Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition: Two Field Experiments.

TWO STUDIES were conducted to evaluate a comprehensive cooperative learning approach to elementary reading and writing instruction: Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition (CIRC). In CIRC, thirdand fourth-grade students worked in heterogeneous learning teams for all reading, language arts, and writing activities. In reading, students worked with partners during follow-up times on partner reading, decoding, story structure, prediction, and story summary activities related to the basal stories. Students also received direct instruction on comprehension and metacomprehension activities, followed by team practice. In writing and language arts, students used a process approach to writing, and participated in peer conferences during planning, revising, and editing stages of the process. Students also received direct instruction followed by team practice on language mechanics and language expression activities, which were integrated with the students' writing activities. The authors found significant effects in favor of the CIRC students on standardized measures of reading comprehension, reading vocabulary, language mechanics, language expression, and spelling. The CIRC students also performed better on writing sample and oral reading measures.
Research Article Malnutrition in hospitalised patients; a real concern in surgical outcomes

Background: Lack of appropriate nutritional support during hospitalization may worsen patients’ nutritional status and increases risk for infection, organ failure, decreased wound healing and suboptimal response to regular medical treatment. The prevalence and intensity of hospital malnutrition have been recognized as an important parameter in the outcome of disease. The study aimed at to determine incidence of malnutrition in hospitalized patients, the change in nutrition status during hospital stay and its effects on outcome of disease. Methods: It was a prospective study and conducted at a tertiary care hospital. Total 70 patients were studied. Each patient's nutritional status was determined from anthropometric data - body mass index, triceps skinfold thickness, mid-arm circumference, mid arm muscle circumference, MNA scoring, serum protein level changes during hospital stay. The next recording was done at 15 days and 30 days after discharge. Student’s t is test used for statistical analysis. Results: The statistical difference for various parameters of nutritional status was found significant at admission and discharge. Conclusions: The change in various parameter of nutritional status was observed in hospitalized patients. The treatment should be aimed at treating specific disorders along with nutritional correction. It is recommended to have dietary plans at the time of admission in consultation with the dietician.
Going mobile: creating a mobile presence for your library

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to determine how students at the University of Regina would like to interact with the library on their mobile devices and how to best construct a mobile site to suit the university community's needs.Design/methodology/approach – A survey was designed to gather feedback from the university community on their use of mobile devices and how they would want to use the library's resources and services via their mobile device. This survey also attempts to better understand how academic libraries can provide effective mobile services. A questionnaire was developed and distributed to several Canadian academic libraries. Its purpose was to discover what other institutions were doing with mobile technologies.Findings – The survey found that 95.4 percent of students that responded to the survey had a smartphone and 75 percent of them used their mobile phone to access the web. The survey indicated that the library catalogue was the most popular resource chosen to become mobile en.
Stability analysis of adaptation process in FxLMS-based Active Noise Control

This thesis is concerned with the Filtered-x Least Mean Square (FxLMS) adaptation algorithm and its applications in Active Noise Control (ANC). Generally, this algorithm is used in system identification problems in which a physical channel, called the secondary path, follows the adaptive filter. The FxLMS algorithm compensates for the secondary path effect by filtering the input signal (training data sequence) using an available estimate of the secondary path, called the secondary path model. However, this filtering causes the analytical model of the adaptation process to become highly complex. Because of this complexity, this model has to be simplified when it is desired to derive closed-form expressions for formulating different behaviours of the adaptation process. Usually, this simplification has been carried out by using unrealistic assumptions of pure delay secondary paths, broad-band acoustic noise, and perfect secondary path models. The first contribution of this thesis is the derivation of a set of closed-from mathematical expressions for formulating behaviours of FxLMS-based ANC systems in steady-state and transient conditions. This derivation is carried out without using any simplifying assumption regarding the secondary path. Consequently, the obtained expressions extend the available knowledge on FxLMS-based ANC systems. The second contribution is formulating influences of acoustic noise band-width on the newly-derived expressions. In the analysis of ANC systems with stochastic noise, it is usual to assume a broad-band acoustic noise with a flat frequency spectrum (which is usually referred to as a white signal), in order to avoid mathematical complexity. However, even if the acoustic noise has a flat spectrum over a wide frequency range, the signal picked up and fed to the ANC system is required to be processed with a sampling frequency higher than the maximum frequency of the acoustic noise. For this reason, a realistic noise signal can only have a flat spectrum over a limited band-width. The third contribution is investigating influences of secondary path models on the newly-derived expressions. Usually, it is acceptable to assume a perfectly-accurate secondary path model; however, in order to generalise the obtained closed-form expressions, this assumption is also removed in this thesis. Consequently, the final closed-form expressions, proposed in this thesis, can apply to a relatively general case with an arbitrary secondary path, an acoustic noise with an arbitrary band-width, and an arbitrary (imperfect) secondary path model. Another contribution of this thesis is determining trajectories of the poles of the FxLMS adaptation process in the z-plane. This investigation leads to find the FxLMS adaptation process root locus. It is shown that the dominant pole of this locus always locates on a certain branch with a typical trajectory v
A study on knowledge attitude and practice of contraception in school going children in Wardha district in central India

Background: Adolescent sexuality is leading to adolescent pregnancy, unsafe abortion, Reproductive Tract Infections, Sexually transmitted infections. Therefore, studying knowledge, attitude and practice regarding this problem among school adolescents is an essential issue, which can support to overcome young people from sexual related problems. Methods: This study was cross sectional study conducted in Wardha district of Maharashtra among school going adolescents. Data was collected by the means of anonymous questionnaire after taking the informed consent. Results: In our study total 375 students were included in the study, amongst 192 were girls and 183 were boys. Majority of students belong to age group of 13-15 years. Nearly 50% of students were knowing about basic reproductive physiology. Amongst the total 375 participants, 184 (49%) students had ever heard about any of contraceptive method while 51 % of totally unaware. Among total students having knowledge of contraception, 38.7% knew about condoms, oral contraceptive pills as method of contraception were known to 88 students (23.5%) while knowledge of emergency contraception was very low. The knowledge of females was higher as compared to males regarding oral and emergency contraception. 15% of total adolescents accepted that they have used condom. The proportion of males using condoms was higher as compared to females. Conclusions: The adolescents need to be provided with correct knowledge for behavior change, to stop their undesirable practices for healthy life. There was an evident gap between knowledge and practices with respect to the sexual practices of youth which needs to be bridged.
Overcrowding Stress Management in Broiler Chicken with Herbal Antistressor

Overcrowding of broiler chicks due to lack of space induces harmful effects which act as predisposing factor in the reduction of production and performance in poultry. Supplementation of antistressor products can ameliorate adverse effect of various stressors in poultry. An experiment was designed by inducing overcrowding stress and its management by supplementation of polyherbal antistressor, adaptogenic and immunomodulator formulation Stresroak in broiler chicken. One hundred and fifty day old broiler chicks were randomly divided into five groups of 30 chicks each. Groups I, II and III served as control and were only offered with basal diet. Group I served as control with a normal space. The chicks in groups II and III (positive control) were provided with space 25% and 50% lesser than normal, respectively. The bird in therapeutic group IV and V were provided with 25% and 50% less space along with antistressor Stresroak@1g/1kg of feed, respectively. Growth and performance related parameters like feed consumption, body weight, feed conversion ratio (FCR) were evaluated in addition to haematological, serum biochemical and gross pathological studies. Polyherbal formulation not only improved growth and performance related parameters, but also normalized the haematological and serum biochemical parameters. Gross pathological lesions in vital organs also showed improvement in therapeutic group compared to control. It was concluded that Stresroak exhibits antistressor and adaptogenic activity to ameliorate the overcrowding stress in poultry.
Dual-Model Radiomic Biomarkers Predict Development of Mild Cognitive Impairment Progression to Alzheimer’s Disease

Predicting progression of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) to Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is clinically important. In this study, we propose a dual-model radiomic analysis with multivariate Cox proportional hazards regression models to investigate promising risk factors associated with MCI conversion to AD. T1 structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and 18F-Fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) positron emission tomography (PET) data, from the AD Neuroimaging Initiative database, were collected from 131 patients with MCI who converted to AD within 3 years and 132 patients with MCI without conversion within 3 years. These subjects were randomly partition into 70% training dataset and 30% test dataset with multiple times. We fused MRI and PET images by wavelet method. In a subset of subjects, a group comparison was performed using a two-sample t-test to determine regions of interest (ROIs) associated with MCI conversion. 172 radiomic features from ROIs for each individual were established using a published radiomics tool. Finally, L1-penalized Cox model was constructed and Harrell’s C index (C-index) was used to evaluate prediction accuracy of the model. To evaluate the efficacy of our proposed method, we used a same analysis framework to evaluate MRI and PET data separately. We constructed prognostic Cox models with: clinical data, MRI images, PET images, fused MRI/PET images, and clinical variables and fused MRI/PET images in combination. The experimental results showed that captured ROIs significantly associated with conversion to AD, such as gray matter atrophy in the bilateral hippocampus and hypometabolism in the temporoparietal cortex. Imaging model (MRI/PET/fused) provided significant enhancement in prediction of conversion compared to clinical models, especially the fused-modality Cox model. Moreover, the combination of fused-modality imaging and clinical variables resulted in the greatest accuracy of prediction. The average C-index for the clinical/MRI/PET/fused/combined model in the test dataset was 0.69, 0.73, 0.73 and 0.75, and 0.78, respectively. These results suggested that a combination of radiomic analysis and Cox model analyses could be used successfully in survival analysis and may be powerful tools for personalized precision medicine patients with potential to undergo conversion from MCI to AD.
Graph Inference with Applications to Low-Resource Audio Search and Indexing

The task of query-by-example search is to retrieve, from among a collection of data, the observations most similar to a given query. A common approach to this problem is based on viewing the data as vertices in a graph in which edge weights reflect similarities between observations. Errors arise in this graph-based framework both from errors in measuring these similarities and from approximations required for fast retrieval. In this thesis, we use tools from graph inference to analyze and control the sources of these errors. We establish novel theoretical results related to representation learning and to vertex nomination, and use these results to control the effects of model misspecification, noisy similarity measurement and approximation error on search accuracy. We present a state-of-the-art system for query-by-example audio search in the context of low-resource speech recognition, which also serves as an illustrative example and testbed for applying our theoretical results. Primary Reader: Professor Ben Van Durme Secondary Reader: Professor Vince Lyzinski Tertiary Reader: Professor Carey E. Priebe ii
Comparison of Decision Tree Based Rainfall Prediction Model with DataDriven Model Considering Climatic Variables

In hydrological cycle, precipitation initiates the flow and governs the system. The preciseness in the prediction of rainfall will reduce the uncertainty involved in estimating the associated hydrological variables such as runoff, infiltration, and stream flow. Many research works has been channelled towards improving the accuracy of these predictions. ANN is the most widely used neural networks in Integrated Water Resource Management. Most of these models, utilize the strength of data-driven modelling approach. The reliability of these predictions depends on the preciseness in selecting the correlated variables. If the available historical database fails to record the most correlated variable, then reliability on these data-driven approach predictions is questionable. In this paper, an attempt has been made to develop a methodological framework that utilizes the strength of a predictive data-mining analysis (decision tree). The developed decision tree based rainfall prediction model maps the climatic variables, namely; a) temperature, b) humidity, and c) wind speed over the observed rainfall database. The performance of the developed model is evaluated based on three performance indicators (Nash Sutcliffe efficiency, RMSE and MSE). The performance of the developed model is also compared with the well- known data-driven (Artificial Neural Network) based rainfall prediction model.
A Pop Music Progression in Recent Popular Movies and Movie Trailers

A harmonic progression of four chords, ubiquitous in popular music from the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first, also occurs in many popular movies and movie trailers from the same time period. This progression has become associated with heroic characters, events, and honours in these movies, and associated with a hero-centred climax in the narratives of the movies advertised in these trailers. Intersections among music theory, network theory, and film theory offer one rationale for this association in the form of a homology, in which the musical structure of the chord progression, and the narrative structure with which the progression is associated, each centrally situates a fundamental opposition.
Supernatant Metabolites from Halophilic Archaea to Reduce Tumorigenesis in Prostate Cancer In-vitro and In-vivo

Halophilic archaea are known as the novel producers of natural products and their supernatant metabolites could have cytotoxic effects on cancer cells. In the present study, we screened the anticancer potential of supernatant metabolites from eight native haloarchaeal strains obtained from a culture collection in Iran. Five human cancer cell lines including breast, lung, prostate and also human fibroblast cells as the normal control were used in the present study. Moreover, to evaluate the anti-tumor effect of the selected supernatant, inhibition of sphere formation and tumor development was assessed in-vitro and in-vivo, respectively. Among all strains, supernatant metabolites from Halobacterium salinarum IBRC M10715 had the most potent cytotoxic effect on prostate cancer cell lines (IC50 = 0.5 mg/mL) without any effects on normal cells. It significantly increased both early and late apoptosis (about 11% and 9%, respectively) in the androgen-dependent PC3 cell line, reduced sphere formation ability of DU145 and PC3 cells with down-regulation of SOX2 gene expression. Furthermore, our results revealed that tumors developed in nude mice significantly shrank post intratumor injection of metabolites of the haloarchaeal strain. In conclusion, we suggested here for the first time that supernatant metabolites from Halobacterium salinarum IBRC M10715 could be a novel component against prostate cancer in-vitro and in-vivo with remarkable reduction in stem-like properties of tumor.
Current Status of Biomarker Discovery in Human clear Cell Renal Cell Carcinoma

The incidence of clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) continues to increase while very few treatment options are available for therapy. Development of metastatic disease dramatically decreases patient survival; therefore detection at an early stage while still localized to the renal capsule is imperative for a favorable prognosis. With recent advances in molecular technologies and subsequent understanding of the underlying pathology of disease, molecular markers have been defined that are predicative of tumor stage, metastatic potential and patient prognosis. Analysis of these biomarkers along with current staging techniques already used in the clinic may allow for implementation of personalized post-surgical treatment plans as well provide further molecular pathways for targeted therapeutic interventions. In this review we will highlight the potential ccRCC biomarkers that have been identified through a variety of molecular techniques to date, and provide insight into research models for biomarker discovery.
Sound Insulation of Acoustic Louvres and Open Screens

This paper reviews the problem of measuring sound insulation of acoustic louvres and other open screens. A survey of manufacturers in the UK shows that there is little agreement on a test method and performance data is often provided using several indices. The most commonly used method, ISO 140, is inappropriate for acoustic devices with transmission losses of 15dB or less. A review is given of the terminology and methods of measurement used, other non-standard methods are considered and a more suitable method, using impulse response techniques, is proposed. This method does not require special acoustic facilities. Results obtained by impulse methods are compared with standard reverberant room measurements and for screens offering more than 15dB insulation the agreement is promising.
Growth Monitoring: Experience from Ghana

Mothers’ understanding of growth charts is an essential component of growth-monitoring programmes. This study investigated mothers’ interpretation of growth charts as they attended child welfare clinics in the greater Accra region of Ghana. Eight hundred seventy-five mothers were interviewed using questionnaires and sample growth charts. Factors impeding attendance at the clinics included business, forgetting, travel, and lack of knowledge. Nearly 40% of the mothers had no idea of the meaning or purpose of growth charts. Efforts to enhance the awareness of mothers and children's caretakers must be intensified.
Comparison between functional and intravascular imaging approaches guiding percutaneous coronary intervention: A network meta‐analysis of randomized and propensity matching studies

The optimal approach to guide percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) has yet to be defined. The aim of this study was to compare functional driven (fractional flow reserve) versus intravascular imaging (intravascular ultrasound, IVUS, and/or optical coherence tomography, OCT) versus standard (coronary angiography only, CA)‐guided PCI.
Effect of Surface Washing Treatment on Quality of Fresh Ginseng during Storage

This study was basic research to improve the existing method far distributing just harvested and sail-clad fresh ginseng. The quality of surface-washed fresh ginseng was compared to that of muddy fresh ginseng during storage at 0, 5, 10, and . After 45 days of storage, there was no difference in weight loss between the washed ginseng and the control at , but the loss was 46% and 37% lower in the washed than the control at and , respectively. The ginseng stored at after washing had less deterioration than the control stored at for the same period. The sensory characteristics of the washed ginseng showed better quality scores ranging from 6.8 to 8.2, while the control ranged from 5.7 to 6.9 after 45 days of storage at . The washed ginseng had less viable cells, mold and yeast, and coliforms at 0.87, 1.55, and 0.95 log units, respectively, compared to the control, and this trend was maintained in the washed ginseng throughout storage.
Attenuated Laser Evoked Potentials in Sarcoidosis Patients in Clinical Remission

Background: Burning sensations and pain in hands and feet occur frequently in patients with sarcoidosis. Even when features of the granulomatous inflammation have resolved and the disease is in clinical remission, pain complaints may persevere. We hypothesized that pain may be related to dysfunctioning of the A δ nociceptive processing which is responsible for transporting pain signals. Methods: Laser Evoked Potentials were recorded in patients with sarcoidosis in clinical remission (n = 62) of whom 27% reported complaints of burning pain in hands and/or feet, and a group of healthy volunteers (n = 28). Electroencephalographic recordings following laser stimulation were evaluated in terms of N2P2-amplitude, N2P2-amplitude per ms, and N2- and P2-latencies. Results: Sarcoidosis patients in clinical remission (irrespective of burning pain complaints) showed no significant increase in N2P2-amplitude and in N2P2- amplitude per ms at stimulus intensity 2.0 Watt, while healthy controls did show a significant increase. Post hoc analysis revealed that sarcoidosis patients with burning pain complaints showed the smallest N2P2- amplitude per ms at stimulus intensity 2.0 Watt (P = 0.028). Age did not explain the differences. No differences between groups were found on the N2- and P2-latencies. Conclusions: This is the first study investigating small fiber processing in sarcoidosis patients by Laser Evoked Potentials. A δ nociceptive processing was found to be reduced in patients in which clinical signs of sarcoidosis have resolved, particularly in those reporting complaints of burning hands and/or feet. The latter data are suggestive for clinical as well as subclinical neuropathy in sarcoidosis patients after clinical remission of the disease. doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.4021/jnr150w