Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Local Production-Based Dietary Supplement Distribution in Emerging Countries

The production and distribution of Bienestarina to the vulnerable population of Colombia is one of the strategies of the Colombian Institute of Familiar Wellness (ICBF) to fight malnutrition, especially among children. This case is a good example of establishing food security and social improvement logistics that merits particular attention. The chapter presents an analysis of the Bienestarina supply chain based on the four elements: steering, organization, development, and financial issues. First, an overview of social improvement logistics and the Bienestarina context is provided. Second, theoretical frameworks related to the case are presented. Third, the case is described on the basis of the proposed analysis framework. Finally, generalization issues and conclusions allow the authors proposing the first characterization of social improvement logistics.
Neurological complications of lumbar and cervical dural punctures with a focus on epidural injections

Background: Various types of lumbar dural punctures may contribute to neurological injury. The etiologies of dural injury include; inadvertent dural punctures due to epidurals placed for labor anesthesia, epidural steroid injections (ESI/transforaminal TESI; approximately 9 million ESI performed in the US per year), deliberate placement of intradural pain devices, and spontaneous cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) fistulas. Resulting neurological complications may include; spinal headaches/intracranial hypotension, subdural hematomas, and 6th nerve cranial palsies. Furthermore, uniquely in the cervical spine, inadvertent cervical dural punctures attributed to cervcial ESI (CESI) may lead to intramedullary spinal cord injuries (e.g. resulting in monoparesis to quadriplegia) or spinal cord strokes due to intravascular/vertebral artery injections. Methods/Results: In 8 studies, inadvertent lumbar dural punctures contributed to intracranial hypotension, subdural hematomas, and double vision/6th cranial nerve palsies. In 5 of the 6 studies, inadvertent dural punctures occurring during CESI were responsible for intramedullary spinal cord injuries, or direct intravascular/vertebral injections resulting in monoplegia/quadriplegia. Conclusions: Inadvertent lumbar dural punctures led to multiple neurological complications including intracranial hypotension, subdural hematomas, and double vision/6th cranial nerve palsies. Uniquely, inadvertent cervical dural punctures solely due to CESI directly resulted in intramedullary spinal cord injuries or cord stroked and monoplegia/quadriplegia attributed to intravascular/vertebral artery injections. The potential neurological risks/complications/adverse events attributed to lumbar and cervical ESI must be taken into account before spine surgeons and others order these procedures.
Interaction of Sleep and Emotional Content on the Production of False Memories

Sleep benefits veridical memories, resulting in superior recall relative to off-line intervals spent awake. Sleep also increases false memory recall in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm. Given the suggestion that emotional veridical memories are prioritized for consolidation over sleep, here we examined whether emotion modulates sleep’s effect on false memory formation. Participants listened to semantically related word lists lacking a critical lure representing each list’s “gist. ” Free recall was tested after 12 hours containing sleep or wake. The Sleep group recalled more studied words than the Wake group but only for emotionally neutral lists. False memories of both negative and neutral critical lures were greater following sleep relative to wake. Morning and Evening control groups (20-minute delay) did not differ ruling out circadian accounts for these differences. These results support the adaptive function of sleep in both promoting the consolidation of veridical declarative memories and in extracting unifying aspects from memory details.
Reburn severity in managed and unmanaged vegetation in a large wildfire

Debate over the influence of postwildfire management on future fire severity is occurring in the absence of empirical studies. We used satellite data, government agency records, and aerial photography to examine a forest landscape in southwest Oregon that burned in 1987 and then was subject, in part, to salvage-logging and conifer planting before it reburned during the 2002 Biscuit Fire. Areas that burned severely in 1987 tended to reburn at high severity in 2002, after controlling for the influence of several topographical and biophysical covariates. Areas unaffected by the initial fire tended to burn at the lowest severities in 2002. Areas that were salvage-logged and planted after the initial fire burned more severely than comparable unmanaged areas, suggesting that fuel conditions in conifer plantations can increase fire severity despite removal of large woody fuels.
Maternal Behaviors Promoting Language Acquisition in Slow-to-Talk Toddlers: Prospective Community-based Study

Objective: To determine, in a community-based sample of slow-to-talk toddlers, the extent to which specific maternal responsive behaviors at 24 months predict child language at 24 and 36 months. Methods: Mother-child dyads were recruited for this prospective longitudinal study from 3 local government areas spanning low, middle, and high socioeconomic status in Melbourne, Australia. At child age 18 months, 1138 parents completed a 100-word expressive vocabulary checklist; the 251 (22.1%) children scoring ⩽20th percentile were then followed up to comprise this study. Predictors: Six maternal responsive behaviors (imitations, interpretations, labels, expansions, supportive directives and responsive questions) were derived from mother-child free-play videos collected at 24 months of age and coded using the Observer XT system. Outcomes: Expressive and receptive language measured at 24 and 36 months of age (Preschool Language Scale-4), blind to maternal responsiveness ratings. Results: Two hundred and twenty-six of the 251 (90.0%) mother-child dyads were followed up at 36 months. In confounder-adjusted linear regression analyses, expansions, imitations, and responsive questions were strongly associated with better receptive and expressive language at 24 and 36 months. Labels unexpectedly predicted poorer expressive language at 36 months. Expansions were the only maternal behavior that predicted improvement in language between 24 and 36 months. Conclusions: Maternal responsive behaviors, particularly expansions, offer promise in enhancing early language learning in slow-to-talk toddlers. Parent-child interactions characterized by frequent use of maternal labels at 24 months could also be a predictive marker of those slow-to-talk toddlers at greater risk of persistent language problems.
Classification of massive noisy image using auto-encoders and convolutional neural network

Image processing tasks has found a new dimension with the improvement of learning feature representation from images using deep networks. Most of the research works are conducted over pre-possessed image data in the lab. But, these methods fail in the real world scenario as most of the time the image required to classify is subject to noise and other disfigurement. For the last three decades, many researches has been conducted and numerus algorithms have been proposed with varying performances to classify noisy images. But in recent times, various autoencoders have outperformed all traditional methods for reconstructing native image from it's noisy form and opened a new door for the research of noisy image classification. In this paper, we studied various auto encoders for reconstructing native images from noisy input images. We have applied convolutional neural network as classifier. Before classification task we have rectified noisy images using denoising autoencoder, convolutional denoising autoencoder and finally a hybrid of them as proposed in this paper. The proposed methods are evaluated by experimenting over benchmark dataset adulterated with noises of different proportionate. This method has outperformed some other prominent methods achieving satisfying classification accuracy even when the image is too much noisy (50% noise is added with the image data).
Progression‐free survival at 2 years post‐autologous transplant: a surrogate end point for overall survival in follicular lymphoma

Overall survival (OS) is the gold‐standard end point for studies evaluating autologous stem cell transplantation (ASCT) in follicular lymphoma (FL), but assessment may be elusive due to the lengthy disease course. We analyzed the validity of two earlier end points, proposed in the setting of first‐line chemo‐/immunotherapy, as surrogates for OS—progression‐free survival (PFS) status at 24 months (PFS24) and complete response at 30 months (CR30) post‐ASCT. We also have investigated the clinical features of patients with early progression after ASCT. Data were available for 626 chemosensitive FL patients who received ASCT between 1989 and 2007. Median follow‐up was 12.2 years from ASCT. In the PFS24 analysis, 153 (24%) patients progressed within 24 months and 447 were alive and progression‐free at 24 months post‐ASCT (26 who died without disease progressions within 24 months were excluded). Early progression was associated with shorter OS (hazard ratio [HR], 6.8; P = 0.00001). In the subgroup of patients who received an ASCT in the setting or relapse after being exposed to rituximab, the HR was 11.3 (95% CI, 3.9–30.2; P < 0.00001). In the CR30 analysis, 183 of 596 (31%) response‐evaluable patients progressed/died with 30 months post‐ASCT. The absence of CR30 was associated with shorter OS (HR, 7.8; P < 0.00001), including in patients with prior rituximab (HR, 8.2). PFS24 and CR30 post‐ASCT are associated with poor outcomes and should be primary end points. Further research is needed to identify this population to be offered alternative treatments.
Occupancy-abundance models for predicting densities of three leaf beetles damaging the multipurpose tree Sesbania sesban in eastern and southern Africa

Abstract Mesoplatys ochroptera Stål, Exosoma and Ootheca spp. seriously damage sesbania, Sesbania sesban (L.) Merril, a multipurpose leguminous tree widely used in tropical agroforestry. This is discouraging farmers from expanding the planting of sesbania in various agroforestry systems in eastern and south-central Africa. Rapid methods are needed for estimation of population densities of these beetles for decisionmaking in pest management. A study was conducted with the objectives of determining the existence of any positive relationship between the occupancy and abundance of Mesoplatys, Exosoma and Ootheca and determining the model that best predicts abundance from occupancy for rapid estimation of population densities. The Poisson model assuming spatial randomness, the negative binomial distribution (NBD) model assuming spatial aggregation, the Nachman model without any distribution assumption, and a General model incorporating spatial variance-abundance and occupancy-abundance relationships were fitted to data on adult M. ochroptera, Exosoma and Ootheca from western Kenya, southern Malawi and eastern Zambia. Very strong variance to abundance relationships were observed in the spatial pattern of all three beetles. The occupancy-abundance relationships were also positive and strong in all beetles. The occupancy and abundance predicted by the four models were closest to the observed at lower densities compared with higher beetle densities. At higher population densities, the NBD and the General model gave better fit for M. ochroptera and Exosoma. For Ootheca populations, the Poisson and NBD models gave better fit at higher population densities. The relationships established here can be used as guide to estimate beetle densities for decision-making in pest management.
IgG Responses to Tissue-Associated Antigens as Biomarkers of Immunological Treatment Efficacy

We previously demonstrated that IgG responses to a panel of 126 prostate tissue-associated antigens are common in patients with prostate cancer. In the current report we questioned whether changes in IgG responses to this panel might be used as a measure of immune response, and potentially antigen spread, following prostate cancer-directed immune-active therapies. Sera were obtained from prostate cancer patients prior to and three months following treatment with androgen deprivation therapy (n = 34), a poxviral vaccine (n = 31), and a DNA vaccine (n = 21). Changes in IgG responses to individual antigens were identified by phage immunoblot. Patterns of IgG recognition following three months of treatment were evaluated using a machine-learned Bayesian Belief Network (ML-BBN). We found that different antigens were recognized following androgen deprivation compared with vaccine therapies. While the number of clinical responders was low in the vaccine-treated populations, we demonstrate that ML-BBN can be used to develop potentially predictive models.
Beyond Projectivity: Multilingual Evaluation of Constraints and Measures on Non-Projective Structures

Dependency analysis of natural language has gained importance for its applicability to NLP tasks. Non-projective structures are common in dependency analysis, therefore we need fine-grained means of describing them, especially for the purposes of machine-learning oriented approaches like parsing. We present an evaluation on twelve languages which explores several constraints and measures on non-projective structures. We pursue an edge-based approach concentrating on properties of individual edges as opposed to properties of whole trees. In our evaluation, we include previously unreported measures taking into account levels of nodes in dependency trees. Our empirical results corroborate theoretical results and show that an edge-based approach using levels of nodes provides an accurate and at the same time expressive means for capturing non-projective structures in natural language.
The role of signal averaged P wave duration and serum magnesium as a combined predictor of atrial fibrillation after elective coronary artery bypass surgery.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the role of low serum magnesium as a trigger for atrial fibrillation in patients with a substrate for the arrhythmia (assessed by signal averaged P wave duration). DESIGN: A case-control study. SETTING: A regional referral cardiac centre. PATIENTS AND INTERVENTIONS: 105 consecutive patients undergoing elective coronary artery bypass surgery had signal averaged P wave recordings before operation. Serum electrolytes were analysed preoperatively and on days 1, 2, and 5 after surgery. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Any episode of electrocardiographically recorded atrial fibrillation was taken as a study end point. RESULTS: Of 102 patients discharged, 27 (26%) had documented episodes of atrial fibrillation at a mean of 2.7 days after surgery. A combination of P wave duration > 155 ms and serum magnesium on the first postoperative day of < 0.7 mmol/l had a sensitivity of 75% and specificity of 80% for predicting atrial fibrillation. Duration of hospital stay (7.9 v 6.8 days) was longer in the atrial fibrillation group (P < 0.01). Stepwise regression showed age, serum magnesium < 0.7 mmol/l on the first postoperative day (both P < 0.001), angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitor withdrawal (P < 0.02), and signal averaged P wave duration (P = 0.04) to be independent predictors. CONCLUSIONS: The combination of signal averaged P wave duration and low serum magnesium on the first postoperative day identified the majority of patients with atrial fibrillation after coronary artery bypass surgery. Early identification and pharmacological treatment for selected patients may reduce the incidence of postoperative atrial fibrillation.
An effective AIS-based model for frequency assignment in mobile communication

Having an effective method for frequency assignment is very important in mobile communications. Artificial Immune Systems, a relatively new methodology for solving optimization-related problems, is investigated in this study to design a cellular frequency assignment model. In this framework, mobile hosts are allowed to continue interacting with the cells that they are currently in, even when the number of frequencies is insufficient. When the number of users increases, it is almost impossible to foresee future frequency demands in a cell. Often cellular networks are faced with insufficient frequencies in cells, whilst other cells have more frequencies available than they need. Our model works by allocating the unused frequencies from the cells with less demand to the overloaded cells. The model demonstrates that it manages to reuse the available free-conflict frequencies efficiently.
Joint Power Reduction and Time-Domain Scheduling for Interference Mitigation in Macro-Pico Heterogeneous Networks with Differential Evolution

Heterogeneous Network (HetNet) in 3GPP is a promising way to increase network coverage and capacity compared to macro cellular-only network. In order to further increase network capacity and balance cell load, Cell Range Expansion (CRE) and time-domain Inter-Cell Interference Coordination (ICIC) have been introduced into LTE-Advanced. The goal of our research is to mitigate the interference towards the User Equipments (UEs) served by the picocells and maintain the throughput of macrocells at the same time. We solve the problem by reducing the transmission power of macro Base Stations (BSs) in some subframes based on the proposed utility function, and accordingly scheduling picocell CRE UEs in these subframes. The existence of optimal solutions to the problem is discussed, and the Differential Evolution (DE) is applied to find the optimal transmission power which maximizes the utility function. System level simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can not only increase the total network's capacity but also improve the load balance between macrocell and picocell.
Monosialoteterahexosyl ganglioside induces the differentiation of human umbilical cord-derived mesenchymal stem cells into neuron-like cells

In the present study, human umbilical cord-derived mesenchymal stem cells (hUMSCs) were investigated for their potential to be induced to differentiate in vitro into neuron-like cells by monosialoteterahexosyl ganglioside (GM1). Mononuclear cells obtained from umbilical cords from women with full-term pregnancies whose babies were delivered by cesarean section were cultivated in vitro and their surface antigen expression profiles were monitored. Following amplification, the cells were divided into 5 groups, of which 4 (groups A–D) were treated with GM1 at doses of 50, 100, 150 and 200 µg/ml, respectively. The control (group E) was treated with the vehicle only. The ability of GM1 to induce the differentiation of the hUMSCs into neuron-like cells was monitored for 6 h. The expression levels of microtubule-associated protein-2 (MAP-2), neurofilament protein (NF-H) and glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) were measured by immunohistochemistry. Following exposure to GM1, the hUMSCs first appeared to have a diamond or polygonal shape and gradually grew into long spindle-shaped cells, finally exhibiting a radiating or swirling pattern. The cells maintained a strong proliferative capacity after continuous passage. Flow cytometry revealed that the hUMSCs expressed CD73, CD90 and CD105 up to passage 10, but not CD11b, CD19, CD34, CD45 or HLA-DR. Treatment with GM1 for 6 h led to the appearance of neuron-like cells with oval-shaped cell bodies and protruding neurites. These neuron-like cells were positive for MAP-2 and NF-H, but negative for GFAP expression. No changes in the expression of these markers were observed in the control group. Thus, the findings of the present study demonstrate that GM1 effectively induces hUMSCs to differentiate into neuron-like cells.
Transitions in social complexity along elevational gradients reveal a combined impact of season length and development time on social evolution

Eusociality is taxonomically rare, yet associated with great ecological success. Surprisingly, studies of environmental conditions favouring eusociality are often contradictory. Harsh conditions associated with increasing altitude and latitude seem to favour increased sociality in bumblebees and ants, but the reverse pattern is found in halictid bees and polistine wasps. Here, we compare the life histories and distributions of populations of 176 species of Hymenoptera from the Swiss Alps. We show that differences in altitudinal distributions and development times among social forms can explain these contrasting patterns: highly social taxa develop more quickly than intermediate social taxa, and are thus able to complete the reproductive cycle in shorter seasons at higher elevations. This dual impact of altitude and development time on sociality illustrates that ecological constraints can elicit dynamic shifts in behaviour, and helps explain the complex distribution of sociality across ecological gradients.
A Parallel Directional Fast Multipole Method

This paper introduces a parallel directional fast multipole method (FMM) for solving N-body problems with highly oscillatory kernels, with a focus on the Helmholtz kernel in three dimensions. This class of oscillatory kernels requires a more restrictive low-rank criterion than that of the low-frequency regime, and thus effective parallelizations must adapt to the modified data dependencies. We propose a simple partition at a fixed level of the octree and show that, if the partitions are properly balanced between p processes, the overall runtime is essentially O(N log N/p+ p). By the structure of the low-rank criterion, we are able to avoid communication at the top of the octree. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our parallelization on several challenging models.