the oxidative pentose pathway and found that the normal tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle were decoupled from increases in glycolysis and glutamine reductive carboxylation. Well-established associated effects on nucleotide, amino acid and thiol metabolism were also seen. Novel aspects in SCC tissue were increased in Vitamin B complex cofactors, serotonin and a reduction of γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA). Our results show the value of FIE-HRMS as a high throughput screening method that could be exploited in clinical contexts.
Sequence diversity of major histo‐compatibility complex class II DQA1 in Indian Tharparkar cattle: novel alleles and in‐silico analysis

Exon 2 of MHC class II gene codes for the first domain of the molecule that forms the peptide‐binding groove and its polymorphism partly explains functional MHC diversity. A 850 bp DQA1 gene fragment spanning from intron I to exon III was typed by sequencing of 40 Tharparkar cattle of various agro‐climatic zones of northern India along with 10 Tharparkar crossbreds. On analysis of nucleotide sequences, a total of 30 polymorphic sites (1 insertion and 29 SNPs) were identified in 14 MHC alleles leading to amino acid changes in 5 places in 249 bp (exon 2). Five new BoLa DQA1 alleles were identified and reported. The within group mean distance was highest in Tharparkar herd of Bikaner (0.045) and lowest (0.020) in that of Surathgarh (breeding tract) whereas, between groups mean distance was highest in Bikaner Tharparkar—Suratgarh Tharparkar pair. There was excess of nonsynonymous over synonymous nucleotide substitutions in the present study. The effects of these substitutions were predicted using I‐Mutant and Panther online resources. The mean ratio of dN/dS was found to be >1.0 at 12 codons with two mutation hotspots at 13th codon (P = 0.002) and 64th codon (P = 0.01). The phylo‐geographic analysis revealed that alleles 5, 7 and 13 formed a different cluster with alleles 7 and 13 grouped by the most frequent allele (BoLa‐DQA*1401).
Animating an Autonomous 3D Talking Avatar

One of the main challenges with embodying a conversational agent is annotating how and when motions can be played and composed together in real-time, without any visual artifact. The inherent problem is to do so---for a large amount of motions---without introducing mistakes in the annotation. To our knowledge, there is no automatic method that can process animations and automatically label actions and compatibility between them. In practice, a state machine, where clips are the actions, is created manually by setting connections between the states with the timing parameters for these connections. Authoring this state machine for a large amount of motions leads to a visual overflow, and increases the amount of possible mistakes. In consequence, conversational agent embodiments are left with little variations and quickly become repetitive. In this paper, we address this problem with a compact taxonomy of chit chat behaviors, that we can utilize to simplify and partially automate the graph authoring process. We measured the time required to label actions of an embodiment using our simple interface, compared to the standard state machine interface in Unreal Engine, and found that our approach is 7 times faster. We believe that our labeling approach could be a path to automated labeling: once a sub-set of motions are labeled (using our interface), we could learn a prediction that could attribute a label to new clips---allowing to really scale up virtual agent embodiments.
Complementary and Alternative Medicine for Menopause

Menopause is associated with problematic symptoms, including hot flashes, sleep problems, mood disorders, sexual dysfunction, weight gain, and declines in cognitive functioning. Many women seek complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) for symptom management. This article critically reviews the existing literature on CAM treatments most commonly used for menopausal symptoms. Electronic searches were conducted to identify relevant, English-language literature published through March 2017. Results indicate that mind and body practices may be of benefit in reducing stress and bothersomeness of some menopausal symptoms. In particular, hypnosis is a mind-body intervention that has consistently shown to have a clinically significant effect on reducing hot flashes. Evidence is mixed in regard to the efficacy of natural products and there are some safety concerns. Health care providers should consider the evidence on CAM in providing an integrative health approach to menopausal symptom management.
Study on the surface of the polymer insert of the knee replacement using pulsed thermography

Providing of joint prostheses with high reliability is particularly important because the loss of their functional properties may cause invasive surgery revision. The main exploitation problems with prostheses are loosening (septic or aseptic) and the wear of inserts made of UHMWPE. Identification of the types and mechanisms of cooperating surfaces wear of the knee prostheses affects the improvement of materials selection, design and increase their reliability and durability. Typical kinds of damage of UHMWPE element of the prosthesis include abrasive wear, plastic deformation and creep, fatigue wear (pitting), changing the chemical composition and colour, changing in the structure, cracking. This paper presents the test results of the UHMWPE insert surface of the knee replacement which was used by the patient for 13 months. Microscopic studies, pulse thermography and 3D scanning of the UHMWPE insert were carried out. 3D scanning element has paved the way for reconstruction of the shape of the working surface of the insert of prosthesis. Surface defects in the tested insert were revealed by using innovative methods of pulsed thermography. In order to identify defects, located on the surface, microscopic studies were carried out. They have shown a complex mechanism of wear. Many signs of abrasive wear, fatigue wear (pitting) and microcracks have been observed. Analysis of the bio-bearing operation also indicates the signs of early fatigue wear. The causes of wear of tested elements include too high load applied exceeding several times the weight of the human body, closed space in which products of friction are accumulated.
Hot self-similar relativistic MHD flows

We consider axisymmetric relativistic jets with a toroidal magnetic field and an ultrarelativistic equation of state, with the goal of studying the lateral structure of jets whose pressure is matched to the pressure of the medium through which they propagate. We find all self-similar steady-state solutions of the relativistic MHD equations for this setup. One of the solutions is the case of a parabolic jet being accelerated by the pressure gradient as it propagates through a medium with pressure declining as p(z) ∝ z−2. As the jet material expands due to internal pressure gradients, it runs into the ambient medium resulting in a pile-up of material along the jet boundary. The magnetic field acts to produce a magnetic pinch along the axis of the jet. The relative importance of the two components – the boundary pile-up and the magnetic pinch – depends on the magnetization parameter of the jet and on the total energy it carries relative to the ambient pressure. Such jets can be in a lateral pressure equilibrium only if their opening angle θj at distance z is smaller than about 1/γ, where γ is the characteristic bulk Lorentz-factor at this distance; otherwise, different parts of the jet cannot maintain causal contact. We construct maps of optically thin synchrotron emission from our selfsimilar models to illustrate the observational features of such jets. We suggest that the boundary pile-up may be the reason for the limb-brightening of the sub-parsec jet of M87. We find that if the synchrotron emissivity falls with the distance from the jet axis (as in the magnetically pinched case), the polarization fraction rises toward the edge, as seen in 3C273 and Mkn501. Projection effects and the emissivity pattern of the jet have a strong effect on the observed polarization signal, so the interpretation of the polarization data in terms of the geometry of magnetic fields is rather uncertain. For example, jets with toroidal magnetic fields display the ‘spine-sheath’ polarization angle pattern seen in some BL Lac objects. Subject headings: MHD – galaxies: jets – radio continuum: galaxies Institute for Advanced Study, Einstein Dr., Princeton, NJ 08540 Spitzer fellow, John N. Bahcall fellow JILA, 440 UCB, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309-0440 Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309-0440 KIPAC, Stanford University, 2575 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park, CA 94025