Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Empirical use of antibiotic therapy in the prevention of early onset sepsis in neonates: a pilot study

Introduction To identify and assess the characteristics, risk and outcome of neonates treated with empiric antibiotics for suspected early onset sepsis (EOS). Material and methods This is a retrospective study conducted at a Malaysian government hospital. Records of neonatal patients admitted within 72 h of life and prescribed with empirical antibiotic therapy for suspected EOS were reviewed. Results Three hundred and twenty-three cases met the inclusion criteria and were divided into gestational age (premature < 36 weeks; term ≥ 37 weeks) and birth weight (low birth weight (LBW) < 2.5 kg; normal body weight (NBW) ≥ 2.5 kg) groups. Premature (n = 197) and LBW (n = 194) neonates required significantly longer hospital stay, a higher degree of ventilator support and more surfactant (p = 0.001). More than 90.0% of premature and LBW neonates were diagnosed with respiratory distress syndrome, congenital pneumonia and presumed sepsis. Term (n = 123) and NBW (n = 129) neonates had greater maternal risk factors, especially meconium-stained amniotic fluid (MSAF) and perinatal asphyxia. The incidence of demonstrated EOS was 3.1%. Crystalline penicillin plus gentamicin was the standard therapy for all groups and was started within 24 h of life, with a mean treatment duration of ∼4 days. The treatment success rate was 89.0%, and only LBW neonates showed a higher risk of overall treatment failure (OR = 3.75; 95% CI: 1.22–11.53). Seventy-four percent of term and NBW neonates discharged well, while 42.0% of premature and LBW neonates required referral. Conclusions Crystalline penicillin plus gentamicin prescribed within 24 h of life is effective in the prevention of EOS. However, low birth weight neonates have a higher risk of treatment failure.
Radar Sensing Featuring Biconical Antenna and Enhanced Delay and Sum Algorithm for Early Stage Breast Cancer Detection

A biconical antenna has been developed for ultra- wideband sensing. A wide impedance bandwidth of around 115% at bandwidth 3.73{14GHz is achieved which shows that the proposed antenna exhibits a fairly sensitive sensor for microwave medical imaging applications. The sensor and instrumentation is used together with an improved version of delay and sum image reconstruction algorithm on both fatty and glandular breast phantoms. The relatively new imaging set-up provides robust reconstruction of complex permittivity proflles especially in glandular phantoms, producing results that are well matched to the geometries and composition of the tissues. Respectively, the signal-to-clutter and the signal-to-mean ratios of the improved method are consistently higher than 5dB and 10dB, corresponding to an average increase in image fldelity of more than 140% compared to conventional radar focusing technique.
The many faces of testosterone

Testosterone is more than a “male sex hormone”. It is an important contributor to the robust metabolic functioning of multiple bodily systems. The abuse of anabolic steroids by athletes over the years has been one of the major detractors from the investigation and treatment of clinical states that could be caused by or related to male hypogonadism. The unwarranted fear that testosterone therapy would induce prostate cancer has also deterred physicians form pursuing more aggressively the possibility of hypogonadism in symptomatic male patients. In addition to these two mythologies, many physicians believe that testosterone is bad for the male heart. The classical anabolic agents, 17-alkylated steroids, are, indeed, potentially harmful to the liver, to insulin action to lipid metabolism. These substances, however, are not testosterone, which has none of these adverse effects. The current evidence, in fact, strongly suggests that testosterone may be cardioprotective. There is virtually no evidence to implicate testosterone as a cause of prostate cancer. It may exacerbate an existing prostate cancer, although the evidence is flimsy, but it does not likely cause the cancer in the first place. Testosterone has stimulatory effects on bones, muscles, erythropoietin, libido, mood and cognition centres in the brain, penile erection. It is reduced in metabolic syndrome and diabetes and therapy with testosterone in these conditions may provide amelioration by lowering LDL cholesterol, blood sugar, glycated hemoglobin and insulin resistance. The best measure is bio-available testosterone which is the fraction of testosterone not bound to sex hormone binding globulin. Several forms of testosterone administration are available making compliance much less of an issue with testosterone replacement therapy.
Deep Vein Thrombosis and Pulmonary Embolism in Liver Transplant Patients: Risks and Prevention

Introduction Deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and pulmonary embolism (PE) are surgical complications estimated to occur in 5% to 10% of patients. There are limited data regarding DVT/PE in the early postoperative period in liver transplant patients. The aim of this study is to determine risk factors that influence the incidence of DVT/PE and the effectiveness of prophylaxis. Methods We reviewed the records of 999 patients who underwent initial liver transplant between January 2000 and June 2012 at Henry Ford Hospital. In 2011, a standardized prophylactic regimen using subcutaneous (SQ) heparin was initiated. All patients that developed either upper/lower extremity DVT or PE within the first 30 days of transplant formed the cohort of this study. Results On multivariate analysis, only peripherally inserted central catheter (PICC) placement and SQ heparin were associated with DVT/PE. In patients receiving heparin, 3 (1.0%) had DVT/PE versus 25 (3.5%) who did not receive heparin (P = 0.03). Sixteen (6.9%) patients that had a PICC developed DVT/PE compared with 12 (1.6%) patients without a PICC (P < 0.001). In the heparin group, DVT/PE with PICC was reduced to 3 (3.0%) versus 13 (9.9%) in those with a PICC and did not receive heparin (P = 0.03). Mean time from transplant to DVT/PE diagnosis was 12.3 days. Length of hospitalization was significantly longer in patients who developed DVT/PE (18.5 vs 10.0 days, P < 0.001). Conclusions In this study, we demonstrated that PICC placement significantly increases the likelihood of DVT/PE in liver transplant recipients. Prophylactic SQ heparin effectively reduced DVT/PE events in this patient population.
Time discretizations for Maxwell‐Bloch equations

In this article we derive new time discretizations for the numerical simulation of Maxwell‐Bloch equations. These discretizations decouple the equations, thus leading to improved efficiency. This approach may be combined with the fulfilment of physical properties, such as positiveness properties, which are not accounted for by classical schemes. Our time discretizations are moreover proved to be nonlinearly stable. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq 19: 284–300, 2003.
Generalized Stability Approach for Regularized Graphical Models

Selecting regularization parameters in penalized high-dimensional graphical models in a principled, data-driven, and computationally efficient manner continues to be one of the key challenges in high-dimensional statistics. We present substantial computational gains and conceptual generalizations of the Stability Approach to Regularization Selection (StARS), a state-of-the-art graphical model selection scheme. Using properties of the Poisson-Binomial distribution and convex non-asymptotic distributional modeling we propose lower and upper bounds on the StARS graph regularization path which results in greatly reduced computational cost without compromising regularization selection. We also generalize the StARS criterion from single edge to induced subgraph (graphlet) stability. We show that simultaneously requiring edge and graphlet stability leads to superior graph recovery performance independent of graph topology. These novel insights render Gaussian graphical model selection a routine task on standard multi-core computers.
Validation of six years of TES tropospheric ozone retrievals with ozonesonde measurements: implications for spatial patterns and temporal stability in the bias

Abstract. In this analysis, Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) V004 nadir ozone (O3) profiles are validated with more than 4400 coinciding ozonesonde measurements taken across the world from the World Ozone and Ultraviolet Radiation Data Centre (WOUDC) during the period 2005–2010. The TES observation operator was applied to the sonde data to ensure a consistent comparison between TES and ozonesonde data, i.e. without the influence of the a priori O3 profile needed to regulate the retrieval. Generally, TES V004 O3 retrievals are biased high by 2–7 ppbv (7–15%) in the troposphere, consistent with validation results from earlier studies. Because of two degrees of freedom for signal in the troposphere, we can distinguish between upper and lower troposphere mean biases, respectively ranging from −0.4 to +13.3 ppbv for the upper troposphere and +3.9 to +6.0 ppbv for the lower troposphere. Focusing on the 464 hPa retrieval level, broadly representative of the free tropospheric O3, we find differences in the TES biases for the tropics (+3 ppbv, +7%), sub-tropics (+5 ppbv, +11%), and northern (+7 ppbv, +13%) and southern mid-latitudes (+4 ppbv, +10%). The relatively long-term record (6 yr) of TES–ozonesonde comparisons allowed us to quantify temporal variations in TES biases at 464 hPa. We find that there are no discernable biases in each of these latitudinal bands; temporal variations in the bias are typically within the uncertainty of the difference between TES and ozonesondes. Establishing these bias patterns is important in order to make meaningful use of TES O3 data in applications such as model evaluation, trend analysis, or data assimilation.
Diffusion driven by collisions with the boundary

We present a mathematically rigorous derivation of a diffusion model previously introduced by the first author to model the diffusion of charged-particles moving in the gap between two plane parallel plates. The particles are subject to crossed electric and magnetic fields and to collisions against the surface of the solid plates. The surface collisions are supposed to be elastic. Under appropriate scaling assumptions, the particle distribution function converges to a function of the energy and of the longitudinal position coordinates only, which evolves in time according to a diffusion equation. A rigorous convergence proof is given. The proof relies on precise estimates on the trace of the distribution function at the boundary.
An empirical examination of CEO compensation and Internal Revenue Code Section 162(m)

Congress enacted §162(m) based upon the assumption that CEOs controlled their own compensation design. Compliance with §162(m) preserves the firm’s tax deduction for CEO compensation, but limits CEO salary and generally increases the use of risky incentives. Therefore, ceteris paribus, I predict that CEOs prefer and attempt to use their influence to secure §162(m) noncompliant compensation. To evaluate how CEOs influence firm §162(m) noncompliance, I examine the factors related to firm §162(m) noncompliance, CEO compensation design trends at firms affected by §162(m), and how the SEC’s 2003 independence governance requirements and 2006 compensation disclosure mandate affected the CEO power-§162(m) noncompliance relation. First, I find that CEO power is positively related to firm §162(m) noncompliance behavior, suggesting that CEOs use their influence to increase firm noncompliance. However, I also find that noncompliance with §162(m) is generally related to the economic determinants of CEO compensation design in a manner consistent with agency theory, and do not find consistent evidence that noncompliance is decreasing in the quality of firm governance. Therefore, the evidence does not suggest that §162(m) noncompliance is systematically the consequence of inefficient CEO influence enabled by poor quality governance, consistent with managerial power theory. I find that firm §162(m) noncompliance behavior is generally explained by agency theory. Second, I document that CEO salaries at firms affected by §162(m) tended to remain relatively flat with evidence of an informal $1 million benchmark and decreased as a percentage of total compensation. Further, the 2003 SEC board independence regulation weakened the positive relation between CEO power and CEO salary in excess of $1 million, noncompliant with §162(m), for those firms with lower pre-2003 independent governance processes. These findings suggest that §162(m) weakened CEO influence over salary levels. Third, I provide evidence that the 2006 disclosure mandate strengthened the CEO power-§162(m) noncompliance relation, instead of weakening it as arguably intended. In addition, I do not find evidence that §162(m) slowed the growth of CEO total compensation levels or increased its relation to firm performance from 1994 through 2012. These findings suggest that that §162(m) did not reduce CEO influence over their total compensation arrangements.
"Rethinking Pension Reform: Ten Myths About Social Security Systems"

Averting the Old Age Crisis, the World Bank's path-breaking publication on pensions, trenchantly notes that "myths abound in discussions of old age security. " This paper examines ten such myths in a deliberately provocative manner. Our hope is not only to spur debate during this "New Ideas About Old Age Security" conference, but more broadly to ensure that policy-makers understand the complexity of pension reform.
Heart rate estimation from facial images using filter bank

This paper introduces a new method to estimate the instantaneous heart rates from facial images obtained from video camera. In this study, facial images of a subject whose heart rate varying from 150 beats per minute (BPM) to 110 BPM in 100 seconds are captured through video camera and analyzed using filter bank. The filter bank is utilized to provide the localized temporal information. We test the proposed method on videos with duration of 20s. The proposed method is compared to short-time Fourier Transform, which can also give temporal information. Experimental results show the proposed method can provide an acceptable result. The root mean square error is about 2.31 beats per minute (BPM). The average percentage error is 1.42% while the correlation coefficient 0.96.
The slashdot zoo: mining a social network with negative edges

We analyse the corpus of user relationships of the Slashdot technology news site. The data was collected from the Slashdot Zoo feature where users of the website can tag other users as friends and foes, providing positive and negative endorsements. We adapt social network analysis techniques to the problem of negative edge weights. In particular, we consider signed variants of global network characteristics such as the clustering coefficient, node-level characteristics such as centrality and popularity measures, and link-level characteristics such as distances and similarity measures. We evaluate these measures on the task of identifying unpopular users, as well as on the task of predicting the sign of links and show that the network exhibits multiplicative transitivity which allows algebraic methods based on matrix multiplication to be used. We compare our methods to traditional methods which are only suitable for positively weighted edges.
Evaluation of real-world and computer-generated stylized facial expressions

The goal of stylization is to provide an abstracted representation of an image that highlights specific types of visual information. Recent advances in computer graphics techniques have made it possible to render many varieties of stylized imagery efficiently making stylization into a useful technique, not only for artistic, but also for visualization applications. In this paper, we report results from two sets of experiments that aim at characterizing the perceptual impact and effectiveness of three different stylization techniques in the context of dynamic facial expressions. In the first set of experiments, animated facial expressions are stylized using three common techniques (brush, cartoon, and illustrative stylization) and investigated using different experimental measures. Going beyond the usual questionnaire approach, these experiments compare the techniques according to several criteria ranging from subjective preference to task-dependent measures (such as recognizability, intensity) allowing us to compare behavioral and introspective approaches. The second set of experiments use the same stylization techniques on real-world video sequences in order to compare the effect of stylization on natural and artificial stimuli. Our results shed light on how stylization of image contents affects the perception and subjective evaluation of both real and computer-generated facial expressions.
The Politics of Private Development Aid : Serving Recipient Needs or Donor Interests ?

Transnational NGOs allocate a large and increasing share of international development aid, much of it from non-governmental sources. Yet, we know not even how this private aid is distributed across recipient countries, much less what explains the allocation. This paper presents an original dataset, based on detailed financial records from most of the major US-based development NGOs, which allows us to map and analyze the allocation of private development aid. We find little support for the common, cynical claim that development NGOs prioritize their organizational self-interest when they allocate private aid. By contrast, we find strong support for the argument that recipient need is a key consideration in their aid allocation, consistent with a view of development NGOs as principled actors and constructivist theories of international relations. This finding is robust to the use of several different measures of aid recipients' objective need and controls for numerous other possible explanations.
A Value Flow Model for the Evaluation of an E-Learning Service

Information Systems (IS) evaluation has been one of the most important and widely researched topics for more than two decades. Τhe evaluation of e-Learning is of critical importance in order to maximize the benefits from the huge investments made in this area. In this paper is presented a method for e-learning multi-layer evaluation and value flow model estimation. It includes evaluation of e-learning using three layers of value measures (efficiency measures, effectiveness measures, and intended future behaviour measures), and also the estimation of the relations between them. In this way a model of value generation and flow is developed. This method generates rich and useful information concerning the different types of value that e-learning creates, the mechanisms of their creation and also possible interventions for increasing them. A first application of this method is presented for the evaluation of an e-learning service in the area of the European cultural heritage that has been developed in the project e-RMIONE of the eTEN Programme of the European Union. This first application gives interesting and useful conclusions concerning the various levels of value created by the above service, as well as the generation and flow of value between these levels, and also it enables the prioritization of the resources and capabilities of this service that should be improved. In this sense this application provides positive and encouraging evidence concerning the validity and the usefulness of the method.
Scoring models of a diet quality index and the predictive capability of mortality in a population-based cohort of Swedish men and women

Abstract Objective To examine how different scoring models for a diet quality index influence associations with mortality outcomes. Design A study within the Malmö Diet and Cancer cohort. Food and nutrient intakes were estimated using a diet history method. The index included six components: SFA, PUFA, fish and shellfish, fibre, fruit and vegetables, and sucrose. Component scores were assigned using predefined (based on dietary recommendations) and population-based cut-offs (based on median or quintile intakes). Multivariate Cox regression was used to model associations between index scores (low, medium, high) and all-cause and cause-specific mortality by sex. Setting Malmö, the third largest city in Sweden. Subjects Men (n 6940) and women (n 10 186) aged 44–73 years. During a mean follow-up of 14·2 years, 2450 deaths occurred, 1221 from cancer and 709 from CVD. Results The predictive capability of the index for mortality outcomes varied with type of scoring model and by sex. Stronger associations were seen among men using predefined cut-offs. In contrast, the quintile-based scoring model showed greater predictability for mortality outcomes among women. The scoring model using median-based cut-offs showed low predictability for mortality among both men and women. Conclusions The scoring model used for dietary indices may have a significant impact on observed associations with disease outcomes. The rationale for selection of scoring model should be included in studies investigating the association between dietary indices and disease. Adherence to the current dietary recommendations was in the present study associated with decreased risk of all-cause and cause-specific mortality, particularly among men.
An Empirical Study on Factors Impacting Bug Fixing Time

Fixing bugs is an important activity of the software development process. A typical process of bug fixing consists of the following steps: 1) a user files a bug report, 2) the bug is assigned to a developer, 3) the developer fixes the bug, 4) changed code is reviewed and verified, and 5) the bug is resolved. Many studies have investigated the process of bug fixing. However, to the best of our knowledge, none has explicitly analyzed the interval between bug assignment and the time when bug fixing starts. After a bug assignment, some developers will immediately start fixing the bug while others will start bug fixing after a long period. We are blind on developer's delays when fixing bugs. This paper explores such delays of developers through an empirical study on three open source software systems. We examine factors affecting bug fixing time along three dimensions: bug reports, source code involved in the fix, and code changes that are required to fix the bug. We further compare different factors by descriptive logistic regression models. Our results can help development teams better understand factors behind delays, and then improve bug fixing process.
Effects of a postpartum back pain relief program for Korean women.

PURPOSE Despite the high prevalence of back pain and its subsequent effects in post-partum women, intervention programs are scarce. The purpose of this study was to test the effects of a back-pain-reducing program on post-partum women who experienced low-back pain during pregnancy. METHODS A non-equivalent control-group pretest-posttest design was used. Pregnant women who attended a hospital for prenatal check-ups and experienced back pain participated in an intervention program (n=27), and the results were compared with women in a control group from another hospital (n=25). RESULTS At 8 weeks post-partum, the pain intensity, functional limitations were lower in the intervention group than in the control group. However, differences in mean change of the pain intensity and functional limitations between 36 and 39 weeks of gestation and at 8 weeks post-partum were not statistically significant between the groups. Moreover, the flexibility, post-partum functional status, and post-partum depression did not differ significantly between the groups. CONCLUSIONS A back-pain-relief program in this study was not effective to reduce the back-pain intensity in post-partum women and to decrease the associated functional limitations. The implications for nursing practice and directions for future research are discussed.