Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ART ICLE-Sweet Bee Venom Pharmacopuncture for Chemotherapy-Induced Peripheral Neuropathy

pyright a 2012, International Pharm tp://dx.doi. org/10.1016/j.jams. 201 Abstract Introduction: Chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN) is sensory and motor nerve damage to the peripheral nervous system caused by chemotherapeutic agents. It often causes pain and other varying degrees of neuropathic symptoms accompanied by functional limitations and reduced quality of life. Currently, there is no standard treatment protocol for the treatment of CIPN. Objective: In need of more research to develop new therapeutic options focusing on their safety, efficacy, and long-term sustained clinical effects, a pilot study of sweet bee venom pharmacopuncture (SBVP) for CIPN was conducted to build up preliminary efficacy data in the process of preparing for a future larger scale randomized controlled SBVP trial for CIPN. Methods: We conducted a prospective case series by analyzing the clinical observations made of CIPN patients treated with SBVP. A total of 11 eligible consecutive CIPN patients who visited East-West Cancer Center from June 1, 2010, to February 28, 2011, were treated with total of six SBVP treatments given within the 3-week period. The outcomes were measured using World Health Organization Common Toxicity Criteria for Peripheral neuropathy (WHO grading system), Patient Neurotoxicity Questionnaire (PNQ), Visual Analogue System (VAS), and Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQOL) collected at the baseline, post-second, fourth, and the final treatment. Patients were followed 3 weeks into no intervention to determine the sustained effects of pharmacopuncture.
Effect of Different DNA Demethylating Agents on In vitro Cultures of Peach Rootstock GF 677

The appearance of somaclonal variability induced by in vitro cultivation is relatively frequent and, in some cases, provides a valuable source of new phenotypes suitable for crop improvement. Numerous studies have confirmed that these changes can be explained by alterations of DNA methylation. Interestingly, a group of chemical compounds termed ‘demethylating agents’ (DMT agents) enable artificial changes to be made in the DNA methylation state. Thus, these agents are theoretically able to induce new phenotypes or more favourable properties. The objective of the present study was to verify suitable conditions for the application of different DMT agents within in vitro protocols for micropropagation using the stone fruit rootstock GF 677 as an example. The impact of these agents on the properties of plant regenerants was evaluated, and their DNA methylation state was controlled by using an AFLP protocol based on a restriction endonuclease that differed in its sensitivity to methylated cytosines. Moreover, the effect of newly synthesised derivates was compared with that of conventional compounds with a well-documented DNA-demethylating impact. Based on the results, the suitable concentration for treatment by a DMT agent was established as approximately 50 µM. Promising results were generated using a combination of DMT agents with different mechanisms of action, such as azacytidine and dihydroxypropyladenine; under these conditions, probable synergy between methyltransferase interception by the cytosine analogue and interruption of methyl group donation by dihydroxypropyladenine significantly changed the DNA methylation state of treated plants. Regarding newly synthesised compounds, the 5,6-dihydro-5-azacytosine nucleoside showed the most promising results, which can likely be explained by its higher stability in the media used for in vitro cultivation. ********* In press - Online First. Article has been peer reviewed, accepted for publication and published online without pagination. It will receive pagination when the issue will be ready for publishing as a complete number (Volume 47, Issue 3, 2019). The article is searchable and citable by Digital Object Identifier (DOI). DOI link will become active after the article will be included in the complete issue. *********
Population Dynamics and Household Energy Consumption

Generational values inspire behaviour in numerous areas such as politics, labour markets, social cohesion, consumption and energy use. Stephenson et al. (2015) highlight the role of so-called energy culture in shaping the behaviour of different population cohorts regarding energy consumption and environmental protection, and empirical studies have confirmed the relevance of cohort effects in residential and transport-related energy use (Bardazzi and Pazienza, 2017; Chancel, 2014). This paper aims to assess how ageing and evolving generational energy cultures in Italy affect the future path of energy consumption, considering the expected changes in the Italian population size, composition and location. We use a pseudo-panel of Italian households to estimate cohort and age effects by macro-area and then we combine these effects with official demographic projections to forecast the potential consequences for energy consumption up to 2050. Our findings show that age and generation are key determinants of household behaviour regarding residential energy consumption and these effects interplay with future population dynamics, which are also area-specific due to internal migration.
Spatially Distributed Characterization of Soil Dynamics Using Travel-Time Distributions

Travel-time distributions are a comprehensive tool for the characterization of hydrological system dynamics. Unlike stream ow hydrographs, they describe the movement and storage of water inside and through the hydrological system. Until recently, studies using such travel-time distributions have generally either been applied to simple (arti cial toy) models or to real-world catchments using available time series, e.g. stable isotopes. Whereas the former are limited in their realism, 5 the latter are limited in their use of available data sets. In our study, we employ a middle ground by using the mesoscale Hydrological Model (mHM) and apply it to a catchment in Central Germany. Being able to draw on multiple large data sets for calibration and veri cation, we generate a large array of spatially distributed states and uxes. These hydrological outputs are then used to compute the travel-time distributions for every grid cell in the modeling domain. A statistical analysis shows the general soundness of the upscaling scheme employed in mHM and reveal precipitation, saturated soil moisture and po10 tential evapotranspiration as important predictors for explaining the spatial heterogeneity of mean travel times. In addition, we demonstrate and discuss the high information content of mean travel times for characterization of internal hydrological processes.
When citizen deliberation enters real politics

In the wake of the increasing use of deliberative citizen assemblies in the public sphere, this article studies how traditional policy actors receive a mini-public as ‘newcomer’ in political decision-making, despite its reliance on a fundamentally different vision of policy-making and that it substantially alters existing power distributions. Survey data collected before and after a typical mini-public case, the Citizen Climate Parliament, shows that most politicians and stakeholders welcome this ‘newcomer’ as long as it remains consultative. A typological discourse analysis of 28 semi-structured interviews with these politicians and stakeholders suggests that this attitude comes with four different views of minipublics’ place in political decision-making: an elitist-, expert-, (re)connectionand reinvention view. Given that an important correlate of these views was the extent to which actors agreed with the recommendations of the mini-public, it shows that their views were driven both by actors’ interests in the outcome on a micro-level and by their general ideas about political decision-making on a macrolevel. The findings illustrate that mini-publics may encounter opposition from both political actors and stakeholders once they aim to take a place in political decision-making that goes beyond occasional and consultative uses. At the same time, these results show that the use of mini-publics does not leave traditional representative institutions unaffected as it prompts them to think about the place that citizen deliberation should take in the political system.
Sexual Health Education Resources, Based on Ideas and Experiences of Students of Two Major Universities in Zahedan, Iran

Background: To determine the most usual resources that adolescents and teenagers are using to learn about sexual issues. A cross-sectional exploratory study implemented in June 2015 in Zahedan, the capital city of Sistan-va-Baluchestan Province, located in the southeast of Iran. Methods: Using convenient sampling method, from among student of two large universities in Zahedan, 134 students 18 to
Essays on Wage Inequality and Poverty

This thesis sets out to study the impact of growth and technological development on inequality. This thesis focuses on two types of inequality, the skill premium (wage inequality between skilled and unskilled labour) and the poverty. First, this thesis sets out to analyze the interaction between the skill premium and the growth and development in England in the very long run (circa 1329-1660); Second, it studies the poverty-reduction effect of the interaction between institutional development and remittances. These two topics are covered by Chapters 2, 3 and 4 respectively. Chapter 2 studies the evolution of the skill premium in England from 1329 to 1660. It develops a unified model that accounts for the growth and development in the historical period that ranging from late medieval ear to industrial revolution. This model unveils insightful linkage between the historical development in this period and the skill premium. It shows that the growth of the relative abundance of physical capital to human capital from an initally low level to a sufficiently high level, which is triggered by demographic change and the growth of agricultural productivity, brings about the decline of the skill premium from 1329 to 1450s, and the stabilization of the skill premium afterwards. On the basis of the analytical findings in Chapter 2, Chapter 3 brings the proposed unified model of growth into data. Through calibration and simulation, it shows that the with the simulated skill premium declining to a low and stable level, the simulated GDP per capita grows to a high and stable level and the simulated primary sector labour share declines from a high level at the beginning to a low level in the end, both of which are consistent with the actual data. The simulated skill premium, GDP per capita and the primary sector labour share jointly show the gradual ‘modernization” of the English economy takes place well before the industrial revolution. Chapter 4 analyzes the impact of institutional development of the povertyreduction effect of remittances. Considering remittances and remittances’ facilitating effect on financial development, it shows that institutional development attract more remittances. This then reduces credit market imperfection and enables a larger fraction of the population to invest in human capital and escape poverty trap, which results in the reduction of poverty. This chapter is the first to analytically study the change in poverty in response to remittances and institutional development.
FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING

Super-resolution is a challenging problem of restoring details lost to diffraction in the image capturing process. Degradations from the environment and the imaging device increase its difficulty, and they are strongly present in mobile phone cameras. The latest promising approaches involve convolutional neural networks, but little testing has been done on degraded images. Also, sizes of neural networks raise a question of their applicability on mobile devices. A wide review of published super-resolution neural networks is done. Four of the network architectures are chosen, and their TensorFlow models are trained and tested for their output quality on high quality and degraded images and compared against bicubic interpolation with sharpening. For the first time, MTF and CPIQ acutance responses are measured from their outputs after processing photographs of a resolution chart. Their execution times on a mobile device are measured for small image sizes and typical phone camera photo sizes. It is shown that the networks are able to learn degradation resilience, and that quality of their results surpasses that of the bicubic interpolations with sharpening. However, even the lightest models still take a considerable time to process images on a mobile device. Moreover, it is shown that the current way of training and evaluating super-resolution neural networks with high quality images is inadequate for practical purposes, and that degradations have to be incorporated into training data in order to overcome the problem.
Network Anomaly Detection Utilizing Robust Principal Component Analysis

In this Major Qualifying Project, we focus on the development of a visualization-enabled anomaly detection system. We examine the 2011 VAST dataset challenge to efficiently generate meaningful features and apply Robust Principal Component Analysis (RPCA) to detect any data points estimated to be anomalous. This is done through an infrastructure that promotes the closing of the loop from feature generation to anomaly detection through RPCA. We enable our user to choose subsets of the data through a web application and learn through visualization systems where problems are within their chosen local data slice. In this report, we explore both feature engineering techniques along with optimizing RPCA which ultimately lead to a generalized approach for detecting anomalies within a defined network architecture.
1-1-2009 Thoracoscopic decortication vs tube thoracostomy with fibrinolysis for empyema in children : a prospective , randomized trial

Purpose—Management of empyema has been debated in the literature for decades. Although both primary video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) and tube thoracostomy with pleural instillation of fibrinolytics have been shown to result in early resolution when compared to tube thoracostomy alone, there is a lack of comparative data between these modes of management. Therefore, we conducted a prospective, randomized trial comparing VATS to fibrinolytic therapy in children with empyema. Methods—After Institutional Review Board approval, children defined as having empyema by either loculation on imaging or more than 10,000 white blood cells/μL were treated with VATS or fibrinolysis. Based on our retrospective data using length of postoperative hospitalization as the primary end point, a sample size of 36 patients was calculated for an α of . 5 and a power of 0.8. Fibrinolysis consisted of inserting a 12F chest tube followed by infusion of 4 mg tissue plasminogen activator mixed with 40 mL of normal saline at the time of tube placement followed by 2 subsequent doses 24 hours apart. Results—At diagnosis, there were no differences between groups in age, weight, degree of oxygen support, white blood cell count, or days of symptoms. The outcome data showed no difference in days of hospitalization after intervention, days of oxygen requirement, days until afebrile, or analgesic requirements. Video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery was associated with significantly higher charges. Three patients (16.6%) in the fibrinolysis group subsequently required VATS for definitive therapy. Two patients in the VATS group required ventilator support after therapy, one of whom required temporary dialysis. No patient in the fibrinolysis group clinically worsened after initiation of therapy. Conclusions—There are no therapeutic or recovery advantages between VATS and fibrinolysis for the treatment of empyema; however, VATS resulted in significantly greater charges. Fibrinolysis may pose less risk of acute clinical deterioration and should be the first-line therapy for children with empyema. © 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. *Corresponding author. Tel. : +1 816 983 6479; fax: +1 816 983 6885. sspeter@cmh.edu. Presented at the 39th annual meeting of the American Pediatric Surgical Association, Phoenix, AZ, May 27-June 1, 2008. NIH Public Access Author Manuscript J Pediatr Surg. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2011 May 3. Published in final edited form as: J Pediatr Surg. 2009 January ; 44(1): 106–111. doi:10.1016/j.jpedsurg. 2008.10. 018. N IH PA Athor M anscript N IH PA Athor M anscript N IH PA Athor M anscript
Ventriculoperitoneal Shunt Infections in Children: Demographical, Clinical Findings and Evaluation of Thrombocyte Parameters

Objective: We investigated demographic, clinical and laboratory characteristics of children with ventriculoperitoneal (VP) shunt infection in this study. The aim of this study was to make a comparison between the values obtained before and after treatment, and those obtained before treatment and of the control groups in terms of platelet count, mean platelet volume (MPV) and platelet distribution width (PDW) values in the diagnosis of VP shunt infection.
1 Income smoothing practices : Evidence from Egypt

Research objective: This study examines the existence of income smoothing practices in Egypt and identifies the differences concerning firm characteristics between smoothers and non-smoothers firms. Design/methodology/approach: The study uses accidental sample of non-financial firms over the period of 2010-2015 to determine income smoothing index using intelligent software based on Eckel Model. A number of statistical techniques are employed including logistic regression in order to predict the key determinants of income smoothing index.
ATTITUDES TOWARD MENTAL HEALTH 3 Mental Health Stigma in a Politically Polarized United States Mental health

This research examines the relationship between political views and mental health stigma. Though past research has examined the framing of mental illness and the predictive ability of political party affiliation in regard to mental health stigma separately, the current research seeks to combine the two in order to create a broader understanding of the connections between attitudes toward mental health and political affiliation and ideology. Two-hundred-and-fifty-one participants from the mid-Atlantic were randomly assigned to one of five groups: a control group answered a questionnaire with no vignette; experimental groups were presented with the questionnaire and one of the following vignettes: information about someone with treated depression, information about someone with untreated depression, information about someone with untreated heroin addiction, or information about someone with treated heroin addiction. Several ANOVAs revealed partial support for the hypotheses regarding political affiliation and mental health, framing effects, and gender. T-tests indicated partial support for hypotheses regarding experience with mental health and mental health stigma.
Analysing the Challenges of IS implementation in public health institutions of a developing country: the need for flexible strategies

This paper explores the challenges of introducing computer-based health information systems in the context of the Ethiopian public health care system. Drawing empirical examples from the process of introducing computer-based health information system(HIS) in two regional states (Amhara and Benishangul-Gumuz) of Ethiopia, this paper analyses the socio-technical challenges influencing the transition towards a new computerised system and suggested the importance of developing context-sensitive strategies to tackle different challenges in different contexts. Building on the notions of installed base and cultivation the paper examines the socio-technical issues and factors that influenced the process of developing, customizing, and implementing computerised HIS in different settings. The findings of this paper revealed that contextual differences in terms of access to infrastructural reources, availability of adaquate and qualified manpower, and managerial commitment and support would significantly influence the implementation process. I argue that, such context-senitive challenges need to be dealt through flexible startegies that took in to account the specific context. In this paper, four diffferent flexible strategies: the strategy of gateways, top-down vs bottom-up approaches, flexible essential data sets and clustering have beed identified as being useful in implementing computer-based systems in different settings of the Ethiopian public health care system.
The characteristics and outcomes of small bowel adenocarcinoma : a multicenter retrospective observational study Running title : Small bowel adenocarcinoma outcomes

Background: Small bowel adenocarcinoma (SBA) is a rare malignancy that accounts for 1-2% of gastrointestinal tumors. We investigated the clinical characteristics, outcomes, and prognostic factors of primary SBA. Methods: We retrospectively analyzed the characteristics and clinical courses of 205 SBA patients from 11 institutions in Japan between June 2002 and August 2013.
A comparison of multiobjective evolutionary algorithms.

In this paper a comparison of the most recent algorithms for Multiobjective Optimization is realized. For this comparison are used the followings algorithms: Strength Pareto Evolutionary Algorithm (SPEA), Pareto Archived Evolution Strategy (PAES), Nondominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm (NSGA II), Adaptive Pareto Algorithm (APA). The comparison is made by using five test functions.
Up in the Air? A study of the factors driving firm participation in the social and economic life of a creative and digital cluster

Most explanations of the superior innovative performance of clusters rely on meso constructs like localised knowledge spillovers and business cultures which are argued to increase learning. Much less attention has been paid to examining empirically the micro behaviours underpinning firm collaboration (and spillovers). We contribute to a growing literature addressing this gap in the evidence base with data from a survey of 485 firms in a creative and digital cluster in England. We use multivariate multiple regression to estimate the association between two firm behaviours (business networking and knowledge exchange), and a comprehensive set of explanatory factors including their absorptive capacity and disciplinary specialisation, local trading and recruitment patterns, institutional proximity to other firms in the cluster, and economic performance. Although all these factors are shown to play a part in explaining local business networking and knowledge exchange, structural factors like local trade and recruitment are shown to be most important. The connection between knowledge exchange and private transacting raises questions about the extent to which any knowledge spillovers thus generated could be considered ‘externalities’ in the usual way. Our measures of economic performance are positively associated to knowledge exchange, and negatively associated to business networking. This finding highlights the importance of examining the economic and strategic dimensions of firm networking in clusters, and point at the existence of channels for localised knowledge exchange which are not open to all firms in the cluster, but only to a subset of them– the most commercially successful ones.