Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Early monitoring for detection of antituberculous drug-induced hepatotoxicity

Background/Aims: We investigated the time of onset of antituberculous drug-induced hepatotoxicity (ADIH) and related characteristics. Methods: Adult patients (n = 1,031) treated with first-line antituberculous drugs between February 2009 and January 2013 were enrolled. Results: Of the 1,031 patients, 108 patients (10.5%) developed ADIH a mean of 39.6 ± 43.7 days after treatment initiation. Twenty-eight patients (25.9%) developed ADIH within 7 days, 73 (67.6%) within 30 days, and the rest after 30 days. The ≤ 30-day group was characterized by higher peak alanine aminotransferase (ALT) level and a high proportion of patients with maintenance of first-line antituberculous drugs compared to the > 30-day group. In subgroup analysis, the ≤ 7-day group was characterized by higher baseline aspartate aminotransferase and ALT, high proportion of patients with maintenance of first-line antituberculous drugs, and high proportion of patients with extrapulmonary tuberculosis compared to patients with ADIH that developed beyond 7 days. In multivariate analysis, serum ALT > 40 IU/L (odds ratio [OR], 2.995; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.580 to 5.680; p = 0.001) and presence of anti-hepatitis C virus (OR, 4.204; 95% CI, 1.822 to 9.700, p = 0.001) were independent risk factors for development of ADIH. Conclusions: Approximately 70% of the cases of ADIH occurred in the first month of antituberculous treatment, and were associated with continuation of the first-line drug regimen.
Energy Efficient and Reliable Geographic Routing in Wireless Sensor Networks

— The wireless link can be unreliable in realistic wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Energy efficient and reliable data forwarding is important because each node has limited resources. Therefore, we must suggest an optimal solution that considers using the information of the node’s characteristics. Previous routing protocols were unsuited to realistic asymmetric WSNs. In this paper, we propose a P rotocol that considers B oth sides of L ink-quality and E nergy ( PBLE ), an optimal routing protocol that balances modified link-quality, distance and energy. Additionally, we propose a node scheduling method. PBLE achieves a longer lifetime than previous routing protocols and is more energy-efficient. PBLE uses energy, local information and both sides of PRR in a 1-hop distance. We explain how to send data packets to the destination node using the node's information. Simulation shows PBLE improves delivery rate and network lifetime compared to previous schemes. Moreover, we show the improvement in various WSN environments.
Jarisch-Herxheimer reaction among HIV-positive patients with early syphilis: azithromycin versus benzathine penicillin G therapy

The Jarisch‐Herxheimer reaction, a febrile inflammatory reaction that often occurs after the first dose of chemotherapy in spirochetal diseases, may result in deleterious effects to patients with neurosyphilis and to pregnant women. A single 2‐g oral dose of azithromycin is an alternative treatment to benzathine penicillin G for early syphilis in areas with low macrolide resistance. With its potential anti‐inflammatory activity, the impact of azithromycin on the incidence of the Jarisch‐Herxheimer reaction in HIV‐positive patients with early syphilis has rarely been investigated.
The Path to European Integration: A Historical Institutionalist Perspective, CES Germany & Europe Working Papers, No. 05.2, 25 October 1994

Many European and American observers of the EC have criticized "intergovemmentalist" ac­ counts for exaggerating the extent of member state control over the process of European integra­ tion. This essay seeks to ground these criticisms in a "historical institutionalist" account that stresses the need to study European integration as a political process which unfolds over time. Such a perspective highlights the limits of member-state control over long-term institutional de­ velopment, due to preoccupation with shorHerm concerns, the ubiquity of unintended conse­ quences, and processes that "lock in" past decusions and make reassertions of member-state control difficult. Brief examination of the evolution of social policy in the EC suggests the limita­ tions of treating the EC as an international regime facilitating collective action among essentially sovereign states. It is ore useful to view integration as a "path-dependent" process that has pro­ duced a fragmented but still discernible "multitiered" European polity.
Impact of Schistosomiaisis in Kasansa Health Zone in Democratic Republic of Congo

To almighty God, for the strength he gave me to start and complete the MPH program despite other obligations including taking care of my four little children and working full time. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis would not have been possible without contributions of several individuals who assisted in the preparation and completion of this study. MS for including me in his team work and allowing the use of data from one of the projects he is conducting in Democratic Republic of Congo. I thank Dr Sylvie Linsuke, Dr Sylvain Baloji and other team members who were involved in the survey and data collection. In presenting this thesis as a partial fulfillment of the requirements for an advanced degree from Georgia State University, I agree that the Library of the University shall make it available for inspection and circulation in accordance with its regulations governing materials of this type. I agree that permission to quote from, to copy from, or to publish this thesis may be granted by the author or, in his/her absence, by the professor under whose direction it was written, or in his/her absence, by the Associate Dean, College of Health and Human Sciences. Such quoting, copying, or publishing must be solely for scholarly purposes and will not involve potential financial gain. It is understood that any copying from or publication of this dissertation which involves potential financial gain will not be allowed without written permission of the author. All thesis deposited in the Georgia State University Library must be used in accordance with the stipulations prescribed by the author in the preceding statement. Users of this thesis who not regularly enrolled as students at Georgia State University are required to attest acceptance of the preceding stipulation by signing below. Libraries borrowing this thesis for the use of their patrons are required to see that each user records here the information requested.
Challenges of Local NGO Sustainability 1

It will not be news to this audience that currently the role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) is more critical and more strategic in the process of global human development than at any time before. I will talk some about why this is so because it will help us understand the changing roles of NGOs, implications for building NGO capacity, and how NGOs can advance the next step from capacity to sustainable roles in the development of a vibrant and free civil society.
Posterior parietal cortex and the filtering of distractors

Neural systems for visual processing can focus attention on behaviorally relevant objects, filtering out competing distractors. Neurophysiological studies in animals and brain imaging studies in humans suggest that such filtering depends on top-down inputs to extrastriate visual areas, originating in structures important for attentional control. To test whether the posterior parietal cortex may be a necessary source of signals that filter distractors, we measured the ability of a patient with bilateral parietal lesions to discriminate the features of a target surrounded by distractors of variable contrast. In the presence of distractors, the patient was impaired at discriminating both grating orientation and faces, and the magnitude of the impairment increased with distractor salience. These attentional deficits are remarkably similar to those caused by damage to monkey extrastriate regions V4 and/or TEO, which are thought to be recipients of top-down attentional feedback. In contrast to the effects of V4 and TEO lesions, however, the parietal lesions impaired performance even with widely spaced targets and distractors, a finding consistent with the projections of parietal cortex to visual processing areas covering a wide range of receptive field sizes and eccentricities.
Assessing the Impact of Alternative Water Pricing Schemes on Income Distribution

The reform of water pricing policies may represent an effective instrument for enhancing the efficient use of water resource. However, policy makers fear that a change in the pricing methods may cause income loss for some farmers, and that this income inequality may generate public discontent and policy inertia. The aim of this paper was to compare some pricing methods in order to measure their effects on income distribution. The analysis focuses on the income distribution among different types of farms, and the income distribution between different social groups (landowners, capitalists and workers) in the short term. A linear programing model based on expected utility theory is used to take into account the effect of commodity prices and rainfall variability, which are among the most relevant factors affecting farmers' income. According to the findings, water pricing schemes do not affect the income distribution among farm types, although a significant impact emerges on the distribution among social groups, and in particular on the wages of temporary workers. Copyright (c) 2010 The Authors. Journal compilation (c) 2010 The Agricultural Economics Society.
Management's role in shaping organizational culture.

AIM The present study addresses the importance of the manager's role in the development and maintenance of organizational culture. It describes the types of cultures that exist and manager characteristics that are essential to facilitating a healthy workplace. BACKGROUND While many managers do not deny the importance of organizational culture in employee satisfaction, few fail to realize the direct impact they have in shaping it. It is oftentimes believed that cultures are predetermined; however, this is a false assumption. It is crucial that managers at all levels are aware of their roles and responsibilities in upholding positive workplace environments that can increase employee satisfaction. Dissatisfaction is the major cause of turnover and can have detrimental cost and environmental effects on the agency. EVALUATION Four critical components of culture (i.e. trust and trustworthiness, empowerment and delegation, consistency and mentorship) are discussed, as is the role of managers in turning these into positive cultural traits. The viewpoints of several authors, such as Stephen Covey, Mark McCormack and Charles Handy, are explored in relation to the development of organizational culture. Additional theories--Kanter's 'Theory of Organizational Empowerment', Locke's 'Goal-setting Theory' and the 'Social Exchange Theory'- supplement these viewpoints. CONCLUSIONS Managers are always under the magnifying glass, with each action carefully scrutinized by subordinates. They must exercise caution when making decisions, ensuring that fairness and equitability exists among staff, and that ethical standards are upheld on a continual basis. The four cultural components, viewed as managerial traits of trust and trustworthiness, empowerment, consistency and mentorship coexist at all times regardless of the type of culture. Managers must put support systems and other mechanisms into place that allow employees the opportunity to empower themselves and to flourish, thus increasing their own effectiveness as well as that of the organization.
Is There a Limit to the Accuracy of Equity Valuation Using Multiples?

We investigate the reasons for there being an apparent limit to the accuracy of valuation using multiples, when it is implemented in a standard way. We find that most of the error comes from failing to correct known biases in earnings forecasts. Another part comes from mismatching observable characteristics of target firms but the only characteristic that matters is growth. A smaller part comes from mismatching unobservable but persistent characteristics of the target firm. We develop a procedure to eliminate these errors, which reduces the variance of valuation errors by more than 60%. The remaining error is mainly random noise.
Securing Approval: Domestic Politics and Multilateral Authorization for War

Among the most momentous decisions that leaders of a state are called upon to make is whether or not to initiate warfare. How their military will fare against the opponent may be the first consideration, but not far behind are concerns about domestic political response and the reaction of the international community. "Securing Approval" makes clear the relationship between these two seemingly distinct concerns, demonstrating how multilateral security organizations like the UN influence foreign policy through public opinion without ever exercising direct enforcement power. While UN approval of a proposed action often bolsters public support, its refusal of endorsement may conversely send a strong signal to domestic audiences that the action will be exceedingly costly or overly aggressive. With a cogent theoretical and empirical argument, Terrence L. Chapman provides new evidence for how multilateral organizations matter in security affairs as well as a new way of thinking about the design and function of these institutions.
CW performance of an InGaAs-GaAs-AlGaAs laterally-coupled distributed feedback (LC-DFB) ridge laser diode

Single-mode distributed feedback (DFB) laser diodes typically require a two-step epitaxial growth or use of a corrugated substrate. We demonstrate InGaAs-GaAs-AlGaAs DFB lasers fabricated from a single epitaxial growth using lateral evanescent coupling of the optical field to a surface grating etched along the sides of the ridge. A CW threshold current of 25 mA and external quantum efficiency of 0.48 mW/mA per facet were measured for a 1 mm cavity length device with anti-reflection coated facets. Single-mode output powers as high as 11 mW per facet at 935 nm wavelength were attained. A coupling coefficient of at least 5.8 cm/sup -1/ was calculated from the subthreshold spectrum taking into account the 2% residual facet reflectivity. <<ETX>>
The role of multiple institutions in the management of micro spring forests in Ukerewe, Tanzania.

Planners of development interventions often assume that natural resource use and management problems can be addressed by applying a single model for different village communities. This perspective fails to recognize the fact that villagers are not passive recipients of interventions, but that they are actively engaged in the shaping and adaptation of external law, rules, and regulations to fit locality-specific situations. Also, most institutional studies have a sectoral approach focusing on one type of natural resources only and failing to consider the mutual dependency of different resources and their users in multiple resource systems. In order to address these issues and develop a better understanding of local dynamics and differences through time and place, we need a study that recognizes the multiple resource systems and the critical role of human agency in solving resource use problems. This PhD research focuses on the use and management of water and forest as integrated resource systems to assess the process of institutional bricolage as a result of external interventions and modernization. The study includes six cases of micro spring forests on Ukerewe main Island in Lake Victoria, Tanzania, and describes the role of resource users in negotiating, transforming and adapting the newly introduced institutions to the locally existing institutional frames. Villagers usually see the management of water sources as interrelated with the management of the micro spring forest vegetation. The study demonstrates to what extend and how changes in the institutional organisation for the use and management of water sources affect the forest vegetation. Modern resource governance is usually carried out along sector lines. Results from these cases clearly underscore the need to regard water sources and forest vegetation as integrated resource systems, and to organise structural interventions accordingly, which is along inter-sector or inter-departmental lines of intervention.
Dual Free Adaptive Minibatch SDCA for Empirical Risk Minimization

In this paper we develop an adaptive dual free Stochastic Dual Coordinate Ascent (adfSDCA) algorithm for regularized empirical risk minimization problems. This is motivated by the recent work on dual free SDCA of Shalev-Shwartz (2016). The novelty of our approach is that the coordinates to update at each iteration are selected non-uniformly from an adaptive probability distribution, and this extends the previously mentioned work which only allowed for a uniform selection of "dual" coordinates from a fixed probability distribution. We describe an efficient iterative procedure for generating the non-uniform samples, where the scheme selects the coordinate with the greatest potential to decrease the sub-optimality of the current iterate. We also propose a heuristic variant of adfSDCA that is more aggressive than the standard approach. Furthermore, in order to utilize multi-core machines we consider a mini-batch adfSDCA algorithm and develop complexity results that guarantee the algorithm's convergence. The work is concluded with several numerical experiments to demonstrate the practical benefits of the proposed approach.
Participation Of Family-Women In Agricultural Production : A Case Study Of Jaffna District, Sri Lanka

Family women play significant and crucial role in agricultural development and allied fields. Several factor both economic and non economic factors are responsible for women participation. However, it is most unfortune that role of women in agriculture has not highlighted.Therefore the effort were made to analyse the work performed by women in agriculture. This study was under taken in Valikamam area of Jaffna district. A total of 185 household were selected through proportionate random sampling. The selected respondents were interview personally using pre tested well structured questionnaire. The data were analysed using appropriate statistical tool -probit model. The finding showed that the women contribution to the agricultural production is highly in family-women. The family-women age, income level and tenure rights had inverse relationship with participation in agriculture while, educational level, years of experience, distance of the woman’s farm from homestead, member of cooperative ,woman contribution in agriculture ,extension services and level of contribution had positive and significant relationship. Keywords :agricultural production , family-women, valikamam , probit.
Demystifying low-power wide-area communications for city IoT applications

Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) communication technologies have the potential to provide a step change in the enablement of cost-effective and energy efficient Internet of Things (IoT) applications. With an increase in the number of offerings available the real performance of these emerging technologies remain unclear. That is, each technology comes with its own advantages and limitations; yet there is a lack of comparative studies that examine their trade-offs based on empirical evidence. This poses a major challenge to IoT solution architects and developers in selecting an appropriate technology for an envisioned IoT application in a given deployment context. In this paper, we look beyond data sheets and white papers of LPWA communication technologies and provide insights into the performance of three emerging LPWA solutions based on real world experiments with different traffic loads and in different urban deployment contexts. Under the context of this study, specialized hardware was created to incorporate the different technologies and provide scientific quantitative and qualitative information related to data rates, success rates, transmission mode energy and power consumption, and communication ranges. The results of experimentation highlight the practicalities of placing LPWA technologies in real spaces and provide guidelines to IoT solution developers in terms of LPWA technology selection. Overall aim is to facilitate the design of new LPWA technologies and adaptive communication strategies that inform future IoT platforms.
Arbitrage Theory in Continuous Time

The fourth edition of this textbook on pricing and hedging of financial derivatives, now also including dynamic equilibrium theory, continues to combine sound mathematical principles with economic applications. Concentrating on the probabilistic theory of continuous time arbitrage pricing of financial derivatives, including stochastic optimal control theory and optimal stopping theory, the book is designed for graduate students in economics and mathematics, and combines the necessary mathematical background with a solid economic focus. It includes a solved example for every new technique presented, contains numerous exercises, and suggests further reading in each chapter. All concepts and ideas are discussed, not only from a mathematics point of view, but the mathematical theory is also always supplemented with lots of intuitive economic arguments. In the substantially extended fourth edition Tomas Björk has added completely new chapters on incomplete markets, treating such topics as the Esscher transform, the minimal martingale measure, f-divergences, optimal investment theory for incomplete markets, and good deal bounds. There is also an entirely new part of the book presenting dynamic equilibrium theory. This includes several chapters on unit net supply endowments models, and the Cox–Ingersoll–Ross equilibrium factor model (including the CIR equilibrium interest rate model). Providing two full treatments of arbitrage theory—the classical delta hedging approach and the modern martingale approach—the book is written in such a way that these approaches can be studied independently of each other, thus providing the less mathematically oriented reader with a self-contained introduction to arbitrage theory and equilibrium theory, while at the same time allowing the more advanced student to see the full theory in action.
A Novel Attempt to Standardize Results of CFD Simulations Basing on Spatial Configuration of Aortic Stent-Grafts

Currently, studies connected with Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) techniques focus on assessing hemodynamic of blood flow in vessels in different conditions e.g. after stent-graft’s placement. The paper propose a novel method of standardization of results obtained from calculations of stent-grafts' “pushing forces” (cumulative WSS—Wall Shear Stress), and describes its usefulness in diagnostic process. AngioCT data from 27 patients were used to reconstruct 3D geometries of stent-grafts which next were used to create respective reference cylinders. We made an assumption that both the side surface and the height of a stent-graft and a reference cylinder were equal. The proposed algorithm in conjunction with a stent-graft “pushing forces” on an implant wall, allowed us to determine which spatial configuration of a stent-graft predispose to the higher risk of its migration. For stent-grafts close to cylindrical shape (shape factor φ close to 1) WSS value was about 267Pa, while for stent-grafts different from cylindrical shape (φ close to 2) WSS value was about 635Pa. It was also noticed that deformation in the stent-graft’s bifurcation part impaired blood flow hemodynamic. Concluding the proposed algorithm of standardization proved its usefulness in estimating the WSS values that may be useful in diagnostic process. Angular bends or tortuosity in bifurcations of an aortic implant should be considered in further studies of estimation of the risk of implantation failure.