Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Relationship of the Arabic version of the asthma control test with ventilatory function tests and levels of exhaled nitric oxide in adult asthmatics.

OBJECTIVE To determine the relationship between the asthma control test (ACT) score using the Arabic version, fractional exhaled nitric oxide (FENO), and lung functions, and to derive the cutoff points for the ACT score with the American Thoracic Society recommended FENO standard levels of inflammation control. METHODS We recruited 59 adult asthmatics out of which 53 subjects completed the study between July 2011 and June 2012 at King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The FENO levels were measured by NIOX MINO (Aerocrine AB, Solna, Sweden), and ventilatory functions were recorded by standard techniques. RESULTS The FENO values were significantly higher in patients with an ACT score <20 (65.5+/= 35.4) compared with those patients with an ACT score >/= 20 (27.4+/=10.5, p<0.001). Among the well-controlled group based on the ACT score criteria, 6 (25%) cases had high FENO levels, while among the poorly controlled group, 23 (79.3%) cases had high FENO levels (odds ratio: 11.5; p<0.0001; confidence interval: 3.16-41.72). There was a significant negative correlation between FENO and ACT score (r=-0.581, p<0.0001). At the international cutoff point of 20, the sensitivity was 95.2, and the specificity was 68.8. The receiver operating curve (ROC) showed that maximum sensitivity and specificity were observed at an ACT score cut off point of 19 (sensitivity: 90.5, and specificity: 81.2). CONCLUSION The FENO levels correlate negatively with ACT scores however, the relationship between FENO and lung function is not significant. A significant relationship between ACT score and FENO levels indicate that there is an ongoing inflammatory state in patients with poor asthma control.
Declines in Mortality From Acute Myocardial Infarction in Successive Incidence and Birth Cohorts of Patients With Rheumatoid Arthritis

Background—Patients with rheumatoid arthritis are at high risk for acute myocardial infarction (AMI). The treatment of rheumatoid arthritis has become more intensive over the past 2 decades, resulting in tighter control of inflammation and lower levels of disability. The impact of this on atherosclerotic cardiovascular diseases is not known. Methods and Results—Death rates from AMI in a cohort of 3862 patients with rheumatoid arthritis followed up from 1980 to 1997 were studied. Time trends in AMI mortality among successive incidence and birth cohorts were examined by use of multivariable Poisson regression models and by comparing standardized mortality ratios. The mean age was 56 years in this predominantly female cohort (76%), and median disease duration was 6.5 years. During the period of observation, the use of methotrexate increased substantially, whereas that of prednisone was relatively stable. Over the 22 209 person-years of observation, there were 157 deaths as a result of AMI, with a death rate of 7.06 per 1000 person-years. Mortality rates were higher in older age groups and in men. After adjustment for age, sex, race, and disease duration, the risk of AMI declined in successive incidence years (relative risk, 0.94; 95% CI, 0.92 to 0.96). Patients with rheumatoid arthritis incident after 1990 did not have excess AMI mortality compared with general population. Declines in mortality trends were observed in successive birth cohorts as well. Conclusions—Mortality as a result of AMI among patients with rheumatoid arthritis has declined over time.
Kinematic history of the opening of the Black Sea and its effect on the surrounding regions

The Black Sea consists of two oceanic basins separated by the mid-Black Sea ridge. The east-west-oriented west Black Sea basin opened as a back-arc rift in the Cretaceous by tearing a Hercynian continental sliver, the Istanbul zone, from the present-day Odessa shelf. The Istanbul zone, which was initially contiguous with the Moesian platform in the west, moved south during the Late Cretaceous-Paleocene with respect to the Odessa shelf along two transform faults: the dextral west Black Sea and the sinistral west Crimean faults. It collided in the early Eocene with a Cimmeride zone in the south, thereby ending the extension in the western Black Sea and deactivating both the west Black Sea and the west Crimean faults as strike-slip faults. The east Black Sea basin opened as a result of the counterclockwise rotation of an east Black Sea block around a rotation pole located north of the Crimea. This block was bounded by the west Crimean fault, the southern margin of the eastern Black Sea, and the southern frontal thrusts of the Greater Caucasus. The rotation of the east Black Sea block was contemporaneous with the rifting of the west Black Sea basin but lasted until the Miocene, resulting in continuous compression along the Greater Caucasus.
Left atrial structure and function and clinical outcomes in the general population.

AIMS Left atrial (LA) structural and functional abnormalities may be subclinical phenotypes, which identify individuals at increased risk of adverse outcomes. METHODS AND RESULTS Maximum LA volume (LAmax) and LA emptying fraction (LAEF) were measured via cardiac magnetic resonance imaging in 1802 participants in the Dallas Heart Study. The associations of LAEF and LAmax indexed to body surface area (LAmax/BSA) with traditional risk factors, natriuretic peptide levels, and left ventricular (LV) structure [end-diastolic volume (EDV) and concentricity(0.67) (mass/EDV(0.67))] and function (ejection fraction) were assessed using linear regression analysis. The incremental prognostic value of LAmax/BSA and LAEF beyond traditional risk factors, LV ejection fraction, and LV mass was assessed using the Cox proportional-hazards model. Both increasing LAmax/BSA and decreasing LAEF were associated with hypertension and natriuretic peptide levels (P < 0.05 for all). In multivariable analysis, LAmax/BSA was most strongly associated with LV end-diastolic volume/BSA, while LAEF was strongly associated with LV ejection fraction and concentricity(0.67). During a median follow-up period of 8.1 years, there were 81 total deaths. Decreasing LAEF [hazard ratio (HR) per 1 standard deviation (SD) (8.0%): 1.56 (1.32-1.87)] but not increasing LAmax/BSA [HR per 1 SD (8.6 mL/m(2)): 1.14 (0.97-1.34)] was independently associated with mortality. Furthermore, the addition of LAEF to a model adjusting Framingham risk score, diabetes, race, LV mass, and ejection fraction improved the c-statistic (c-statistics: 0.78 vs. 0.77; P < 0.05, respectively), whereas the addition of LAmax/BSA did not (c-statistics: 0.76, P = 0.20). CONCLUSION In the general population, both LAmax/BSA and LAEF are important subclinical phenotypes but LAEF is superior and incremental to LAmax/BSA.
Combined Stable Carbon Isotope and C/N Ratios as Indicators of Source and Fate of Organic Matter in the Bangpakong River Estuary, Thailand

Stable carbon isotopes and C/N ratios of particulate organic matter (POM) in suspended solids and surficial sediment were used to define the spatial and temporal variability in an anthropogenic tropical river estuary, the Bangpakong River Estuary. Samples were taken along salinity gradients during the four different river discharges in the beginning, high river discharge and at the end of the wet season, and low river discharge during the dry season. The values of [C/N] a ratio and δ 13 C in the river estuary revealed significant differences from those of the offshore station. Conservative behaviors of [C/ N] a and δ 13 C in the estuary during the wet season indicated major contribution of terrigenous C 3 plants derived OM. By contrast, during the dry season, marine input mainly dominated OM contribution with an evidence of anthropogenic input to the estuary. These compositions of the bulk sedimentary OM were dominated by paddy rice soils and marine derived OM during the wet and dry seasons, respectively. These results show that the combined stable carbon isotopes and C/N ratios can be used to identify the source and fate of OM even in a river estuary. This tool will be useful to achieve sustainable management in coastal zone.
Expansion of Lowland Rice Production and Constraints on a Rice Green Revolution: Evidence from Uganda

In Uganda, rice production has increased rapidly in the past 10 years while the yield has been stagnant. To examine this mixed story in detail, we use data on 600 rural households with access to wetlands. The estimation results on the expansion of rice cultivation show that the high population density in upland farm areas has pushed farmers to rice cultivation in wetlands. Although applying proper cultivation practices such as constructing bunds, leveling, and transplanting is considered to be critical in yield enhancement, as well as using chemical fertilizer and improved varieties, such cultivation practices are rarely adopted in Uganda. The rice production function estimation results show that these practices do not increase the yield significantly once village fixed effects are controlled for. This suggests that these practices are not being adopted since the rice yield is not enhanced effectively by the cultivation practices. This is probably explained by the fact that the water supply in wetlands tends to be unstable and to suffer from drought and floods.
The effect of trans-cockpit authority gradient on Navy/Marine helicopter mishaps.

Navy and Marine Corps helicopter mishaps which had a pilot causal factor assigned were examined to determine if the relative military rank of the pilot and copilot was associated with the rate of occurrence per 100,000 flight hours. All class A and B helicopter flight mishaps for the 11 calendar year period 1980-1990 were examined. Although no statistically significant differences were noted, pairing pilots who were of equal rank yielded the lowest rate, seemingly refuting Elwyn Edward's notion that a flat "trans-cockpit authority gradient" may lead to greater problems in the cockpit than his hypothetical "optimum gradient. " Moreover, when copilots flew with pilots who differed by two or more ranks, the largest pilot error rate was revealed. This last finding seems to support Edward's hypothesis that a steep "trans-cockpit authority gradient" may be detrimental to aviation safety.
When Are Fuzzy Extractors Possible?

Fuzzy extractors (Dodis et al., SIAM J. Computing 2008) convert repeated noisy readings of a high-entropy secret into the same uniformly distributed key. A minimum condition for the security of the key is the hardness of guessing a value that is similar to the secret, because the fuzzy extractor converts such a guess to the key. We quantify this property in a new notion called <italic>fuzzy min-entropy</italic>. We ask: is fuzzy min-entropy sufficient to build fuzzy extractors? We provide two answers for different settings. 1) If the construction is provided a description of the probability distribution <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$W$ </tex-math></inline-formula> that defines the noisy source then fuzzy min-entropy is a sufficient condition for information-theoretic key extraction from <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$W$ </tex-math></inline-formula>. 2) A more ambitious goal is to design a single extractor that works for all possible sources. This more ambitious goal is impossible: there is a family of sources with high fuzzy min-entropy for which no single fuzzy extractor is secure. This is true in three settings: a) for standard fuzzy extractors, b) for fuzzy extractors that are allowed to sometimes be wrong, c) and for secure sketches, which are the main ingredient of most fuzzy extractor constructions.
Cross-linguistic differences in processing double-embedded relative clauses: Working-memory constraints or language statistics?

An English double-embedded relative clause from which the middle verb is omitted can often be processed more easily than its grammatical counterpart, a phenomenon known as the grammaticality illusion. This effect has been found to be reversed in German, suggesting that the illusion is language specific rather than a consequence of universal working memory constraints. We present results from three self-paced reading experiments which show that Dutch native speakers also do not show the grammaticality illusion in Dutch, whereas both German and Dutch native speakers do show the illusion when reading English sentences. These findings provide evidence against working memory constraints as an explanation for the observed effect in English. We propose an alternative account based on the statistical patterns of the languages involved. In support of this alternative, a single recurrent neural network model that is trained on both Dutch and English sentences is shown to predict the cross-linguistic difference in the grammaticality effect.
On the summertime development of the North Pacific sea -level pressure anticyclone

Title of Document: ON THE SUMMER TIME DEVELOPMENT OF THE NORTH PACIFIC SEA-LEVEL PRESSURE ANTICYCLONE Steven Carl Chan, Doctor of Philosophy, 2008 Directed By: Professor Sumant Nigam Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science With the exception of the North Indian Ocean, subtropical ocean basins are dominated by climatological planetary-scale sea-level pressure (SLP) anticyclones. The seasonal variability of the North Pacific subtropical SLP anticyclone is examined here. The largest ERA-40 and linear diagnostic modeled Northern Hemisphere SLP seasonal variabilities are found in the mid-latitudes with relatively less change in the subtropics; this leads to the poleward boreal summer development of the North Pacific and Atlantic subtropical SLP high. Unlike the Northern Hemisphere, the Southern Hemisphere subtropical SLP highs develop equatorward. The zonal-mean Northern Hemisphere subtropical SLP and ω seasonal variabilities are dominated by continental seasonality – a uniform boreal winter descent changing to a zonally asymmetric continental monsoon ascent and heat lows with relatively little change over the oceans. A linear diagnostic model is used to examine the forcing of the SLP seasonal cycle. The modeled North Pacific SLP seasonal variability is forced mainly by winter stormtracks, extra-tropical North Pacific diabatic cooling, and boreal winter ITCZ. Asian monsoon forces a SLP ridge downstream, but the monsoon response is cancelled significantly by East Pacific diabatic heating and transients. North American diabatic heating and transients are also found to have a limited upstream effect. Boreal summer ITCZ forcing has limited North Pacific SLP response, and that is possibly linked to the prescribed tropical zonal-mean easterlies. ERA-40 and TRMM CSH diabatic heating is inter-compared with other independent measures of diabatic and latent heating. Zonal-mean ERA-40 ITCZ diabatic heating is nearly twice that of NCEP and ERA-15 reanalyses, which indicates a much stronger ERA-40 Hadley Circulation. The ERA-40 Walker Circulation is also stronger than of NCEP Reanalysis, which is consistent with excessive Maritime Continent diabatic heating. Largest differences are also found in the Tropical East Pacific and Atlantic. Vertically integrated TRMM CSH heating is too weak even compare with other TRMM products. However, TRMM CSH midtropospheric tropical heating compares well with other datasets. The largest differences appear in the upper and lower troposphere, which implies CSH limitations in handling shallow convection (a known issue) and stratiform precipitation in deep convection.
More Effective Web Search Using Bigrams and Trigrams

This paper investigates the effectiveness of quoted bigrams and trigrams as query terms to target web search. Prior research in this area has largely focused on static corpora each containing only a few million documents, and has reported mixed (usually negative) results. We investigate the bigram/trigram extraction problem and present an extraction algorithm that shows promising results when applied to real-time web search. We also present a prototype augmented search software package that can leverage the results provided by a web search engine to assist the web searcher identify important phrases and related documents quickly. This software has received favourable feedback in a recent user survey.
Source routed forwarding with software defined control, considerations and implications

The research introduced in this paper focuses on controller scalability and performance issues in Software-Defined Networks (SDNs), and discusses a new routing scheme that leverages a variation of Source Routing for use in OpenFlow-based networks. The research aims to reduce the state needed to be distributed to the network devices by the controller(s) in SDNs, and in return improve the scale, convergence time, fault tolerance and cost of such network architectures.
A multidisciplinary approach to determine the structural geometry of hard-rock aquifers. Application to the Plancoet migmatitic aquifer (NE Brittany, W France)

A new multidisciplinary methodology is developed to determine the structural geometry of hard-rock aquifers. The Plancoet migmatitic basement, chosen as an example for the use of this methodology, is studied both at a regional (300 km2) and a local (4 km2) scale. The regional mapping, based on field mapping of the tectonic structures and the weathered layers, on geostatistics and on aerial photographs and Digital Elevation Model (DEM) analyses, demonstrates the influence of the tectonic structures on the weathering processes. Some geo-electric investigations, added to the first mapping at the local scale, lead to the building of a local geometrical model of the aquifer.
Linking Local Perceptions of Elephants and Conservation: Samburu Pastoralists in Northern Kenya

This article examines the development and implementation of a grass-roots elephant conservation program based upon the Samburu people's perceptions and knowledge of elephants in the areas surrounding the Samburu and Buffalo Springs National Reserves in northern Kenya. Ethnographic methods were used to understand these perceptions and demonstrated that strong customs and traditions for conserving wildlife, particularly elephants, exist among the Samburu people. It became evident that these customs are changing, given various factors influencing Samburu culture and younger generations. The use of economic incentives is a widely accepted method to foster positive attitudes and behavior toward wildlife. The value of using ethnographic methods to reinforce positive indigenous knowledge about wildlife, however, is underestimated. This case study highlights the significance of using ethnographic methods in community conservation program design. The article demonstrates that in local contexts where cultural perceptions and traditions toward elephants are largely positive, this is a viable approach for community-based wildlife management that is complementary to economic incentives programs.
Comparison of L3JRC and MODIS global burned area products from 2000 to 2007

[1] As a significant source of trace gases and particulate matter to the atmosphere, biomass burning plays an important role in climate change and atmospheric chemistry at regional and global scales. The burned area is a critical parameter in estimating fire emissions. Recently, multiyear global burned area products with medium spatial resolution (1 km or 500 m) have been released, including the L3JRC product and the Collection 5 Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MCD45A1) product. In this study, we compare the spatial distribution and temporal pattern of L3JRC and MCD45A1 burned areas over 7 fire years from 1 April 2000 to 31 March 2007. For these 7 fire years, L3JRC gave global burned areas of 3.89, 4.32, 3.53, 4.43, 3.81, 3.60, and 4.51 million km2, and MCD45A1 gave values of 3.44, 3.33, 3.57, 3.38, 3.52, 3.39, and 3.61 million km2, respectively. The L3JRC product showed persistent burning activity from April to October, whereas the burned area according to MCD45A1 often peaked in August and December at the global scale. For most continents, the L3JRC and MCD45A1 burned areas compared very well during the fire season; however, for the period outside the fire season, L3JRC generally reported a significantly larger burned area than did MCD45A1. The burned areas were examined according to the main vegetation classes given by the GlobCover product. Validation of the L3JRC and MCD45A1 burned areas was performed using data from ground-based measurements in Canada, the United States, Russia, and China. The results showed that MCD45A1 was more comparable to reference data, although it often underestimated in the boreal forests. L3JRC generally exhibited significant overestimation in these areas.
Late Quaternary history around Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden and Jøkelbugten, North‐East Greenland

Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden in North‐East Greenland is at present covered by a floating glacier. Raised marine deposits in the surrounding area contain shells of marine molluscs, bones of marine mammals and pieces of driftwood. A fairly systematic sampling of such material has been conducted, followed by extensive radiocarbon dating. We suggest that the Greenland ice sheet extended onto the shelf offshore North‐East Greenland during isotope stage 2, perhaps even reaching the shelf break. During the subsequent recession of the ice sheet, the entrance of Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden had become ice‐free by 9.7 cal. ka BP. The recession culminated between 7.7 and 4.5 cal. ka BP, during which time the fjord was glacier‐free along its entire 80 km length. No dates younger than 4.5 cal. ka BP are available on marine material from the fjord, and it seems probable that the fjord has been continuously covered by the floating glacier since this time. The maximum glaciation was attained around AD 1900, after which thinning and recession took place. The marine limit increases from c. 40 m above sea level near the present margin of the Inland Ice to c. 65 m above sea level at the outer coast. These figures fit into the regional pattern of the marine limit for areas both to the south and north. The marine fauna comprise two bivalves, Macoma calcarea and Serripes groenlandicus, that may represent a southern element present during the Holocene temperature optimum. Remains of three taxa of southern extralimital terrestrial and limnic plants were dated to 5.1 cal. ka BP, and remains of another extralimital plant were dated to 8.8 and 8.5 cal. ka BP. The known Holocene time ranges of the willow Salix arctica and the lemming Dicrostonyx torquatus have been extended back to 8.8 and 6.4 cal. ka BP, respectively, providing minimum dates for their immigration to Greenland.
Integration of aquaculture into the farming systems of the floodprone ecosystems of Bangladesh: an evaluation of adoption and impact

This report presents the results of studies undertaken for incorporating low-external input aquaculture practices into the farming systems of a complex floodprone ecosystem in Bangladesh and the impacts of integration on income, nutrition and resource use in rural households. The study shows that multi-purpose ponds which were underutilized or unutilized because of risk of flooding could be made productive through proper management and incorporation into the existing farming systems. Farmers with minimal external inputs were able to increase fish production and consumption by 5 to 8 times.