Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Prevalence of nasal symptoms and their relation to self-reported asthma and chronic bronchitis/emphysema

We read with interest the paper by MONTNÉMERY et al. [1] reporting nasal symptoms in patients with asthma and chronic bronchitis/emphysema (CBE). This study is of particular interest since it is the first, to our knowledge, to assess nasal symptoms in CBE. It seems that the results can be interpreted since an agreement ofy70% was found between the diagnosis of asthma or CBE made in the study and a doctor9s diagnosis. However, some patients with CBE may be falsely classified and may have other respiratory diseases, including asthma. Moreover, patients aged 29 yrs are unlikely to have CBE and the authors showed, in another paper [2], that the prevalence of CBE was 3.3% in subjects aged between 20–29 yrs. In order to reinforce the results of the study, it would have been interesting to study the association of nasal symptoms with asthma and CBE depending on the age groups. A second point, regarding this study may be discussed. The characteristics of nasal symptoms appear to differ in asthma and CBE. In their first paper, MONTNÉMERY et al. [2] reported "allergic eyenose catarrh (hay fever)". It would also be interesting to discuss this association with asthma and CBE. Finally the authors reported that nasal symptoms probably due to nonallergic mechanisms (provoked by cold air/damp air) were significant risk factors for asthma. This is in accordance with the results from an analysis of the European Community Respiratory Health Survey data, showing that rhinitis is associated with an increased risk of asthma in nonatopic subjects with normal immunoglobulin-E levels [3].
The Phenomenon of Informal Workers in Housing Projects During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic influenced alterations in the real estate market. Since the pandemic, housing development in Indonesia has been negatively impacted, especially labor, which was crucial to the success of housing development. In addition, most workers in housing developments are informal workers who behave differently than formal or permanent workers. This study aimed to examine the phenomena of informal workers in housing developments during the COVID-19 pandemic using qualitative phenomenological approaches. Ten informal worker informants, five project supervisor in-formants, and two housing developer informants were chosen for in-depth interviews based on a preset criteria. In housing construction projects, implementing the health protocol and compliance with Occupational Health and Safety rules increased the awareness of informal workers. The fact that informal laborers prioritize health and safety during the COVID-19 outbreak is encouraging for building developers. Thus, the risk of housing construction projects decreases, and it is hoped that the government’s program to build one million homes will be successful. In addition, the government can create incentive-related policies for informal employees who implemented the health protocol during the COVID-19 outbreak. Keywords: COVID-19, health and safety, housing project, informal workers
The Influence of Neuromuscular Electrical Stimulation on the Heart Rate Variability in Healthy Subjects

[Purpose] The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES) on heart rate variability (HRV). [Subjects and Methods] Ten healthy subjects participated in the study. All subjects received NMES with a pulse duration of 300 us and frequency of 30 Hz at the vastus lateralis and vastus medialis for 15 minutes. The stimulation intensity was adjusted in the range of 20 to 30 mA. HRV using a pulse oximeter was measured in the sitting position before and after NMES. [Results] After the NMES, all HRV data slightly increased, but there was no significance between before and after data. [Conclusion] We suggest that strengthening exercises using NMES may be undertaken safely.
Large vocabulary speech recognition with multispan statistical language models

Multispan language modeling refers to the integration of various constraints, both local and global, present in the language. It was recently proposed to capture global constraints through the use of latent semantic analysis, while taking local constraints into account via the usual n-gram approach. This has led to several families of data-driven, multispan language models for large vocabulary speech recognition. Because of the inherent complementarity in the two types of constraints, the multispan performance, as measured by perplexity, has been shown to compare favorably with the corresponding n-gram performance. The objective of this work is to characterize the behavior of such multispan modeling in actual recognition. Major implementation issues are addressed, including search integration and context scope selection. Experiments are conducted on a subset of the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) speaker-independent, 20000-word vocabulary, continuous speech task. Results show that, compared to standard n-gram, the multispan framework can lead to a reduction in average word error rate of over 20%. The paper concludes with a discussion of intrinsic multi-span tradeoffs, such as the influence of training data selection on the resulting performance.
On the Transition to Sustainability: An Analysis of the Costs of School Feeding Compared with the Costs of Primary Education

Background The current food, fuel, and financial crises have highlighted the importance of school feeding programs both as a social safety net for children living in poverty and food insecurity, and as part of national educational policies and plans. Objective To examine the costs of school feeding, in terms of both the absolute cost per child and the cost per child relative to overall education expenditure and gross domestic product (GDP) in low-, middle-, and high-income countries. Methods Data on the costs of school feeding in different countries were collected from multiple sources, including World Food Programme project data, reports from government ministries, and, where such searches failed, newspaper articles and other literature obtained from internet searches. Regression models were then used to analyze the relationships between school feeding costs, the per capita costs of primary education and GDP per capita. Results School feeding programs in low-income countries exhibit large variations in cost, with concomitant opportunities for cost containment. As countries get richer, however, school feeding costs become a much smaller proportion of the investment in education. The per capita costs of feeding relative to education decline nonlinearly with increasing GDP. Conclusions These analyses suggest that the main reason for this decline in the relative cost of school feeding versus primary education is a greatly increased investment per child in primary education as GDP rises, but a fairly flat investment in food. The analyses also show that there appears to be a transitional discontinuity at the interface between the lower- and middle-income countries, which tends to coincide with changes in the capacity of governments to take over the management and funding of programs. Further analysis is required to define these relationships, but an initial conclusion is that supporting countries to maintain an investment in school feeding through this transition may emerge as a key role for development partners.
Detection of Wordpress Content Injection Vulnerability

The popularity of content management software (CMS) is growing vastly to the web developers and the business people because of its capacity for easy accessibility, manageability and usability of the distributed website contents. As per the statistics of Built with, 32% of the web applications are developed with WordPress(WP) among all other CMSs [1]. It is obvious that quite a good number of web applications were built with WP in version 4.7. 0 and 4.7. 1. A recent research reveals that content injection vulnerability was found available in the above two versions of WP [2]. Unauthorized content injection by an intruder in a CMS managed application is one of the serious problems for the business as well as for the web owner.Therefore, detection of the vulnerability becomes a critical issue for this time. In this paper, we have discussed about the root cause of WP content injection of the above versions and have also proposed a detection model for the given vulnerability. A tool, SAISAN has been implemented as per our anticipated model and conducted an examination on 176 WP developed web applications using SAISAN. We achieved the accuracy of 92% of the result of SAISAN as compared to manual black box testing outcome.
The Copenhagen Hip and Groin Outcome Score (HAGOS): development and validation according to the COSMIN checklist

Background Valid, reliable and responsive Patient-Reported Outcome (PRO) questionnaires for young to middle-aged, physically active individuals with hip and groin pain are lacking. Objective To develop and validate a new PRO in accordance with the COnsensus-based Standards for the selection of health Measurement INstruments (COSMIN) recommendations for use in young to middle-aged, physically active patients with long-standing hip and/or groin pain. Methods Preliminary patient interviews (content validity) included 25 patients. Validity, reliability and responsiveness were evaluated in a clinical study including 101 physically active patients (50 women); mean age 36 years, range 18–63 years. Results The Copenhagen Hip and Groin Outcome Score (HAGOS) consists of six separate subscales assessing Pain, Symptoms, Physical function in daily living, Physical function in Sport and Recreation, Participation in Physical Activities and hip and/or groin-related Quality of Life (QOL). Test–retest reliability was substantial, with intraclass correlation coefficients ranging from 0.82 to 0.91 for the six subscales. The smallest detectable change ranged from 17.7 to 33.8 points at the individual level and from 2.7 to 5.2 points at the group level for the different subscales. Construct validity and responsiveness were confirmed with statistically significant correlation coefficients (0.37–0.73, p < 0.01) for convergent construct validity and for responsiveness from 0.56 to 0.69, p < 0.01. Conclusion HAGOS has adequate measurement qualities for the assessment of symptoms, activity limitations, participation restrictions and QOL in physically active, young to middle-aged patients with long-standing hip and/or groin pain and is recommended for use in interventions where the patient's perspective and health-related QOL are of primary interest. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00716729
Acoustic variation and arousal level in infants.

This study compared the effects of three auditory background conditions—no sound, intermittent sound, and continuous sound—on level of arousal in infants. The study also investigated responsiveness to discrete auditory stimuli superimposed upon these background conditions. The results indicated that level of arousal was decreased by continuous sound and increased by intermittent sound, relative to the no sound condition. Measures of level of arousal included state, respiration, heart rate, and motor activity. Responsiveness to discrete auditory stimuli, superimposed upon the background conditions and measured by evoked responses, was not predictable from indices of arousal level.
Factor H Binding to PspC of Streptococcus pneumoniae Increases Adherence to Human Cell Lines In Vitro and Enhances Invasion of Mouse Lungs In Vivo

ABSTRACT Pneumococcal surface protein C (PspC) binds to both human secretory immunoglobulin A (sIgA) and complement factor H (FH). FH, a regulator of the alternative pathway of complement, can also mediate adherence of different host cells. Since PspC contributes to adherence and invasion of host cells, we hypothesized that the interaction of PspC with FH may also mediate adherence of pneumococci to human cells. In this study, we investigated FH- and sIgA-mediated pneumococcal adherence to human cell lines in vitro. Adherence assays demonstrated that preincubation of Streptococcus pneumoniae D39 with FH increased adherence to human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVEC) 5-fold and to lung epithelial cells (SK-MES-1) 18-fold, relative to that of D39 without FH on the surface. The presence of sIgA enhanced adherence to SK-MES-1 6-fold and to pharyngeal epithelial cells (Detroit 562) 14-fold. Furthermore, sIgA had an additive effect on adherence to HUVEC; specifically, preincubation of D39 with both FH and sIgA led to a 21-fold increase in adherence. Finally, using a mouse model, we examined the significance of the FH-PspC interaction in pneumococcal nasal colonization and lung invasion. Mice intranasally infected with D39 preincubated with FH had increased bacteremia and lung invasion, but they had similar levels of nasopharyngeal colonization compared to that of mice challenged with D39 without FH.
Assessing the area/power/performance tradeoffs for an integrated fully-digital, large-scale 3D-ultrasound beamformer

High-frame-rate and high-resolution 3D medical ultrasound imaging imposes high requirements on the involved processing hardware. Several thousands of analog signals need to be processed in many steps to obtain a final image. Fully digital beamforming makes it possible to achieve high image quality coupled with extreme flexibility. Unfortunately, digital beamforming imposes staggering requirements on main memory bandwidth caused by the loading of off-chip stored beamforming delays. In this paper we present the first fully-digital integrated beamformer that is able to compute 269.3 M focal points (FP) per second from 10 000 receive channels, and which does not require off-chip main memory. This is enabled by our novel delay approximation circuit that exploits temporal correlation between subsequent computations and thereby allows to compute the delays for beamforming online. To estimate the area and power requirements, the complete system was designed and the beamformer core was evaluated for a 130 nm CMOS technology. The estimated complexity per channel is 37.2 kGE and the corresponding power dissipation was estimated with 48 mW.
What is consciousness, and could machines have it?

The controversial question of whether machines may ever be conscious must be based on a careful consideration of how consciousness arises in the only physical system that undoubtedly possesses it: the human brain. We suggest that the word “consciousness” conflates two different types of information-processing computations in the brain: the selection of information for global broadcasting, thus making it flexibly available for computation and report (C1, consciousness in the first sense), and the self-monitoring of those computations, leading to a subjective sense of certainty or error (C2, consciousness in the second sense). We argue that despite their recent successes, current machines are still mostly implementing computations that reflect unconscious processing (C0) in the human brain. We review the psychological and neural science of unconscious (C0) and conscious computations (C1 and C2) and outline how they may inspire novel machine architectures.
Lead, Diabetes, Hypertension, and Renal Function: The Normative Aging Study

In this prospective study, we examined changes in renal function during 6 years of follow-up in relation to baseline lead levels, diabetes, and hypertension among 448 middle-age and elderly men, a subsample of the Normative Aging Study. Lead levels were generally low at baseline, with mean blood lead, patella lead, and tibia lead values of 6.5 μg/dL, 32.4 μg/g, and 21.5 μg/g, respectively. Six percent and 26% of subjects had diabetes and hypertension at baseline, respectively. In multivariate-adjusted regression analyses, longitudinal increases in serum creatinine (SCr) were associated with higher baseline lead levels but these associations were not statistically significant. However, we observed significant interactions of blood lead and tibia lead with diabetes in predicting annual change in SCr. For example, increasing the tibia lead level from the midpoints of the lowest to the highest quartiles (9–34 μg/g) was associated with an increase in the rate of rise in SCr that was 17.6-fold greater in diabetics than in nondiabetics (1.08 mg/dL/10 years vs. 0.062 mg/dL/10 years; p < 0.01). We also observed significant interactions of blood lead and tibia lead with diabetes in relation to baseline SCr levels (tibia lead only) and follow-up SCr levels. A significant interaction of tibia lead with hypertensive status in predicting annual change in SCr was also observed. We conclude that longitudinal decline of renal function among middle-age and elderly individuals appears to depend on both long-term lead stores and circulating lead, with an effect that is most pronounced among diabetics and hypertensives, subjects who likely represent particularly susceptible groups.
Isotope cisternography in the diagnosis and follow-up of cerebrospinal fluid rhinorrhea.

OCALIZATION of the leakage site in cases of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) rhinorrhea, both posttraumatic and spontaneous (nontraumatic), is often an arduous and always a challenging diagnostic problem. The possible sites are numerous: through the frontal sinus, the lamina cribrosa, the sphenoid sinus via the sella, and the petrous bone via the middle ear and the eustachian tube (Fig. 1). Furthermore, the fistula may be located on the side opposite to the "dripping nostril" or the sources of leakage may be multiple. Diagnostic procedures for CSF rhinorrhea include the use of dyes, fluorescent substances, radiography, and radioactive tracers (Table 1). Dyes and fluorescein usually are not very informative for the localization of the fistula and, in addition, may be dangerous. ~6,34,~ Plain x-rays and even detailed tomographic studies are frequently disappointing. In our opinion no convincing evidence has yet been offered for the value of Pantopaque as a localizing agent for the CSF leaks, and this x-ray opaque medium is not always innocuous. 18,28 Radioactive counting of cotton pledgets placed in strategic points of the walls and roof of the nose and nasopharynx prior to the subarachnoidal introduction of a radiation emitter 4,35 fails to give morphologic information about the leakage. This report deals with the diagnostic possibilities of isotope cisternography (pictorial scintiphotography of the head after introduction of a radioactive tracer into the subarachnoidal spaces) for the localization, demonstration of the cause, and follow-up of cerebrospinal fluid rhinorrhea. We have used
Caveats for Using Shock Tube in Blast-Induced Traumatic Brain Injury Research

Blast-induced traumatic brain injury (TBI) is currently an important and very “hot” research topic because it has been acknowledged to be a significant source of morbidity and disability during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, among blast victims. A total of 545 academic articles about blast TBI research have been published since 1946, of which 82% (447 articles) have been published since 2003, and 57% (312 articles) were published from 2010 to 2013. A number of experimental models are currently implemented to investigate the mechanisms of blast-induced TBI in rodents and larger animals such as rabbits and swine. As the fundamental shock wave generator, shock tubes (either compressed air-driven or detonation-driven) are generally employed in these experimental models. The compressed air-driven shock tube is a horizontally mounted, circular steel tube, in which a gas at low pressure (the driven gas) and a gas at high pressure (the driver gas) are separated using diaphragms (such as polyester Mylar membrane). After the diaphragm suddenly ruptures at predetermined pressure thresholds (e.g., 126–147 kPa), shock waves are generated and propagate through the low pressure section (the driven section) toward the mouth of the shock tube. The detonation-driven shock tube is a cylindrical metal tube that is closed at one end. The blast, causing the shock waves, is generated by detonation of an explosive charge in the closed end of the tube. Both compressed air-driven and detonation-driven shock tubes can produce blast shock waves to induce blast injuries in animals. However, because of their designs and structures, both shock tubes are not able to generate the Friedlander wave (an ideal form of a primary blast wave) that occurs when a powerful explosive detonates in a free field, without nearby surfaces that can interact with the wave. A series of complex shock waves are then generated following the lead shock wave (the original shock front), including reflected shock waves, a Mach stem, an unsteady turbulent jet, and rarefaction waves. These waves can cause sudden compression or rarefaction effects upon any object encountered in their motion path, and transfer kinetic energy to the object. Therefore, if an experimental animal is placed inside the shock tube, these complex pressure waves will cause more severe and complex injuries that are rarely observed in blast victims, thus leading to false-positive results in the studies of blast TBI mechanism.
Deep multi-scale video prediction beyond mean square error

Learning to predict future images from a video sequence involves the construction of an internal representation that models the image evolution accurately, and therefore, to some degree, its content and dynamics. This is why pixel-space video prediction may be viewed as a promising avenue for unsupervised feature learning. In addition, while optical flow has been a very studied problem in computer vision for a long time, future frame prediction is rarely approached. Still, many vision applications could benefit from the knowledge of the next frames of videos, that does not require the complexity of tracking every pixel trajectories. In this work, we train a convolutional network to generate future frames given an input sequence. To deal with the inherently blurry predictions obtained from the standard Mean Squared Error (MSE) loss function, we propose three different and complementary feature learning strategies: a multi-scale architecture, an adversarial training method, and an image gradient difference loss function. We compare our predictions to different published results based on recurrent neural networks on the UCF101 dataset