Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Association of Red Cell Distribution Width and Hba 1 c in Type-2 Diabetes Mellitus

Background: Diabetes Mellitus is recognized as major cause of death and disability with public health burden worldwide. Prevalence of diabetes with impaired glucose regulation (IGT and/or IFG) is the highest in developing countries. Objective: To find out the association and contribution of Red Blood Distribution Width (RDW), CRP and Glycated Haemoglobin (HbA1C) with type-2 diabetes mellitus. Methods: It was laboratory based cross sectional study and conducted 80 subjects in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Endocrinology, Bangobandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University, Bangladesh. After the laboratory works, data were inputted and analyzed through SPSS 24 version. Results: The mean age of the respondents was 45.06±11.08 years. 35% patient belonged to age ≤40years and 11.3% was ≥60 years. Mean value of RBC (×10 12 /L) was 4.73±0.57, RDW-CV (%) 14.55±1.11, HbA1c (%) 8.54±2.08 and CRP (mg/L) was 5.98±5.85. Correlation between HbA1c (%) and RDW was strongly related (P=0.001) and (r=0.457). CRP with RDW was p=0.001 and r=0.512. Conclusion: RDW and CRP were strongly correlated with HbA1c in type2 diabetes mellitus. Increased RDW likely reflects the presence of pro-inflammatory cytokines and oxidative stress. So, CBC, CRP and HbA1c test are very valuable and effective tool for monitoring DM and follow up.
The diagnostic value of circulating miRNA-499 in acute myocardial infarction : a systematic review and meta-analysis

Background: Acute myocardial infarction (AMI) is a common cardiovascular disease with high morbidity and mortality. Many recent studies have demonstrated that serum miRNA-499 levels are increased in the early stages of AMI. However, studies documenting the levels of miRNA-499 in AMI have had inconsistent results. Therefore, this study aimed to systematically evaluate the role of circulating miRNA-499 as a biomarker for AMI. Methods: According to the inclusion and exclusion criteria, a preliminary literature search was performed in the PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane databases up through October 2018. The meta-analysis was conducted used Review Manager 5.3 and Stata 12.0 software. The overall sensitivity, the overall specificity, the positive likelihood ratio (PLR), the negative likelihood ratio (NLR), the diagnostic odds ratio (OR), the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC), and the 95% confidence interval were presented to assess the diagnostic value of miRNA-499 in patients with AMI. Results: 16 articles that met the criteria were included in the qualitative synthesis. The studies included 1991 patients with AMI and 1950 healthy controls. The overall sensitivity of miRNA-499 for diagnosing AMI was 0.878 [95% CI: 0.827-0.915] and the specificity was 0.904 [95% CI: 0.831-0.947]. The PLR was 9.151 [95% CI: 4.993-16.770], and the NLR was 0.135 [95% CI: 0.092-0.199]. The overall diagnostic OR and 95% confidence interval were 67.776 and 27.994-164.092, respectively. The area under the AUROC was 0.95, and the 95% confidence interval was 0.920-0.960. Conclusions: In summary, miRNA-499 has a high diagnostic value in the diagnosis of AMI, and miRNA-499 may still be a valuable diagnostic marker for AMI. Furthermore, additional rigorously designed experiments with large sample sizes are needed to demonstrate the diagnostic value of miRNA-499 for AMI.
Journal of International Agricultural and Extension Education

In Mozambique, adoption of improved maize seed and chemical fertilizers is still limited. This study assessed farmers’ attitudes towards hybrid maize SC513, Nitrogenous (N) Phosphorous (P) Potassium (K), (NPK 12-24-12) and urea fertilizers in highlands and lowlands of the Manica District. The study determined the influence of farmers’ characteristics, attitudes, sources of information, and agro-ecological conditions on adoption of these technologies during 1995 through 2005. A questionnaire was administered during April and May 2006 with a randomly selected sample of 293 households. In general, farmers held positive attitudes towards improved maize varieties and chemical fertilizers, but the strength of attitudes towards fertilizers, in particular, varied by source of information. Farmers who learned about fertilizers from extension had stronger positive attitudes than farmers who learned about fertilizers from neighbors, although with hybrid seeds adoption there was no significant difference between key sources. Overall, the number of farmers using SC513 was higher than the number of farmers using NPK and urea. Farmers’ decision to adopt SC513 was positively associated with agroecological conditions, knowledge, production traits and marketability of the maize. Agroecological conditions, knowledge of fertilizer application, and extension contact influenced adoption of chemical fertilizers. The results differentiate a simpler process of adoption of new seed from a more complex process of adoption of fertilizers which demands greater knowledge of timing and soils as well as basic computational skills. Factors determining adoption of hybrid maize varieties and chemical fertilizers should be considered when designing extension programs for these technologies.
Dual diagnosis and treatment : substance abuse and comorbid medical and psychiatric disorders

Part 1 General considerations: epidemiology - comorbidity of substance use and psychiatric disorders genetics - models of transmission of substance use and common comorbid psychiatric disorders overview of diagnostic methods - clinical interviews, semi-structured and structured interviews, biological markers overview of treatment modalities and settings - pharmacotherapy, psychotherapy, 12-step programmes. Part 2 Specific comorbid conditions - diagnosis and treatment: alcoholism and mood disorders alcoholism and anxiety disorders drug abuse and mood disorders drug abuse and anxiety disorders comorbidity of smoking with other substance use and psychiatric disorders substance abuse and psychological trauma substance abuse and personality disorders substance abuse and eating disorders substance abuse and attention deficit disorder substance abuse and schizophrenia substance abuse and traumatic brain injuries substance abuse and HIV-related disease other medical disorders in substance abuse patients.
Blood biochemistry fluctuations as influenced by feed provision in juvenile Snow trout (Schizothorax zarudnyi)

This study aimed at determining blood biochemical parameters with potential diagnostic value to assess the nutritional status for healthy Snow trout, Schizothorax zarudnyi . For this purpose, three treatment groups of Snow trout (average weight, 65.9±5.3 g) were kept unfed for 24 h, 7 and 14 days. During the experiment, a natural photoperiod was adopted, water temperature was maintained at 23.2±1.1 °C, pH at 7.8±0.2, dissolved oxygen at 7±0.4 mg L -1 and ammonia concentration was kept around zero mg L -1 . Fish in all treatment groups were fed twice a day, to apparent satiety. At the end of the trial, the levels of glucose; triglyceride; cholesterol; total protein; inorganic phosphorus; calcium; magnesium; triiodothyronine (T 3 ); thyroxin (T 4 ); alkaline phosphatase (ALP); aspartate aminotransferase (AST); Alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) were determined using standard clinical methods. The results showed that glucose (71.8±6.64-138.6±13.02 mg dl -1 ), AST (63.53±12.17-130.41±23.04Ul -1 ) and T 4 (6.46±0.88-11.69±1.16 ng ml -1 ) levels were significantly affected by the starvation period ( p <0.05). T 3 levels remained relatively stable during the first week of starvation (2.3±0.25-2.39±0.31 ng ml -1 ) and then significantly decreased (1.77±0.16 ng ml -1 ) in the second week of starvation ( p <0.05). Triglycerides levels increased during the first week of starvation (147.40±16.62 to 199.31±31.42 mg dl -1 ) and decreased significantly ( p <0.05) in the second week (163.70±24.63 mg dl -1 ). These results suggested that in healthy Snow trout juveniles, glucose, AST and T 4 levels are responsive to starvation.
Exclusive analysis of the Λ ( 1405 ) resonance in the charged Σπ decay channels in proton proton reactions with HADES

The HADES experiment is located at the heavy ion research facility GSI. It was originally designed for the measurement of the rare decays of the vector mesons ρ, ω and φ into e+e−-pairs at a beam energy of 1-2 AGeV. For this purpose different experiments with e.g. C + C, Ar + KCl and p + Nb colliding systems are already accomplished, where the predicted in-medium modifications of the mass and width of the vector mesons can be investigated [Aga07]. As a reference measurement for the p + Nb reaction system (taken in September 2008) a p + p beam time with a beam energy of 3.5 GeV was processed in April 2007. Besides the feasibility of e+e−-pair identification, it was shown that it is also possible to detect hadrons with HADES [Sch08]. Thus the data of the p+p run, with 1.2 ·109 detected events, can for instance be used for the analysis of particles with strangeness content. This thesis concentrates mainly on the investigation of the Λ(1405) by its decay into the (Σ±π∓) states. The Λ(1405) is currently of high interest, since it is predicted to be not only a three-quark baryon but a molecular state of a meson and a baryon. As the K̄N bound state should have a certain contribution to this resonance, the investigation of the Λ(1405) is interesting in terms of a deeper understanding of the kaon-nucleon interaction. In order to improve the mass resolution of particles, reconstructed via invariantor missingmass technique, a kinematic refit was developed for the exclusive analysis of the Λ(1405). The mathematical details about the kinematic refit and the effects of its application are described in this thesis. Besides the improvement of the Λ(1405) analysis, the refit can also be important for the investigation for other reactions, like the production of η and ω mesons. An essential step in the presented analysis is the exact modeling and understanding of the background below the Λ(1405) signal. Especially for that purpose a sophisticated sideband analysis was developed, which can describe the background due to misidentification quite well. Finally all background contributions could be identified and subtracted and thus a pure Λ(1405) was extracted with a total yield of about 330 entries in each decay channel. In this way the thesis presents the first measurement of the Λ(1405), produced in p + p reactions and reconstructed in the two charged decay channels. Furthermore the analysis of the Σ(1385)+ is shown. The investigation of this resonance can give a bench mark for the cross section of the Σ(1385)0, which plays an important role in the Λ(1405) analysis. The pole mass and width of the obtained Σ(1385)+ signal were extracted and compared to the nominal values from literature.
Variational Domain Adversarial Learning for Speaker Verification

Domain mismatch refers to the problem in which the distribution of training data differs from that of the test data. This paper proposes a variational domain adversarial neural network (VDANN), which consists of a variational autoencoder (VAE) and a domain adversarial neural network (DANN), to reduce domain mismatch. The DANN part aims to retain speaker identity information and learn a feature space that is robust against domain mismatch, while the VAE part is to impose variational regularization on the learned features so that they follow a Gaussian distribution. Thus, the representation produced by VDANN is not only speaker discriminative and domain-invariant but also Gaussian distributed, which is essential for the standard PLDA backend. Experiments on both SRE16 and SRE18-CMN2 show that VDANN outperforms the Kaldi base-line and the standard DANN. The results also suggest that VAE regularization is effective for domain adaptation.
Exercise Training for the Patient with Heart Failure: Is Your Patient Ready?

&NA; The purpose of this paper is: (1) to briefly review the heart failure syndrome and the importance of exercise training, (2) to stimulate the reader to consider examining the motivation and readiness of the patient with heart failure to engage in exercise training, and (3) to provide strategies to accelerate the process of change to make necessary behavioral changes. The cardinal symptoms of patients with heart failure include chronic fatigue, exercise intolerance, and shortness of breath. Multiple compensatory mechanisms appear to contribute to these symptoms, making the management of the patient extremely challenging. The reason for the compensatory adaptations is to maintain cardiac output and arterial pressure, but eventually these adaptations contribute to maladaptive processes and worsening heart failure. Exercise training programs for the patient with heart failure have shown great success with significant physiological and clinical benefits. Unfortunately, participation in and adherence to exercise training programs is low, in part, due to a lack of understanding of the patient's motivation and readiness to change behavior. This paper describes a theoretical framework for understanding behavioral change, using the transtheoretical model (TTM). The TTM consists of 4 core constructs: (1) the stages of change, (2) processes of change, (3) decisional balance, and (4) self‐efficacy. It is recommended that clinicians use these constructs in their attempts to increase physical activity participation. Data from our laboratory indicate that the majority of patients with heart failure are in the pre‐action stages of participation in physical activity programs and have significantly reduced exercise tolerance. Consequently, the stage of change algorithm aids in the identification of patients at increased risk for complications and early mortality. Our data also identify that the 2 most important predictors for the TTM stage in patients with heart failure are the processes of change and self‐efficacy. Using this information specific stage‐matched strategies can be used to help move individuals toward the action stage. These strategies are outlined in the paper. To further understand the stage‐matched approach toward physical activity promotion in the pre‐action stages, 3 cases are presented of individuals with heart failure. It is hypothesized that ‘moving’ patients toward the active stages may ultimately contribute to the well‐being of the patient and perhaps have an impact on health care costs associated with this disease.
Study on the infl uence of advertising attractiveness on the purchase decisions of women and men

< is article attempts to document diff erences in purchase decisions of men and women. Earlier research has found that they, due to their diff erent upbringing and socialization along with various other social, biological and psychological factors, depict diff erent types of consumer behaviour. < e purpose of this study is to investigate the infl uence of advertising attractiveness on male and female purchase decisions. < e aim of the paper is to present the authorial research procedure which proposes the usage of the theory of rough set to determine the rules of the consumers’ behaviour. Implications and directions for future research are provided on the basis of the results.
Users' Evaluation of Next-POI Recommendations

The performance of a Recommender System (RS) is often assessed offline, by measuring the system accuracy in predicting or reconstructing the observed user ratings or choices. As a consequence, RSs optimised for that performance measure may suggest items that the user would evaluate correct but uninteresting, because lacking novelty. In fact, these systems are hardly able to generalise the preferences directly derived from the user’s observed behaviour. To overcome this problem a novel RS approach has been proposed. It applies clustering to users’ observed sequences of choices in order to identify like-behaving users and to learn a user behavioural model for each cluster. It then leverages the learned behaviour model to generate novel and relevant recommendations, not directly the users’ predicted choices. In this paper we assess in a live user study how users evaluate recommendations produced by more traditional approaches and the proposed one along different dimensions. The obtained results illustrate the differences of the compared approaches, the benefits and the limitations of the proposed RS.
Aluminosilicates and yeast-based mycotoxin binders: Their ameliorated effects on growth, immunity and serum chemistry in broilers fed aflatoxin and ochratoxin

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of commercial toxin binders on growth performance, organ morphology, immunity and serum biochemistry in broilers. Dietary treatments consisted of the negative control (NC): experimental diet with aflatoxin B1 <20 parts per billion (ppb), ochratoxin A (OTA) <5 ppb; control (C) experimental diet without toxin binder; Z1: toxin binder 1 g/kg of zeta plus; Z2: toxin binder 2 g/kg of zeta plus; TX1: toxin binder 1 g/kg of Toxfin Dry; and TX2: toxin binder 2 g/kg of Toxfin Dry). Except for NC, all diets contained 57 ppb aflatoxin B 1 and 23 ppb ochratoxin A. Feed intake was higher in the TX1, TX2, NC, Z2 and Z1 treatments than in the control. Weight gain was higher in Z2, TX2, Z1, TX1 and NC than in C. Feed conversion ratio (FCR) was poor in C. The control had the highest liver weight, though the weights of the spleen, kidneys and hearts of the birds were similar in all treatments. Gizzard weight, thymus weight, and bursa of Fabricius were lowest in C. The weight of the pancreas was similar among treatments. The antibody titres against new castle disease were higher in treatments Z2, Z1, TX2, TX1 and NC than in C. Urea and creatinine concentrations, and aspartate aminotransferase activity in serum were similar among treatments, whereas the serum alanine transaminase activity was higher in C than in Z1, TX1, TX2, Z2 and NC. It was concluded that growth rate, FCR and immunity indices were improved in broilers fed toxin binder. At lower levels of mycotoxin in feed, 1 g/kg of toxin binder (clay based or yeast based) was sufficient to ameliorate the adverse effects of aflatoxin B1 and OTA, whereas at higher levels of mycotoxins, supplementation of toxin binder should be increased. Keywords: alanine aminotransferase, aspartate aminotransferase, carcass characteristics, growth performance, toxin binders, urea, creatinine
Effects of Ketoprofen in Spermatogenesis of Mice Exposed to Continuos Hypobaric Hypoxia

Hypoxia hypobaric (HH) can cause alterations at testicular level, with temperature increase, intrascrotal alteration and deterioration of spermatogenesis. Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) such as ketoprofen have anti-angiogenic pro perti s, and can decrease testicular abnormalities. The objective of the study was to evaluate the effect of ketoprofen on spermatogenes is of mic exposed to continuous hypobaric hypoxia. 78 Mus musculus CF-1 male mice 3 to 4 months old were used and subjected to HH in chamber at 4200 m. They were divided into 13 groups (G) of 6 animals: 10 with HH cycles (1, 2, 3, 4 and 8, lasting 8.3 days eac h cycle, two groups each) and 3 in normoxia (Nx). Intraperitoneal ketoprofen 25 mg/kg was administered every 4 days. Euthanasia of these animals was performed at the end of each cycle and in the case the Nx groups at the end of cycles 1, 4 and 8. Percentage of mic rohematocrit and reticulocytes were measured in blood smears and a morphometric and histopathological analysis of the height of the epitheli um, the tubular diameter and the diameter of the tubular lumen was made. It was shown that hematocrit increases continuously up to 8 cy cles, while reticulocytes increase up to 3 cycles. Continuous HH decreases the tubular diameter in a sustained manner and proportiona l to HH cycles, and the height increased only in the groups subjected to 8 cycles. The groups treated with ketoprofen saw a decrease in ngiogen sis, presenting some degree of protection at the testicular level.
Determinants of Changing Behaviors of NERICA Adoption : An Analysis of Panel Data from Uganda

Using panel data of 347 households collected in 2004 and 2006 in Uganda, we identify four types of NERICA adoption behavior; continuous adoption in the two years, dropout (adoption only in 2004), late adoption (adoption only in 2006), and non-adoption. We found that NERICA yield is significantly higher among continuous adopters than among dropouts and late adopters. Further, results of the estimated NERICA adoption and yield functions indicate that the extension system failed to disseminate appropriate production knowledge, particularly of NERICA seed production, while the development of the market for rice via improved provision of milling services and the use of farmer-produced seed led to wider dissemination of NERICA rice. * Graduate School of Systems & Information Engineering, University of Tsukuba, 1-1-1 Tennodai, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-8573 JAPAN, E-mail: kijima@sk.tsukuba. ac.jp Financial support was provided by the 21 Century Center of Excellency project at National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies for collection of the data used in this paper. We would like to thank Carlos Bozzoli, Kei Kajisa, Takashi Yamano, participants in CSAE Conference 2008 in Oxford University, COE Tokyo workshop 2008 in National Graduate Institute (GRIPS), and GSID seminar in Nagoya University for helpful comments.
Poison Parasite Counter: Turning Frequently-Encountered Duplicitous Mass Communications into Self-Negating Memory Retrieval Cues

142 words) Democracy requires the free and full exchange of ideas. However, asymmetrical reach in mass communications due to disparities in communicators’ resources or power can lead to imbalances in who is heard, regardless of the validity of their ideas. The Poison Parasite Counter (PPC) involves inserting a strong (poisonous) counter-message, just once, into a replica of a rival’s communication. In parasitic fashion, the rival’s communication then “hosts” the poisonous counter-message, which is recalled upon each new exposure to the rival communication. This strategy harnesses associative memory to turn the rival’s communication into a retrieval cue for a poisonous counter-message embedded within the rival’s communication. In seven randomized tests (N = 3,678), we show that the PPC procedure lastingly undermines a rival’s communication by influencing opinions of the rival communicator, as well as behavior in the form of real political donations to actual candidates. 1Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA. 2University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 3Harvard Kennedy School, Cambridge, MA, USA. *Corresponding author. Email: jlaskyfink@berkeley.edu