Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy of serum accurately detects prostate cancer in patients with prostate-specific antigen levels of 4–10 ng/mL

The surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) of blood serum was investigated to differentiate between prostate cancer (PCa) and benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) in males with a prostate-specific antigen level of 4–10 ng/mL, so as to reduce unnecessary biopsies. A total of 240 SERS spectra from blood serum were acquired from 40 PCa subjects and 40 BPH subjects who had all received prostate biopsies and were given a pathological diagnosis. Multivariate statistical techniques, including principal component analysis (PCA) and linear discriminant analysis (LDA) diagnostic algorithms, were used to analyze the spectra data of serum from patients in control (CTR), PCa and BPH groups; results offered a sensitivity of 97.5%, a specificity of 100.0%, a precision of 100.0% and an accuracy of 99.2% for CTR; a sensitivity of 90.0%, a specificity of 97.5%, a precision of 94.7% and an accuracy of 98.3% for BPH; a sensitivity of 95.0%, a specificity of 93.8%, a precision of 88.4% and an accuracy of 94.2% for PCa. Similarly, this technique can significantly differentiate low- and high-risk PCa with an accuracy of 92.3%, a specificity of 95% and a sensitivity of 89.5%. The results suggest that analyzing blood serum using SERS combined with PCA–LDA diagnostic algorithms is a promising clinical tool for PCa diagnosis and assessment.
Towards a model of programmers' cognitive processes in software maintenance: A structural learning theory approach for debugging

No comprehensive model of programmers' cognitive processes in software maintenance exists. As a first step in formulating such a model, a cognitive processes model for application debugging is developed. The new model is grounded on structural learning theory, which integrates both declarative models, such as Brooks's (1983) programmer comprehension model, and procedural knowledge such as Gould's (1975) process model and Vessey's (1986) functional model as components. The theoretical foundation of structural learning theory as a reference discipline for exploring software maintenance is provided. Not only are the benefits of the theory examined, but criticisms that have been levied are addressed. Based upon these consequences, the use of structural learning theory as applied to software maintenance is instantiated for the software debugging domain—the result is an approach that unites declarative and procedural knowledge. The practical and research implications of the new approach is then discussed.
RNA-Sequencing Gene Expression Profiling of Orbital Adipose-Derived Stem Cell Population Implicate HOX Genes and WNT Signaling Dysregulation in the Pathogenesis of Thyroid-Associated Orbitopathy

Purpose The purpose of this study was to characterize the intrinsic cellular properties of orbital adipose-derived stem cells (OASC) from patients with thyroid-associated orbitopathy (TAO) and healthy controls. Methods Orbital adipose tissue was collected from a total of nine patients: four controls and five patients with TAO. Isolated OASC were characterized with mesenchymal stem cell–specific markers. Orbital adipose-derived stem cells were differentiated into three lineages: chondrocytes, osteocytes, and adipocytes. Reverse transcription PCR of genes involved in the adipogenesis, chondrogenesis, and osteogenesis pathways were selected to assay the differentiation capacities. RNA sequencing analysis (RNA-seq) was performed and results were compared to assess for differences in gene expression between TAO and controls. Selected top-ranked results were confirmed by RT-PCR. Results Orbital adipose-derived stem cells isolated from orbital fat expressed high levels of mesenchymal stem cell markers, but low levels of the pluripotent stem cell markers. Orbital adipose-derived stem cells isolated from TAO patients exhibited an increase in adipogenesis, and a decrease in chondrogenesis and osteogenesis. RNA-seq disclosed 54 differentially expressed genes. In TAO OASC, expression of early neural crest progenitor marker (WNT signaling, ZIC genes and MSX2) was lost. Meanwhile, ectopic expression of HOXB2 and HOXB3 was found in the OASC from TAO. Conclusion Our results suggest that there are intrinsic genetic and cellular differences in the OASC populations derived from TAO patients. The upregulation in adipogenesis in OASC of TAO may be is consistent with the clinical phenotype. Downregulation of early neural crest markers and ectopic expression of HOXB2 and HOXB3 in TAO OASC demonstrate dysregulation of developmental and tissue patterning pathways.
Reliability and validity of the computerized Revised Token Test: comparison of reading and listening versions in persons with and without aphasia.

PURPOSE This study assessed the reliability and validity of intermodality associations and differences in persons with aphasia (PWA) and healthy controls (HC) on a computerized listening and 3 reading versions of the Revised Token Test (RTT; McNeil & Prescott, 1978). METHOD Thirty PWA and 30 HC completed the test versions, including a complete replication. Reading versions varied according to stimulus presentation method: (a) full-sentence presentation, (b) self-paced word-by-word full-sentence construction, and (c) self-paced word-by-word presentation with each word removed with the onset of the next word. Participants also received tests of aphasia and reading severity. RESULTS The listening version produced higher overall mean scores than each of the reading versions. Differences were small and within 1 standard error of measurement of each version. Overall score test-retest reliability among versions for PWA ranged from r=. 89 to r=. 97. Correlations between the listening and reading versions ranged from r=. 79 to r=. 85. All versions correlated highly with aphasia and reading severity. Correlations were generally low for the HC due to restricted variability. Factor analysis yielded a 2-factor solution for PWA and a single-factor for HC. CONCLUSIONS Intermodality differences were small, and all 4 versions were reliable, concurrently valid, and sensitive to similar linguistic processing difficulties in PWA.
elationship between the performance of parental inbred lines and hybrids for ood-feed traits in maize ( Zea mays L . ) in Ethiopia erhanu

Prediction of hybrid performance from inbred lines per se is crucial in targeted improvement of new traits such as stover fodder quality. The present study investigated the trend in variability and association between food and fodder traits in inbred parents and the hybrids derived from them and assessed the general combining ability (GCA) of inbred lines for both food and fodder traits. Sixteen inbred lines and sixty single cross hybrids generated by a 10 × 6 factorial mating design were evaluated for grain and stover yield and a range of laboratory stover fodder quality traits across three environments in Ethiopia. The hybrid and inbred line trials were planted in adjacent blocks in the same fields using an alpha lattice experimental design. Genotypes in both hybrids and inbred trials showed highly significant differences for all the traits studied. Generally, hybrids had higher grain and stover yields and lower stover fodder quality traits than the inbred lines. Both the magnitude and direction of relationship for almost all traits were similar among genotypes in the inbred and hybrid trials. General combining abilities of both lines and testers and specific combining ability (SCA) of line by tester interactions were significant for most traits studied. The highly significant GCA effects observed for most traits and the greater relative importance of GCA (lines and testers) as compared to SCA for grain yield and most stover fodder quality traits suggest the importance of additive gene effects in controlling grain and stover yield as well as stover fodder quality. Important stover fodder quality traits such as digestibility and metabolizable energy were highly heritable (h2 = 0.79–0.81) and the genotypic variations among hybrids in these traits will have implications for productivity of maize stover fed to livestock or for the income of farmers selling maize stover to fodder value chains. Significant positive relationships observed between inbred lines per se and hybrid performances for these fodder quality traits suggest the feasibility of predicting hybrid performance from the performance of the inbred lines.
Thermal, mechanical and wettability properties of some branched polyetherurethane elastomers

Abstract In this study three series of polyetherurethanes (PEU) based on Terathane ® (polytetramethyleneetherglycol - PTMEG, Mn 1400) as polyol; isophorone diisocyanate (IPDI), 4,4’-methylene-bis-(cyclohexyl-isocyanate) (HMDI) and hexamethylene diisocyanate (HDI) as aliphatic diisocyanate components; 1,4- butanediol (BD) and glycerin (Gly) as chain extenders were synthesized. The glycerin as triol is responsible for the crosslinking structures. All polyether urethanes were synthesized by prepolymer method. The PTMEG was reacted with diisocyanate to realize a diisocyanate-terminated prepolymer, which in next step was extended with blend of the 1,4-butanediol (BD) and glycerin (Gly) in different proportion. The influence of the diisocyanate structure and chain extender functionality on the thermal, mechanical and wettability properties were the aim of this study. The physical, mechanical and wettability properties of these polymers were measured according to standard methods. All polymers were characterized by conventional characterization methods. Different methods of thermal analysis (TGA and DSC) were used for characterization. Wettability was estimated by determination of the dynamic contact angle. The structures were confirmed by FTIR and H-NMR analysis. The results show that the thermal stability, mechanical and wettability properties of the final products are influenced by the diisocyanate and chain extenders nature.
Acceptability and validity of a home exercise diary used in home‐based pulmonary rehabilitation: A secondary analysis of a randomised controlled trial

Evaluating adherence to home‐based pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) could be challenging due to lack of direct supervision and the complex nature of the rehabilitation model. To measure adherence to home‐based PR in the HomeBase trial, participants were encouraged to work towards a goal of at least 30 min of whole‐body exercise on most days of the week and report their participation using a home exercise diary.
Targeted Surveillance of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus and Its Potential Use To Guide Empiric Antibiotic Therapy

ABSTRACT The present study aimed to determine the frequency of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)-positive clinical culture among hospitalized adults in different risk categories of a targeted MRSA active surveillance screening program and to assess the utility of screening in guiding empiric antibiotic therapy. We completed a prospective cohort study in which all adults admitted to non-intensive-care-unit locations who had no history of MRSA colonization or infection received targeted screening for MRSA colonization upon hospital admission. Anterior nares swab specimens were obtained from all high-risk patients, defined as those who self-reported admission to a health care facility within the previous 12 months or who had an active skin infection on admission. Data were analyzed for the subcohort of patients in whom an infection was suspected, determined by (i) receipt of antibiotics within 48 h of admission and/or (ii) the result of culture of a sample for clinical analysis (clinical culture) obtained within 48 h of admission. Overall, 29,978 patients were screened and 12,080 patients had suspected infections. A total of 46.4% were deemed to be at high risk on the basis of the definition presented above, and 11.1% of these were MRSA screening positive (colonized). Among the screening-positive patients, 23.8% had a sample positive for MRSA by clinical culture. Only 2.4% of patients deemed to be at high risk but found to be screening negative had a sample positive for MRSA by clinical culture, and 1.6% of patients deemed to be at low risk had a sample positive for MRSA by clinical culture. The risk of MRSA infection was far higher in those who were deemed to be at high risk and who were surveillance culture positive. Targeted MRSA active surveillance may be beneficial in guiding empiric anti-MRSA therapy.
Frailty screening and assessment tools: a review of characteristics and use in Public Health.

INTRODUCTION Frailty screening and assessment are a fundamental issue in Public Health in order to plan prevention programs and services. METHODOLOGY By a narrative review of the literature employing the International Narrative Systematic Assessment tool, the authors aims to develop an updated framework for the main procedures and measurement tools to assess frailty in older adults, paying attention to the use in the primary care setting. RESULTS The study selected 10 reviews published between January 2010 and December 2016 that define some characteristics of the main tools used to measure the frailty. Within the selected reviews only one of the described tools met all the criteria (multidimensionality, quick and easy administration, accurate risk prediction of negative outcomes and high sensitivity and specificity) necessary for a screening tool. CONCLUSION Accurate risk prediction of negative outcomes could be the appropriate and sufficient criteria to assess a tool aimed to detect frailty in the community-dwelling elderly population. A two-step process (a first short questionnaire to detect frailty and a second longer questionnaire to define the care demand at individual level) could represent the appropriate pathway for planning care services at community level.
Nutrition Transition and Biocultural Determinants of Obesity among Cameroonian Migrants in Urban Cameroon and France

Native of rural West Cameroon, the Bamiléké population is traditionally predisposed to obesity. Bamiléké who migrated to urban areas additionally experience the nutrition transition. We investigated the biocultural determinants of obesity in Bamiléké who migrated to urban Cameroon (Yaoundé), or urban France (Paris). We conducted qualitative interviews (n = 36; 18 men) and a quantitative survey (n = 627; 266 men) of adults using two-stage sampling strategy, to determine the association of dietary intake, physical activity and body weight norms with obesity of Bamiléké populations in these three socio-ecological areas (rural Cameroon: n = 258; urban Cameroon: n = 319; urban France: n = 50). The Bamiléké valued overweight and traditional energy-dense diets in rural and urban Cameroon. Physical activity levels were lower, consumption of processed energy-dense food was frequent and obesity levels higher in new migrants living in urban Cameroon and France. Female sex, age, duration of residence in urban areas, lower physical activity and valorisation of overweight were independently associated with obesity status. This work argues in favour of local and global health policies that account for the origin and the migration trajectories to prevent obesity in migrants.
Evaluation on Microstructure of Aluminum Alloys Dedicated to Plasma Etcher

The relationship between microstructure and anodic oxidation film on 6061 aluminum alloy dedicated to plasma etcher were mainly studied by OM, SEM and TEM. The results show that the quality of anodic oxidation film has close relationship with the microstructure of materials, the distribution of element and the morphology of secondary phases. The microstructure of foreign 6061 aluminum alloy is uniform, and there are not obviously segregation and cavity. Two kinds of secondary phases disperse over the grain, one is rich-Fe phase, and the other is Mg2Si. Certainly there are also few secondary phases distributing along the grain boundary. The sizes of all secondary phases are almost below 5mm. The size of rich-Fe phases in homemade aluminum alloys are about from 2mm to 15mm, these big-size phases will bring pin-hole defects, which form some channels sending F+ etc. into the matrix of aluminum alloy, then not only the equipment will be destroyed at last, but also products will be polluted. The evaluation on microstructure of aluminum alloy will provide scientific basis for nationalization of plasma etcher.
Approaches for the visualization of health information

Clinical reasoning leading to diagnosis or treatment decisions in the modern era can be complex due to scenarios that often involve multiple morbidities, unique patient contexts and the plethora of evidence repositories and guidelines now available. The complexity impacts in clinical group settings such as ward rounds, multidisciplinary meetings or shared care contexts where health care professionals unfamiliar with a patient's context must be briefed, usually within tight time constraints. The complexity also impacts on shared care as patients often struggle to understand clinical decision making. In this article, a case is advanced that the knowledge transfer required can be facilitated if relevant information is presented to patients and health care professionals visually. A categorisation of diagrams for this is advanced. Illustrative examples include a diagram that presents key information for a treatment decision. The suggestion is made that decisions about elements to include in diagrams vary according to patient and organisational circumstances. Insights from participants who assessed the diagrams are presented.
Opponent Modeling in Deep Reinforcement Learning

Opponent modeling is necessary in multi-agent settings where secondary agents with competing goals also adapt their strategies, yet it remains challenging because strategies interact with each other and change. Most previous work focuses on developing probabilistic models or parameterized strategies for specific applications. Inspired by the recent success of deep reinforcement learning, we present neural-based models that jointly learn a policy and the behavior of opponents. Instead of explicitly predicting the opponent's action, we encode observation of the opponents into a deep Q-Network (DQN); however, we retain explicit modeling (if desired) using multitasking. By using a Mixture-of-Experts architecture, our model automatically discovers different strategy patterns of opponents without extra supervision. We evaluate our models on a simulated soccer game and a popular trivia game, showing superior performance over DQN and its variants.
Risk factors for failure of outpatient parenteral antibiotic therapy (OPAT) in infective endocarditis

Objectives To identify risk factors for failure of outpatient antibiotic therapy (OPAT) in infective endocarditis (IE). Patients and methods We identified IE cases managed at a single centre over 12 years from a prospectively maintained database. ‘OPAT failure’ was defined as unplanned readmission or antibiotic switch due to adverse drug reaction or antibiotic resistance. We analysed patient and disease-related risk factors for OPAT failure by univariate and multivariate logistic regression. We also retrospectively collected follow-up data on adverse disease outcome (defined as IE-related death or relapse) and performed Kaplan–Meier survival analysis up to 36 months following OPAT. Results We identified 80 episodes of OPAT in IE. Failure occurred in 25/80 episodes (31.3%). On multivariate analysis, cardiac or renal failure [pooled OR 7.39 (95% CI 1.84–29.66), P = 0.005] and teicoplanin therapy [OR 8.69 (95% CI 2.01–37.47), P = 0.004] were independently associated with increased OPAT failure. OPAT failure with teicoplanin occurred despite therapeutic plasma levels. OPAT failure predicted adverse disease outcome up to 36 months (P = 0.016 log-rank test). Conclusions These data caution against selecting patients with endocarditis for OPAT in the presence of cardiac or renal failure and suggest teicoplanin therapy may be associated with suboptimal OPAT outcomes. Alternative regimens to teicoplanin in the OPAT setting should be further investigated.
The TEXTURE Benchmark: Measuring Performance of Text Queries on a Relational DBMS

We introduce a benchmark called TEXTURE (TEXT Under RElations) to measure the relative strengths and weaknesses of combining text processing with a relational workload in an RDBMS. While the well-known TREC benchmarks focus on quality, we focus on efficiency. TEXTURE is a micro-benchmark for query workloads, and considers two central text support issues that previous benchmarks did not: (1) queries with relevance ranking, rather than those that just compute all answers, and (2) a richer mix of text and relational processing, reflecting the trend toward seamless integration. In developing this benchmark, we had to address the problem of generating large text collections that reflected the (performance) characteristics of a given "seed" collection; this is essential for a controlled study of specific data characteristics and their effects on performance. In addition to presenting the benchmark, with performance numbers for three commercial DBMSs, we present and validate a synthetic generator for populating text fields.
Pinching of alkoxide jets—a route for preparing nanometre level sharp oxide fibres

The pinching phenomenon is used to shape jets of Sn(OBu)4 based viscous oligomeric melts into nanometre range sharp oxide needles. The influence of viscosity of the liquid, humidity of surrounding environment and pulling speed on formation of the needles is investigated. Optimal conditions enable reproducible preparation of needles that have tip radii down to 15–25 nm, i.e. in the range that is of considerable interest for many nanotechnological applications.
Impact of Annular Yoke Geometry on Performance of a Dynamo-Type HTS Flux Pump

Flux pumps provide a contact-free method of energizing dc currents in superconducting coils. Since a predictive quantitative theory for dynamo-type flux pumps does not exist yet, the optimization of device designs must proceed through empirical experiment. In this paper, we investigate the effect of varying the annular width of the iron stator yoke within a high-temperature superconducting dynamo. Reducing the dimensions of this iron yoke reduces the mass of cold iron within the dynamo, and hence has advantages in terms of weight, cryogenic efficiency, and eddy current losses. In this paper, we have investigated the dc output from an experimental high-temperature superconductor (HTS) dynamo in which the annular width of the iron yoke Δ<italic>r</italic> is varied across a factor of four. Varying this dimension affects the reluctance of the magnetic circuit formed between the rotor and stator. We have shown that the dynamo output is surprisingly insensitive to the size of the iron yoke. The maximum current output ( <italic>I</italic><sub>sc</sub>) is independent of Δ<italic>r</italic> at all flux gaps. At the closest magnet–stator flux gap, a fourfold increase in Δ<italic>r</italic> results in only a ∼30% increase in the open circuit voltage (<italic>V</italic><sub>oc</sub>) and internal resistance (<italic>R</italic><sub> d</sub>) of the dynamo. Our results indicate that the smallest yoke studied (Δ<italic>r</italic> = 6 mm) can be utilized with a 25.4-mm Nd-Fe-B rotor magnet, without adverse impact on the electrical performance of this type of HTS dynamo.