Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Barriers Associated with Misuse of Laboratory in Antenatal Care in Senegal: A Quantitative Approach

Barriers Associated with Misuse of Laboratory in Antenatal Care in Senegal: A Quantitative Approach Maternal mortality remains high in developing countries; however laboratory can help to fight against this problematic situation. In Senegal, six (6) tests are recommended by the national program, for antenatal screening. This study aimed to identify barriers regarding utilization of laboratory, by pregnant women, during antenatal care (ANC), in Senegal. A cross-sectional study was conducted in 16 peripheral health facilities, 12 health centers and 4 hospitals (EPS1). Data were collected, amongst 1692 pregnant women, 61 midwives, 99 laboratory staffs and 16 administrators, from February 2013 to July 2014. Pregnancy age, gestity, parity, pregnant age, ANC location were variables studied from pregnant women. From the laboratory, timely accessibility, concordance of opening hours with ANC services, availability of reagents and equipments, skilled laboratory staff, acceptability of results delivery, tests prices visibility, confidentiality and adequacy of infrastructures, were investigated. From ANC, waiting time, availability of skilled midwives and guidelines, adequacy of waiting rooms and infrastructures, were studied. Data were entered in Microsoft Excel version 2013 and Open Clinica 3.1. 3, then exploited and analyzed in SPSS version 20. Laboratory misuse was 87.88% among 1692 pregnant women who went to the facilities for the first ANC visit. The whole population had 25.25 ±6.19years [20-29 years] (55%), first pregnancy trimester (54%), multigest (66%), multiparous (42%), had frequented health centers (75%). In the multivariate model, variables independently associated with laboratory use were: gestity, parity (more than 3), confidentiality, affordability of tests prices, availability of guidelines and health center level. Most of the barriers are supply-health systems. It is then important to take into account these results, to sensitize pregnant women, health personnel and authorities for a better use of the laboratory during antenatal care.
Ambulance Nurses' Competence and Perception of Competence in Prehospital Trauma Care

Introduction We focus on trauma care conducted in the context of a simulated traumatic event. This is in this study defined as a four-meter fall onto a hard surface, resulting in severe injuries to extremities in the form of bilateral open femur fractures, an open tibia fracture, and a closed pelvic fracture, all fractures bleeding extensively. Methods The simulated trauma care competence of 63 ambulance nurses in prehospital emergency care was quantitatively evaluated along with their perception of their sufficiency. Data was collected by means of simulated trauma care and a questionnaire. Results Life-saving interventions were not consistently performed. Time to perform interventions could be considered long due to the life-threatening situation. In comparison, the ambulance nurses' perception of the sufficiency of their theoretical and practical knowledge and skills for trauma care scored high. In contrast, the perception of having sufficient ethical training for trauma care scored low. Discussion This study suggests there is no guarantee that the ambulance nurses' perception of theoretical and practical knowledge and skill level corresponds with their performed knowledge and skill. The ambulance nurses rated themselves having sufficient theoretical and practical knowledge and skills while the score of trauma care can be considered quite low.
The Role of Semipurified Fractions Isolated from Quercus infectoria on Bone Metabolism by Using hFOB 1.19 Human Fetal Osteoblast Cell Model

Background. Quercus infectoria (QI) is a plant used in traditional medicines in Asia. The plant was reported to contain various active phytochemical compounds that have potential to stimulate bone formation. However, the precise mechanism of the stimulation effect of QI on osteoblast has not been elucidated. The present study was carried out to isolate QI semipurified fractions from aqueous QI extract and to delineate the molecular mechanism of QI semipurified fraction that enhanced bone formation by using hFOB1.19 human fetal osteoblast cell model. Methods. Isolation of QI semipurified fractions was established by means of column chromatography and thin layer chromatography. Established QI semipurified fractions were identified using Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (LC-MS). Cells were treated with derived QI semipurified fractions and investigated for mineralization deposition and protein expression level of BMP-2, Runx2, and OPN by ELISA followed gene expression analysis of BMP-2 and Runx2 by RT-PCR. Results. Column chromatography isolation and purification yield Fractions A, B, and C. LC-MS analysis reveals the presence of polyphenols in each fraction. Results show that QI semipurified fractions increased the activity and upregulated the gene expression of BMP-2 and Runx2 at day 1, day 3, and day 7. OPN activity increased in cells treated with QI semipurified fractions at day 1 and day 3. Meanwhile, at day 7, expression of OPN decreased in activity. Furthermore, the study showed that combination of Fractions A, B, and C with osteoporotic drug (pamidronate) further increased the activity and upregulated the gene expression of BMP-2 and Runx2. Conclusions. These findings demonstrated that polyphenols from semipurified fractions of QI enhanced bone formation through expression of the investigated bone-related marker that is its potential role when combined with readily available osteoporotic drug.
Raman microprobe characterization of electrodeposited S-rich CuIn"S,Se… 2 for photovoltaic applications: Microstructural analysis

This article reports a detailed Raman scattering and microstructural characterization of S-rich CuIn(S,Se)2 absorbers produced by electrodeposition of nanocrystalline CuInSe2 precursors and subsequent reactive annealing under sulfurizing conditions. Surface and in-depth resolved Raman microprobe measurements have been correlated with the analysis of the layers by optical and scanning electron microscopy, x-ray diffraction, and in-depth Auger electron spectroscopy. This has allowed corroboration of the high crystalline quality of the sulfurized layers. The sulfurizing conditions used also lead to the formation of a relatively thick MoS2 intermediate layer between the absorber and the Mo back contact. The analysis of the absorbers has also allowed identification of the presence of In-rich secondary phases, which are likely related to the coexistence in the electrodeposited precursors of ordered vacancy compound domains with the main chalcopyrite phase, in spite of the Cu-rich conditions used in the growth.
Internet Gaming Disorder in Adolescents: Personality, Psychopathology and Evaluation of a Psychological Intervention Combined With Parent Psychoeducation

Internet Gaming Disorder is an increasingly prevalent disorder, which can have severe consequences in affected young people and in their families. There is an urgent need to improve existing treatment programs; these are currently hampered by the lack of research in this area. It is necessary to more carefully define the symptomatic, psychosocial and personality characterization of these patients and the interaction between treatment and relevant variables. The objectives of this study were three: (1) to analyze the symptomatic and personality profiles of young patients with Internet Gaming Disorder in comparison with healthy controls; (2) to analyze the effectiveness of a cognitive behavioral treatment on reducing symptomatology; and (3) to compare the results of that treatment with or without the addition of a psychoeducational group offered to the parents. The final sample consisted of 30 patients consecutively admitted to a specialized mental health unit in Spain, and 30 healthy controls. The experimental group received individual cognitive-behavioral therapy. The experimental group was divided into two subgroups (N = 15), depending on the addition or not of a psychoeducational group for their parents (consecutively admitted). Scores on the Millon Adolescent Personality Inventory (MACI), the Symptom Checklist-Revised (SCL-90-R), the State-Trait Anxiety Index (STAI), and other clinical and psychopathological measures were recorded. The patients were re-assessed post treatment (except for the MACI questionnaire). Compared with healthy controls, patients did not differ in symptomatology at baseline, but scored significantly higher in the personality scales: Introversive and Inhibited, and in the expressed concerns scales: Identity Confusion, Self-Devaluation, and Peer Insecurity and scored significantly lower in the Histrionic and Egotistic scale. In the experimental group, pre-post changes differed statistically on SCL-90-R scales Hostility, Psychoticism, and Global Severity Index and on the diagnostic criteria for Internet Gaming Disorder, regardless of the addition of a psychoeducational group for parents. Pre-post changes did not differ between experimental subgroups. However, the subgroup without psychoeducation for parents presented statistically higher drop-out rates during treatment. The results of this study are based on a sample of patients seeking treatment related to problems with online gaming, therefore, they may be of value for similar patients.
DSGAN: Generative Adversarial Training for Distant Supervision Relation Extraction

Distant supervision can effectively label data for relation extraction, but suffers from the noise labeling problem. Recent works mainly perform soft bag-level noise reduction strategies to find the relatively better samples in a sentence bag, which is suboptimal compared with making a hard decision of false positive samples in sentence level. In this paper, we introduce an adversarial learning framework, which we named DSGAN, to learn a sentence-level true-positive generator. Inspired by Generative Adversarial Networks, we regard the positive samples generated by the generator as the negative samples to train the discriminator. The optimal generator is obtained until the discrimination ability of the discriminator has the greatest decline. We adopt the generator to filter distant supervision training dataset and redistribute the false positive instances into the negative set, in which way to provide a cleaned dataset for relation classification. The experimental results show that the proposed strategy significantly improves the performance of distant supervision relation extraction comparing to state-of-the-art systems.
The tree species pool of Amazonian wetland forests: Which species can assemble in periodically waterlogged habitats?

We determined the filtered tree species pool of Amazonian wetland forests, based on confirmed occurrence records, to better understand how tree diversity in wetland environments compares to tree diversity in the entire Amazon region. The tree species pool was determined using data from two main sources: 1) a compilation of published tree species lists plus one unpublished list of our own, derived from tree plot inventories and floristic surveys; 2) queries on botanical collections that include Amazonian flora, curated by herbaria and available through the SpeciesLink digital biodiversity database. We applied taxonomic name resolution and determined sample-based species accumulation curves for both datasets, to estimate sampling effort and predict the expected species richness using Chao’s analytical estimators. We report a total of 3 615 valid tree species occurring in Amazonian wetland forests. After surveying almost 70 years of research efforts to inventory the diversity of Amazonian wetland trees, we found that 74% these records were registered in published species lists (2 688 tree species). Tree species richness estimates predicted from either single dataset underestimated the total pooled species richness recorded as occurring in Amazonian wetlands, with only 41% of the species shared by both datasets. The filtered tree species pool of Amazonian wetland forests comprises 53% of the 6 727 tree species taxonomically confirmed for the Amazonian tree flora to date. This large proportion is likely to be the result of significant species interchange among forest habitats within the Amazon region, as well as in situ speciation processes due to strong ecological filtering. The provided tree species pool raises the number of tree species previously reported as occurring in Amazonian wetlands by a factor of 3.2.
Large Multiuser MIMO Detection: Algorithms and Architectures

In this thesis, we investigate the problem of efficient data detection in large MIMO and high order MU-MIMO systems. First, near-optimal low-complexity detection algorithms are proposed for regular MIMO systems. Then, a family of low-complexity hard-output and soft-output detection schemes based on channel matrix puncturing targeted for large MIMO systems is proposed. The performance of these schemes is characterized and analyzed mathematically, and bounds on capacity, diversity gain, and probability of bit error are derived. After that, efficient high order MU-MIMO detectors are proposed, based on joint modulation classification and subspace detection, where the modulation type of the interferer is estimated, while multiple decoupled streams are individually detected. Hardware architectures are designed for the proposed algorithms, and the promised gains are verified via simulations. Finally, we map the studied search-based detection schemes to low-resolution precoding at the transmitter side in massive MIMO and report the performance-complexity tradeoffs.
FUNCTIONAL ELECTRICAL STIMULATION FOR CONTROL OF EPILEPTIC SEIZURES

There are around 50 million people with epilepsy worldwide and 30%-40% do not respond well to antiepileptic drugs. Electrical stimulation, as an alternative treatment for patients with refractory epilepsy, has received increased attention over the last decades. However, the efficiency of these electrical therapies is still relatively low. For example, only a 50% of reduction of seizures was obtained in 50% of the patients receiving for vagus nerve stimulation (VNS). One possibly way to improve the antiepileptic efficacy of such electrical stimulation treatments is to optimize the stimulation. The present thesis hypothesized that the antiepileptic effect of VNS and spinal cord stimulation (SCS) can be improved by using a higher stimulation frequency than currently used in the clinic and proposed in the literature.
Effectively Learning from Pedagogical Demonstrations

When observing others’ behavior, people use Theory of Mind to infer unobservable beliefs, desires, and intentions. And when showing what activity one is doing, people will modify their behavior in order to facilitate more accurate interpretation and learning by an observer. Here, we present a novel model of how demonstrators act and observers interpret demonstrations corresponding to different levels of recursive social reasoning (i.e. a cognitive hierarchy) grounded in Theory of Mind. Our model can explain how demonstrators show others how to perform a task and makes predictions about how sophisticated observers can reason about communicative intentions. Additionally, we report an experiment that tests (1) how well an observer can learn from demonstrations that were produced with the intent to communicate, and (2) how an observer’s interpretation of demonstrations influences their judgments.
High-field Shubnikov–de Haas oscillations in the topological insulator Bi 2 Te 2 Se

We report measurements of the surface Shubnikov\char21{}de Haas oscillations (SdH) on crystals of the topological insulator Bi${}_{2}$Te${}_{2}$Se. In crystals with large bulk resistivity ($\ensuremath{\sim}4$ $\ensuremath{\Omega}\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}$cm at 4 K), we observe $\ensuremath{\sim}15$ surface SdH oscillations (to the $n=1$ Landau level) in magnetic fields $B$ up to 45 T. Extrapolating to the limit $1/B\ensuremath{\rightarrow}0$, we confirm the $\frac{1}{2}$-shift expected from a Dirac spectrum. The results are consistent with a very small surface Land\'e $g$ factor.
Lack of Impact of Race Alone on Cervical Cancer Survival in Brazil

Objective: To analyze differences in survival between black and non-black women diagnosed with cervical cancer and treated at the National Cancer Institute in Brazil. Methods: This retrospective cohort study was conducted using medical records of patients who were treated for cervical cancer between 2006 and 2009 at the Brazilian National Cancer Institute - Rio de Janeiro - Brazil. The clinical and epidemiological characteristics of black and non-black patients were compared using the chi-square test. Survival functions over five years were calculated using the Kaplan-Meier estimator and compared using the log-rank test. Associations between race and mortality risk were analyzed using the Cox proportional hazards model. P-values <0.05 were considered statistically significant. Results: The study included 1,482 women, of whom 188 (12.7%) were black, 1,209 (81.6%) were non-black and 85 (5.7%) were of unspecified race. The age at diagnosis of the patients ranged from 19 to 84 years (mean 50.1 years; SD±13.2). Hemoglobin <12 g/dL at the time of diagnosis (p=0.008) and absence of surgery as primary treatment (p = 0.005) were more frequent among black women. Cox analysis adjusted for these two factors showed no statistically significant difference in the mortality risk associated with cervical cancer among black and non-black women (HR=1.1 95% CI 0.9-1.5; p=0.27). Conclusion: After adjusting for hemoglobin levels and surgery, race alone was not shown to be a prognostic factor for patients with cervical cancer.
"First do no harm": kidney drug targeting to avoid toxicity in ADPKD.

Eun Ji Chung and Kenneth R. Hallows Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California; Division of Nephrology and Hypertension, Department of Medicine, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California; Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California; Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California; Department of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California; and University of Southern California/University Kidney Research Organization Kidney Research Center, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California
Racial disparity in HbA1c persists when fructosamine is used as a surrogate for mean blood glucose in youth with type 1 diabetes

Blacks have been reported to have higher hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) than Whites even after adjustment for differences in blood glucose levels. Potentially glucose‐independent racial disparity in HbA1c is an artifact of glucose ascertainment methods. In order to test this possibility, we examined the relationship of HbA1c with race after adjustment for concurrent fructosamine level as a surrogate for mean blood glucose (MBG).
Valine biosynthesis in Saccharomyces cerevisiae is regulated by the mitochondrial branched-chain amino acid aminotransferase Bat1

In the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the branched-chain amino acid aminotransferases (BCATs) Bat1 and Bat2 catalyze the conversion of α-ketoisovalerate, α-keto-β-methylvalerate, and α-ketoisokaproate and into valine, isoleucine, and leucine, respectively, as the final step of branched-chain amino acid biosynthesis. Bat1 and Bat2 are homologous proteins that share 77% identity, but Bat1 localizes in the mitochondria and Bat2 in the cytosol. Based on our preliminary finding that only disruption of the BAT1 gene led to slow-growth phenotype, we hypothesized that Bat1 and Bat2 play distinct roles in valine biosynthesis and the regulation of cell growth. In this study, we found that intracellular valine content was dramatically decreased in Δbat1 cells, whereas Δbat2 cells exhibited no changes in the valine level. To further examine the distinct roles of Bat1 and Bat2, we constructed two artificial genes encoding the mitochondrial-targeting signal (MTS)-deleted Bat1 (Bat1-MTS) and the MTS of Bat1-fused Bat2 (Bat2+MTS). Interestingly, Bat2+MTS was relocalized into the mitochondria, because Bat2 localization was changed to the mitochondria by addition of MTS, and could partially restore the valine content and growth in Δbat1Δbat2 cells. These results suggest that the mitochondria are the major site of valine biosynthesis, and mitochondrial BCAT is important for valine biosynthesis in S. cerevisiae.
An Evaluation of Perceptually Complementary Views for Multivariate Data

We evaluate the relative merits of three techniques for visualising multivariate data: parallel coordinates; scatterplot matrix; and a side-by-side, coordinated combination of these views. In particular, we report on: (1) the most effective visual encoding of multivariate data for each of the six common tasks considered; (2) common strategies that our participants used when the two views were combined based on eye-tracking data analysis; (3) the finding that these views are perceptually complementary in the sense that they both show the same information, but with different and complementary support for different types of analysis. For the combined view, our studies show that there is a perceptually complementary effect in terms of significantly improved accuracy for certain tasks, but that there is a small cost in terms of slightly longer completion time than the faster of the two techniques alone. Eye-movement data shows that for many tasks participants were able to swiftly switch their strategies after trying both in the training phase.