Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Clinical Results of Distal Radius Intraarticular Comminuted Fractures in the Elderly: A Retrospective Comparative Analysis of Different Fixation Methods

Introduction Distal radius intraarticular fractures in the elderly population are likely to cause impaired clinical outcomes. Intraarticular fracture treatment in the literature is a debatable issue with mixed results. Here, we aimed to present a tertiary trauma center experience with plate fixation and K wire-assisted external fixator in elderlies over 60 years old. Material and methods Patients who were diagnosed with an unstable intraarticular distal radius fracture and received surgical treatment with plate fixation or K wire-assisted external fixator between 2016 January and 2020 January were included in the study. Patients were evaluated retrospectively in terms of radiologic stability criteria and clinical outcomes. Results There were 27 patients; 14 in the volar plate group (group 1) and 13 (group 2) in the external fixator group. The mean age was 64.2 (60-72) in group 1 and 67.7 (60-76) in group 2. The mean follow-up time was 31.6 (12-63) in group 1 and 28.8 (12-59) in group 2. The mean quick disabilities of the arm, shoulder, and hand (Q-DASH) score was 25.7 (5-75) in group 1 and 24.4 (10-87) in group 2. The mean patient-reported wrist evaluation (PRWE) was 27.1 (6-87) in group 1 and 31.4 (10-87) in group 2. There was no statistical difference between groups in terms of clinical scores, hospital stay, follow-up, and complications. (p>0.05). Conclusion Although open reduction and plate fixation and K wire-assisted external fixator are viable options for providing radiologic union, unsatisfactory clinical outcomes were maintained independently of the fixation method in elderly patients.
Functionalized GO/Hydroxy-Terminated Polybutadiene Composites with High Anti-Migration and Ablation Resistance Performance

The migration of plasticizers such as nitroglycerin seriously affects the storage and working safety of rocket systems. In this work, hydroxy-terminated polybutadiene (HTPB) liner composites with the cross-linked structure were prepared by cross-linking isocyanate functionalized graphene oxide (IGO) with HTPB to prevent the migration of high energy plasticizers in the propellant. IGO was uniformly dispersed in the matrix as reinforcement and cross-linker, providing good migration resistance and ablation resistance for the liner composites. Compared with pure HTPB, the migration resistance of the liner with 0.5 wt% IGO increased by 18.94%, 16.33% and 15.34% at 25 °C, 60 °C and 90 °C, respectively. In addition, the ablation resistance of the HTPB liner was improved by the addition of IGO. The improved anti-migration properties come from the special laminar structure of IGO and the dense molecular chains network of the cross-linked composites.
USE OF ICT IN TEACHING AND LEARNING IN SECOND CYCLE INSTITUTIONS: UNDERSTANDING THE TECHNOLOGICAL ASPECT OF THE TPACK MODEL

This study investigated how ICT can be used to support teaching and learning in public and private second cycle educational institutions in Ghana. The survey approach was used for the study. Using a simple random sampling technique, 182 (112 students and 70 teachers) from the two schools were selected to participate in the study. A comparative study was conducted on the schools’ ICT facilities, how they were being used, the challenges that are encountered and the perception of teachers and students on integration of ICT into teaching and learning in both schools. The findings revealed that both teachers and students have a positive perception about the integration of ICT into teaching and learning. Unstable power supply, system breakdown, unstable internet access and unavailability of ICT integration support staff were identified as the main challenges encountered in using ICT. The study recommended the following: ICT facilities should be provided in all classrooms; the teacher and student laptop project should be expanded to cover every teacher and student, especially in public second cycle institutions and the expansion of internet access points in the various schools. Keywords: TPACK Model, ICT, Teaching with ICT, Learning with ICT, Second cycle Institution
Endothelial Dysfunction, HMGB1, and Dengue: An Enigma to Solve

Dengue is a viral infection caused by dengue virus (DENV), which has a significant impact on public health worldwide. Although most infections are asymptomatic, a series of severe clinical manifestations such as hemorrhage and plasma leakage can occur during the severe presentation of the disease. This suggests that the virus or host immune response may affect the protective function of endothelial barriers, ultimately being considered the most relevant event in severe and fatal dengue pathogenesis. The mechanisms that induce these alterations are diverse. It has been suggested that the high mobility group box 1 protein (HMGB1) may be involved in endothelial dysfunction. This non-histone nuclear protein has different immunomodulatory activities and belongs to the alarmin group. High concentrations of HMGB1 have been detected in patients with several infectious diseases, including dengue, and it could be considered as a biomarker for the early diagnosis of dengue and a predictor of complications of the disease. This review summarizes the main features of dengue infection and describes the known causes associated with endothelial dysfunction, highlighting the involvement and possible relationship between HMGB1 and DENV.
Systolic Blood Pressure Trajectories and the Progression of Arterial Stiffness in Chinese Adults

Evidence on the association between systolic blood pressure (SBP) trajectories and arterial stiffness progression is scarce. The current study aimed to identify the association between SBP trajectories and the progression of arterial stiffness over time in Chinese adults. This study included 30,384 adult participants. Latent mixture modeling was used to identify the SBP trajectory patterns from 2006 to 2010. The brachial–ankle pulse wave velocity (baPWV) was used to measure arterial stiffness. The associations between SBP trajectories and the progression of arterial stiffness were explored using multiple linear regression models. We identified five distinct SBP trajectories and took the low-stable group as the reference. In the cross-sectional analysis, the four SBP trajectories were significantly associated with higher baPWV levels (p < 0.001) compared with the reference. In the longitudinal analysis, after adjusting for covariates and the baseline baPWV, the SBP trajectories were significantly associated with the progression of the baPWV, with corresponding β (95% CI) values of 23.3 (17.2–29.5) cm/s per year for the moderate-stable group, 44.8 (36.6–52.9) cm/s per year for the moderate-increasing group, 54.6 (42.2–67.0) cm/s per year for the elevated-decreasing group, and 66.8 (54.7–79.0) cm/s per year for the elevated-stable group. Similar significant results were also observed in the non-hypertensive population. In conclusion, SBP trajectories were related to the baseline baPWV and the progression of the baPWV. Blood pressure control may be considered a therapeutic target to further reduce the risk of arterial stiffness.
Potential Targets and Mechanisms of Phellodendrine in the Treatment of Diabetes Mellitus Based on Network Pharmacology and Molecular Docking

Phellodendrine is a Phellodendri Cortex-derived isoquinoline alkaloids, has been shown to have various activities, especially hypoglycemic effect in mice, predicting its medicinal value on diabetes mellitus. To further understand the pharmacological effect of phellodendrine on diabetes mellitus, network pharmacological techniques have been used to elaborate the involved mechanisms. 84 common target molecules were screened, based on the chemical structure of phellodendrine molecule and disease database. These proteins were enriched in insulin resistance, insulin secretion and inflammatory response, mainly focus on the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase/protein kinase B signaling pathway, mitogen-activated protein kinase signaling pathway and interleukin-17 signaling pathway. Moreover, enrichment analysis suggested that the targets of phellodendrine such as phosphatidylinositol-4,5-bisphosphate 3-kinase catalytic subunit alpha and mitogen-activated protein kinases 8 were associated with coronavirus disease 2019. To verify the results, molecular docking technique was used to evaluate the interaction between phellodendrine and key targets in the signaling pathway. The calculated binding energy indicates that phellodendrine can form stable complex with insulin receptor, mitogen-activated protein kinases 8, phosphatidylinositol-4,5-bisphosphate 3-kinase catalytic subunit alpha and glycogen synthase kinase 3 beta. These data suggest that phellodendrine should be beneficial for treatment of diabetes mellitus.
A Semi-Supervised Methodology for Fishing Activity Detection Using the Geometry behind the Trajectory of Multiple Vessels

Automatic Identification System (AIS) messages are useful for tracking vessel activity across oceans worldwide using radio links and satellite transceivers. Such data play a significant role in tracking vessel activity and mapping mobility patterns such as those found during fishing activities. Accordingly, this paper proposes a geometric-driven semi-supervised approach for fishing activity detection from AIS data. Through the proposed methodology, it is shown how to explore the information included in the messages to extract features describing the geometry of the vessel route. To this end, we leverage the unsupervised nature of cluster analysis to label the trajectory geometry, highlighting changes in the vessel’s moving pattern, which tends to indicate fishing activity. The labels obtained by the proposed unsupervised approach are used to detect fishing activities, which we approach as a time-series classification task. We propose a solution using recurrent neural networks on AIS data streams with roughly 87% of the overall F-score on the whole trajectories of 50 different unseen fishing vessels. Such results are accompanied by a broad benchmark study assessing the performance of different Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) architectures. In conclusion, this work contributes by proposing a thorough process that includes data preparation, labeling, data modeling, and model validation. Therefore, we present a novel solution for mobility pattern detection that relies upon unfolding the geometry observed in the trajectory.
Bone Metastasis As the Initial Presentation of a Hidden Bronchogenic Carcinoma

Primary malignant bone tumours are on the whole rare, while secondary bone tumours are much more common. Up to 40% of bone metastases are associated with lung cancer. This case report highlights a rare presentation of metastatic bone disease as the initial presentation of a primary lung malignancy and only very few cases were mentioned in literature with the same presentation of no clinical signs of the primary lung pathology, except for an unexpected radiological finding of a suspicious lung lesion. An 85-year-old gentleman presented with a progressive lower backache radiating to both lower limbs over a period of 4 weeks associated with difficulty in walking, significant weight loss, and decreased appetite. A skeletal survey showed only spondylolisthesis. However, no clinical improvement was noticed with conventional therapy. Examination of the respiratory, gastrointestinal, and genitourinary systems was normal. Ultrasonography of the abdomen and pelvis, and the findings of the colonoscopy did not add anything. During the third week of follow-up, the patient reported unbearable severe pain in the left arm. A plain radiograph revealed a pathological fracture of the humerus. Secondary bone metastasis was suspected. Although the patient was a non-smoker and there were no clinical signs of underlying lung disease, a simple plain chest radiograph, unexpectedly, showed a suspicious right lower lobe lesion. Therefore, a contrast-enhanced computerized tomography (CT) scan for the chest, abdomen, and pelvis was done which revealed a right lower lobe lesion of bronchogenic carcinoma with distant metastasis. Unfortunately, the patient died after 3 weeks of palliative therapy when he was admitted to the hospital with acute renal failure and septic shock. Bone metastases in lung cancer predict a poor prognosis and short-term survival. The diagnosis of such a challenging presentation requires a high index of suspicion. If the patient had been sent for a plain chest radiograph at first, lots of time and effort could be saved in reaching the diagnosis without the need for further sophisticated or invasive diagnostic procedures.
Microvascular Changes in the Cystic Lesion of Branch Retinal Vein Occlusion Imaged by Swept-Source Optical Coherence Tomography Angiography

Introduction This study aimed to describe the quantitative features of the microvasculature in the cystic lesions of branch retinal vein occlusion (BRVO). Methods A total of 43 eyes with BRVO, treated with anti-vascular endothelial growth factor therapy, were analyzed. Using wide-field swept-source optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA), en face OCT images were obtained by depth-integrated reflectivity of the retina, and vascular density (VD), vascular length (VL), vascular lacunarity, and fractal dimension (FD) were evaluated in a 12 × 12-mm area of retinal nonperfusion. Results The mean area of affected lesions was 38.7 ± 19.8 mm2, and cystic lesions were 8.5 ± 10.1 mm2. VD, VL, and FD were significantly decreased in the cystic lesions compared to other affected lesions in the same eyes (p = 0.0010, p = 0.0001, and p = 0.0003, respectively) and in all eyes (p = 0.0281, p = 0.0050, and p < 0.0001, respectively). VD in cystic lesions within the vascular arcade (25 eyes) correlated with best-corrected visual acuity on OCTA (r = −0.433, and p = 0.0492). Conclusions Vascular structure in the cystic lesions was unpreserved compared to the other lesions in BRVO. These findings may help in understanding the pathophysiology of retinal edema in BRVO.
General-Domain Compressible Navier-Stokes Solvers Exhibiting QuasiUnconditional Stability and High Order Accuracy in Space and Time

This thesis presents a new class of solvers for the subsonic compressible Navier-Stokes equations in general two- and three-dimensional spatial domains. The proposed methodology incorporates: 1) A novel linear-cost implicit solver based on use of higher-order backward differentiation formulae (BDF) and the alternating direction implicit approach (ADI); 2) A fast explicit solver; 3) Dispersionless spectral spatial discretizations; and 4) A domain decomposition strategy that negotiates the interactions between the implicit and explicit domains. In particular, the implicit methodology is quasi-unconditionally stable (it does not suffer from CFL constraints for adequately resolved flows), and it can deliver orders of time accuracy between two and six in the presence of general boundary conditions. In fact this thesis presents, for the first time in the literature, high-order time-convergence curves for Navier-Stokes solvers based on the ADI strategy---previous ADI solvers for the Navier-Stokes equations have not demonstrated orders of temporal accuracy higher than one. An extended discussion is presented in this thesis which places on a solid theoretical basis the observed quasi-unconditional stability of the methods of orders two through six. The performance of the proposed solvers is favorable. For example, a two-dimensional rough-surface configuration including boundary layer effects at Reynolds number equal to one million and Mach number 0.85 (with a well-resolved boundary layer, run up to a sufficiently long time that single vortices travel the entire spatial extent of the domain, and with spatial mesh sizes near the wall of the order of one hundred-thousandth the length of the domain) was successfully tackled in a relatively short (approximately thirty-hour) single-core run; for such discretizations an explicit solver would require truly prohibitive computing times. As demonstrated via a variety of numerical experiments in two- and three-dimensions, further, the proposed multi-domain parallel implicit-explicit implementations exhibit high-order convergence in space and time, useful stability properties, limited dispersion, and high parallel efficiency.
Systemic design and control of switching synchronous motor dedicated to electric car motorization

Abstract In this paper, we present a design and control methodology of an innovated structure of switching synchronous motor with reduced production cost. The control strategy is based on the pulse width modulation technique imposing currents sum of a continuous value and a value having a shape varying in phase opposition with respect to the variation of the inductances. This control technology can greatly reduce vibration of the entire system due to the strong fluctuation of the torque developed by the engine, generally characterizing switching synchronous motors. A systemic design and modeling program is developed. This program is validated following the implementation and the simulation of the control model in the simulation environment Matlab-Simulink. Simulation results are with good scientific level and encourage subsequently the industrialization of the global system.
Rational Number Arithmetic including Square Root Handling

Owing to the success of micro electronics and parallel computing technology, the power and capacity of computer systems are extending. This advancement attaches hopes of paradigm shift in numerical methods, that is, further continuous extension of the power and capacity of parallel systems may gradually replace numerical methods done by floating-point to rational number arithmetic, which provides essentially different results from floating-point arithmetic. A rational number arithmetic provides us exact results, which is important in mathematical point of view. However the problem of the rational number arithmetic exists in its limitation to compute irrational numbers. In this paper, we propose how square root operations can be avoided by rational number arithmetic without rounding the number. In the first section, we describe introductions. In the second section, an implicit square root formulation in rational number arithmetic with an example of Schmidt orthogonalization. In the third section, we describe a naive method to compute eigenvalues of symmetric matrices in arbitrarily high precision. In the fourth section, we describe a new approach to transform symmetric matrix to tridiagonal matrix exactly by implicit square root formulation, and show an example to solve a multiple eigenvalue problem. In the final section, concluding remarks are described.
Liner Dissociation and Acetabular Erosion Treated by Implant Retention and Dual-Mobility Liner Cementation

Case: A 56-year-old woman underwent a left total hip arthroplasty (THA) after developing avascular necrosis after chemotherapeutic treatment of breast cancer. She presented approximately 2 years after index THA with left groin pain and complaints of instability. Imaging revealed pseudodislocation of the ceramic femoral head with erosion through the acetabular component. Intraoperative evaluation revealed a dissociated polyethylene liner, damaged acetabular locking mechanism, metallosis, and well-fixed and aligned components. Treatment consisted of component retention, bone grafting, and dual-mobility liner cementation into the acetabular component. Conclusions: The two-year follow-up demonstrated a pain-free, well-functioning hip, bone graft incorporation, and no evidence of loosening.
An s(CASP) In-Browser Playground based on Ciao Prolog

In recent years Web browsers are becoming closer and closer to full-fledged computing platforms. Ciao Prolog currently includes a browser-based playground which allows editing and running programs locally in the browser with no need for server-side interaction. The playground is built from reusable components, and allows easily embedding runnable Prolog programs in web pages and documents. These components can also be easily used for the development of specific, fully browser-based applications. The purpose of this paper is to present a browser-based environment for developing s(CASP) programs, based on the Ciao Prolog playground and its components. This s(CASP) playground thus runs locally on the browser with no need for interaction with a server beyond code download. After briefly introducing s(CASP) and Ciao Prolog, we provide an overview of the architecture of the Ciao playground, based on a compilation of the Ciao engine to the WebAssembly platform, describe its adaptation to create the s(CASP) playground, and present some of its capabilities. These include editing and running s(CASP) programs, sharing them, obtaining (sets of) answers, and visualizing and exploring explanations.
Fachpraktikum Signalverarbeitung SV 7 : K-means and Spectral Clustering 1

Clustering has been a prominent, successful and challenging topic for years. The task is to group similar objects together. Clustering is a method from a larger family of methods called unsupervised learning algorithms. The paradigm beneath these methods assumes that no labeled training data are available. As an example, imagine a group of persons of which a lot of personal details are given, but not their favorite music genre. How would one assign these persons to different party cliques (based on the assumption that a common taste of music is the most important criteria). Typically, we might expect that persons with similar characteristics (e.g. age, gender and fashion style) like the same kind of music. Therefore, identifying such groups, leads us to desired conclusion. Obviously, unsupervised algorithms and clustering in particular, have a plethora of applications in various fields (e.g. vector quantization, grouping proteins, density estimation).
Scandinavian or Mid-century Modern? Cracking Style of Furniture: An E-commerce Perspective

Understanding the style of furniture items is a well known challenging problem in E-commerce. The task of determining which style a furniture piece belongs to, e.g., Scandinavian or Mid-century Modern, can be subjective, and the boundary between two different furniture styles can be vague. Moreover, to our knowledge, there is no existing dataset that is publicly available. In this work we introduce a new large image dataset collected from web, which is composed of different furniture styles across a diverse set of furniture types (e.g. couch, table, . . . ), we then apply recent deep learning method to tackle the problem of classifying style of furniture item images. We benchmark a multi-task algorithm to the problem of classifying style and we pro-pose the problem of learning furniture style across furniture types that can serve as a benchmark for transfer learning algorithms.
The electrophysiologist’s conundrum: catheter ablation of atrial fibrillation in hypertensive patients

Hypertension (HTN) is a well-established major cardiovascular risk factor, with a growing prevalence in the population and underlies several other entities. It has been recognized as an independent predictor of atrial fibrillation (AF). HTN and AF, in conjunction, contribute to increased stroke risk. The emergence of catheter ablation in AF revolutionized the management of AF; however, recurrence rates have shadowed its merits. It was initially hypothesized that recurrence rates relate strictly to an electrophysiological substrate. However, further research revealed that several factors, including HTN, perpetuate an atrial substrate, especially when uncontrolled. In turn, this prompted the scientific community to advocate for rigorous evaluation before and after transcatheter ablation and aggressive control of blood pressure to ensure a higher rate of success and better long-term management.