Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparison of the Sedation Quality of Etomidate, Propofol, and Midazolam in Combination with Fentanyl During Phacoemulsification Cataract Surgery: A Double-Blind, Randomized, Controlled, Clinical Trial

Background According to the favorable effects of combination therapy to provide better sedation during phacoemulsification and lack of any studies investigating the sedative effect of etomidate, propofol, and midazolam in combination with fentanyl during the procedure. Objectives The current study aimed at comparing the sedative properties of the mentioned three combination therapies in this field. Methods The current double-blind, randomized, controlled clinical trial was conducted on patients referred for elective phacoemulsification surgery under sedation. They were randomly allocated to the three groups to receive fentanyl plus one of the following medications: Propofol, midazolam, and etomidate. Demographic characteristics, medical condition, and hemodynamic parameters before, during, and after surgery, sedation level, anesthetic complications, sedation-related adverse events, and patients’ and surgeons’ satisfaction were evaluated and recorded by the anesthesiologist and compared in the three studied groups. Results In the current study, out of 150 enrolled patients, 98 completed the study. Frequency of different levels of Ramsay scores was not significantly different between the groups (P = 0.41). Frequency of Ramsay scores 3 and 4 was 92%, 79.4%, and 88.2% in etomidate, midazolam and propofol groups, respectively (P = 0.32). The median recovery time was significantly higher in the midazolam group than the propofol group (P = 0.04); intergroup comparisons indicated that the patients’ mean score of satisfaction in the propofol group was significantly higher than that of the etomidate group (P = 0.006). Conclusions The current study findings indicated that though the quality of sedation during phacoemulsification cataract surgery was acceptable in the three agents and the results had no significantly differences among the groups, and considering other factors including recovery time, hemodynamic evaluation, sedation-related complications, and patients’ satisfication scores, it is suggested that propofol was superior to the other two agents.
Managed Multi-Context Systems

Multi-context systems (MCS) are a powerful framework for interlinking heterogeneous knowledge sources. They model the flow of information among different reasoning components (called contexts) in a declarative way, using so-called bridge rules, where contexts and bridge rules may be nonmonotonic. We considerably generalize MCS to managed MCS (mMCS): while the original bridge rules can only add information to contexts, our generalization allows arbitrary operations on context knowledge bases to be freely defined, e.g., deletion or revision operators. The paper motivates and introduces the generalized framework and presents several interesting instances. Furthermore, we consider inconsistency management in mMCS and complexity issues.
Seroepidemiology of Asymptomatic Dengue Virus Infection in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

Background Although virologically confirmed dengue fever has been recognized in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, since 1994, causing yearly outbreaks, no proper seroepidemiologic studies on dengue virus have been conducted in this region. Such studies can define the extent of infection by this virus and estimate the proportion that may result in disease. The aim of this study was to measure the seroprevalence of past dengue virus infection in healthy Saudi nationals from different areas in the city of Jeddah and to investigate demographic and environmental factors that may increase exposure to infection. Methods Sera were collected from 1984 Saudi subjects attending primary health care centers in six districts of Jeddah. These included general patients of various ages seeking routine vaccinations, antenatal care or treatment of different illnesses excluding fever or suspected dengue. A number of blood donors were also tested. Serum samples were tested by enzyme immunoassay (EIA) for IgG antibodies to dengue viruses 1, 2, 3, 4. A questionnaire was completed for each patient recording various anthropometric data and factors that may indicate possible risk of exposure to mosquito bites and dengue infection. Patients with missing data and those who reported a history of dengue fever were excluded from analysis, resulting in a sample of 1939 patients to be analyzed. Results The overall prevalence of dengue virus infection as measured by anti-dengue IgG antibodies from asymptomatic residents in Jeddah was 47.8% (927/1939) and 37% (68/184) in blood donors. Infection mostly did not result in recognizable disease, as only 19 of 1956 subjects with complete information (0.1%) reported having dengue fever in the past. Anti dengue seropositivity increased with age and was higher in males than females and in residents of communal housing and multistory buildings than in villas. One of the six districts showed significant increase in exposure rate as compared to the others. Availability of public sewage was associated with lower infection at a nearly significant level. No other clear risk factors were identifiable. Infection was not related to travel abroad. Conclusions Our results indicate a relatively high exposure of Jeddah residents to infection by dengue viruses, which must be considered endemic to this region. Infection largely remained asymptomatic or was only associated with minor illness for which patients did not seek treatment. These results call for continued vigilance for clinical cases of dengue that may arise from this wide exposure. They also call for more extensive control efforts to reduce exposure to and transmission of dengue viruses.
Rotation and Activity of Pre-Main-Sequence Stars

We present a study of rotation (v sin i) and chromospheric activity (Hα equivalent width) based on an extensive set of high-resolution optical spectra obtained with the MIKE instrument on the 6.5 m Magellan Clay telescope. Our targets are 74 F-M dwarfs in four young stellar associations, spanning ages from 6 to 30 Myr. By comparing Hα EWs in our sample to results in the literature, we see a clear evolutionary sequence: Chromospheric activity declines steadily from the T Tauri phase to the main sequence. Using activity as an age indicator, we find a plausible age range for the Tuc-Hor association of 10-40 Myr. Between 5 and 30 Myr, we do not see evidence for rotational braking in the total sample, and thus angular momentum is conserved, in contrast to younger stars. This difference indicates a change in the rotational regulation at ~5-10 Myr, possibly because disk braking cannot operate longer than typical disk lifetimes, allowing the objects to spin up. The rotation-activity relation is flat in our sample; in contrast to main-sequence stars, there is no linear correlation for slow rotators. We argue that this is because young stars generate their magnetic fields in a fundamentally different way from main-sequence stars, and not just the result of a saturated solar-type dynamo. By comparing our rotational velocities with published rotation periods for a subset of stars, we determine ages of 13 and 9 Myr for the η Cha and TWA associations, respectively, consistent with previous estimates. Thus we conclude that stellar radii from evolutionary models by Baraffe et al. (1998) are in agreement with the observed radii to within ±15%.
Answering bounded continuous search queries in the world wide web

Search queries applied to extract relevant information from the World Wide Web over a period of time may be denoted as continuous search queries. The improvement of continuous search queries may concern not only the quality of retrieved results but also the freshness of results, i.e. the time between the availability of a respective data object on the Web and the notification of a user by the search engine. In some cases a user should be notified immediately since the value of the respective information decreases quickly, as e.g. news about companies that affect the value of respective stocks, or sales offers for products that may no longer be available after a short period of time. In the document filtering literature, the optimization of such queries is usually based on threshold classification. Documents above a quality threshold are returned to a user. The threshold is tuned in order to optimize the quality of retrieved results. The disadvantage of such approaches is that the amount of information returned to a user may hardly be controlled without further user-interaction. In this paper, we consider the optimization of bounded continuous search queries where only the estimated best k elements are returned to a user. We present a new optimization method for bounded continuous search queries based on the optimal stopping theory and compare the new method to methods currently applied by Web search systems. The new method provides results of significantly higher quality for the cases where very fresh results have to be delivered.
A randomized trial of the effects of an almond-enriched, hypocaloric diet in the treatment of obesity1234

Background: Increased consumption of nuts has been advocated because of their health benefits, but the role of nuts in the treatment of obesity is unclear given their high energy density. Objective: This study was designed to evaluate the effects of a hypocaloric, almond-enriched diet (AED) compared with a hypocaloric nut-free diet (NFD) on body weight and cardiovascular disease risk factors in the context of an 18-mo behavioral weight-management program. Design: Overweight and obese individuals [n = 123; age = 46.8 y, BMI (in kg/m2) = 34.0] were randomly assigned to consume an AED or NFD and instructed in traditional behavioral methods of weight control. Anthropometric and metabolic measurements were made at baseline, 6 mo, and 18 mo. Results: Those in the AED group lost slightly but significantly less weight than did those in the NFD group at 6 mo (−5.5 compared with −7.4 kg; P = 0.04), but there were no differences at 18 mo. No significant differences in body composition were found between the groups at 6 or 18 mo. The AED, compared with the NFD, was associated with greater reductions in total cholesterol (P = 0.03), total:HDL cholesterol (P = 0.02), and triglycerides (P = 0.048) at 6 mo, and no differences were observed between the groups at 18 mo. Conclusions: The AED and NFD groups experienced clinically significant and comparable weight loss at 18 mo. Despite smaller weight loss in the AED group at 6 mo, the AED group experienced greater improvements in lipid profiles. This trial was registered at clinicaltrials.gov as NCT00194428.
Surgical management of dentigerous cyst and keratocystic odontogenic tumor in children: a conservative approach and 7-year follow-up

Dentigerous cyst (DC) is one of the most common odontogenic cysts of the jaws and rarely recurs. On the other hand, keratocystic odontogenic tumor (KCOT), formerly known as odontogenic keratocyst (OKC), is considered a benign unicystic or multicystic intraosseous neoplasm and one of the most aggressive odontogenic lesions presenting relatively high recurrence rate and a tendency to invade adjacent tissue. Two cases of these odontogenic lesions occurring in children are presented. They were very similar in clinical and radiographic characteristics, and both were treated by marsupialization. The treatment was chosen in order to preserve the associated permanent teeth with complementary orthodontic treatment to direct eruption of the associated permanent teeth. At 7-years of follow-up, none of the cases showed recurrence.
Not guilty by reason of insanity: clinical and judicial profile of medium and high security patients in Belgium

ABSTRACT Under Belgian law, offenders deemed to lack criminal responsibility because of insanity receive mandated treatment under the internment law. Population profiles of these forensic patients (‘internees’) are, however, very scarce. In this study, we analysed the demographic, clinical and judicial profile of a large sample of Belgian internees admitted to a secure setting. In addition, differences between internees admitted to a medium versus a high security setting were investigated. Belgian internees were characterised by a large number of personality disorders and a low number of first offenders. Comparative analyses showed substantial differences between the high and medium security settings, with a marked proportion of the forensic patients in high security having committed a sexual offence. Contrary to expectations, more predictors for length of stay were found in the medium security subsample, while admission periods were significantly longer in the high security subsample.
Language Problem in Bangladeshi Children with Autism spectrum disorder : Observation through a Neurolinguistics Approach

Background : Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) covers a set of developmental disabilities that can cause significant social, communication, and behavioral challenges.Objective : It was aimed to find out the language problem in Bangladeshi children with Autism spectrum disorder following the neurolinguistics approach.Methodology : A descriptive observational study conducted during the period of April 2014 to December 2014 in the department of Linguistics, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh among the Bangladeshi children aged between 3–12 years. A total of 10 children with normal hearing ability who were diagnosed as ASD according to the diagnostic criteria (DSM- 5 or ICD 10) were enrolled in the study purposively from two tertiary care hospitals of Dhaka city.Results : In this study total 10 children were included and their age range was 3 to 12 years. Male was predominant (90%). Consanguinity of parents was not present in most (90%) cases,60% had positive family history of mental illness, 70% had history of delivery by lower uterine section, 80% of them were term baby. 100% children had delayed speech development, 90% was unable to indicate with index finger, 90% was unable to use noun and pronoun, 90% had repetitive words, 100% had inability to take part in rhymes, 90% was unable to play with symbols, 70% had no eye to eye contact, and 90% had no reciprocal social smile.Conclusion : Language problem in the children with ASD is an under attended problem in Bangladesh. To the authors’ best knowledge this is the first neurolinguistics approach to ASD children in Bangladesh. Further large scale extensive studies would be necessary for better visualization of the extent of the issue.Northern International Medical College Journal Vol.9(2) Jan 2018: 295-299
Elastic instability and stripe domains in liquid crystalline elastomers

We consider the elastic and orientational response of a uniform nematic elastomer subjected to an extension perpendicular to its director. By allowing a possibility of local shear in the material, we show that the effect of “soft elasticity” leads to a new regime of director reorientation, through a highly non-uniform stripe domain state (in contrast to earlier predictions and observations of a discontinuous uniform director jump). The molecular theory developed here gives predictions on two levels: of the general texture of the stripe state plus the interval of strains in which it occurs, and of topological properties of the director rotation that are very general and depend only on chain anisotropy of elastomer but not on details of the specific material. On the other hand, parameters like the threshold strain for the domain formation depend on the chemical composition and on the model used to describe its effect. We discuss and explain experimental observations of stripe domains both in the perpendicular geometry and when the stretching direction is at an oblique angle to the director, leading to asymmetric stripes and different topology.
Learning from Demonstrations for Real World Reinforcement Learning

Deep reinforcement learning (RL) has achieved several high profile successes in difficult decision-making problems. However, these algorithms typically require a huge amount of data before they reach reasonable performance. In fact, their performance during learning can be extremely poor. This may be acceptable for a simulator, but it severely limits the applicability of deep RL to many real-world tasks, where the agent must learn in the real environment. In this paper we study a setting where the agent may access data from previous control of the system. We present an algorithm, Deep Q-learning from Demonstrations (DQfD), that leverages this data to massively accelerate the learning process even from relatively small amounts of demonstration data and is able to automatically assess the necessary ratio of demonstration data while learning thanks to a prioritized replay mechanism. DQfD works by combining temporal difference updates with supervised classification of the demonstrator's actions. We show that DQfD has better initial performance than Prioritized Dueling Double Deep Q-Networks (PDD DQN) as it starts with better scores on the first million steps on 41 of 42 games and on average it takes PDD DQN 82 million steps to catch up to DQfD's performance. DQfD learns to out-perform the best demonstration given in 14 of 42 games. In addition, DQfD leverages human demonstrations to achieve state-of-the-art results for 17 games. Finally, we show that DQfD performs better than three related algorithms for incorporating demonstration data into DQN.
An exploration of semantic tendencies in word of mouth business reviews

Explicit customer review ratings mark future business success. One important and well-studied aspect of customer satisfaction is a review's affective - positive or negative - valence. More recently, tools from natural language processing (NLP) applied to reviews show less obvious linguistic differences in review texts dependent on reviewer rating. Consistent with this is previous work using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC), showing that language use changes depending on one's current psychological state. Finer-grained analyses of review text focusing on less obvious linguistic categories may provide insight into customer values. In an attempt to explore how the content of a review is related to a review's explicit rating, we analyzed review texts using LIWC. LIWC determines the percentage of review text associated with a variety of different psychologically relevant categories such as social or cognitive words. We explore how certain categories of words relate to review ratings and use a support vector machine to determine how well each category predicts reviewer's review rating. We relate our findings to previous work and speculate that businesses would benefit from the application of various Natural Language Processing tools in attempting to obtain comprehensive insight into customer satisfaction. We end with the connection between this work and theories of language use, for which data sets of customer reviews may be useful for exploring the role of psychological state in determining word choice.
Assessment of potential drug-drug interactions among outpatients receiving cardiovascular medications at Jimma University specialized hospital, South West Ethiopia

Background: The quality of pharmacotherapy is highly dependent on the process of choosing a drug in relation to nature of the disease. Several factors should be considered in choosing optimal pharmacotherapeutics strategy including efficacy, safety, availability and cost of the drugs. The objective of this study was to assess potential drug-drug interactions and risk factors in outpatients taking cardiovascular drugs at Jimma University specialized hospital. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted from Feb. to April, 2011on patients visiting the cardiac clinic of Jimma University Specialized hospital. A sample of 332 outpatients who were taking cardiovascular medications at study clinic was studied. MicroMedex software was used to screen drug-drug interactions and SPSS for windows software versions-16.0 was used for data analysis. Results: A total of 1249 drugs with average of 3.76 drugs per prescription were prescribed for the 332 patients. The frequency of potential DDIs was found to be 241 (72.6%). Among these 200 (67.3%) were of "moderate" severity and 164 (55.2%) were delayed in onset. The most common potential DDI observed was between Enalapril and Furosemide (20%). Patients who prescribed many drugs (AOR=4.09; P=0.00) by medical intern had a higher risk of developing potential DDIs (AOR=4.6; P=0.00). Conclusions: Patients with cardiovascular disorders are subjected to high risk of potential drug-drug interactions and the number of drugs prescribed and educational level of the prescribers has a high significantly associated with the occurrence of potential drug-drug interactions. Therefore, it is imperative that further studies need to be conducted to identify reasons for and tackle the problem and provide appropriate mechanisms for management.
The effect of work cycle frequency on the potentiation of dynamic force in mouse fast twitch skeletal muscle

SUMMARY The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that the potentiation of concentric twitch force during work cycles is dependent upon both the speed and direction of length change. Concentric and eccentric forces were elicited by stimulating muscles during the shortening and lengthening phases, respectively, of work cycles. Work cycle frequency was varied in order to vary the speed of muscle shortening and/or lengthening; all forces were measured as the muscle passed though optimal length (Lo). Both concentric and eccentric force were assessed before (unpotentiated control) and after (potentiated) the application of a tetanic conditioning protocol known to potentiate twitch force output. The influence of the conditioning protocol on relative concentric force was speed dependent, with forces increased to 1.19±0.01, 1.25±0.01 and 1.30±0.01 of controls at 1.5, 3.3 and 6.9 Hz, respectively (all data N=9–10 with P<0.05). In contrast, the conditioning protocol had only a limited effect on eccentric force at these frequencies (range: 1.06±0.01 to 0.96±0.03). The effect of the conditioning protocol on concentric work (force × distance) was also speed dependent, being decreased at 1.5 Hz (0.84±0.01) and increased at 3.3 and 6.9 Hz (1.05±0.01 and 1.39±0.01, respectively). In contrast, eccentric work was not increased at any frequency (range: 0.88±0.02 to 0.99±0.01). Thus, our results reveal a hysteresis-like influence of activity-dependent potentiation such that concentric force and/or work were increased but eccentric force and/or work were not. These outcomes may have implications for skeletal muscle locomotor function in vivo.
Education in the New China: Shaping Ideas at Work

Contents: An introduction to the project The context of contemporary Chinese education Introducing the people Impressions of the Chinese educational environment Interpreting themes from the stories about education The teaching and learning dynamics of Harmony college Work, gender, and the future Chinese students in British universities Their own words, the unambitious woman, the bookworm, the English teacher, the mature student, the construction kid, the self-made woman Glossary Bibliography Index.
Management of Information Technology Outsourcing Relationships: The Role of Service Level Agreements

Existing studies on information technology outsourcing relationships have typically examined partnership factors that influence IT outsourcing effectiveness. This research extends such studies and draws upon relational exchange theory to investigate how relational elements in service level agreements (SLAs) may impact outsourcing relationships. The results show that the effects of a well-structured SLA in managing IT outsourcing relationship are significant. This paper also provides insight into the development of relational governance through a contractual mechanism over the entire course of an outsourcing engagement. Suggestions for appropriate SLA elements are also developed.