Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Sample size calculation for comparing two negative binomial rates

Negative binomial model has been increasingly used to model the count data in recent clinical trials. It is frequently chosen over Poisson model in cases of overdispersed count data that are commonly seen in clinical trials. One of the challenges of applying negative binomial model in clinical trial design is the sample size estimation. In practice, simulation methods have been frequently used for sample size estimation. In this paper, an explicit formula is developed to calculate sample size based on the negative binomial model. Depending on different approaches to estimate the variance under null hypothesis, three variations of the sample size formula are proposed and discussed. Important characteristics of the formula include its accuracy and its ability to explicitly incorporate dispersion parameter and exposure time. The performance of the formula with each variation is assessed using simulations. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Households’ preferences and willingness to pay for multiple use water services in rural areas of South Africa: An analysis based on choice modelling

Financing of multiple use (i.e. domestic and productive) water services was identified as an important ingredient to ensure improved water access for rural poor and broaden livelihood options in South Africa. Following the principles of integrated water resource management (IWRM), efficient, equitable and sustainable investments in improved water services should be based on a thorough understanding of actual demand by consumers. Comprehensive studies looking at multiple use water services are not common in South African rural areas, where most of the economic analyses focus on either domestic or irrigation water demand. This study aims at filling this gap by assessing the household demand for multiple use water services in Sekororo-Letsoalo area in the Limpopo Province. Choice modelling is the approach used to identify the attributes determining demand for water services and quantify their relative importance. Results show that households in rural areas are willing to pay for improvements in water services. Due to the current poor level of water services in the area, users are primarily concerned with basic domestic uses and, consequently, demand for productive uses is low. Only households already relatively well served are interested in engaging in multiple water uses.
Structural analysis of electric circuits and consequences for MNA

The development of integrated circuits requires powerful numerical simulation programs. Naturally, there is no method that treats all the different kinds of circuits successfully. The numerical simulation tools provide reliable results only if the circuit model meets the assumptions that guarantee a successful application of the integration software. Owing to the large dimension of many circuits (about 107 circuit elements) it is often difficult to find the circuit configurations that lead to numerical difficulties. In this paper, we analyse electric circuits with respect to their structural properties in order to give circuit designers some help for fixing modelling problems if the numerical simulation fails. We consider one of the most frequently used modelling techniques, the modified nodal analysis (MNA), and discuss the index of the differential algebraic equations (DAEs) obtained by this kind of modelling. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Seasonal Distributions of the Western Cherry Fruit Fly (Diptera: Tephritidae) Among Host and Nonhost Fruit Trees

Abstract Seasonal distributions of the western cherry fruit fly, Rhagoletis indifferens Curran (Diptera: Tephritidae), in sweet cherry ( Prunus avium (L.) L. ) (major host), black hawthorn (occasional developmental host) ( Crataegus douglasii Lindley), and other trees were determined in a ponderosa pine ecosystem in Washington state, USA. The hypothesis that most fly dispersal from cherry trees occurs after fruit senesce or drop was tested, with emphasis on movement to black hawthorn trees. Sweet cherry fruit developed earlier than black hawthorn, bitter cherry (common host), choke cherry, and apple fruit. Flies were usually captured first in sweet cherry trees but were caught in bitter cherry and other trees throughout the season. Peak fly capture periods in sweet cherry began around the same time or slightly earlier than in other trees. However, peak fly capture periods in black hawthorn and other nonsweet cherry trees continued after peak periods in sweet cherry ended, or relative fly numbers within sweet cherry declined more quickly than those within other trees. Larvae were reared from sweet and bitter cherry but not black hawthorn fruit. Results provide partial support for the hypothesis in that although R. indifferens commonly disperses from sweet cherry trees with fruit, it could disperse more, or more flies are retained in nonsweet cherry trees after than before sweet cherries drop. This could allow opportunities for the flies to use other fruit for larval development. Although R . indifferens infestation in black hawthorn was not detected, early season fly dispersal to this and other trees and fly presence in bitter cherry could make fly management in sweet cherry difficult.
Association of anaemia and mortality in patients with acute pulmonary embolism

Summary This study aimed to evaluate the relationship between anaemia and pulmonary embolism (PE) prognosis. We analysed a cohort of 764 patients with acute PE referred to a single center for diagnosis and management. Patients were divided into groups by quartiles of haemoglobin (Hb): Hb < 11.7 g/dl; Hb 11.7 to 12.9 g/dl; Hb 13.0 to 14.1 g/dl; Hb > 14.1 g/dl. Patients had a mean Hb of 12.9 g/dl, and values ranged from to 4.3 to 19.5 g/dl. Lower Hb was associated with recent bleeding, an impaired haemodynamic profile and higher creatinine. Patients in the lower Hb quartiles more commonly had female gender (p < 0.001), a diagnosis of cancer (p < 0.001), and an indication for an inferior vena cava (IVC) filter (p < 0.002), compared to patients in the higher Hb quartiles. Patients in higher Hb quartiles had higher survival at three months (75%, 86%, 90% and 91% for lowest to highest quartiles, respectively). On multivariate analysis, adjusting for known PE prognostic factors, low Hb proved to be an independent predictor of mortality (hazard ratio [HR] 1.16, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.05 to 1.28 for each decrease of 1 g/dl). Hb level remained an independent predictor of all-cause mortality when cancer patients were excluded from the analysis (adjusted HR 0.81; 95% CI, 0.66 to 0.99; p = 0.04). Moreover, patients with anaemia showed a higher risk of fatal PE (unadjusted HR 1.19, 95% CI 1.04 to 1.37). In conclusion, in patients with acute symptomatic PE, anaemia severity is associated with worsened survival.
A Laboratory Examination of Emotion Regulation Skill Strengthening in Borderline Personality Disorder

This study examined whether individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD; N = 25) exhibit deficits in their ability to strengthen their emotion regulation skills over time compared with healthy controls (HCs; N = 30). Participants were instructed to implement 1 of 2 different emotion regulation strategies (i.e., distraction and mindful awareness of the emotion) or to either react naturally (i.e., nonregulation condition) in response to BPD-relevant stimuli across multiple trials. Self-reported negativity and positivity, and physiological indices of emotion were collected throughout. Self-report results indicated that both groups displayed strengthening of distraction, but not mindful awareness, compared with the nonregulation condition over time. When comparing the 2 emotion regulation strategies to each other, heart rate data suggested that the rate of skill strengthening varied by group. Specifically, the BPD group evidenced strengthening of mindful awareness, but not distraction, over time whereas the HCs exhibited the opposite pattern. These findings suggest that individuals with BPD generally do not show deficits in their ability to strengthen emotion regulation skills and exhibit greater strengthening of mindful awareness than distraction over time.
BRAF inhibitors in metastatic non-small cell lung cancer.

Lung cancer is the first cause of death by cancer in men and the second in women worldwide (1). This huge mortality is explained by the presence of advanced disease at diagnosis of lung cancer (78% of patients present locoregional and/or distant metastasis). Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) represents up to 85% of all lung cancers (2), with a 5-year overall survival about 17% (3).
SketchMate: Deep Hashing for Million-Scale Human Sketch Retrieval

We propose a deep hashing framework for sketch retrieval that, for the first time, works on a multi-million scale human sketch dataset. Leveraging on this large dataset, we explore a few sketch-specific traits that were otherwise under-studied in prior literature. Instead of following the conventional sketch recognition task, we introduce the novel problem of sketch hashing retrieval which is not only more challenging, but also offers a better testbed for large-scale sketch analysis, since: (i) more fine-grained sketch feature learning is required to accommodate the large variations in style and Abstraction, and (ii) a compact binary code needs to be learned at the same time to enable efficient retrieval. Key to our network design is the embedding of unique characteristics of human sketch, where (i) a two-branch CNN-RNN architecture is adapted to explore the temporal ordering of strokes, and (ii) a novel hashing loss is specifically designed to accommodate both the temporal and Abstract traits of sketches. By working with a 3.8M sketch dataset, we show that state-of-the-art hashing models specifically engineered for static images fail to perform well on temporal sketch data. Our network on the other hand not only offers the best retrieval performance on various code sizes, but also yields the best generalization performance under a zero-shot setting and when re-purposed for sketch recognition. Such superior performances effectively demonstrate the benefit of our sketch-specific design.
What can simulated molecular clouds tell us about real molecular clouds

We study the properties of giant molecular clouds (GMCs) from a smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulation of a portion of a spiral galaxy, modelled at high resolution, with robust representations of the physics of the interstellar medium. We examine the global molecular gas content of clouds, and investigate the effect of using CO or H2 densities to define the GMCs. We find that CO can reliably trace the high-density H2 gas, but misses less dense H2 clouds. We also investigate the effect of using 3D CO densities versus CO emission with an observer’s perspective, and find that CO-emission clouds trace well the peaks of the actual GMCs in 3D, but can miss the lower density molecular gas between density peaks which is often CO-dark. Thus, the CO emission typically traces smaller clouds within larger GMC complexes. We also investigate the effect of the galactic environment (in particular the presence of spiral arms), on the distribution of GMC properties, and we find that the mean properties are similar between arm and inter-arm clouds, but the tails of some distributions are indicative of intrinsic differences in the environment. We find highly filamentary clouds (similar to the giant molecular filaments of our Galaxy) exclusively in the inter-arm region, formed by galactic shear. We also find that the most massive GMC complexes are located in the arm, and that as a consequence of more frequent cloud interactions/mergers in the arm, arm clouds are more sub-structured and have higher velocity dispersions than inter-arm clouds.
Effect of oral nutritional supplementation on growth and recurrent upper respiratory tract infections in picky eating children at nutritional risk: a randomized, controlled trial

Objectives To evaluate the effect of oral nutritional supplementation (ONS) plus dietary counselling (DC) (intervention) versus DC alone (control) on growth and upper respiratory tract infection (URTI) in nutritionally at-risk, picky eating children in India. Methods We performed a 90-day, prospective, randomized, controlled trial. A total of 255 children aged 24–72 months with a weight-for-age z-score ≥−2 and <−1, picky eating behaviour, and acute URTI were randomized to the control (n = 128) or intervention group (n = 127). The outcomes included the change in weight-for-age z-score from days 1 to 90 and the URTI incidence. Results The mean age was 44.0 ± 14.3 months. The intervention group showed a significantly greater increase in mean weight-for-age and body mass index-for-age z-scores compared with the control group from day 10 onwards. Higher energy intake in the intervention group was observed at all follow-up visits, except for day 10. The incidence of URTI in the control group was 2.01 times higher than that in the intervention group, controlling for confounding factors. Conclusions ONS plus DC is effective for improving weight and reducing the incidence of URTI in nutritionally at-risk, picky eating children with an acute URTI episode.
The Relationship of Health Beliefs with Information Sources and HPV Vaccine Acceptance among Young Adults in Korea

Despite the HPV vaccine’s efficacy in preventing cervical cancer, its coverage rates among Asians are very low. To increase immunization coverage among these populations, understanding the psychological factors that affect HPV acceptability is critical. To this end, this study examined the relationships between multidimensional health beliefs and HPV vaccine acceptance, and what information sources effectively foster HPV vaccination-related health beliefs. Data were collected using a survey of 323 undergraduate students in Korea. Results showed that perceived susceptibility, perceived severity, perceived benefits, and perceived vaccine safety concerns predicted vaccine acceptance. Multiple dimensions of perceived barriers showed differing impacts on vaccine acceptance. In addition, interpersonal information sources were effective in boosting various health beliefs for HPV vaccination. The Internet also was effective in reducing social barriers, but the effects were opposite to those of social media. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
Efficacy and costs of controlling eastern redcedar

Eastern redcedar (Juniperus virginiana L.) is reducing grassland productivity across much of the Great Plains. Control methods include broadcast prescribed fire, herbicides, cutting, and individual tree ignition. All methods have disadvantages when used alone. Fire can be ineffective against larger trees. Intensive methods can be too expensive for low-productivity grasslands. The objectives of this research were to determine the effects of broadcast prescribed fire alone as measured at 3 weeks after fire; to compare the effects of picloram herbicide application with or without fire, sawing with or without fire, and individual tree ignition with fire; and to compare all treatment costs. Treatments were applied at a central Nebraska rangeland site in 1993 and 1994. Fire mortality was 77% in 1993 and 67% in 1994. Either picloram or cutting after fire provided nearly 100% control of trees 3 m tall. Total mortality due to treatment combinations generally was higher in 1993, when burning conditions were more favorable. Burning, at an estimated cost of $4.96 ha-1, before picloram application or cutting reduced total costs by nearly half. Picloram application costs were reduced from $90.10 ha-1 to $47.95 ha-1, and cutting costs from $62.92 ha-1 to 39.26 ha-1. Burning first also reduced cutting time from 362 min ha-1 to 184 min ha-1, but did not significantly decrease picloram application time. Prescribed fire should precede intensive treatment applications if possible, both to reduce costs and improve total effectiveness. Because the costs and effectiveness of burning followed by either picloram or cutting are similar, managers should choose the method most suitable to individual circumstances.
Chlamydomonas angulosa (Green Alga) and Nostoc commune (Blue-Green Alga) Microalgae-Cellulose Composite Aerogel Beads: Manufacture, Physicochemical Characterization, and Cd (II) Adsorption

This study presents composite aerogel beads prepared by mixing dissolved cellulose with Chlamydomonas angulosa and Nostoc commune cells, respectively, at 0.1, 0.3, and 0.5% (w/w). The manufactured composites (termed regenerated cellulose (RC)), with C. angulosa (RCCA-(1, 3, and 5)), and with N. commune (RCNC-(1, 3, and 5)) were analyzed. Both RCCA-5 and RCNC-5 showed the high specific surface area to be about 261.3 and 332.8 m2·g−1. In the microstructure analysis, network structures were observed in the cross-sections of RC, RCCA-5, and RCNC-5. The pyrolysis temperature of the RCCA-5 and RCNC-5 composite aerogel beads was rapidly increased about 250 °C during the mixing of cellulose with C. angulosa and N. commune. The chemical analysis of RC, RCCA-5, and RCNC-5 showed peaks corresponding to various functional groups, such as amide, carboxyl, and hydroxyl groups from protein, lipid, and carbohydrate. RCNC-5 at pH 6 demonstrated highest Cd2+ removal rate about 90.3%, 82.1%, and 63.1% at 10, 25, and 50 ppm Cd2+, respectively. At pH 6, Cd2+ adsorption rates per unit weight of the RCNC-5 were about 0.9025, 2.0514, and 3.1547 mg/g at 10, 25, and 50 ppm, respectively. The peaks assigned to the amide, carboxyl, and hydroxyl groups in RCCA-5, RCNC-5, and RC were shifted or disappeared immediately after adsorption of Cd2+. The specific surface area, total pore volume, and mean pore diameter of composites was decreased due to adsorption of Cd2+ on the developed materials. As can be seen in the X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) spectrum, significant changes in the molecular structure of the composite aerogel beads were not observed even after adsorption of Cd2+.
Robotic surgery, video-assisted thoracic surgery, and open surgery for early stage lung cancer: comparison of costs and outcomes at a single institute.

Background Robotic surgery is increasingly used to resect lung cancer. However costs are high. We compared costs and outcomes for robotic surgery, video-assisted thoracic surgery (VATS), and open surgery, to treat non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Methods We retrospectively assessed 103 consecutive patients given lobectomy or segmentectomy for clinical stage I or II NSCLC. Three surgeons could choose VATS or open, the fourth could choose between all three techniques. Between-group differences were assessed by Fisher's exact, two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), and Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney test. P values <0.05 were considered significant. Results Twenty-three patients were treated by robot, 41 by VATS, and 39 by open surgery. Age, physical status, pulmonary function, comorbidities, stage, and perioperative complications did not differ between the groups. Pathological tumor size was greater in the open than VATS and robotic groups (P=0.025). Duration of surgery was 150, 191 and 116 minutes, by robotic, VATS and open approaches, respectively (P<0.001). Significantly more lymph node stations were removed (P<0.001), and median length of stay was shorter (4, 5 and 6 days, respectively; P<0.001) in the robotic than VATS and open groups. Estimated costs were 82%, 68% and 69%, respectively, of the regional health service reimbursement for robotic, VATS and open approaches. Discussion Robotic surgery for early lung cancer was associated with shorter stay and more extensive lymph node dissection than VATS and open surgery. Duration of surgery was shorter for robotic than VATS. Although the cost of robotic thoracic surgery is high, the hospital makes a profit.
Surface Dynamics vs. Adhesion in Oxygen Plasma Treated Polyolefins

Abstract Polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP) were oxygen plasma treated and aged in carefully reproducible conditions. The effect of aging on the surface chemistry, wettability and adhesion were studied using a combination of techniques: contact angle measurements, XPS, SSIMS, adhesion tests (shear and pull). PE was found to be relatively insensitive to aging both in terms of wettability and adhesion, due to crosslinking during plasma treatment, which is likely to reduce macromolecular mobility within the surface layer. In the case of PP, dramatic decreases of wettability occur with time, due to macromolecular motions leading to minimization of oxygen-containing functions at the surface. This behavior was shown to affect the adhesion performance of treated PP.
Neuroprotective effects of statins against amyloid β-induced neurotoxicity

A growing body of evidence suggests that disruption of the homeostasis of lipid metabolism affects the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease (AD). In particular, dysregulation of cholesterol homeostasis in the brain has been reported to considerably increase the risk of developing AD. Thus, dysregulation of lipid homeostasis may increase the amyloid β (Aβ) levels by affecting amyloid precursor protein (APP) cleavage, which is the most important risk factor involved in the pathogenesis of AD. Previous research demonstrated that Aβ can trigger neuronal insulin resistance, which plays an important role in response to Aβ-induced neurotoxicity in AD. Epidemiological studies also suggested that statin use is associated with a decreased incidence of AD. Therefore, statins are believed to be a good candidate for conferring neuroprotective effects against AD. Statins may play a beneficial role in reducing Aβ-induced neurotoxicity. Their effect involves a putative mechanism beyond its cholesterol-lowering effects in preventing Aβ-induced neurotoxicity. However, the underlying molecular mechanisms of the protective effect of statins have not been clearly determined in Aβ-induced neurotoxicity. Given that statins may provide benefits beyond the inhibition of 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl coenzyme A (HMG-CoA) reductase, these drugs may also improve the brain. Thus, statins may have beneficial effects on impaired insulin signaling by activating AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) in neuronal cells. They play a potential therapeutic role in targeting Aβ-mediated neurotoxicity.
Veno‐venous extracorporeal CO2 removal improves pulmonary hemodynamics in a porcine ARDS model

Protective lung ventilation is recommended in patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) to minimize additional injuries to the lung. However, hypercapnic acidosis resulting from ventilation at lower tidal volume enhances pulmonary hypertension and might induce right ventricular (RV) failure. We investigated if extracorporeal veno‐venous CO2 removal therapy could have beneficial effects on pulmonary circulation and RV function.