Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Frost hardiness vs. growth performance in trembling aspen: an experimental test of assisted migration

Summary 1. According to the range limit hypothesis, the distribution of many temperate species is restricted by a trade-off between their capacity to survive winter extremes in the north (or high elevation) and their ability to compete with better-adapted species in the south (or low elevation range limits). This trade-off has important implications in forestry, particularly in the context of managed seed movement under climate change. 2. In this study, we aim to quantify trade-offs among growth, frost hardiness and timing of leaf senescence and bud break in populations of trembling aspen, Populus tremuloides Michx. , which were observed in a large reciprocal transplant experiment across five planting sites in western Canada, including additional provenances from Minnesota. 3. After 10 years, we found pronounced increases in productivity as a result of long-distance transfers in a north-west direction. For example, provenances moved 1600 km north-west from Minnesota to central Alberta (a shift of 7° latitude to the north) produced almost twice the biomass of local sources. Similarly, provenances moved 800 km from central Alberta to north-east British Columbia (4° latitude north) also produced twice the biomass of local sources. 4. We further found that increased growth was not associated with lower survival rates. Bud break in provenances transferred north-west generally occurred slightly later than in local sources, suggesting decreased risk of spring frost injury. Leaf abscission was later in provenances transferred in a north-west direction, but they appeared to be very frost hardy, well ahead of very rare early fall frost events. 5. Synthesis and applications. This study demonstrated that assisted migration prescriptions have considerable potential to enhance forest productivity. In the case of aspen, even longdistance seed transfers in a north-west direction were successful. We conclude that benefits in productivity outweigh potential risks associated with northward transfer of aspen planting stock under both current and projected future climate conditions.
Outcome of An Uncemented Hydroxyapatite Coated Hemiarthroplasty for Displaced Femoral Neck Fractures: A Clinical and Radiographic 2-Year Follow-Up Study

Background and purpose Hemiarthroplasty is the preferred treatment for displaced femoral neck fractures (DFNF) in elderly patients. The use of uncemented stems remains controversial and issues regarding inferior fixation in osteoporotic bone, implant-related pain and decreased mobility have discouraged their use. There is limited evidence for the use of modern uncemented femoral stems in the treatment of DFNF, and we wished to investigate the clinical and radiographic performance of an uncemented hydroxyapatite coated hemiarthroplasty at 2-year follow-up. Patients and methods We included 97 consecutive patients who had an uncemented, hydroxyapatite coated hemiarthroplasty (Corail, Depuy) inserted during a 1-year period. Due to unwillingness or cognitive impairment (n = 6) and death before follow-up (n = 44), a total of 47 patients (39 females) with a mean age of 81 years were available. Results At two year follow-up 38 of 47 patients lived in their own homes and the median New Mobility Score was 6 (range: 2–9). The median Visual Analogue Scale pain score was 0 (range: 0–5) at rest and 0 (range: 0–8) when walking. Patient satisfaction was a score of 9 (range: 2–10) on the VAS. Anterior or lateral thigh pain or groin pain was reported by 15 patients. The EQ-5D index score at follow-up was 0.72 (range: 0.16–1.00) and the EQ-5D Visual Analogue Score was 70 (range: 15–100). There were no signs of implant loosening in any of the 37 hips undergoing radiographic evaluation at follow-up. Conclusion The results suggest that an uncemented hydroxyapatite coated hemiarthroplasty can be used to treat displaced intracupsular femoral neck fractures with good clinical and radiographic outcomes at short term follow-up.
On the local reactions of the arterial wall to changes of internal pressure

MY attention was first directed to these phenomena by the occurrence of curves like that reproduced in Fig. 11. In the course of experiments on vaso-dilator reflexes I sometimes observed what looked like a reflex of this kind, in a limb of which the nerves had been divided; the figure _ reproduced shows the effect of a fall of arterial pressure produced by exI citing the central end of the depressor nerve on the volume of the hind leg of the rabbit, the sciatic and the nerves accompanying the femoral artery having been cut. It will be noticed that as long as the fall of blood-pressure lasts there is a passive diminution of volume in the limb, but that as soon as the previous height of blood-pressure is attained, on cessation of the excitation, there is a considerable expansion of the limb lasting for some time. Such a curve would usually be explained by stating that Fig. 1. Effect of depressor excitation on there was present all through the volume of enervated leg. Upper curve blood-pressure, next below it volume of excitation a relaxration of the vessels, leg, upper of two chronographs-period but that it was prevented from showof excitation of depressor nerve, lower ing itself in an actual expansion of one-time in 10 sec. intervals. the limb by the simultaneous fall of blood-pressure; although it was
Use of the Chi-Squared Test to Examine Vocabulary Differences in English Language Corpora Representing Seven Different Countries

The chi-squared test is used to find the vocabulary most typical of seven different ICAME corpora, each representing the English used in a particular country. In a closely related study, Leech and Fallon (1992, Computer corpora - what do they tell us about culture? ICAME Journal, 16: 29-50) found differences in the vocabulary used in the Brown Corpus of American English and that the Lancaster-Oslo-Bergen Corpus of British English. They were mainly interested in those vocabulary differences which they assumed to be due to cultural differences between the United States and Britain, but we are equally interested in vocabulary differences which reveal linguistic preferences in the various countries in which English is spoken. Whether vocabulary differences are cultural or linguistic in nature, they can be used for the automatic classification according to variety of English of texts of unknown provenance. The extent to which the vocabulary differences between the corpora represent vocabulary differences between the varieties of English as a whole depends on the extent to which the corpora represent the full range of topics typical of their associated cultures, and thus there is a need for corpora designed to represent the topics and vocabulary of cultures or dialects, rather than stratified across a set range of topics and genres. This will require methods to determine the range of topics addressed in each culture, then methods to sample adequately from each topical domain.
Mediastinal lymph node detection and station mapping on chest CT using spatial priors and random forest.

PURPOSE To develop an automated system for mediastinal lymph node detection and station mapping for chest CT. METHODS The contextual organs, trachea, lungs, and spine are first automatically identified to locate the region of interest (ROI) (mediastinum). The authors employ shape features derived from Hessian analysis, local object scale, and circular transformation that are computed per voxel in the ROI. Eight more anatomical structures are simultaneously segmented by multiatlas label fusion. Spatial priors are defined as the relative multidimensional distance vectors corresponding to each structure. Intensity, shape, and spatial prior features are integrated and parsed by a random forest classifier for lymph node detection. The detected candidates are then segmented by the following curve evolution process. Texture features are computed on the segmented lymph nodes and a support vector machine committee is used for final classification. For lymph node station labeling, based on the segmentation results of the above anatomical structures, the textual definitions of mediastinal lymph node map according to the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer are converted into patient-specific color-coded CT image, where the lymph node station can be automatically assigned for each detected node. RESULTS The chest CT volumes from 70 patients with 316 enlarged mediastinal lymph nodes are used for validation. For lymph node detection, their system achieves 88% sensitivity at eight false positives per patient. For lymph node station labeling, 84.5% of lymph nodes are correctly assigned to their stations. CONCLUSIONS Multiple-channel shape, intensity, and spatial prior features aggregated by a random forest classifier improve mediastinal lymph node detection on chest CT. Using the location information of segmented anatomic structures from the multiatlas formulation enables accurate identification of lymph node stations.
Molecular Beacon Probes of Oligonucleotides Photodamaged by Psoralen

Ultraviolet A (UVA)‐irradiated 4′‐hydroxymethyl‐4,5′,8‐trimethyl psoralen (HMT) in the presence of a poly‐dT17 and dA7TTA8 oligonucleotides produces HMT–dT17 and HMT–dA7TTA8 adducts in aqueous solution. In this article, we determine whether these HMT–dT17 and HMT–dA7TTA8 adducts can be detected with a molecular beacon (MB) probe. We measure the degree of damage in dT17 and dA7TTA8 solutions containing UVA‐activated HMT via monitoring the decrease in MB fluorescence. Photoproduct formation is confirmed by MALDI‐TOF MS (matrix‐assisted laser desorption/ionization time‐of‐fight mass spectrometry measurements) and absorption spectroscopy. The MB fluorescence decreases upon UVA irradiation in the presence of HMT with a single‐exponential time constants of 114.2 ± 6.5 min for HMT–dT17 adducts and 677.8 ± 181.8 min for HMT–dA7TTA8 adducts. Our results show that fluorescent MB probes are a selective, robust and accurate tool for detecting UVA‐activated HMT‐induced DNA damage.
Effective Prevention of Carotid Artery Atherosclerosis by Following this Motto for Healthy Habits: “Give Up One, Reduce Two, and Increase Three”

Summary Objectives: Lifestyle has a major influence on the development and progression of atherosclerosis. Our motto for healthy habits is “give up one, reduce two, and increase three”. The one thing that is to be given up is smoking. The two things that are to be reduced are intake of food and alcohol. The three things that are to be increased are exercise, rest and enjoyable activities. We assessed correlation between these six-health habits and plaque score indicating degree of atherosclerosis in the carotid artery. Methods: Subjects were divided into unfavorable (practicing zero to three habits) and optimal (practicing four to six habits) healthy habits groups. Results: Plaque score was significantly higher in the unfavorable group (7.6 ± 5.8) than in the optimal group (4.9 ± 4.2) (P<0.001). Conclusions: The healthy habits that significantly contributed to prevention of atherosclerosis were quitting smoking and increasing rest and enjoyable activities.
Security issues in most popular content management systems

Nowadays, the internet is playing a major role in everyday life, becoming the first choice for sharing information. In the last sixteen years the number of websites increased from three million to almost one billion. An important contribution to this number was brought by the content management systems which provided an easy approach for any user to create its own website without having advanced programming skills. This paper describes the main security issues that content management systems are dealing with and a solution is proposed, based on users experience, that implies to collect any issue reported by them and sent to the developers in order to minimize the possible vulnerabilities over multiple platforms.
Network orchestration in reliable 5G/NFV/SDN infrastructures

In this paper, we elaborate an SDN orchestration solution aiming at the dynamic adaptation of service chain paths thereby addressing high-availability requirements of 5G applications. We present an SDN orchestrator that periodically monitors the availability of the network and, if necessary, promptly adapts service chain paths to recover from congestion events and to preserve network QoS performance of service data flows. A set of performance results are finally presented.
Utilizing Bedside Shift Report to Improve the Effectiveness of Shift Handoff

Handoff of patient information during shift report between nurses is a time of risk and liability. A quality improvement project was conducted on a 23-bed inpatient unit to measure the value of a bedside change-of-shift report in improving the effectiveness of shift report. Indicators including end-of-shift overtime, call light usage, nurse perceptions, and patient satisfaction were impacted by the change in process.
The effect of industrial processing of salmon oil on its ability to reduce serum concentrations of oxidized low-density lipoprotein- β2-glycoprotein-I complex in a mouse model

Background: Circulating serum levels of oxidized low-density lipoprotein, β2-glycoprotein I complex (oxLDL-GP), have been previously correlated with adverse cardiovascular events and have been shown to be reduced by consumption of enzymatically liberated extra virgin salmon oil (EVSO). This mouse study measured the changes in the oxLDL-GP lowering effect when consuming EVSO with varying levels of EPA+DHA (eicosapentenoic acid and docosahexenoic acid) as well as when consuming EVSO that was subjected to various processing treatments commonly carried out during fish oil production. Methods: Sprague Dawley mice were fed a diet containing eight different EVSO’s incorporated into a normal diet at the Human Equivalent Dose (HED) of 1000 mg for 8 weeks. Serum was collected at the start and at the end of the trial and the oxLDL-GP concentrations were measured using an ELISA assay. Statistical analysis of the results was carried out using a 1-tail, paired Student t-Test.
Pseudospectral Methods for the Efficient Simulation of Quantization Effects in Nanoscale MOS Transistors

This paper presents an in-detail investigation of the possible advantages related to the use of the pseudospectral (PS) method for the efficient description of the carrier quantization in nanoscale n- and p-MOS transistors. To this purpose, we have implemented, by using both the finite-difference (FD) and PS methods, self-consistent Schrödinger-Poisson solvers for both a 2-D hole gas described by a k ·p Hamiltonian (suitable for p-MOSFETs) and a 1-D electron gas in the effective-mass approximation (for n-type fin-shaped FETs and nanowire FETs). The PS and FD methods have been systematically compared in terms of the CPU time and the number of discretization points by monitoring not only the subband energies in the low-dimensional carrier gas but also the calculation of some scattering matrix elements that are critically important for the transport modeling. Our results indicate a remarkable reduction in the CPU time for the PS method with respect to the FD method, which makes the PS method very attractive for the modeling of the carrier quantization in nanoscale MOSFETs.
Multifingered dextrous robotics hand design and control: a review

During the last two decades a large amount of effort and attention has been paid to the problem of designing and controlling dextrous robotics hands. The possible application background ranges from telerobotics to upper limb prosthetics, while actual industrial developments are mainly limited to specific grippers and tools. Classical problems related to dextrous hand design are kinematics of multifingered hands, development of proper actuation technologies and redundant tendinous systems for transmission. As far as hand control is concerned, grasp preshaping, planning and synthesis are of major concern, while sensor guided hand operation is still a matter of research. The present work reviews the above mentioned hand design and control issues trying to throw some light on the Babel-like confusion encountered when looking at present literature on dextrous hand design and specially control. Most actuation and transmission technologies, as well as control approaches, are studied and classified.
What Do We Know about Alignment of Requirements Engineering and Software Testing?

Context: The alignment of different software engineering activities for coordinated functioning and optimized product development is of great importance, particularly in industrial-scale development. The link between intermediate activities has been researched extensively, but the link between requirements engineering (RE) and software testing (ST) is a relatively less explored area. Objective: The objective of this study is to aggregate, structure, and classify all existing research regarding alignment of RE and ST published by the end of 2015. Method: We conducted a systematic mapping study (SMS) and aggregated all studies relevant to our scope. The primary studies are analyzed in terms of publication trend, focus area, i.e., how alignment is supported, the application domain and benefits and challenges, methodological data, and scientific rigor and industrial relevance. Results: There is a growing interest towards the topic. Several different techniques have been identified to improve RE and ST alignment. Test generation from requirements specification has received most attention. Alignment of RE and ST is particularly important for large safety-critical domains. While many challenges have been reported, the supporting evidence for benefits is scarce. Frameworks/methods/techniques is the most frequent contribution type. Solution proposal and evaluation research were the most frequently applied research type. Case study research was the most frequently applied research method, however, almost half of the studies did not clearly report any research method. Conclusion: Despite the numerous approaches that are proposed, it is not clear what approach is suitable in what context and why. To support industry in RE and ST alignment, guidelines and tool support are needed. The supporting evidence for claimed benefits is very limited. Overall, the research area is in its early stages and an increase in both the number and rigor of empirical studies are required.
EMG in Common Migraine: Changes in Absolute and Proportional EMG Levels During Real-Life Stress

The absolute and proportional EMG levels of the frontal, temporal, and corrugator muscles of 37 migraine patients and 37 matched controls were recorded during three experimental sessions: adaptation and real-life and experimental stress, both of long duration. Migraine patients did not show significantly different absolute EMG levels but had higher proportional EMG levels of the corrugator muscle than controls in each session. Migraine patients did not have different facial muscle responses to stress, and the two experimental groups reacted similarly to real-life and experimental stress. No relation was found between muscle activity and reported headache within 24 h after real-life stress. Increased EMG activity due to stress does not seem to be a significant cause of headache in common migraine as defined in this study, but rather a response to pain. Migraine patients with headache during stress showed lower muscle tension than patients without headache.
A comparison of the autonomic arousal of frequent, infrequent and non-gamblers while playing fruit machines.

AIMS The purpose of the present study was to examine differences between frequent, infrequent and non-gamblers in autonomic arousal, as indexed by heart rate, while playing a fruit machine and controlling for the confounding effect of movement. DESIGN The experiment employed a between-subjects design, with a total of three groups being investigated-two experimental groups (frequent and infrequent gamblers) and a control group (non-gamblers). SETTING To enhance ecological validity the study took place within an actual gambling setting, in Glasgow city centre. PARTICIPANTS A total of 63 participants, 21 for each of the three groups, who were matched for age and gender, took part in the study. MEASUREMENTS In terms of autonomic arousal, measurements were taken using a Pulse Oximeter (Pulsox-3I-Minolta Company Limited Milton Keynes, UK). In addition, a questionnaire was employed to measure levels of gambling severity (SOGS). FINDINGS Frequent gamblers were found to have significantly higher levels of autonomic arousal than infrequent and non-gamblers, with the frequent gamblers arousal levels continuing to rise after play, unlike the other two groups. Interestingly, novel findings to arise from this research involved the fact that the specialist play characteristics of the fruit machine, such as bonuses, nudges and features, were found to be as arousing as wins. CONCLUSIONS The main hypothesis was supported, suggesting that arousal is indeed a key factor in fruit machine gambling. The research has value, as few studies have examined specifically the differences between frequent, infrequent and non-gamblers, and no studies have investigated the arousal associated with the actual dynamics of fruit machine play (i.e. bonuses, nudges, features, wins). The arousal associated with modern British fruit machines suggests a high potential for addiction.
fMRI-MEG Integrative Neuroimaging in an Apparent Visual Motion Perception Task

We have developed an fMRI-MEG integrative neuroimaging method that is capable of analyzing spatiotemporal multiple cortical activities. The method determines the center of gravity in each fMRI activated cluster as the location of the linear constraints. First, activated multiple clusters were determined by statistically analyzing fMRI data. Secondly, using the fMRI activated clusters as spatial constraints, the orientations of equivalent current dipoles (ECDs) placed at the center of gravity in each voxel of all activated clusters were estimated by a procedure maximizing inner product of lead field and measured field vectors. Thirdly, the activities of all ECDs were estimated, and dynamic activities of them were visualized. The linear constraints for the voxels in a cluster are defined to suppress the power from the source at the center of gravity of the other cluster. The spatial distributions and the time courses of activities for all ECDs were successfully reconstructed. We applied the newly developed method to data obtained during an apparent visual motion perception task and could confirm its availability. Although there were individual differences, the present fMRI-MEG integrative neuroimaging method successfully detected dynamic cortical activities in multiple visual areas, such as V1, V2, V5 and IPS.