Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
β-glucan in the lymph nodes in sarcoidosis and in Kveim-Siltzbach test reagent

Background: Previous studies have demonstrated a relationship between biomass of fungi exposure in the home and the risk of sarcoidosis. β-glucan was present in the bronchial alveolar lavage fluid (BALF) of patients with sarcoidosis. The Kveim-Siltzbach test reagent (KSTR) induces a sarcoidosis specific, granulomatous, cutaneous response and was used to establish the diagnosis. To date, the granuloma-inducing component of KSTR is still unknown. The present study was undertaken to investigate the presence of β-glucan in the lymph nodes of patients with sarcoidosis and to determine the relationship between the amounts of this agent with disease severity and to investigate the presence of β-glucan in KSTR. Materials and methods: Lymph node aspirations were collected by transbronchial needle aspiration (TBNA) in region R4 or 7 from patients with newly diagnosed sarcoidosis. The samples were treated to isolate β-glucan and analyzed using a Limulus-based assay. Cultures of Propionibacterium ac. and Mycobacterium gordonae as well as samples of Kveim-Siltzbach test reagent were analyzed to determine β-glucan content. Results: A significant relationship was observed between the amount of the β-glucan in the lymph nodes and the extent of granuloma formation in the lung parenchyma, and the size of the lymph nodes in the mediastinum (r=0.787, p=0.0001 and r=0.664, p<0.001 respectively, Spearman’s test). The samples of Kveim-Siltzbach test reagent contained high levels of β-glucan. Cultures of Propionibacterium ac. and Mycobacterium gordonae contained β-glucan, the levels of which were lower in the Mycobacterium cultures. Comments: The results support the hypothesis that β-glucan, and thus fungal exposure, are involved in the pathogenesis of sarcoidosis. (Sarcoidosis Vasc Diffuse Lung Dis 2017; 34: 130-135)
Seroprevalence of hepatitis E among restaurant food handlers in Ibadan, Nigeria

Background: Hepatitis E virus (HEV) is one of the causative agent of acute viral hepatitis in humans. HEV is an important public health disease in many parts of the world because it is transmitted faeco-orally. Majority of the documented studies on hepatitis E virus in Nigeria have focused on pregnant women and animal handlers with limited data among food handlers. Thus the current study aimed at investigating the prevalence of HEV infection among food handlers operating within the premises of a tertiary care facility.Methods: One hundred and seventy seven (177) food handlers were screened using commercial Enzyme-Linked Immuno-Sorbent Assay (ELISA) to detect IgM antibodies to Hepatitis E. A semi-structured questionnaire was used to assess risk factors for HEV infection.Results: HEV IgM antibodies were detected in 16 (9.0%) of the participants. Age-specific HEV IgM seroprevalence appeared to decrease with age, however there were no significant differences in HEV IgM seropositivity regarding age (P=0.251), gender (P = 0.231), marital status (P=0.735) and religion (P = 0.906). Significant risk factors for HEV IgM seropositivity included source of water for drinking (P=0.03) and the use of soap for hand washing (P=0.02). Conclusion: Our findings suggest that HEV remains a public health problem, as the virus circulates at low but considerable levels especially among food handlers; thus posing a threat to potential contacts. Proper hand washing practices as well as provision of portable water are important factors for the control of Hepatitis E.
Talking with women after birth

This article describes the introduction of a new service which intended to contribute to the new public health agenda by furthering the support already provided by midwives for women following birth. The role of the liaison midwife was established to provide a debriefing service for women and also to coordinate complaints. An initial review found that 80% of all women had been contacted by the liaison midwife. There was a marked difference between the take-up of a discussion if the contact was made on the ward and where women were contacted by phone or letter. Forty four percent considered the service to be very necessary. The new woman-centred service has enabled midwives to see the world through the eyes of the women to whom they provide care. Both the need to provide information and to include women and their partners in the care process has been highlighted.
Pre-Androgen Ablation Prostate Cancer Patients Who Bleed Do Well with 5 Alpha Reductase Inhibitors

Background: Patients with gross haematuria are sometimes found to have prostate cancer after clinical evaluation. The treatment of such haematuria could be very challenging. Use of a 5 alpha reductase inhibitor like dutasteride has been found helpful in bleeding prostate cancer patients if they have not undergone hormonal manipulation before they developed haematuria. Patients and Method: 26 patients with gross haematuria of prostatic origin who had histologic confirmation of adenocarcinoma of the prostate but who have not had chemical or surgical castration were randomized to receive daily dutasteride in addition to vigorous saline irrigation and antibiotics on one arm and vigorous saline irrigation and antibiotics only as control on the other arm. The time taken before haematuria resolved and the amount of irrigation fluid used were noted. Statistical analysis was done using SPSS. Student’s t-test and Kaplan Meier survival analysis were used to test various variables at 0.5 significant levels. Results: Of the 26 patients 12(46.2%) received 0.5 mg oral dutasteride in addition to saline irrigation while 14 (53.8%) received saline irrigation only. Haematuria stopped in all of 12 (100%) patients on dutasteride arm but on 12 (85.7%) of the 14 patients on the control arm. It took significantly shorter time and lesser volume of irrigation fluid before haematuria resolved in those treated with dutasteride than in those on the control arm. Conclusion: Dutasteride is effective in the control of acute haematuria in pre-androgen ablation prostate cancer patients.
The Retail revolution

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Losing Control to Data-Hungry Apps: A Mixed-Methods Approach to Mobile App Privacy

Personal data from mobile apps are increasingly impacting users’ lives and privacy perceptions. However, there is a scarcity of research addressing the combination of (1) individual perceptions of mobile app privacy, (2) actual dataflows in apps, and (3) how such perceptions and dataflows relate to actual privacy policies and terms of use in mobile apps. To address these limitations, we conducted an innovative mixed-methods study including a representative user survey in Norway, an analysis of personal dataflows in apps, and content analysis of privacy policies of 21 popular, free Android mobile apps. Our findings show that more than half the respondents in the user survey repeatedly had refrained from downloading or using apps to avoid sharing personal data. Our analysis of dataflows applied a novel methodology measuring activity in the apps over time (48 hr). The investigation showed that 19 of the 21 apps investigated transmitted personal data to a total of approximately 600 different primary and third-party domains. From an European perspective, it is particularly noteworthy that most of these domains were associated with tech companies in the United States, where privacy laws are less strict than companies operating from Europe. The investigation further revealed that some apps by default track and share user data continuously, even when the app is not in use. For some of these, the terms of use provided with the apps did not inform the users about the actual tracking practice. A comparison of terms of use as provided in the studied apps with actual person dataflows as identified in the analysis disclosed that three of the apps shared data in violation with their provided terms of use. A possible solution for the mobile app industry, to strengthen user trust, is privacy by design through opt-in data sharing with the service and third parties and more granular information on personal data sharing practices. Also, based on the findings from this study, we suggest specific visualizations to enhance transparency of personal dataflows in mobile apps. A methodological contribution is that a mixed-methods approach strengthens our understanding of the complexity of privacy issues in mobile apps.
E-governance di ﬀ usion: Population level e-service adoption rates and usage patterns

This paper investigates how e-governance di ﬀ uses in population. Speci ﬁ cally, the cumulative and peak adoption rates of e-governance, the usage patterns of duration (number of days services were used) and depth (number of services used) of usage were analyzed. The data comprised 2.1 billion rows of anonymized service call log data of the entire Estonian e-governance ecosystem, the X-Road, from 2003 to 2015. The results showed that e-governance di ﬀ usion was linear, not sigmoid-shape, as literature suggests. In general, cumulative adoption rate grows faster and peak adoption rate increases as user age decreases, and is higher among women. E-service usage duration does not increase faster than usage depth. Usage depth and duration increased with age, though not linearly, and were higher in women. This is the ﬁ rst study to use the behavioral data logs of the entire population across more than 10years to study technology di ﬀ usion on the example of e-governance. The results complement the contemporary technology adoption and di ﬀ usion theories, and this study could be of practical relevance to other nations implementing their own e-services for governance.
Normalization of historical texts with neural network models

Historische Dokumente werden zunehmend in digitalisierter Form verfugbar gemacht. Haufig sind sie jedoch durch eine Fulle von Schreibvarianten gekennzeichnet, welche die Anwendung computerlinguistischer Methoden (bzw. NLP-Tools) schwierig gestalten. Ein haufig verwendeter Ansatz ist die Normalisierung dieser Varianten auf moderne Schreibweisen. Die vorliegende Arbeit untersucht die Anwendung neuronaler Encoder-Decoder-Modelle fur die automatische Normalisierung historischer Sprachdaten. In einer umfassenden Auswertung auf historischen Korpora in acht verschiedenen Sprachen zeigt sich, dass das verwendete Modell — trotz zahlreicher Anpassungen und Verbesserungen wie z.B. Beam Search und Ensembling — meist eine schlechtere Normalisierungs-Genauigkeit hat als etablierte Methoden, die auf statistischer maschineller Ubersetzung beruhen.
Mode of Delivery in Preterm Births - Bosnian and Herzegovinian Experience

Introduction: The method of carrying out PTB is one of the most controversial topics of modern perinatology, because there are no clear and undeniable works and studies that would in any case support vaginal delivery (VD) or delivery to the cesarean section (CS). Aim: To determine more frequent mode of delivery in different groups of birth weights and degrees of prematurity from single and twin pregnancies. To determine the degree of vitality of premature born vaginal delivery (VD) in relation to the cesarean section (CS) in different degrees of prematurity from single and twin pregnancies. Patients and methods: Research has retrospective cohort character. Data were collected from the databases of University Clinic of Gynecology and Obstetrics Tuzla for the period of five years (January 1st, 2012–December 31st, 2016). The study included newborns of both genders, gestational age from 24 to 37 weeks of gestation (WG) in singleton and twin pregnancies. Results: Out of 19506 births, 1350 (6.92%) were preterm birth (PTB). Singleton PTB was 1180 (87.40%), and the twins were 170 (12.59%). Vaginal delivery (VD) was born 788 (58.37%). Cesarean section (CS) was born 562 (41.63%). There was statistically significant association between the mode of delivery (MD) in singleton and twins pregnancy in all three subgroups of birth weight (BW) 1000-1499, 2000-2499 and >2500 grams in 33-37 WG. In this group was more frequent VD than CS mode of singleton delivery, and CS than VD mode of twins delivery. In contrast to newborn with BW 1500-1999 grams (chi-square = 23.16, P <0.0001) in same gestational period where was more frequent CS than VD (OR: 2.56, 95% CI: 1.71-3,85). Apgar score (AS) at first and five minute 5-7 and 8-10 in the period 28-32 and 33-37 was a statistically significant frequent in VD and singletons in contrast to CS and twins. Conclusion: VD was more frequent in the higher WG, as well as the higher AS in singletons in contrast to twins delivery.
On the Solution Phase of Direct Solvers for Sparse Linear Systems with Multiple Sparse Right-Hand Sides. (De la phase de résolution des méthodes directes pour systèmes linéaires creux avec multiples seconds membres creux)

We consider direct methods to solve sparse linear systems AX = B, where A is a sparse matrix of size n × n with a symmetric structure and X and B are respectively the solution and right-hand side matrices of size n × nrhs. A is usually factorized and decomposed in the form LDL , or LU , where L and U are respectively a lower and an upper triangular matrix, and D is diagonal. Then, the solve phase is applied through two triangular resolutions named the forward and the backward substitutions. Solving sparse linear systems arises in numerous fields of applications and for many years, the factorization has been the subject of much attention compared to the solve. It has rightly been considered as the most computationally intensive phase due to its higher complexity. Recent advances on the exploitation of data sparsity by low-rank approximations of matrices reduced this complexity but also increased the relative weight of the solve. In addition, for some applications, the very large number of right-hand sides (RHS) in B, nrhs 1, makes the solution phase the computational bottleneck. However, B is often sparse and its structure exhibits specific characteristics that may be efficiently exploited to reduce this cost. The exploitation of sparsity in matrix B may be divided into two main features: vertical sparsity to reduce the number of operations by avoiding computations on rows that are entirely zero, and horizontal sparsity to go further by performing each elementary solve operation only on a subset of the RHS columns. We propose in this thesis to study the impact of the exploitation of this structural sparsity during the solve phase going through its theoretical aspects down to its actual implications on real-life applications. Although we mainly focus on the forward substitution, all the results obtained also apply to the backward substitution, when only part of the solution is required. First, we investigate the asymptotic complexity, in the big-O sense, of the forward substitution when exploiting the RHS sparsity in order to assess its efficiency when increasing the problem size. In particular, we study on 2D and 3D regular problems the asymptotic complexity of the forward substitution both for traditional full-rank unstructured solvers and for the case when low-rank approximation is exploited. A significant asymptotic improvement is observed in the latter case. These complexity results are indeed more general, since they also provide a measure of the available parallelism of the solve phase in the dense RHS case. Next, we extend state-of-the-art algorithms on the exploitation of RHS sparsity, and more particularly the horizontal feature, and also propose an original approach converging toward the optimal number of operations while preserving performance. For that, we propose a new
Learning from Climate Research: Applying the Finite Pool of Worry on Cyber-Related Hazards

Experts in climate change and cybersecurity face a similar challenge: although most people do perceive the severity and likelihood of hazards like global warming or data theft, they rarely actively engage in a change of behaviour to decrease their risk that exposure to the hazard will lead to negative consequences. Whereas most research in Information Systems predominantly draws on cognitive, consequentialist models, climate researchers claim that negative affect can be seen as the wellspring of actions and that a lack of emotions and affects delays or defers behavioral changes. Especially, the role of worry as trigger for behavioral change has been accentuated in the last decade but remains largely overlooked in the context of cyber-related hazards. However, behavioral scientists claim that humans’ capacity of emotions is limited which leads to the hypothetical mental formation of a Hierarchy of Concerns. Only risks that are perceived as probable, serious and concern-inducing will elicit personal worry which ultimately leads to action. Due to the limited capacity of emotions, climate researchers attribute inaction to the so-called Finite Pool of Worry. We thus assume that cyber-related hazards are affected similarly by these mental formations and present our experimental approach aimed at demonstrating its existence.
Implementation of Microstrip Patch Antenna for Wi-Fi Applications

In recent years, the inventions in communication systems require the design of low cost, minimal weight, compact and low profile antennas which are capable of main-taining high performance. This research covers the study of basics and fundamentals of the microstrip patch antenna. The aim of this work is to design the microstrip patch antenna for Wi-Fi applications which operates at 2.4 GHz. The simulation of the proposed antenna was done with the aid of the computer simulation technology (CST) microwave studio student version 2017. The substrate used for the proposed antenna is the flame resistant four (FR-4) with a dielectric constant of 4.4 and a loss tangent of 0.025. The proposed MSA is fed by the coaxial probe. The proposed antenna may find applications in wireless local area network (Wi-Fi) and Bluetooth technology. And the work is the design of a Hexagonal shaped microstrip patch antenna which is presented for the wireless communication applications such as Wi-Fi in S-band. The designed microstrip patch antenna consists of a hexagonal patch which is found to be resonant at the frequency of 2.397 GHz with the return loss of -31.2118 dB having satisfactory radiation properties. The proposed antenna is the compact design of 28.2842mm 48.2842mm area on the FR4-epoxy substrate with dielectric constant of 4.4 and thickness of 1.6. The designed antenna has the realized gain of 3.42 dB at the resonant frequency of 2.397 GHz. After simulating with the CST software, the patch antenna was fabricated using the MITS milling machine on the FR-4 substrate in the YTU’s communication lab. The fabricated antenna was measured by the Vector Network Analyzer. Then, the simulation and measurement results were compared. The designed antenna structure is planar, simple and compact since it can be easily embedded for Wi-Fi applications, cellular phones and wireless communications for low manufacturing cost.
Bidirectional Texture Functions: Acquisition, Rendering and Quality Evaluation

As one of its primary objectives, Computer Graphics aims at the simulation of fabrics’ complex reflection behaviour. Characteristic surface reflectance of fabrics, such as highlights, anisotropy or retro-reflection arise the difficulty of synthesizing. This problem can be solved by using Bidirectional Texture Functions (BTFs), a 2D-texture under various light and view direction. But the acquisition of Bidirectional Texture Functions requires an expensive setup and the measurement process is very time-consuming. Moreover, the size of BTF data can range from hundreds of megabytes to several gigabytes, as a large number of high resolution pictures have to be used in any ideal cases. Furthermore, the three-dimensional textured models rendered through BTF rendering method are subject to various types of distortion during acquisition, synthesis, compression, and processing. An appropriate image quality assessment scheme is a useful tool for evaluating image processing algorithms, especially algorithms designed to leave the image visually unchanged. In this contribution, we present and conduct an investigation aimed at locating a robust threshold for downsampling BTF images without loosing perceptual quality. To this end, an experimental study on how decreasing the texture resolution influences perceived quality of the rendered images has been presented and discussed. Next, two basic improvements to the use of BTFs for rendering are presented: firstly, the study addresses the cost of BTF acquisition by introducing a flexible low-cost step motor setup for BTF acquisition allowing to generate a high quality BTF database taken at user-defined arbitrary angles. Secondly, the number of acquired textures to the perceptual quality of renderings is adapted so that the database size is not overloaded and can fit better in memory when rendered. Although visual attention is one of the essential attributes of HVS, it is neglected in most existing quality metrics. In this thesis an appropriate objective quality metric based on extracting visual attention regions from images and adequate investigation of the influence of visual attention on perceived image quality assessment, called Visual Attention Based Image Quality Metric (VABIQM), has been proposed. The novel metric indicates that considering visual saliency can offer significant benefits with regard to constructing objective quality metrics to predict the visible quality differences in images rendered by compressed and non-compressed BTFs and also outperforms straightforward existing image quality metrics at detecting perceivable differences.
Appliance Event Detection for Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring in Complex Environments

This work proposes, develops, and evaluates a fine-grained high-frequency data acquisition (DAQ) solution to accurately detect individual appliances from the aggregate load, even when several appliances are operating simultaneously. As most disaggregation inaccuracies stem from DAQ, we have developed a circuit-level electric appliance radar to simultaneously gather energy data at up to 250 kHz from six circuits. Similarly, a novel event detection algorithm using the Hilbert-Huang transform is proposed to accurately detect low power appliance events from an office.