Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
IL-6 and TNF-α serum levels are associated with early death in community-acquired pneumonia patients

Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) is amongst the leading causes of death worldwide. As inflammatory markers, cytokines can predict outcomes, if interpreted together with clinical data and scoring systems such as CURB-65, CRB, and Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II (APACHE II). The aim of this study was to determine the impact of inflammatory biomarkers on the early mortality of hospitalized CAP patients. Twenty-seven CAP patients needing hospitalization were enrolled for the study and samples of interleukin-1 (IL-1) and interleukin-6 (IL-6), tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α), C-reactive protein (CRP), and homocystein were collected at the time of admission (day 1) as well as on the seventh day of the treatment. There was a significant reduction in the levels of IL-6 between the first and the second collections. Median IL-6 values decreased from 24 pg/mL (day 1) to 8 pg/mL (day 7) (P=0.016). The median levels of TNF-α were higher in patients: i) with acute kidney injury (AKI) (P=0.045), ii) requiring mechanical ventilation (P=0.040), iii) with short hospital stays (P=0.009), iv) admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) (P=0.040), v) who died early (P=0.003), and vi) with worse CRB scores (P=0.013). In summary, IL-6 and TNF-α levels were associated with early mortality of CAP patients. Longer admission levels demonstrated greater likelihood of early death and overall mortality, necessity of mechanical ventilation, and AKI.
Erosion And Runoff Generation From Fire Disturbed Mediterranean Forest Area

In order to assess the effects on runoff, erosion and soil hydraulic properties, following the changes in soil and vegetation induced by forest fires in Mediterranean areas, a set of rainfall simulator experiments was carried out in the Liguria region, Italy, immediately after a fire occurred in early August, 2003. Three rainfall events, with different antecedent soil moisture conditions (dry, wet, very wet), were simulated on two 30 m 2 plots, established on areas with different fire histories (i.e. recently burned and burned six years before the field experiments) and characterized by the same main physiographic features. Each simulation consisted of a single 60 minutes application of rainfall at a constant intensity of about 76 mm h -1 . The experimental results showed runoff ratio, evaluated for different pre-event soil moisture conditions, ranging from 0 to 2% in the plot burned six years before, and from 21 to 41% in the recently burned plot. In particular runoff ratio from the burned plot was 60 times more than from the area unburned in the last six years, for the wet run, and 20 times more, for the very wet run. Regarding sediment production, large increases in sediment yields were measured from the burned plot compared with the unburned one. Suspended sediment yields from the burned plot were more than two orders of magnitude higher than the control plot in all the simulated events.
Equalization of Multichannel Acoustic Systems in Oversampled Subbands

Equalization of room transfer functions (RTFs) is an important topic with several applications in acoustic signal processing. RTFs are often modeled as finite-impulse response filters, characterized by orders of thousands of taps and non-minimum phase. In practice, only approximate estimates of the actual RTFs are available due to measurement noise, limited estimation accuracy, and temporal variation of source-receiver position. These issues make equalization a difficult problem. In this paper, we discuss multichannel equalization with focus on inexact RTF estimates. We present a multichannel method for the equalization filter design utilizing decimated and oversampled subbands, where the full-band acoustic impulse response is decomposed into equivalent subband filters prior to equalization. This technique is not only more computationally efficient but also more robust to impulse response inaccuracies compared with the full-band counterpart.
Diffusion Anisotropy Measurement of Brain White Matter Is Affected by Voxel Size: Underestimation Occurs in Areas with Crossing Fibers

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Voxel size/shape of diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) may directly affect the measurement of fractional anisotropy (FA) in regions where there are crossing fibers. The purpose of this article was to investigate the effect of voxel size/shape on measured FA by using isotropic and nonisotropic voxels. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Ten healthy adult volunteers had MR imaging by using a 1.5T clinical imager. DTI was performed with 2 different voxel sizes: a 2-mm-section isotropic voxel (2 × 2 × 2 mm3) and a 6-mm-section nonisotropic voxel (2 × 2 × 6 mm3). Images were obtained by using a single-shot echo-planar imaging technique with motion-probing gradients in 15 orientations and a b-value of 1000 s/mm2. FA and the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) were measured at different sites of the brain. RESULTS: When smaller isotropic voxels were used, the FA was greater in areas with crossing fibers, including the superior longitudinal fasciculus, the thalamus, and the red nucleus; the FA was not significantly different in areas without crossing fibers, such as the corpus callosum, the posterior limb of the internal capsule, and the corticospinal tract at the level of the centrum semiovale (P > .05). The ADC values were not affected by voxel size/shape at any of the areas of the brain that were measured. CONCLUSION: FA values that are measured in regions containing crossing fibers are underestimated when using nonisotropic DTI.
Constructing virtual documents for ontology matching

On the investigation of linguistic techniques used in ontology matching, we propose a new idea of virtual documents to pursue a cost-effective approach to linguistic matching in this paper. Basically, as a collection of weighted words, the virtual document of a URIref declared in an ontology contains not only the local descriptions but also the neighboring information to reflect the intended meaning of the URIref. Document similarity can be computed by traditional vector space techniques, and then be used in the similarity-based approaches to ontology matching. In particular, the RDF graph structure is exploited to define the description formulations and the neighboring operations. Experimental results show that linguistic matching based on the virtual documents is dominant in average F-Measure as compared to other three approaches. It is also demonstrated by our experiments that the virtual documents approach is cost-effective as compared to other linguistic matching approaches.
Interactions between Lactobacillus acidophilus strains and the starter cultures, Lactobacillus bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus during fermentation of goats' milk

It has been observed that Lactobacillus acidophilus has poor survivability in fermented goats’ milk. In this study, interactions between L. acidophilus and starter cultures during goats’ milk fermentation were investigated using three strains of L. acidophilus: ATCC-11975, LA-5 and NCFM, and the starter cultures (Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus (LB350) and Streptococcus thermophilus (ST350), isolated from a commercial yogurt starter. Selective enumeration methods were validated; de Mann, Rogosa and Sharpe (MRS) agar with 0.2% bile and anaerobic incubation at 37°C (72 h) was found to be suitable for all L. acidophilus strains; MRS agar with pH adjusted to 5.2 and anaerobic incubation at 37°C (24 h) was used for strain LB350 and M17 agar with 0.5% lactose and aerobic incubation at 37°C (24 h) for strain ST350. Addition of LB350 and/or ST350 into the goats’ milk inoculated with L. acidophilus strains accelerated pH decrease compared to L. acidophilus strains used alone. Antagonism between each of the L. acidophilus strains and LB350 occurred, most noticeably with the LA-5 culture. However, it varied widely between the acidophilus strains indicating that antagonism is likely to be strain specific.
Nuclear Black Hole Formation in Clumpy Galaxies at High Redshift

Massive stellar clumps in high-redshift galaxies interact and migrate to the center to form a bulge and exponential disk in ≲1 Gyr. Here we consider the fate of intermediate-mass black holes (BHs) that might form by massive-star coalescence in the dense young clusters of these disk clumps. We find that the BHs move inward with the clumps and reach the inner few hundred parsecs in only a few orbit times. There they could merge into a supermassive BH by dynamical friction. The ratio of BH mass to stellar mass in the disk clumps is approximately preserved in the final ratio of BH to bulge mass. Because this ratio for individual clusters has been estimated to be ~10−3, the observed BH-to-bulge mass ratio results. We also obtain a relation between BH mass and bulge velocity dispersion that is compatible with observations of present-day galaxies.
Experiences of mindfulness for physical health and asthma patients : a qualitative approach

The initial part of this thesis comprises of a thematic synthesis of qualitative research followed by a qualitative study. The thematic synthesis aimed to gain an understanding of how participants with long term health conditions and physical health difficulties, experience mindfulness interventions. Thomas and Harden’s (2008) three step thematic synthesis method was utilised, in order to synthesise the qualitative findings of 20 qualitative studies. This process revealed five key themes: 1) Perceived barriers to participation and practice: 2) Positive consequences and benefits of participation: 3) Group attributes: 4) Negative experience and 5) Home practice and application to life. Mindfulness based interventions are acceptable for individuals with long term and physical health conditions. Individuals can experience both positive and negative experiences of mindfulness interventions. The group aspects of these interventions are valued by participants for their support and social aspect; however some patients can experience a negative effect, which requires further exploration. The needs of patients with respiratory conditions and dual mental health difficulties are not adequately catered for. The literature investigating mindfulness and respiratory conditions, especially asthma, is limited. There is only one study to date, which has looked at the effectiveness of mindfulness compared to treatment as usual in a randomised control trial for asthma, which has shown promising results. The present study aimed to explore poorly controlled asthma patients’ experience of a brief mindfulness group. A qualitative approach was taken to elicit the views of adults with poorly controlled asthma from a difficult asthma clinic, who attended a four week mindfulness course. A focus group and nine semi structured interviews were conducted and analysed using thematic analysis. The study found four overarching themes including: Wellbeing, Challenges, Acceptability and Integration. These results imply that despite the challenges, a mindfulness based intervention is acceptable for poorly controlled asthmatics. Furthermore, it had a positive impact on wellbeing and patients were able to integrate skills alongside existing treatment. Further exploration of tailored mindfulness based interventions for asthmatics would be beneficial. In particular, exploring both subjective experiences and impact on health related outcomes, as well as psychological barriers to attendance and practice.
RELATIVISTIC LINES AND REFLECTION FROM THE INNER ACCRETION DISKS AROUND NEUTRON STARS

A number of neutron star low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs) have recently been discovered to show broad, asymmetric Fe K emission lines in their X-ray spectra. These lines are generally thought to be the most prominent part of a reflection spectrum, originating in the inner part of the accretion disk where strong relativistic effects can broaden emission lines. We present a comprehensive, systematic analysis of Suzaku and XMM-Newton spectra of 10 neutron star LMXBs, all of which display broad Fe K emission lines. Of the 10 sources, 4 are Z sources, 4 are atolls, and 2 are accreting millisecond X-ray pulsars (also atolls). The Fe K lines are fit well by a relativistic line model for a Schwarzschild metric, and imply a narrow range of inner disk radii (6–15 GM/c2) in most cases. This implies that the accretion disk extends close to the neutron star surface over a range of luminosities. Continuum modeling shows that for the majority of observations, a blackbody component (plausibly associated with the boundary layer) dominates the X-ray emission from 8 to 20 keV. Thus it appears likely that this spectral component produces the majority of the ionizing flux that illuminates the accretion disk. Therefore, we also fit the spectra with a blurred reflection model, wherein a blackbody component illuminates the disk. This model fits well in most cases, supporting the idea that the boundary layer illuminates a geometrically thin disk.
FusionNet: 3D Object Classification Using Multiple Data Representations

High-quality 3D object recognition is an important component of many vision and robotics systems. We tackle the object recognition problem using two data representations, to achieve leading results on the Princeton ModelNet challenge. The two representations: 1. Volumetric representation: the 3D object is discretized spatially as binary voxels - $1$ if the voxel is occupied and $0$ otherwise. 2. Pixel representation: the 3D object is represented as a set of projected 2D pixel images. Current leading submissions to the ModelNet Challenge use Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) on pixel representations. However, we diverge from this trend and additionally, use Volumetric CNNs to bridge the gap between the efficiency of the above two representations. We combine both representations and exploit them to learn new features, which yield a significantly better classifier than using either of the representations in isolation. To do this, we introduce new Volumetric CNN (V-CNN) architectures.
Real-Time Fine-Grained Multiple-Target Tracking on an Extensible Virtual Fab Architecture Using Multi-Agents

The concept of a “Virtual Fab” (VF) stems from the IC industry and emphasizes the idea of intangible manufacturing service provision. In addition to satisfying customers’ order fulfillment, providing remote service accessibility and real-time data granularity with gratifying performance and flexibility are among major challenges of a VF system. In this paper, we propose an architecture for a VF based on multi-agents that provides fine-grained real-time multiple-target tracking service for both the customers and internal managerial personnel of an IC foundry. Each function module is constructed as an autonomous agent and performs dedicated tasks. To provide flexibility and allow for future enhancements, our proposed extensible architecture also can utilize currently available RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) techniques to cooperate with other tracking sensors for the purpose of improving tracking accuracy and mitigating the power consumption issues inherent in RFID systems. Finally, an integrated simulation which utilizes technologies including RFID, Web Services and embedded-systems has also been conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of this architecture.
The graininess of dark matter haloes

We use the recently completed one billion particle Via Lactea II A cold dark matter simulation to investigate local properties like density, mean velocity, velocity dispersion, anisotropy, orientation and shape of the velocity dispersion ellipsoid, as well as the structure in velocity space of dark matter haloes. We show that at the same radial distance from the halo centre, these properties can deviate by orders of magnitude from the canonical, spherically averaged values, a variation that can only be partly explained by triaxiality and the presence of subhaloes. The mass density appears smooth in the central relaxed regions but spans four orders of magnitude in the outskirts, both because of the presence of subhaloes as well as of underdense regions and holes in the matter distribution. In the inner regions, the local velocity dispersion ellipsoid is aligned with the shape ellipsoid of the halo. This is not true in the outer parts where the orientation becomes more isotropic. The clumpy structure in local velocity space of the outer halo cannot be well described by a smooth multivariate normal distribution. Via Lactea II also shows the presence of cold streams made visible by their high 6D phase space density. Generally, the structure of dark matter haloes shows a high degree of graininess in phase space that cannot be described by a smooth distribution function.
Antispasmodic phytomedicine , from traditional utilization to rational formulation : functional approach

The aim of this study was to assess traditional preparation used to treat infantile colic and to propose a rational formulation. We studied the antispasmodic effect in vitro on rat intestine using isometric transducer and rationalized the traditional preparation using functional approach. The crude aqueous extract of fifteen plants induced dose-dependent relaxation in rat intestine with an IC50 of 164.7 ± 1.2 μg/mL. With a new rational formulation, the IC50 was 27.8 ± 1.1 μg/mL, a very effective value when compared to antispasmodic drugs e.g. loperamide (IC50 = 49.6 ± 1.1 μg/mL), trimebutine (IC50 = 106.5 ± 1.0 μg/mL), phloroglucinol (IC50 = 119.1 ± 1.1 μg/mL), and pinaverium bromide (IC50 = 837.7 ± 1.1 μg/mL). This study validates traditional utilization the mixture as antispasmodic and demonstrates that functional approach can be used to optimize traditional preparation.
THE IMPACT OF ONLINE SHOPPING EXPERIENCE ON RISK PERCEPTIONS AND ONLINE PURCHASE INTENTIONS : DOES PRODUCT CATEGORY MATTER ?

The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of online shopping experience on perception of specific types of risks associated with online shopping and how each type of risk perceptions influences online purchase intentions. A conceptual model was proposed to illustrate the relationships between online shopping experience and perceptions of product, financial, and privacy risks associated with online shopping, and how both experience and risk perceptions impact online purchase intentions. The results indicate that online shopping experience is a strong positive predictor of online shoppers’ purchase intentions for the two product categories (i.e. non-digital and digital products) examined. Online shopping experience is negatively related to perceptions of product and financial risks associated with online shopping regardless of product category; but only reduce privacy risk associated with shopping non-digital products online. Interestingly, although both product and financial risks are negatively related to online purchase intentions for non-digital and marginally for digital product, privacy risk perception is not related to online shopping intentions for either of the product categories. Findings are discussed with theoretical and managerial implications.
Navigating Israeli citizenship: how do Arab-Palestinian teachers civicize their pupils?

ABSTRACT This study examines citizenship education in Israel from the point of view of Arab teachers, as they rework and negotiate the content and boundaries of their Israeli citizenship. Specifically, the paper studies how teachers of citizenship education in Arab high schools in Israel perceive their sociopolitical reality, how they respond to it in their classrooms, and how they conceptualize Israeli citizenship for their pupils. In doing so, the paper ponders the pedagogical strategies and emphases of these teachers, as they mediate the citizenship education curriculum, with its heavy emphasis on the ethno-national character of Israel, to their Arab pupils.
Young and Middle-Aged Schoolteachers Differ in the Neural Correlates of Memory Encoding and Cognitive Fatigue: A Functional MRI Study

This investigation was inspired by growing evidence that middle-aged persons in a cognitively demanding profession might be characterized by subtle cognitive fatigue. We studied young and middle-aged male schoolteachers. They were compared in a study with functional magnetic resonance imaging to evaluate differences during successful memory encoding. The schoolteachers were additionally subjected to an induced fatigue condition involving the sustained performance of cognitively demanding tasks and to a control condition. Results showed age-related brain activation differences underlying behavioral performance including: (1) greater activation in middle-aged vs. young teachers in bilateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) areas; and (2) differential fatigue effects in the left anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) depending on age group. Middle-aged schoolteachers showed decreased ACC activation in the fatigue compared to the control condition, whereas no change in activation was found in young teachers. Findings demonstrate age effects in these middle-aged subjects that are typically found in older adults, specifically in PFC over-activation. Findings also indicate that already in middle age cognitive aging may be associated with greater resource depletion following sustained task performance. The findings underscore the notion that persons in a cognitively demanding profession can experience subtle age effects, which are evident on fMRI and which impact daily functioning. Possible practical implications for middle-aged schoolteachers are discussed.
Vasopressin release is enhanced by the Hemocontrol biofeedback system and could contribute to better haemodynamic stability during haemodialysis.

BACKGROUND Haemodialysis with the Hemocontrol biofeedback system (HHD) is associated with improved haemodynamic stability compared with standard haemodialysis (HD) (SHD). Although the beneficial effect of HHD on haemodynamic stability is generally explained by its effect on blood volume, we questioned whether additional factors could play a role. Since HHD is associated with higher initial dialysate sodium concentrations and ultrafiltration (UF) rate, we studied whether the beneficial effect of HHD on haemodynamic stability may be explained by an increased release of the vasoconstrictor arginine vasopressin (AVP). METHODS Fifteen chronic dialysis patients underwent SHD and HHD in random order. All other treatment factors were identical and patients served as their own control. Plasma levels of AVP were measured pre-dialysis, at 30 and 60 min intra-dialysis and, next, hourly until completion of the dialysis session. RESULTS Plasma AVP levels did not change significantly during SHD, whereas AVP levels rose significantly within 30 min after the start of HHD (P < 0.01). AVP levels were significantly higher at 30 and 60 min of HHD in comparison with SHD (P < 0.05). Dialysis hypotension occurred significantly less frequent during HHD than during SHD (P < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS HHD is associated with higher initial AVP levels compared with SHD. The enhanced release of the vasoconstrictor AVP with HHD could contribute to the lower frequency of dialysis hypotension by facilitating fluid removal during the first part of the dialysis session, permitting lower UF rates during the second half of the dialysis session.