Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Implementation and validation of an Omnet++ optical burst switching simulator

In this paper, we present a newly developed simulator based on the Omnet++ framework, for simulating Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexed, optical burst switched networks in the presence of optical impairments. The simulator is validated against a reduced link load model for optical burst switched networks, and simulations are performed in order to determine the effects of flexi-grid and impairments modelling on simulation results. We find that flexi-grid substantially reduces the burst loss probability on the simulated network, and that impairments modelling has a noticeable effect on simulation results, particularly in flexi-grid scenarios.
Upper Airway Stimulation for Treatment of Obstructive Sleep Apnea: An Evaluation and Comparison of Outcomes at Two Academic Centers.

STUDY OBJECTIVES Data from patients at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital (TJUH) and University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) undergoing upper airway stimulation (UAS) were analyzed. We hypothesize that treatment with UAS will improve both subjective and objective outcome measures and results will be reproducible between institutions. METHODS We reviewed patients undergoing UAS between May 2014 and August 2016. We recorded demographic data, Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS), and preoperative and postoperative polysomnographic information. We compared outcome data between institutions and subsequently combined the cohorts and compared baseline to posttreatment results. RESULTS The TJUH cohort consisted of 30 males and 18 females with a mean age of 60.88 years and body mass index of 29.29. The mean preoperative apnea-hypopnea index (AHI), O2 nadir, and ESS were 35.88, 80.96, and 11.09, respectively. The mean postoperative AHI, O2 nadir, and ESS were 6.34, 88.04, and 5.77, respectively. The UPMC cohort consisted of 30 males and 19 females with a mean age of 62.84 years and body mass index of 27.74. The mean preoperative AHI, O2 nadir, and ESS were 35.29, 79.58, and 10.94, respectively. The mean postoperative AHI, O2 nadir, and ESS were 6.28, 84.35, and 6.60, respectively. We found no difference in patients reaching a postoperative AHI less than 15, 10, and 5 when comparing the cohorts. After combining cohorts, we found a significant improvement in postoperative AHI, O2 nadir, and ESS compared to preoperative values. CONCLUSIONS UAS appears to provide a viable alternative to continuous positive airway pressure, producing improvement in both polysomnographic and quality-of-life measures. Results are reproducible at high-volume centers.
Metformin use and health care utilization in patients with coexisting chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and diabetes mellitus

Background Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is associated with persistent systemic inflammation. Anti-inflammatory therapies have been shown to decrease acute exacerbations of COPD. The antidiabetic medication metformin decreases oxidative stress and inflammation and may benefit patients with COPD. We aimed at investigating the effect of metformin on health care utilizations in patients with coexisting COPD and diabetes mellitus (DM). Methods We studied 5% Medicare beneficiaries with coexisting COPD and DM prescribed metformin or other antidiabetics during the period 2007–2010. The primary outcome was COPD-specific emergency room (ER) visits and hospitalizations; the secondary outcome was all-cause ER visits and hospitalizations over the 2-year follow-up after the index antidiabetic prescription. The effects of metformin were examined by COPD complexity and compared with the effects of other antidiabetic medications. Results Among 11,260 patients, 3,193 were metformin users and 8,067 were nonusers. Metformin users were younger, were less sick, were less likely to be on oxygen, and had fewer hospitalizations in the prior year compared with the nonusers. Over a 2-year period, metformin users had lower COPD-specific and all-cause ER visits and hospitalizations (7.11% vs 9.61%, p<0.0001; and 61.63% vs 71.27%, p<0.0001, respectively). In a stratified multivariable analysis, the odds of COPD-specific ER visits and hospitalizations were lower in patients with low-complexity COPD (adjusted odds ratio =0.66, 95% confidence interval =0.52–0.85). However, patients with all COPD complexities get benefits of metformin on all-cause ER visits and hospitalizations. Conclusion The use of metformin in patients with coexisting COPD and DM was associated with fewer COPD-specific ER visits and hospitalizations, especially in low-complexity COPD.
Maternal body weight trajectories across the life course and risk of preterm delivery

We examined the association between life course body weight percentile trajectories and risk for preterm delivery (PTD). Data about women’s weight at birth, age 18, and before pregnancy were obtained by retrospective self-report in a cohort of 1410 black women in metropolitan Detroit. Growth mixture models were used to categorize women with similar weight percentile trajectories across these time points. Log-Poisson models were used to examine the association between the trajectory groups and PTD. Four trajectory groups with different beginning and endpoints of their weight percentiles (high-high, high-low, low-high and low-low) best fit the data. The groups with the highest prevalence of PTD were those that started low (low-high, 21%; low-low, 18%). The low-high group had a higher prevalence of PTD than the high-high trajectory group in unadjusted models (prevalence ratio=1.49 [95% confidence interval (CI) 1.11, 2.00]). The association became not significant after adjusting for maternal age at delivery, income, diabetes and hypertension. When compared with the high-high trajectory group, the low-low trajectory seemed to also have a higher prevalence of PTD after adjusting for maternal age at delivery, income, diabetes and hypertension (prevalence ratio=1.35 [95% CI 1.00, 1.83]). Results suggest that a woman’s risk for PTD is influenced by her body weight trajectory across the life course.
Does Hospital Volume Affect Outcomes in Patients Undergoing Vestibular Schwannoma Surgery?

OBJECTIVE To determine the effect of hospital surgical case volume on the outcomes of vestibular schwannoma surgery. STUDY DESIGN Retrospective case review. SETTING University HealthSystem Consortium member hospitals (includes nearly every US academic medical center). PATIENTS Three thousand six hundred ninety-seven patients who underwent vestibular schwannoma resection over a 3-year timespan (2012-2015) grouped by race, age, comorbidities, payer, and sex. INTERVENTION Surgical resection of vestibular schwannoma. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Morbidity and mortality following vestibular schwannoma excision are compared by hospital volume (low, medium, and high) including deciles. RESULTS There was significantly longer length of stay (p ≤ 0.005) among groups with low-volume hospitals followed by medium-volume hospitals and high-volume hospitals. Low-volume hospitals had a significantly higher rate of complications including stroke, aspiration, and respiratory failure (p ≤ 0.0175). Patient characteristics of age, sex, sex, and baseline comorbidities were similar between hospital groups. However, patients at high-volume hospitals were more likely to be Caucasian (83.1%, p = 0.0001) and have private insurance (76.7%, p < 0.0001). There was a strong negative correlation between complication rates and hospital volume (r = -0.8164, p = 0.0040). CONCLUSION The volume of vestibular schwannoma surgeries performed at a hospital impacts length of stay and rates of postoperative complications. Demographics among hospital groups were similar though high-volume hospitals had significantly more patients who were privately insured and Caucasian.
Patch testing with a textile dye mix in two concentrations - a multicentre study by the Swedish contact dermatitis research group.

UNLABELLED Disperse dyes, which are used for colouring synthetic textile fibres, are well-known contact sensitisers. To investigate the outcome of patch-testing with a textile dye mix (TDM) at 7 dermatology clinics in Sweden, a TDM tested at 2 concentrations was included into the baseline series during one year. The mix consisted of Disperse (D) Blue 35, D Yellow 3, D Orange 1 and 3, D Red 1 and 17, all 1.0%, and D Blue 106 and D Blue 124, each 0.3% in the mix 6.6% and 1.0% each in the mix 8.0%. In 2,122 tested patients, contact allergy to the TDM at the concentration 8.0% was found in 2.8% and to the TDM at 6.6% in 2.5% of the patients. The contact allergy to the TDM could explain or contribute to the dermatitis in about 35% of the patients. CONCLUSION contact allergy to the TDM is common and inclusion into the Swedish baseline series should be considered.
Statistically augmented preprocessing/normalization module for a Romanian text-to-speech system

This paper addresses issues regarding the interdependence between sentence boundary detection (SBD), proper name detection (PND) and acronym/abbreviation detection (ABD) from the perspective of a preprocessing/ normalization module implementation as a first level in a Romanian text-to-speech (TTS) system. All these tasks have a major contribution to the intelligibility and naturalness of a synthesized text. Moreover, Romanian is still a scarce resource language and building algorithms for the automatic extraction of acronym/abbreviation and proper names from large text corpora helps obtaining more comprehensive resources for the TTS language processing stage. The paper proposes an improved preprocessing/normalization module for a high quality Romanian TTS system mainly by solving in a unified manner a number of difficult situations at the preprocessing level.
Reference curves for triceps and subscapular skinfold thicknesses in US children and adolescents.

BACKGROUND Skinfold thicknesses have long been considered important and valid measurements of subcutaneous fat. Nevertheless, there are no current skinfold reference data for US children and adolescents. OBJECTIVE We developed new percentile reference curves for triceps and subscapular skinfold thicknesses by using the same national samples as those included in the reference curves for body mass index (BMI) in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2000 Growth Charts. DESIGN We included triceps and subscapular skinfold-thickness measurements for 32,783 individuals who also had complete data for BMI. The LMS method was used to derive 10 smoothed skinfold-thickness percentile reference curves and to generate the L, M, and S parameters that allow the calculation of standardized z scores. RESULTS The new reference curves exhibit established age- and sex-related patterns of development, including dramatic prepubescent increases in subcutaneous fatness in boys at the highest percentiles. Comparisons of smoothed medians for race-ethnicity groups confirm greater subcutaneous fatness in white children than in black age mates at the triceps site but similar median subscapular skinfold thicknesses. Median skinfold thicknesses for children considered overweight (> or =85th percentile) or obese (> or =95th percentile) on the basis of BMI cutoffs do not follow closely the skinfold percentile reference channels across age, especially in boys, which suggests a certain degree of independence between BMI and skinfold thickness at the upper extremes of the BMI distribution. CONCLUSIONS The age- and sex-standardized skinfold percentiles and z scores will be appropriate for a wide range of research applications that consider measures of subcutaneous fat. Because they were developed by using the same children as those used for the 2000 BMI curves of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, they provide an important new complementary assessment tool that should be appropriate for almost all US children and adolescents.
What explains the correlation between growth in vocabulary and grammar? New evidence from latent change score analyses of simultaneous bilingual development.

A close relationship between children's vocabulary size and the grammatical complexity of their speech is well attested but not well understood. The present study used latent change score modeling to examine the dynamic relationships between vocabulary and grammar growth within and across languages in longitudinal data from 90 simultaneous Spanish-English bilingual children who were assessed at 6-month intervals between 30 and 48 months. Slopes of vocabulary and grammar growth were strongly correlated within each language and showed moderate or nonsignificant relationships across languages. There was no evidence that vocabulary level predicted subsequent grammar growth or that the level of grammatical development predicted subsequent vocabulary growth. We propose that a common influence of properties of input on vocabulary and grammatical development is the source of their correlated but uncoupled growth. An unanticipated across-language finding was a negative relationship between level of English skill and subsequent Spanish growth. We propose that the cultural context of Spanish-English bilingualism in the US is the reason that strong English skills jeopardize Spanish language growth, while Spanish skills do not affect English growth. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at: https://youtu.be/qEHSQ0yRre0.
Dietary fat and fish intake and age-related maculopathy.

OBJECTIVE To assess whether dietary intake of fat or fish is associated with age-related maculopathy (ARM) prevalence. DESIGN Cross-sectional, urban population-based study. PARTICIPANTS People (N = 3654) aged 49 years or older. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Subjects with ARM were identified from masked grading of retinal photographs. A 145-itemself-administered, semiquantitative food frequency questionnaire was completed adequately by 88.8% of participants and was used to assess intakes of dietary fat and fish. RESULTS A higher frequency of fish consumption was associated with decreased odds of late ARM (odds ratio for frequency of consumption more than once per week compared with less than once per month, 0.5). Subjects with higher energy-adjusted intakes of cholesterol were significantly more likely to have late ARM, with an increased risk for late ARM for the highest compared with the lowest quintile of intake (odds ratio, 2.7). CONCLUSION The amount and type of dietary fat intake may be associated with ARM.
The Differential Impact of Social Participation and Social Support on Psychological Well-Being: Evidence From the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study

Being socially engaged is theorized to diminish age-related declines in emotional functioning. However, unique facets of social engagement may differentially impact functioning in older adulthood. In particular, social participation (SP) might be more beneficial than social support (SS) in buffering declines. The goal of this study was to examine whether interindividual differences in SP and SS influenced intraindividual change in Psychological Well-Being (PWB). The impact of SS and SP on change in PWB was investigated in two samples from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study spanning 19 years (1992–2011): graduate respondents and their siblings. Using latent growth curve models, small declines in PWB were found. Individuals high in SP demonstrated a less steep decline in PWB across the three time points than individuals low in SP. SS, however, did not buffer declines in PWB. Developmental implications of the age-related trajectory of PWB and the relationship with social engagement are discussed.
Influence of Language Load on Speech Motor Skill in Children With Specific Language Impairment.

Purpose Children with specific language impairment (SLI) show particular deficits in the generation of sequenced action: the quintessential procedural task. Practiced imitation of a sequence may become rote and require reduced procedural memory. This study explored whether speech motor deficits in children with SLI occur generally or only in conditions of high linguistic load, whether speech motor deficits diminish with practice, and whether it is beneficial to incorporate conditions of high load to understand speech production. Method Children with SLI and typical development participated in a syntactic priming task during which they generated sentences (high linguistic load) and, then, practiced repeating a sentence (low load) across 3 sessions. We assessed phonetic accuracy, speech movement variability, and duration. Results Children with SLI produced more variable articulatory movements than peers with typical development in the high load condition. The groups converged in the low load condition. Children with SLI continued to show increased articulatory stability over 3 practice sessions. Both groups produced generated sentences with increased duration and variability compared with repeated sentences. Conclusions Linguistic demands influence speech motor production. Children with SLI show reduced speech motor performance in tasks that require language generation but not when task demands are reduced in rote practice.
Effective Connectivity in Response to Posture Changes in Elderly Subjects as Assessed Using Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy

This study aims to assess the posture-related changes in frequency-specific effective connectivity (EC) in elderly subjects by coupling function measured using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). The fNIRS signals were continuously recorded from the bilateral prefrontal cortex (PFC), motor cortex (MC), and occipital lobe (OL) in 17 healthy elderly and 19 healthy young subjects during sitting and standing states. EC was calculated based on Dynamic Bayesian inference in one low frequency interval I: 0.052–0.145 Hz and one very low frequency interval II: 0.021–0.052 Hz. Results show that in response to posture change, the coupling strength significantly increased in interval I of the young group from right PFC to MC (p < 0.05). Meanwhile, the coupling strength of the elderly group was significantly increased in interval II from the left PFC to right PFC (p = 0.008) and to left MC (p = 0.031) in the standing state as compared with that in the sitting state. Compared with that of the young group, the coupling strength of the elderly group was significantly decreased (p < 0.05) between the right PFC and left PFC in interval I and from PFC and OL to MC in interval II during the sitting state. The decreased EC in interval I was also positively correlated with cognitive scores in the elderly group. In addition, the coupling strength from MC to PFC in interval II during standing state was significantly increased in elderly subjects as compared with that in the young group. These results revealed the age-related changes in reorganization of interregional interactions for different postures. These findings may provide evidence of impaired cognitive function in the elderly and can deepen the understanding on age-related changes in neurovascular coupling.
Parental Stress Scale: Validation study with a Portuguese population of parents of children from 3 to 10 years old

The aim of this study was to validate the Parental Stress Scale (PSS) for Portuguese parents and to further investigate the scale’s criterion-related validity. A two-stage stratified sample of the Portuguese population of parents, with children attending public preschools and primary schools, was obtained, totalizing 3842 parents of children between 3 and 10 years old. Parents completed a Parental Concerns Scale and the Portuguese version of the PSS. Results support the four-factor structure of the Portuguese version of the PSS. Higher levels of parental stress were reported by parents of boys, with lower educational levels; older, divorced or single parents; unemployed mothers; and with a higher number of children. Parental concerns and parental stress’ comparative study reported very low correlations between the two constructs. This study supported evidence for the PSS’ validity with a stratified sample of Portuguese parents of children between 3 and 10 years old. Moreover, our findings reported the scale’s divergent validity with a Parental Concerns Scale. These results point to the importance of assessing both dimensions in family practice.
Synergistic reaction of silver nitrate, silver nanoparticles, and methylene blue against bacteria

Significance Bacteria are increasingly becoming resistant to antibiotics; therefore, other means must be found for their inactivation. Efficient inactivation of bacteria cannot be achieved simply by increasing the dose because of toxicity limitation. Therefore, it is critical to search for a combination of agents, within a safe dose, that is more effective in killing bacteria than agents reacting alone. Here, we show that the combination of methylene blue (MB) and silver nitrate can be up to three orders of magnitude more effective in killing bacteria than the two agents reacting alone against bacteria. This synergistic mechanism is due to silver ion increasing the penetration of MB into the bacteria interior, allowing photogenerated single oxygen to react with DNA and prevent replication. In this paper we describe the antibacterial effect of methylene blue, MB, and silver nitrate reacting alone and in combination against five bacterial strains including Serratia marcescens and Escherichia coli bacteria. The data presented suggest that when the two components are combined and react together against bacteria, the effects can be up to three orders of magnitude greater than that of the sum of the two components reacting alone against bacteria. Analysis of the experimental data provides proof that a synergistic mechanism is operative within a dose range when the two components react together, and additive when reacting alone against bacteria.
Multilocus genotyping of Giardia duodenalis in captive non-human primates in Sichuan and Guizhou provinces, Southwestern China

Giardia duodenalis is a common human and animal pathogen. It has been increasingly reported in wild and captive non-human primates (NHPs) in recent years. However, multilocus genotyping information for G. duodenalis infecting NHPs in southwestern China is limited. In the present study, the prevalence and multilocus genotypes (MLGs) of G. duodenalis in captive NHPs in southwestern China were determined. We examined 207 fecal samples from NHPs in Sichuan and Guizhou provinces, and 16 specimens were positive for G. duodenalis. The overall infection rate was 7.7%, and only assemblage B was identified. G. duodenalis was detect positive in northern white-cheeked gibbon (14/36, 38.9%), crab-eating macaque (1/60, 1.7%) and rhesus macaques (1/101, 0.9%). Multilocus sequence typing based on beta-giardin (bg), triose phosphate isomerase (tpi) and glutamate dehydrogenase (gdh) revealed nine different assemblage B MLGs (five known genotypes and four novel genotypes). Based on a phylogenetic analysis, one potentially zoonotic genotype of MLG SW7 was identified in a northern white-cheeked gibbon. A high degree of genetic diversity within assemblage B was observed in captive northern white-cheeked gibbons in Southwestern China, including a potentially zoonotic genotype, MLG SW7. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report using a MLGs approach to identify G. duodenalis in captive NHPs in Southwestern China.