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Abstract Objective The aim of this prospective pilot study is to establish an initial database to register patients diagnosed with different types of childhood glaucoma and the set-up of a national registry for childhood glaucoma (ReCG) in Germany. 28 children with different types of diagnosed childhood glaucoma, who were admitted and treated at the Childhood Glaucoma Center of the University Medical Center Mainz, Germany were included. Main outcome measures were the type of childhood glaucoma, mean intraocular pressure (IOP) and genetic data of the patients. Results The documents and questionnaires for each individual included: informed consent form of the parents, medical history form of the child, patient’s gestational history questionnaire and general anesthesia examination form. Primary congenital and secondary childhood glaucoma were revealed in 11 (39%) and 17 (61%) patients, respectively. The mean IOP measured with Perkins tonometer in all patients under general anesthesia at the time of inclusion was 17.5 ± 11.8 mmHg in the right and 17 ± 8.9 mmHg in the left eyes. In 33% of children with glaucoma mutations in the CYP1B1, FOXC1, LTBP2 and TEK genes were found. The development of specific questionnaires for childhood glaucoma provides detailed baseline data to establish a ReCG in Germany for the first time.

Cloud computing is an attractive model that provides users with a variety of services. Thus, the number of cloud services on the market is growing rapidly. Therefore, choosing the proper cloud service is an important challenge. Another major challenge is the availability of diverse cloud services with similar performance, which makes it difficult for users to choose the cloud service that suits their needs. Therefore, the existing service selection approaches is not able to solve the problem, and cloud service recommendation has become an essential and important need. In this paper, we present a new way for context-aware cloud service recommendation. Our proposed method seeks to solve the weakness in user clustering, which itself is due to reasons such as 1) lack of full use of contextual information such as cloud service placement, and 2) inaccurate method of determining the similarity of two vectors. The evaluation conducted by the WSDream dataset indicates a reduction in the cloud service recommendation process error rate. The volume of data used in the evaluation of this paper is 5 times that of the basic method. Also, according to the T-test, the service recommendation performance in the proposed method is significant.

The manuscript represents a comeprehensive and systematic literature review on the machine learning methods in the emerging applications of the smart cities. Application domains include the essential aspects of the smart cities including the energy, healthcare, transportation, security, and pollution. The research methodology presents a state-of-the-art taxonomy, evaluation and model performance where the ML algorithms are classified into one of the following four categories: decision trees, support vector machines, artificial neural networks, and advanced machine learning methods, i.e., hybrid methods, ensembles, and Deep Learning. The study found that the hybrid models and ensembles have better performance since they exhibit both a high accuracy and low overall cost. On the other hand, the deep learning (DL) techniques had a higher accuracy than the hybrid models and ensembles, but they demanded relatively higher computation power. Moreover, all these advanced ML methods had a slower processing speed than the single methods. Likewise, the support vector machine (SVM) and decision tree (DT) generally outperformed the artificial neural network (ANN) for accuracy and other metrics. However, since the difference was negligible, it can be concluded that using either of them is appropriate.

Abstract Frosted branch angiitis (FBA) is an uncommon form of severe retinal perivasculitis associated with systemic inflammatory/infectious diseases. In this report, we describe a case of FBA and macular edema as a result of immune recovery response in a patient newly diagnosed with HIV infection and cytomegalovirus viremia.

This paper investigates the applications of explainable AI (XAI) in healthcare, which aims to provide transparency, fairness, accuracy, generality, and comprehensibility to the results obtained from AI and ML algorithms in decision-making systems. The black box nature of AI and ML systems has remained a challenge in healthcare, and interpretable AI and ML techniques can potentially address this issue. Here we critically review previous studies related to the interpretability of ML and AI methods in medical systems. Descriptions of various types of XAI methods such as layer-wise relevance propagation (LRP), Uniform Manifold Approximation and Projection (UMAP), Local Interpretable Model-agnostic Explanations (LIME), SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP), ANCHOR, contextual importance and utility (CIU), Training calibration-based explainers (TraCE), Gradient-weighted Class Activation Mapping (Grad-CAM), t-distributed Stochastic Neighbor Embedding (t-SNE), NeuroXAI, Explainable Cumulative Fuzzy Class Membership Criterion (X-CFCMC) along with the diseases which can be explained through these methods are provided throughout the paper. The paper also discusses how AI and ML technologies can transform healthcare services. The usability and reliability of the presented methods are summarized, including studies on the usability and reliability of XGBoost for mediastinal cysts and tumors, a 3D brain tumor segmentation network, and the TraCE method for medical image analysis. Overall, this paper aims to contribute to the growing field of XAI in healthcare and provide insights for researchers, practitioners, and decision-makers in the healthcare industry. Finally, we discuss the performance of XAI methods applied in medical health care systems. It is also needed to mention that a brief implemented method is provided in the methodology section.

Nematic liquid crystal elastomers (LCE). exhibit unique mechanical properties such as large loss behaviour, which makes these materials interesting for damping applications. Here, the authors investigate the effect of anomalous damping in LCEs by comparing impact dissipation in shaped samples with elastic wave transmission and resonance.

Purpose: Bilateral fatigue femoral fractures (BFFF) represent an extremely rare clinical entity. The present study introduces a novel classification, in order to categorize the BFFFs and provide a thorough review of all these, so far in the literature, reported cases. Methods: The BFFF were classified taking into account the anatomical region of the femoral fracture; (fh): femoral head, (sc): sub-capital, (pt): peri-trochanteric, (st): sub-trochanteric, (s): shaft, (d): distal femur and the fracture type (complete or incomplete); type I: bilateral incomplete fractures, type II: unilateral incomplete fracture, and type III: bilateral complete fractures. Type III was further subdivided into type IIIA: bilateral non-displaced fractures, type IIIB: unilateral displaced fracture, and type IIIC: bilateral displaced fractures. Furthermore, a meticulous review of the PubMed and MEDLINE databases was conducted to locate all articles reporting these injuries. Results: A total of 38 patients (86.8% males), with a mean age of 25.3 years, suffering BFFFs were identified from the literature search. The mean time interval from symptoms’ onset to diagnosis was 54 days. According to the proposed classification, 2.6% of the fractures were categorized as type I (h), 36.8% as type I (sc), 2.6% as type I(st/s), 7.9% as type I (s), 2.6% as type I (d), 5.4% as type II (fh), 26.3% as type II (sc), 2.6% as type IIIA (st), 2.6% as type IIIA (d), 5.4% as type IIIB (sc), 2.6% as type IIIB (d) and 2.6% as type IIIC (sc). Surgery was performed in 52.6%, while non-operative treatment was followed in 47.4% of the population. Regarding the fracture type, 75% of type I fractures were conservatively treated, while 91.7% and 66.6% of type II and III fractures were surgically treated. For patients treated conservatively, the mean time from diagnosis to return to previous status was 260 days, while for patients treated surgically, 343 days. Conclusions: BFFFs, although rare, may pose a diagnostic and therapeutic challenge. The present classification offers valuable information and may act as a guide for the management of these patients.

Low physical function is associated with poor outcomes in the elderly population suffering from hip fractures. The present study aims to evaluate the prognostic tools for predicting patient recovery after hip fractures and investigate the correlation between the pre-fracture motor and functional statuses. A prospective study was performed, including 80 patients suffering from hip fractures. Patient history, previous falls, the type of fracture and overall survival were evaluated. Patient-reported outcome measures (SF-36, EQ-5D/VAS, Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI), Short Physical Performance Battery (SPPB), Timed Up and Go (TUG) and Harris Hip Score (HHS)) were monitored before hospital discharge at 6 weeks, and 3, 6 and 12 months postoperatively. Overall, 55% of patients experienced at least one fall, and 46% of them used crutches before the fracture. The average CCI score was 6.9. The SPPB score improved from 1.4 ± 1.3 (1 week) to 4.4 ± 2.1 (48 weeks). A one-year age increase, female sex, and prior history of falls lead to 0.1-, 0.92-, 0.56-fold lower SPPB scores, respectively, at 12 months. The HHS recorded the greatest improvement between 6 and 12 weeks (52.1 ± 14.6), whereas the TUG score continued to improve significantly from 139.1 ± 52.6 s (6 weeks) to 66.4 ± 54 s (48 weeks). The SPPB and performance test can be routinely used as a prognostic tool.

Since December 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on healthcare systems worldwide, prompting policymakers to implement measures of isolation and eventually adopt strict national lockdowns, which affected mobility, healthcare-seeking behavior, and services, in an unprecedented manner. This study aimed to analyze the effects of these lockdowns on hip-fracture epidemiology and care services, compared to nonpandemic periods in previous years. We retrospectively collected data from electronic patient records of two major hospitals in Western Greece and included patients who suffered a fragility hip fracture and were admitted during the two 5-week lockdown periods in 2020, compared to time-matched patients from 2017–2019. The results showed a drop in hip-fracture incidence, which varied among hospitals and lockdown periods, and conflicting impacts on time to surgery, time to discharge after surgery, and total hospitalization time. The study also found that differences between the two differently organized units were exaggerated during the COVID-19 lockdown periods, highlighting the impact of compliance with social-distancing measures and the reallocation of resources on the quality of healthcare services. Further research is needed to fully understand the specific variations and patterns of geriatric hip-fracture care during emergency health crises characterized by limited resources and behavioral changes.

Abstract In this work, we present a single low-profile metamaterial that provides bandgaps of acoustic and elastic waves at the same time. This was done by ensuring impedance mismatch in two different domains, the fluid domain where the acoustic waves propagate and the solid domain where the elastic waves propagate. Through creatively designing the metamaterial, waves of certain nature and frequencies of interest were completely blocked in the solid and fluid domains simultaneously. The simulation results showed bandgaps with acoustic waves attenuation below 5 kHz and elastic waves attenuation below 10 kHz. The acoustic and elastic dispersion curves of the metamaterials were calculated for various designs with various diameters and neck lengths, and the bandgaps were calculated. These parameters can be used as means for tuning both the acoustic and elastic bandgaps. A representative design of the metamaterial was manufactured on a laser powder bed fusion system and the dynamic performance was measured at various points. The measurements were carried out using a dynamic shaker setup and the dynamic performance was in good agreement with the numerical modelling results. Such metamaterials can be used for simultaneous acoustic and elastic attenuation, as well as saving in space and material consumption, in various fields including building construction, automobile, aerospace and rocket design.

Objective Osteoradionecrosis of the jaw (ORNJ) is one of the most severe head and neck complications in patients treated with radiotherapy. The goal of treatment is to suppress ORNJ progression. Currently, surgical removal of necrotic bone is an effective management approach for advanced stages. In this study, we present our experience in managing ORNJ using fluorescence-guided surgery. Methods Nineteen ORNJ lesions in 15 hospitalized patients were treated with fluorescence-guided surgery. We retrospectively reviewed patients’ demographic data, comorbidities, local preceding event, location, ORNJ stage, and treatment outcomes with a median follow-up of 12 months. Results Twelve lesions (63%) were treated surgically under tetracycline fluorescence, and seven lesions (37%) were surgically treated under auto-fluorescence. Overall, four lesions (21%) achieved complete mucosal healing, eight lesions (42%) showed partial mucosal healing with bone exposure and no signs or symptoms of inflammation, and seven lesions (37%) were progressive. The results showed that either healing or ORNJ stabilization was achieved in 63% of lesions (n = 12). Conclusion Fluorescence-guided surgery can be beneficial in curing or stabilizing ORNJ. However, randomized clinical trials are needed to confirm these findings.

Ιn a 76-year old man with a dual-chamber ICD implanted five years ago, dizzy spells and significant bradycardia on Holter were not initially recognized as inhibition of bradycardia pacing, due to oversensing. Hospital admission was deemed necessary only after repetitive ICD shocks attributed to right ventricular pace-sense lead fracture. The need to ensure adequate ICD antibradycardia backup pacing in pacing-dependent patients when deleterious sensing errors occur, cannot be overemphasized.

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a very common arrhythmia that mainly affects older individuals. The mechanism of atrial fibrillation is complex and is related to the pathogenesis of trigger activation and the perpetuation of arrhythmia. The pulmonary veins in the left atrium arei confirm that onfirm the most common triggers due to their distinct anatomical and electrophysiological properties. As a result, their electrical isolation by ablation is the cornerstone of invasive AF treatment. Multiple factors and comorbidities affect the atrial tissue and lead to myocardial stretch. Several neurohormonal and structural changes occur, leading to inflammation and oxidative stress and, consequently, a fibrotic substrate created by myofibroblasts, which encourages AF perpetuation. Several mechanisms are implemented into daily clinical practice in both interventions in and the medical treatment of atrial fibrillation.

Ischemia-reperfusion (I/R) events are involved in the development of various ocular pathologies, e.g., retinal artery or vein occlusion. We tested the hypothesis that resveratrol is protective against I/R injury in the murine retina. Intraocular pressure (IOP) was elevated in anaesthetized mice to 110 mm Hg for 45 min via a micropipette placed in the anterior chamber to induce ocular ischemia. In the fellow eye, which served as control, IOP was kept at a physiological level. One group received resveratrol (30 mg/kg/day p.o. once daily) starting one day before the I/R event, whereas the other group of mice received vehicle solution only. On day eight after the I/R event, mice were sacrificed and retinal wholemounts were prepared and immuno-stained using a Brn3a antibody to quantify retinal ganglion cells. Reactivity of retinal arterioles was measured in retinal vascular preparations using video microscopy. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) and nitrogen species (RNS) were quantified in ocular cryosections by dihydroethidium and anti-3-nitrotyrosine staining, respectively. Moreover, hypoxic, redox and nitric oxide synthase gene expression was quantified in retinal explants by PCR. I/R significantly diminished retinal ganglion cell number in vehicle-treated mice. Conversely, only a negligible reduction in retinal ganglion cell number was observed in resveratrol-treated mice following I/R. Endothelial function and autoregulation were markedly reduced, which was accompanied by increased ROS and RNS in retinal blood vessels of vehicle-exposed mice following I/R, whereas resveratrol preserved vascular endothelial function and autoregulation and blunted ROS and RNS formation. Moreover, resveratrol reduced I/R-induced mRNA expression for the prooxidant enzyme, nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate oxidase 2 (NOX2). Our data provide evidence that resveratrol protects from I/R-induced retinal ganglion cell loss and endothelial dysfunction in the murine retina by reducing nitro-oxidative stress possibly via suppression of NOX2 upregulation.

In this paper, defect detection and identification in aluminium joints is investigated based on guided wave monitoring. Guided wave testing is first performed on the selected damage feature from experiments, namely, the scattering coefficient, to prove the feasibility of damage identification. A Bayesian framework based on the selected damage feature for damage identification of three-dimensional joints of arbitrary shape and finite size is then presented. This framework accounts for both modelling and experimental uncertainties. A hybrid wave and finite element approach (WFE) is adopted to predict the scattering coefficients numerically corresponding to different size defects in joints. Moreover, the proposed approach leverages a kriging surrogate model in combination with WFE to formulate a prediction equation that links scattering coefficients to defect size. This equation replaces WFE as the forward model in probabilistic inference, resulting in a significant enhancement in computational efficiency. Finally, numerical and experimental case studies are used to validate the damage identification scheme. An investigation into how the location of sensors can impact the identified results is provided as well.

Abstract Background Severe congenital ophthalmological malformations and glaucoma might be an important occasional feature in patients with Coffin-Siris syndrome (CSS), especially Coffin-Siris syndrome 9 (CSS9, OMIM #615866) caused by SOX11 mutation. Recently, primary (open-angle) glaucoma was described in two children with the most common form of Coffin-Siris syndrome, CSS1 (OMIM #135900) by ARID1B (AT-rich interaction domain-containing protein 1B) gene mutation. In this article, we present the first report of glaucoma with Coffin-Siris syndrome 9 as well as the first report of secondary glaucoma with any form of Coffin-Siris syndrome. These findings indicate that secondary glaucoma is an occasional finding in patients with Coffin-Siris syndrome. Case presentation A child with secondary childhood glaucoma and additional ocular manifestations was evaluated and treated at the childhood glaucoma centre in Mainz, Germany. Examination under general anaesthesia revealed ocular anterior segment dysgenesis (ASD) (Peters type iridocorneal dysgenesis) in combination with congenital limbal stem cell deficiency (LSCD), aniridia, and cataract. The patient also had multiple other congenital anomalies and severe developmental delay. To explain his combination of anomalies, molecular genetic analysis from peripheral blood was performed in late 2018 and early 2019. Following normal findings with a panel diagnostic of 18 genes associated with congenital glaucoma, whole exome sequencing was performed and revealed a novel likely pathogenic heterozygous variant c.251G>T, p.(Gly84Val) in the SOX11 gene (SRY-related HMG-box gene 11). The variant had occurred de novo. Thus, the multiple congenital anomalies and developmental delay of the patient represented Coffin-Siris syndrome 9 (CSS9, OMIM #615866). Conclusions When eye diseases occur in combination with other systemic features, genetic analysis can be seminal. Results indicate that glaucoma is an occasional feature of patients with Coffin-Siris syndrome. As early treatment may improve the visual outcome of patients with glaucoma, we suggest that patients with Coffin-Siris syndrome should receive specific ophthalmological screening.

In a cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) enabled computation-offloading network, vehicular users may deliver computation tasks to a cellular base station (BS) through vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) transmission links in order to accommodate computation-intensive applications, where the BS is usually equipped with a mobile edge computing (MEC) server. However, due to the broadcast nature of wireless communications and high-mobility of vehicles, the computation-offloading information may suffer from an eavesdropping threat. In practice, the interference generated by device-to-device-based V2V (D2D-V) links can be utilized for protecting the offloading information against eavesdropping. This observation motivates a security provisioning for C-V2X computation-offloading network. Specifically, a dynamic threshold-based access scheme is required to maintain the interference under control for different channel conditions. Unfortunately, the previous studies that are based on the assumption of perfect channel state information (CSI) can not be applied for the dynamic vehicular networks. In this paper, we propose a dynamic threshold-based access scheme for security provisioning of C-V2X computation-offloading network by considering an imperfect CSI. In this scheme, an optimized access threshold is set to update adaptively in terms of channel estimation error for balancing both the security and reliability of the offloading link. Furthermore, the proposed scheme can maximize the secrecy throughput under a connection outage constraint of the D2D-V links, with the total area spectral efficiency optimized under the security performance criterion for the offloading link. Numerical results are provided for validating the proposed theoretical analysis. A useful design insight is provided for attaining an optimal configuration of C-V2X computation-offloading network.

The immune system during pregnancy teeters between maintaining fetal tolerance and providing protection against pathogens. Due to this delicate balance, pregnant women and their offspring often have increased susceptibilities to infection. During the first year of life, infant immunity against infection is mainly mediated via passively transferred maternal antibodies. However, our understanding of the route of transfer of the maternal antibodies for conferring protection to influenza A virus (IAV) infection in offspring is incomplete. Here we have demonstrated that offspring from IAV-infected mice were significantly protected against IAV infection. This remarkable increase in survival is mediated via the elevated maternal serum IgG1. By cross-fostering, we further showed that this enhanced host resistance was only achieved in mice born to and nursed by IAV-infected mothers. Collectively, our data suggest that the prolonged protection of offspring against IAV infection requires maternal IgG1 from both the placenta and breast milk.

This study investigates the vibration power flow behavior and performance of inerter-based vibration isolators mounted on finite and infinite flexible beam structures. Two configurations of vibration isolators with spring, damper, and inerter as well as different rigidities of finite and infinite foundation structures are considered. Both the time-averaged power flow transmission and the force transmissibility are studied and used as indices to evaluate the isolation performance. Comparisons are made between the two proposed configurations of inerter-based isolators and the conventional spring-damper isolators to show potential performance benefits of including inerter for effective vibration isolation. It is shown that by configuring the inerter, spring, and damper in parallel in the isolator, anti-peaks are introduced in the time-averaged transmitted power and force transmissibility at specific frequencies such that the vibration transmission to the foundation can be greatly suppressed. When the inerter is connected in series with a spring-damper unit and then in-parallel with a spring, considerable improvement in vibration isolation can be achieved near the original peak frequency while maintaining good high-frequency isolation performance. The study provides better understanding of the effects of adding inerters to vibration isolators mounted on a flexible foundation, and benefits enhanced designs of inerter-based vibration suppression systems.

Chiral phononic crystals (PnCs) provide unique properties not offered by conventional metamaterial based on classic Bragg scattering and local resonance. However, it is insufficient to only consider the inertial amplification effect to describe its bandgap mechanism due to the absence of the bandgap caused by the chirality in some specific chiral structures. Here, we theoretically and experimentally introduce an analogy with Thomson scattering in electromagnetic waves to characterize the bandgap phenomena in chiral PnCs with translation–rotation coupling. Another phononic structures with translation–translation coupling are proposed to illustrate the universality of the analogy. We evidence that the coupling motion in chiral unit cells is similar to the result of Thomson scattering, which quantitatively formulizing as inertial amplification in theory and, twice elastic Thomson scattering allows the waves in the same polarization mode to superpose in antiphase, which is essence of the bandgap formation. This finding sheds a new light on the physics of the elastodynamic wave manipulation in chiral PnCs, thus opening a definite route for the pragmatic exploitation of chiral PnCs as well as other structures with motion coupling in achieving low-frequency and broad bandgaps.

A Computer game is the new platform in generating learning experiences for educational purposes. There are many educational games that have been used as an interaction design tool in a learning environment to enhance students learning outcomes. However, research also claims that playing video games can have a negative impact on student behavior, cognition and emotion. The aim of the study is to review the related articles in educational games and the function of games as interaction design tools, which affect student's cognition, emotion and social skills interaction when playing games. We use thematic analysis to classify the papers including the following: (a) data familiarization (b) initial code generation (c) review themes (d) themes search (e) Define & Name Themes. The articles were found from four databases: web of science, IEEE, ACM, and Springer. All the articles were analyzed based on three main research questions (1) what are the issues of survey papers in educational games? (2) What are the trends of research models in educational game? (3) What is the technology used in educational games? The results show that educational games are affective interaction design tools for learning outcomes.

Abstract Patient survival from biventricular thrombosis is possible using mechanical support followed by cardiac transplantation.

Abstract Recent advances in additive manufacturing have enabled fabrication of phononic crystals and metamaterials which exhibit spectral gaps, or stopbands, in which the propagation of elastic waves is prohibited by Bragg scattering or local resonance effects. Due to the high level of design freedom available to additive manufacturing, the propagation properties of the elastic waves in metamaterials are tunable through design of the periodic cell. In this paper, we outline a new design approach for metamaterials incorporating internal resonators, and provide numerical and experimental evidence that the stopband exists over the irreducible Brillouin zone of the unit cell of the metamaterial (i.e. is a three-dimensional stopband). The targeted stopband covers a much lower frequency range than what can be realised through Bragg scattering alone. Metamaterials have the ability to provide (a) lower frequency stopbands than Bragg-type phononic crystals within the same design volume, and/or (b) comparable stopband frequencies with reduced unit cell dimensions. We also demonstrate that the stopband frequency range of the metamaterial can be tuned through modification of the metamaterial design. Applications for such metamaterials include aerospace and transport components, as well as precision engineering components such as vibration-suppressing platforms, supports for rotary components, machine tool mounts and metrology frames.

ERα breast cancer can relapse to metastatic disease following endocrine therapy. Here, the authors find that when aromatase inhibitor treatment resistance develops, epigenomic reprogramming drives Keratin-80 upregulation via SREBP1, and promotes cytoskeletal rearrangements that drive cancer cell invasion.

Abstract Background While arthroscopic complete repair of massive rotator cuff tears (MRCT) back to their anatomic footprint is preferential, there are cases where this type of repair is not applicable due to the contraction of the torn tendons. In such cases, a non-anatomic incomplete or partial repair can be performed. A number of clinical studies have investigated the clinical and functional outcomes of arthroscopic partial repair for irreparable MRCT. To our knowledge, no systematic review has been published yet to synthetically evaluate these results. Methods Two reviewers independently conducted the search in a PRISMA-compliant systematic way using the MEDLINE/PubMed database and the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. These databases were queried with the terms “arthroscopy”[MeSH Terms] OR arthroscopic surgical procedure [Text Word (tw)] AND massive rotator cuff tears [tw] AND arthroscopic partial repair [tw]. Results From the 55 initial studies, we finally chose 11 clinical studies which were eligible to our inclusion-exclusion criteria. The mean modified methodology Coleman score was 58/100, whereas it ranged from 41/100 to 78/100. In total, 643 patients were included in this review. All postoperative mean clinical and functional subjective scores, as well as muscle strength of patients treated with arthroscopic partial repair, were found significantly improved, when compared with the respective mean preoperative values. The rate of structural failure of the partial repair, as it was estimated by postoperative imaging modalities, was 48.9%. The overall reoperations’ rate was 2.9% regarding the patients who were treated with partial repair. Conclusions Arthroscopic partial repair might be a safe and effective alternative treatment for irreparable contracted MRCT, where a complete repair cannot be performed. The methodological quality of the relevant, available literature is low to moderate; therefore, further studies of higher quality are required to confirm these results.

Vehicle clustering has been utilized for reducing the complexity of vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications that would ultimately improve road traffic efficiency. Using a car-following model in a V2X communication system, we propose a vehicle clustering method for dynamically classifying vehicles and adjusting cluster size in real time. The especially important issue for the selected cluster-head vehicles (CHVs) can achieve an optimal trade-off between the CHVs' relative speed and power allocation. Furthermore, in order to balance the power allocation among the CHVs to further increase the downlink throughput, a power control approach for non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) is proposed. In this approach, the power allocation coefficients are obtained by maximizing the achievable rate while meeting the predefined target rate of each NOMA user. Finally, numerical simulations are provided to confirm the theoretical results and demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed approach. Note that through the numerical simulations, we can find the critical point of maximizing the minimum achievable rate among the CHVs at low transmission power of base station (BS).