Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A systematic review of the effects of dietary interventions on neonatal outcomes in adolescent pregnancy

© 2015 The Royal College of Midwives. Background. Poor nutrition negatively impacts on pregnancy outcome, fetal growth and neonatal survival. Adolescent mothers, with competing demands of a growing baby and their own rising nutritional requirements, often have poor diets. Despite recognition of their physiological immaturity and nutritional inadequacies, along with evidence highlighting significant differences between adolescent and adult pregnancy outcomes, systematic evidence on the effects of supplementation on adolescent pregnancy is scarce. Aim. To evaluate the effectiveness of dietary interventions on neonatal outcomes in adolescent pregnancy (19 and under). Method. CENTRAL, EMBASE, CINAHL, Cochrane, Maternity and Infant Care, Scopus and MEDLINE databases were searched using selected terminology. Titles and abstracts were screened with selected papers reviewed in full by two authors against the inclusion criteria. Any randomised controlled trials in which the effects of nutritional interventions were evaluated in adolescent pregnancy were included. Data were extracted on study quality, design, compliance, dose and duration of intervention, and main birth outcomes, and analysed using Review Manager. Results. Five studies out of 18 identified were included. Four used supplementation (three zinc, one calcium) with one intervention comparing dairy products to fortified orange juice. The limited available data showed a significant effect from zinc supplementation in reducing the likelihood of low birthweight (RR [95%CI]: 0.39 [0.15, 0.98], one study, n=507) and that having four servings of dairy per day increased average birthweight in adolescent pregnancy (MD [95%CI]: 240g [110.83, 369.17]). Conclusion. High-quality comparative studies between supplements and food sources to improve birth outcomes for adolescent pregnancies, focusing on the clinical effectiveness and acceptability are urgently needed.
Understanding Information Spreading in Social Media during Hurricane Sandy: User Activity and Network Properties

Many people use social media to seek information during disasters while lacking access to traditional information sources. In this study, we analyze Twitter data to understand information spreading activities of social media users during hurricane Sandy. We create multiple subgraphs of Twitter users based on activity levels and analyze network properties of the subgraphs. We observe that user information sharing activity follows a power-law distribution suggesting the existence of few highly active nodes in disseminating information and many other nodes being less active. We also observe close enough connected components and isolates at all levels of activity, and networks become less transitive, but more assortative for larger subgraphs. We also analyze the association between user activities and characteristics that may influence user behavior to spread information during a crisis. Users become more active in spreading information if they are centrally placed in the network, less eccentric, and have higher degrees. Our analysis provides insights on how to exploit user characteristics and network properties to spread information or limit the spreading of misinformation during a crisis event.
Transcatheter arterial chemoembolization for hepatocellular carcinoma after attempted portal vein embolization in 25 patients.

OBJECTIVE Portal vein embolization (PVE) has been widely used to facilitate major liver resection; however, curative surgery even after PVE may not be possible mainly because of inadequate hypertrophy of remnant liver or disease progression. For these patients, transcatheter arterial chemoembolization (TACE) is the next therapeutic option. We evaluated the safety and efficacy of TACE after PVE in 25 patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). CONCLUSION TACE using a single chemotherapeutic agent can be performed safely and effectively in HCC patients who previously underwent PVE. TACE after PVE allowed two of the patients to be downstaged so they could undergo surgical resection.
Coagulopathy After Severe Pediatric Trauma

ABSTRACT Trauma remains the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in the United States among children aged 1 to 21 years. The most common cause of lethality in pediatric trauma is traumatic brain injury. Early coagulopathy has been commonly observed after severe trauma and is usually associated with severe hemorrhage and/or traumatic brain injury. In contrast to adult patients, massive bleeding is less common after pediatric trauma. The classical drivers of trauma-induced coagulopathy include hypothermia, acidosis, hemodilution, and consumption of coagulation factors secondary to local activation of the coagulation system after severe traumatic injury. Furthermore, there is also recent evidence for a distinct mechanism of trauma-induced coagulopathy that involves the activation of the anticoagulant protein C pathway. Whether this new mechanism of posttraumatic coagulopathy plays a role in children is still unknown. The goal of this review is to summarize the current knowledge on the incidence and potential mechanisms of coagulopathy after pediatric trauma and the role of rapid diagnostic tests for early identification of coagulopathy. Finally, we discuss different options for treating coagulopathy after severe pediatric trauma.
Sequential Dual Deep Learning with Shape and Texture Features for Sketch Recognition

Recognizing freehand sketches with high arbitrariness is greatly challenging. Most existing methods either ignore the geometric characteristics or treat sketches as handwritten characters with fixed structural ordering. Consequently, they can hardly yield high recognition performance even though sophisticated learning techniques are employed. In this paper, we propose a sequential deep learning strategy that combines both shape and texture features. A coded shape descriptor is exploited to characterize the geometry of sketch strokes with high flexibility, while the outputs of constitutional neural networks (CNN) are taken as the abstract texture feature. We develop dual deep networks with memorable gated recurrent units (GRUs), and sequentially feed these two types of features into the dual networks, respectively. These dual networks enable the feature fusion by another gated recurrent unit (GRU), and thus accurately recognize sketches invariant to stroke ordering. The experiments on the TU-Berlin data set show that our method outperforms the average of human and state-of-the-art algorithms even when significant shape and appearance variations occur.
Treatment of Monteggia and Transolecranon Fracture-Dislocations of the Elbow: A Critical Analysis Review

The uninjured elbow is an inherently stable joint. The skeletal articulations, surrounding capsuloligamentous structures, and muscular attachments maintain stability. The primary stabilizers of the elbow are the coronoid process, olecranon, trochlea, and collateral ligaments1. Traumatic dislocations without substantial skeletal injury are considered simple and usually do not require operative repair. In contrast, complex dislocations, which are associated with fracture and may involve one or more of the primary stabilizing structures of the elbow, are unstable and typically require operative reduction and internal fixation to achieve stability. Complex elbow fracture-dislocations follow a subluxation or dislocation event. These injuries range from ulnohumeral dislocations with radial head and coronoid process fracture (“terrible triad” injuries) to ulnar fractures with an associated injury of the proximal part of the radius, proximal radioulnar joint, radiocapitellar joint, or ulnohumeral joint. Monteggia injuries involve a proximal ulnar fracture with disruption of the proximal radioulnar joint. Transolecranon fracture-dislocations involve a proximal ulnar fracture at the greater sigmoid notch and anterior dislocation of the elbow, without disruption of the proximal radioulnar joint. Some fracture-dislocations do not follow either pattern but have features consistent with one or the other that help to guide treatment. The focus of this article …
Coinfection and the evolution of drug resistance

Recent experimental work in the rodent malaria model has shown that when two or more strains share a host, there is competitive release of drug‐resistant strains upon treatment. In other words, the propagule output of a particular strain is repressed when competing with other strains and increases upon the removal of this competition. This within‐host effect is predicted to have an important impact on the evolution and growth of resistant strains. However, how this effect translates to epidemiological parameters at the between‐host level, the level at which disease and resistance spread, has yet to be determined. Here we present a general, between‐host epidemiological model that explicitly takes into account the effect of coinfection and competitive release. Although our model does show that when there is coinfection competitive release may contribute to the emergence of resistance, it also highlights an additional between‐host effect. It is the combination of these two effects, the between‐host effect and the within‐host effect, that determines the overall influence of coinfection on the emergence of resistance. Therefore, even when competitive release of drug‐resistant strains occurs, within an infected individual, it is not necessarily true that coinfection will result in the increased emergence of resistance. These results have important implications for the control of the emergence and spread of drug resistance.
An Application of Fuzzy Prototypes to the Diagnosis and Treatment of Fuzzy Diseases

Decision support systems, embedded in modern telemedicine applications, are a tool to improve the skills of general practitioners and patients in decision‐making in medicine. Nowadays, one of the more challenging problems in this context is how to diagnose those diseases, whose early clinical signs are often subtle, and many of their common signs and symptoms are similar to other. These “fuzzy diseases,” even they can have distinctive features, are not diagnosable through a concrete clinical test or symptom, and, thus, they are difficult to recognize, especially in their initial phases when they might be mistaken for other similar ones. Then, the diagnosis of a fuzzy disease set is based on the exclusion of symptoms and tests results, due to the similarity between them. In the present article, it is proposed the development of a Clinical Decision Support System framework to diagnose a set of fuzzy diseases, concretely applied to Fibromyalgia and associated syndromes. For this purpose, in this paper a reasoning method that uses theories about conceptual categorization from the psychology, pattern recognition, and Zadeh's prototypes has been designed. Through the use of this model, satisfactory results in the evaluation of patients were obtained.
Voicing contrast of stop consonant production in the speech of individuals with Parkinson disease ON and OFF dopaminergic medication

ABSTRACT The aims of this study were to: 1) compare voicing contrast in speakers with Parkinson disease (PD) and healthy controls by comparing the separation of voice onset time (VOT) distributions of voiced and voiceless stop consonants and 2) to determine whether the administration of dopaminergic medication affected VOT separation in speakers with PD. Data from a previous study by Fisher and Goberman (2010) were used to compare the VOT measures obtained from a group of speakers with PD with both ON and OFF medication, and a group of healthy controls. Supplementing the previous findings, the current analysis revealed that individuals with PD exhibited significantly less contrast between voiced and voiceless VOT than that observed in healthy speakers. Medication administration did not affect VOT contrast as no differences in VOT separation were observed between the ON and OFF medication states.
Effects of micronized purified flavonoid fraction (Daflon) on pelvic pain in women with laparoscopically diagnosed pelvic congestion syndrome: a randomized crossover trial.

BACKGROUND We evaluated the effects of daflon, a venomimetic agent that regulates the circulatory tonus of the venous system, on pelvic pain and investigated the role of enlarged veins in the pathophysiology of pelvic congestion syndrome. METHODS Twenty women (age 28-35 yrs) with chronic pelvic pain were diagnosed with the syndrome at laparoscopy. They all had prominent broad ligaments and ovarian veins without other pathologies such as endometriosis to explain the etiology of pelvic pain. Ten women were randomized in a fashion to receive 500 mg of Daflon twice/daily for six months, and ten a vitamin pill for placebo effect; they were crossed over for another six months. RESULTS At the end of the third month, the frequency and severity of pelvic symptoms began to decrease with daflon compared with the pretreatment and vitamin arm. The mean scores were significantly less at the end of six months, respectively, p < 0.05. CONCLUSIONS Pharmacologic enhancement of venous tonus may restore pelvic circulation and relieve pelvic symptomatology.
WAIS-IV Verbal Comprehension Index and Perceptual Reasoning Index Performance is Unaffected by Cold-Pressor Pain Induction

Cognitive complaints are frequently reported by patients with chronic pain, but studies of the effects of pain on different forms of cognition have been inconsistent. In two studies, cold-pressor pain was induced in nonclinical undergraduate volunteers who, under normal conditions, took Verbal Comprehension Index (VCI) subtests (Study 1, n = 57) or Perceptual Reasoning Index (PRI) subtests (Study 2, n = 59) followed by a different VCI or PRI subtest taken during either cold-pressor pain induction or a nonpainful control condition. Pain was not associated with significant reduction in subtest scaled score performance. Results indicate that cold-pressor pain in nonclinical volunteers does not impair Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Fourth Edition (WAIS-IV) VCI or PRI performance and suggest that pain per se should not be expected to substantially influence these cognitive abilities. Viewed together with previous Processing Speed Index and Working Memory Index studies, no cognitive or intellectual functions measured by the WAIS-IV are affected by induced pain. Generalizability of these findings may be limited by the fact that patients with chronic pain may differ in their pain experience from nonclinical volunteers with induced pain.
Evaluation of an Automated Multi-phase Approach for Patterns Discovery

Design patterns capitalize the knowledge of expert designers and offer reuse that provides for higher design quality and overall faster development. To attain these advantages, a designer must, however, overcome the difficulties in understanding design patterns and determining those appropriate for his/her particular application. On the other hand, one way to benefit from design patterns is to assist inexperienced designers in pattern detection during the design elaboration. Such detection should tolerate variations between the design and the pattern since the exact instantiation of a pattern is infrequent in a design. However, not all variations of a pattern are tolerated. In particular, some structural variations may result in non-optimal instantiations where the requirements are respected but the structure is different; such variations are called spoiled patterns and should also be detected and transformed into acceptable pattern instantiations. This paper first presents an improvement of our design/spoiled pattern detection approach, named MAPeD (Multi-phase Approach for Pattern Discovery). The latter uses an XML information retrieval technique to identify design/spoiled pattern occurrences in a design using, first, static and semantic information and, secondly, dynamic information. This multi-phase detection approach tolerates structural differences between the examined design and the identified design pattern. Furthermore, thanks to the matching information it collects, our identification technique can offer assistance for the improvement of a design. In its second contribution, this paper evaluates MAPeD by comparing its recall and precision rates for five open source systems: JHotDraw, JUnit, JRefactory, MapperXML, QuickUML. The latter were used by other approaches in experimental evaluations. Our evaluation shows that our design pattern identification approach has an average improvement of 9.98% in terms of precision over the best known approach.
Allometry, Antilog Transformations, and the Perils of Prediction on the Original Scale

Biologists often use allometric equations that take the form of power functions (e.g., \documentclass{aastex} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{bm} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{pifont} \usepackage{stmaryrd} \usepackage{textcomp} \usepackage{portland,xspace} \usepackage{amsmath,amsxtra} \usepackage[OT2,OT1]{fontenc} \newcommand\cyr{ \renewcommand\rmdefault{wncyr} \renewcommand\sfdefault{wncyss} \renewcommand\encodingdefault{OT2} \normalfont \selectfont} \DeclareTextFontCommand{\textcyr}{\cyr} \pagestyle{empty} \DeclareMathSizes{10}{9}{7}{6} \begin{document} \landscape $$Y=aM^{b}$$ \end{document} , where M stands for mass and a and b are empirically fitted constants). Typically, these allometric equations are fitted by taking the antilog of log‐log regressions. Predictions from these allometric equations are biased, and the bias my be appreciable. Methods for making predictions that correct for the bias are available, but they have rarely, if ever, been used by ecological and evolutionary physiologists. Just as physiologists would not use an instrument that was not properly calibrated, they should not use allometric equations to make predictions unless they account for the bias of those predictions. We analyzed 20 interspecific and 10 intraspecific data sets. We compared predictions from standard allometric equations with those from several alternative methods. Our analyses suggest that the bias of predictions from interspecific data sets may be substantial. For the intraspecific data sets we analyzed, the bias was likely to be small. Biologists, including ecological and evolutionary physiologists, should exercise care when using allometric equations to make predictions, particularly given that methods to adjust for bias are easily implemented.
Assessment of Metronidazole Susceptibility in Helicobacter pylori: Statistical Validation and Error Rate Analysis of Breakpoints Determined by the Disk Diffusion Test

ABSTRACT Metronidazole susceptibility of 100 Helicobacter pyloristrains was assessed by determining the inhibition zone diameters by disk diffusion test and the MICs by agar dilution and PDM Epsilometer test (E test). Linear regression analysis was performed, allowing the definition of significant linear relations, and revealed correlations of disk diffusion results with both E-test and agar dilution results (r2 = 0.88 and 0.81, respectively). No significant differences (P = 0.84) were found between MICs defined by E test and those defined by agar dilution, taken as a standard. Reproducibility comparison between E-test and disk diffusion tests showed that they are equivalent and with good precision. Two interpretative susceptibility schemes (with or without an intermediate class) were compared by an interpretative error rate analysis method. The susceptibility classification scheme that included the intermediate category was retained, and breakpoints were assessed for diffusion assay with 5-μg metronidazole disks. Strains with inhibition zone diameters less than 16 mm were defined as resistant (MIC > 8 μg/ml), those with zone diameters equal to or greater than 16 mm but less than 21 mm were considered intermediate (4 μg/ml < MIC ≤ 8 μg/ml), and those with zone diameters of 21 mm or greater were regarded as susceptible (MIC ≤ 4 μg/ml). Error rate analysis applied to this classification scheme showed occurrence frequencies of 1% for major errors and 7% for minor errors, when the results were compared to those obtained by agar dilution. No very major errors were detected, suggesting that disk diffusion might be a good alternative for determining the metronidazole sensitivity of H. pylori strains.
Woodchuck dendritic cells generated from peripheral blood mononuclear cells and transduced with recombinant human adenovirus serotype 5 induce antigen‐specific cellular immune responses

Woodchucks infected with the woodchuck hepatitis virus (WHV) is the best available animal model for testing the immunotherapeutic effects of dendritic cells (DCs) in the setting of a chronic infection, as woodchucks develop a persistent infection resembling that seen in humans infected with the hepatitis B virus. In the present study, DCs were generated from woodchuck peripheral blood mononuclear cells (wDCs) in the presence of human granulocyte macrophage colony‐stimulating factor (hGM‐CSF) and human interleukin 4 (hIL‐4). After 7 days of culture, cells with morphology similar to DCs were stained positively with a cross‐reactive anti‐human CD86 antibody. Functional analysis showed that uptake of FITC‐dextran by wDCs was very efficient and was partially inhibited after LPS‐induced maturation. Furthermore, wDCs stimulated allogenic lymphocytes and induced proliferation. Moreover, wDCs were transduced efficiently with a human adenovirus serotype 5 for the expression of β‐galactosidase. Following transduction and in vivo administration of such DCs into woodchucks, an antigen‐specific cellular immune response was induced. These results demonstrate that wDCs can be generated from the peripheral blood. Following transfection with a recombinant adenovirus wDCs can be used as a feasible and effective tool for eliciting WHV‐specific T‐cell responses indicating their potential to serve as prophylactic and therapeutic vaccines. J. Med. Virol. 79:522–529, 2007. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Risk factors for genital human papillomavirus among men in Tanzania

The objective of the study was to assess risk factors for Human Papillomavirus (HPV) among men in Tanzania, both overall and in relation to HIV status. In a cross‐sectional study conducted among 1,813 men in Tanzania, penile swabs were tested for HPV using Hybrid Capture 2 (HC2). Study participants were offered HIV testing. Risk factors for HPV (HC2 high‐risk and/or low‐risk positivity) were assessed using logistic regression with adjustment for age, lifetime number of sexual partners, and HIV status. Altogether, 372 men (20.5%) were HPV‐positive. Among men tested for HIV (n = 1,483), the HIV prevalence was 9.4%. The odds ratio (OR) of HPV increased with increasing age. HIV‐positivity was associated with an increased odds ratio of HPV (OR = 1.91; 95%CI: 1.30–2.82), whereas the odds of HPV tended to be lower in circumcised men than in uncircumcised men (OR = 0.77; 95%CI: 0.54–1.09). When stratifying by HIV status, we found lower odds of HPV in overweight HIV‐positive men (BMI > 25) than in normal weight HIV‐positive men (OR = 0.25; 95%CI: 0.08–0.78). This did not apply to HIV‐negative men. Circumcision tended to decrease the odds of HPV both in HIV‐positive men and in HIV‐negative men, although not being statistically significant. In conclusion, HIV is a strong risk factor for HPV among men in Tanzania. Additionally, in HIV‐positive men a high BMI seems to be associated with a lower risk of HPV. Finally, we observed a tendency toward a lower risk of HPV both among HIV‐positive and HIV‐negative circumcised men compared to their uncircumcised counterparts. J. Med. Virol. 89:345–351, 2017. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.