Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Aboriginal users of Canadian quitlines: an exploratory analysis

Objectives: To conduct an exploratory, comparative study of the utilisation and effectiveness of tobacco cessation quitlines among aboriginal and non-aboriginal Canadian smokers. Setting: Population based quitlines that provide free cessation information, advice and counselling to Canadian smokers. Subjects: First time quitline callers, age 18 years of age and over, who called the quitline between August 2001 and December 2005 and who completed the evaluation and provided data on their ethnic status (n = 7082). Main measures: Demographic characteristics and tobacco behaviours of participants at intake and follow-up; reasons for calling; actions taken toward quitting, and 6-month follow-up quit rates. Results: 7% of evaluation participants in the time period reported aboriginal origins. Aboriginal participants were younger than non-aboriginals but had similar smoking status and level of addiction at intake. Concern about future health and current health problems were the most common reasons aboriginal participants called. Six months after intake aboriginals and non-aboriginals had taken similar actions with 57% making a 24-hour quit attempt. Quit rates were higher for aboriginals than non-aboriginals, particularly for men. The 6-month prolonged abstinence rate for aboriginal men was 16.7% compared with 7.2% for aboriginal women and 9.4% and 8.3% for non-aboriginal men and women, respectively. Conclusions: This exploratory analysis showed that even without targeted promotion, aboriginal smokers do call Canadian quitlines, primarily for health related reasons. We also showed that the quitlines are effective at helping them to quit. As a population focused intervention, quitlines can reach a large proportion of smokers in a cost efficient manner. In aboriginal communities where smoking rates exceed 50% and multiple health risks and chronic diseases already exist, eliminating non-ceremonial tobacco use must be a priority. Our results, although exploratory, suggest quitlines can be an effective addition to aboriginal tobacco cessation strategies.
Short term stability of verbal memory impairment in mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease measured using the International Shopping List Test

There is a need for culture neutral neuropsychological instruments. The International Shopping List Test (ISLT) is sensitive to memory impairment in Alzheimer's disease (AD) in different cultural groups, although its sensitivity to mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and ability to be given repeatedly at short retest intervals is unknown. Performance on the ISLT was compared between groups of healthy adults, MCI, and AD from the Australian Imaging Biomarkers and Lifestyle study of ageing. Subjects were assessed four times in three months. In each group, the ISLT performance measures had high test–retest reliability, and group means remained stable over time. There was no difference between groups on within-subject variability. These data suggest that in English-speaking samples, the ISLT is sensitive to MCI and can be given repeatedly in order to assess change in memory.
Building Resilience: A meta-analysis of Oxfam’s resilience Effectiveness Reviews

Oxfam’s Effectiveness Reviews evaluate the impact of the organization’s projects on the lives of those they are intended to help. This research paper uses statistical meta-analysis to summarise the results of all 16 Effectiveness Reviews carried out under the theme of resilience between 2011 and 2015. The paper finds that projects evaluated had a significant positive impact overall, as measured by an index of contextually-appropriate indicators of resilience. However, there are important differences in impact between different regions of the world. The meta-analysis also reveals a difference in the level of resilience by the gender of the head of household, and provides some insights into the resilience measurement approach.
Calculation of the lattice constant of solids with semilocal functionals

shown to be better than the PBE functional for many but not all compounds. Nevertheless, we note that for some of these new GGA functionals a general improvement of the structural properties is accompanied by a worsening of the thermochemical properties, e.g., the cohesive energy see, e.g., Ref. 19. More generally, due to their rather simple mathematical form dependence on the electron density and its derivative , the accuracy that can be reached with GGA functionals is limited. 20 Therefore more advanced and sometimes more expensive functionals, e.g., the meta-GGA Ref. 21 and hybrid 7 functionals, have been proposed.
Safety, Tolerability, and Clinical Response After Fecal Transplantation in Children and Young Adults With Ulcerative Colitis

Background and Objective: Colonic dysbiosis contributes to the development of colonic inflammation in ulcerative colitis (UC). Fecal microbial transplantation (FMT) is being proposed as a novel treatment for UC because it can eliminate dysbiosis; however, no prospective data exist. We initiated a pilot study to evaluate feasibility and safety of FMT in children with UC. Methods: Ten children, 7 to 21 years of age, with mild-to-moderate UC (pediatric UC activity index [PUCAI] between 15 and 65) received freshly prepared fecal enemas daily for 5 days. Data on tolerability, adverse events, and disease activity were collected during FMT and weekly for 4 weeks after FMT. Clinical response was defined as decrease in PUCAI by >15, and decrease in PUCAI to <10 was considered clinical remission. Results: No serious adverse events were noted. Mild (cramping, fullness, flatulence, bloating, diarrhea, and blood in stool) to moderate (fever) adverse events were self-limiting. One subject could not retain fecal enemas. Average tolerated enema volume by remaining 9 subjects was 165 mL/day. After FMT, 7 of the 9 (78%) subjects showed clinical response within 1 week, 6 of the 9 (67%) subjects maintained clinical response at 1 month, and 3 of the 9 (33%) subjects achieved clinical remission at 1 week after FMT. Median PUCAI significantly improved after FMT (P = 0.03) compared with the baseline. Conclusions: Fecal enemas were feasible and tolerated by children with UC. Adverse events were acceptable, self-limiting, and manageable by subjects. FMT indicated efficacy in the treatment of UC.
Presynaptic inhibition of excitatory synaptic transmission by adenosine in rat hippocampus: analysis of unitary EPSP variance measured by whole- cell recording

We have utilized the favorable signal-to-noise ratios provided by whole- cell recording, combined with variance analysis, to determine the pre- or postsynaptic actions of a variety of manipulations on unitary EPSPs evoked by low-intensity stimulation of afferents to CA1 pyramidal neurons in slices of hippocampus. Estimates of quantal content (mcv) were determined by calculating the ratio of the squared average unitary EPSP amplitude (determined from 150–275 responses) to the variance of these responses (M2/sigma 2), while quantal amplitudes (qcv) were estimated by calculating the ratio of the response variance to average EPSP size (sigma 2/M). Estimates of mcv were highly correlated with those determined using the method of failures (mf). With paired stimulation (50 msec interpulse interval) there was a significant facilitation of the second unitary EPSP, accompanied by an increase in mcv, but not qcv, suggesting that this facilitation was of presynaptic origin. Superfusion of hippocampal slices with various concentrations of adenosine, the A1-selective adenosine receptor agonist cyclohexyladenosine, or the Ca2+ channel blocker cadmium significantly reduced average unitary EPSP amplitudes and mcv, without significantly altering qcv, suggesting a presynaptic locus for this inhibition. The 50% effective concentration for the apparent presynaptic action of adenosine on mcv in the present study (5.7 microM; 95% confidence limits = 4.2–7.7 microM) was significantly lower than its EC50 for reducing conventional, large EPSPs (33 microM; recorded with high- resistance microelectrodes), or extracellular field EPSPs (29 microM), as previously reported by this laboratory. The glutamate receptor antagonist 6,7-dinitroquinoxaline-2,3-dione (DNQX) reduced average unitary EPSP amplitudes; in contrast to the above manipulations, it had no effect on mcv, but significantly altered qcv, which is consistent with its presumed postsynaptic mechanism of action. We conclude from these data that adenosine presynaptically reduces synaptic strength at Schaffer collateral-commissural synapses in the hippocampus by diminishing the number of quanta released, not by reducing the size of these individual quanta or postsynaptic sensitivity to excitatory neurotransmitter. These results suggest that the mechanism by which adenosine inhibits synaptic transmission in the hippocampus is similar, if not identical, to the mechanism by which it inhibits synaptic transmission at the neuromuscular junction.
How Does Age at Onset Influence the Outcome of Autoimmune Diseases?

The age at onset refers to the time period at which an individual experiences the first symptoms of a disease. In autoimmune diseases (ADs), these symptoms can be subtle but are very relevant for diagnosis. They can appear during childhood, adulthood or late in life and may vary depending on the age at onset. Variables like mortality and morbidity and the role of genes will be reviewed with a focus on the major autoimmune disorders, namely, systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), rheumatoid arthritis (RA), multiple sclerosis (MS), type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1D), Sjögren's syndrome, and autoimmune thyroiditis (AITD). Early age at onset is a worst prognostic factor for some ADs (i.e., SLE and T1D), while for others it does not have a significant influence on the course of disease (i.e., SS) or no unanimous consensus exists (i.e., RA and MS).
Transfer Pricing by U.S.-Based Multinational Firms

This paper examines how prices set by multinational firms vary across arm's-length and related-party customers. Comparing prices within firms, products, destination countries, modes of transport and month, we find that the prices U.S. exporters set for their arm's-length customers are substantially larger than the prices recorded for related-parties. This price wedge is smaller for commodities than for differentiated goods, is increasing in firm size and firm export share, and is greater for goods sent to countries with lower corporate tax rates and higher tariffs. We also find that changes in exchange rates have differential effects on arm's-length and related-party prices; an appreciation of the dollar reduces the difference between the prices.
Two-Layer Image Resizing for Scalable CODEC

Resizing compressed images is often needed for different display, storage and transmission. Based on the analysis of energy reserving capacity for different basis vectors, we propose a two-layer downsizing scheme, where the elementary layer represents the low frequency components of the image, while some high frequency details can be recovered from the enhancement layer. The new method provides a solution for low definition image scalable transmission, at the same time, provides a potential tool to rationally recover the high definition information. Experimental results show that the new scheme exhibits better picture quality than some current downsizing approaches, with a comparable computational cost
Offline Handwriting Recognition with Multidimensional Recurrent Neural Networks

Ofﬂine handwriting recognition—the automatic transcription of images of hand-written text—is a challenging task that combines computer vision with sequence learning. In most systems the two elements are handled separately, with sophisticated preprocessing techniques used to extract the image features and sequential models such as HMMs used to provide the transcriptions. By combining two recent innovations in neural networks—multidimensional recurrent neural networks and connectionist temporal classiﬁcation—this paper introduces a globally trained ofﬂine handwriting recogniser that takes raw pixel data as input. Unlike competing systems, it does not require any alphabet speciﬁc preprocessing, and can therefore be used unchanged for any language. Evidence of its generality and power is provided by data from a recent international Arabic recognition competition, where it outperformed all entries (91.4% accuracy compared to 87.2% for the competition winner) despite the fact that neither author understands a word of Arabic.
Information Capacity of MIMO Channels with Relative Entropy Constraint

This paper addresses the issue of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless channel capacity, when the probability distribution of the channel matrix p(H) is not completely known to the transmitter and the receiver. The partial knowledge of a true probability distribution of the channel matrix is modelled by using a relative entropy D(pparq). All possible channel matrix distributions p(H) satisfy D(pparpnom) les d, d ges 0, i.e., they lie within d distance from the so-called nominal channel matrix distribution pnom(H). The information channel capacity is defined as a maximin optimization problem, where the mutual information is a pay-off function. The minimum is with respect to the channel matrix distribution, and the maximum is with respect to the covariance matrix of a transmitted signal. Based on the derived characteristics of the pay-off function, the formula for the channel matrix distribution, which minimizes the mutual information, is derived. In the case of the Rayleigh fading, the formula for the information capacity and the optimal transmit covariance matrix are obtained. In addition, the existence of the saddle point of the maximin optimization problem is established for this particular case
Software Modification Aided Transient Error Tolerance for Embedded Systems

Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components are increasingly being employed in embedded systems due to their high performance at low cost. With emerging reliability requirements, design of these components using traditional hardware redundancy incur large overheads, time-demanding re-design and validation. To reduce the design time with shorter time-to-market requirements, software-only reliable design techniques can provide with an effective and low-cost alternative. This paper presents a novel, architecture-independent software modification tool, SMART (Software Modification Aided transient eRror Tolerance) for effective error detection and tolerance. To detect transient errors in processor data path, control flow and memory at reasonable system overheads, the tool incorporates selective and non-intrusive data duplication and dynamic signature comparison. Also, to mitigate the impact of the detected errors, it facilitates further software modification implementing software-based check-pointing. Due to automatic software based source-to-source modification tailored to a given reliability requirement, the tool requires no re-design effort, hardware- or compiler-level intervention. We evaluate the effectiveness of the tool using a Xentium processor based system as a case study of COTS based systems. Using various benchmark applications with single-event upset (SEUs) based error model, we show that up to 91% of the errors can be detected or masked with reasonable performance, energy and memory footprint overheads.
Characteristics of delayed intracerebral hemorrhage after ventriculoperitoneal shunt insertion

Background Delayed intracerebral hemorrhage after ventriculoperitoneal (VP) shunt insertion is rare and has not been well investigated previously. Its characteristics is still unknown. Objective We reported 12 patients with delayed intracerebral hemorrhage after VP shunt to investigate the potential risk factors and the outcome. Results 12 patients (1.59%) of all the 754 hydrocephalus had delayed intracerebral hemorrhage after VP shunt insertion. 4 patients were women and 8 patients were men, ranging in age from 50 to 76 years. The delayed cerebral hemorrhage from day 3 to day 7 post operation was diagnosed by repeated CT. The delayed intracerebral hemorrhage was significantly related to age, prior craniotomy operation history and manipulation of valve system (3–7 days). Neither gender sexuality nor potential risk factors for postoperative hemorrhage (including anticoagulation/antiplatelet status, liver disease, diabetes, hypertension), time of shunt attempt affected the happen of delayed intracerebral hemorrhage. Materials and Methods The clinical characteristics including sex, age, anticoagulation/antiplatelet status, liver disease, diabetes, hypertension, craniotomy operation history, manipulation of valve system and time of shunt attempt of 754 patients who were surgically treated of VP shunt at the first affiliated hospital of Soochow University between 2007 and 2013 were reviewed retrospectively. The potential risk factors of the delayed intracerebral hemorrhage were statistically analyzed. Conclusions This study summarizes the presentation and outcome of a series of 12 patients with delayed intracerebral hemorrhage after VP shunt. Age ≥ 60 years, prior craniotomy operation and manipulation of the valve system are statistically significant to the delayed hematoma secondary to VP shunt.
A Rapid, Automated Enzymatic Fluorometric Assay for Determination of d-Arabinitol in Serum

ABSTRACT A rapid enzymatic fluorometric assay for measuringd-arabinitol in serum was developed using recombinantd-arabinitol dehydrogenase from Candida albicans (rArDH). rArDH was produced in Escherichia coli and purified by dye-ligand affinity chromatography. rArDH was highly specific for d-arabinitol, cross-reacting only with xylitol (4.9%) among all polyols tested. A Cobas Fara II centrifugal autoanalyzer (Roche) was used to measure NADH fluorometrically when rArDH and NAD were added to serum extracts, andd-arabinitol concentrations were calculated from standard curves derived from pooled human serum containing known amounts ofd-arabinitol. The method was precise (mean intra-assay coefficients of variation [CVs], 0.8%, and mean interassay CVs, 1.6%) and rapid (3.5 min per assay) and showed excellent recovery of added d-arabinitol in serum (mean recovery rate, 101%). The mean and median d-arabinitol/creatinine ratios were 2.74 and 2.23 μM/mg/dl, respectively, for the 11 patients with candidemia compared to 1.14 and 1.23 μM/mg/dl, respectively, for 10 healthy controls (P < 0.01). These results confirm earlier studies showing that serum d-arabinitol measurement may help to promptly diagnose invasive candidiasis. The technique shows a significant improvement in terms of accuracy, cost, simplicity, specificity, and speed compared with gas chromatography, mass spectrometry, and earlier enzymatic assays.
Range-Based Underwater Vehicle Localization in the Presence of Unknown Ocean Currents: Theory and Experiments

This paper addresses the problem of range-based autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) localization in the presence of unknown ocean currents. In the setup adopted, the AUV is equipped with an attitude and heading reference system, a depth sensor, and an acoustic device that provides measurements of its distance to a set of stationary beacons. We consider the situation where the number of active beacons is not known in advance and may vary with time. The objective is to simultaneously localize the AUV and beacons, that is, to find their positions underwater. We start by deriving conditions under which it is possible to reconstruct the initial condition of the system under study. We consider the design model where the states evolve continuously with time, but the range measurements are only available at discrete instants of time, possibly in a nonuniform manner. For trimming maneuvers that correspond to AUV trajectories with constant linear and angular velocities expressed in the body frame, we show that if either the position of one of the beacons or the initial position of the AUV is known, then even without depth information the system is weakly observable (i.e., the set of states that are indistinguishable from a given initial configuration contains only a set of finite isolated points). If depth measurements are also available, then the system is observable even in the presence of unknown constant ocean currents. Equipped with these results, we then propose a novel observer for simultaneous AUV and beacon localization. The mathematical setup exploited borrows from minimum-energy estimation theory applied to continuous-time processes with discrete measurements, projection filters, and multiple-model estimation techniques. Convergence analysis of the resulting observer system yields conditions under which the estimation errors converge to a small neighborhood of the origin (whose size depends on the magnitude of the process and measurement noise). The results of field experiments with a robotic marine vehicle show the efficacy of the simultaneous AUV/multiple beacon localization system proposed.
Modelling changing population distributions: an example of the Kenyan Coast, 1979–2009

ABSTRACT Large-scale gridded population datasets are usually produced for the year of input census data using a top-down approach and projected backward and forward in time using national growth rates. Such temporal projections do not include any subnational variation in population distribution trends and ignore changes in geographical covariates such as urban land cover changes. Improved predictions of population distribution changes over time require the use of a limited number of covariates that are time-invariant or temporally explicit. Here we make use of recently released multi-temporal high-resolution global settlement layers, historical census data and latest developments in population distribution modelling methods to reconstruct population distribution changes over 30 years across the Kenyan Coast. We explore the methodological challenges associated with the production of gridded population distribution time-series in data-scarce countries and show that trade-offs have to be found between spatial and temporal resolutions when selecting the best modelling approach. Strategies used to fill data gaps may vary according to the local context and the objective of the study. This work will hopefully serve as a benchmark for future developments of population distribution time-series that are increasingly required for population-at-risk estimations and spatial modelling in various fields.