Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Campylobacter Spp. Epidemiology and Antimicrobial Susceptibility in a Developing Country, Burkina Faso (West Africa)

Data on campylobacteriosis are almost nonexistent in Burkina Faso. In this study conducted from 2006 to 2008 in Ouagadougou, stool specimens and sociodemographic data were collected from 1 246 patients attending the university teaching hospital for enteritis. Stool samples were analyzed for the presence of Campylobacter by the direct culture method on selective mCCDA agar followed by antibiotic susceptibility testing on the isolated strains. The isolation rate of Campylobacter was 2.3%,comprising of the following species C. jejuni (51.8%), C. coli (13.8%), and C. upsaliensis (3.5%). However, 30.9% of the isolates were unidentified. No resistant strain was found to gentamicin. The resistance to amoxicillin+clavulanic acid (3.4%) was lower than those (10.3-34.5%) to the other antibiotics: erythromycin (10.3%), tetracycline (10.3%), ciprofloxacin (13.8%), amoxicillin (24.1%) and ceftriaxone (34.5%), nalidixic acid (34.5%). Significant associations were found between Campylobacter enteritis and contact with animals (P=0.03), and HIV infection (P<0.0001), in contrast to other sociodemographic and seasonal factors. From the data obtained Amoxicillin+clavulanic acid appear to be the first choice for treatment. The implementation of a national program may be helpful in controlling the spread of the disease and the increase of resistance to antibiotics. Keywords: Campylobacter , epidemiology, HIV, drug resistance, Burkina Faso
Modifiable behaviors help to explain the inequalities in perceived health associated with deprivation and social class: evidence from a national sample.

BACKGROUND The association between health and deprivation is of serious concern to many health promotion agencies. The purpose of the current study was to assess whether modifiable behaviors of physical activity (PA), sports participation, diet, smoking and body mass index (BMI) can help to explain these inequalities in a sample of 4653 respondents from Northern Ireland. METHODS The study is based on a cross-sectional survey of Northern Irish adults. Responses to a self-rated health question were dichotomized and binary logistic regression was used to identify the health inequalities between areas of high, middle or low deprivation. These differences were further adjusted for other sociodemographic factors and subsequently for various modifiable behaviors of PA, sports participation, diet, smoking, and BMI. RESULTS Respondents from high and middle areas of deprivation are more likely to report poorer health. As soon as sociodemographic factors and other modifiable behaviors were included, these inequalities either disappeared or were greatly reduced. CONCLUSION Many inequalities in health in NI can be explained by the respondents' sociodemographic characteristics that can be further explained by introducing information about respondents who meet the recommended PA guidelines, play sport, eat 5 portions of fruit and vegetables, and maintain an optimal BMI.
Ancient Coin Classification Using Reverse Motif Recognition: Image-based classification of Roman Republican coins

We propose a holistic system to classify ancient Roman Republican coins based on their reverse-side motifs. The bag-of-visual-words (BoW) model is enriched with spatial information to increase the discriminative power of the coin image representation. This is achieved by combining a spatial pooling scheme with co-occurrence encoding of visual words. We specifically address the required geometric invariance properties of image-based ancient coin classification, as coins from different collections can be located at differing image locations, have various scales in the images and can undergo various in-plane rotations. We evaluate our method on a data set of 2,224 coin images from three different sources. The experimental results show that our proposed image representation is more discriminative than the traditional bag-of-visual-words model while still being invariant to the mentioned geometric transformations. For 29 motifs, the system achieves a classification rate of 82%. It is considered to act as a helpful tool for numismatists in the near future, which facilitates and supports the traditional coin classification process by a faster presorting of coins.
Speaker Recognition by Machines and Humans: A tutorial review

Identifying a person by his or her voice is an important human trait most take for granted in natural human-to-human interaction/communication. Speaking to someone over the telephone usually begins by identifying who is speaking and, at least in cases of familiar speakers, a subjective verification by the listener that the identity is correct and the conversation can proceed. Automatic speaker-recognition systems have emerged as an important means of verifying identity in many e-commerce applications as well as in general business interactions, forensics, and law enforcement. Human experts trained in forensic speaker recognition can perform this task even better by examining a set of acoustic, prosodic, and linguistic characteristics of speech in a general approach referred to as structured listening. Techniques in forensic speaker recognition have been developed for many years by forensic speech scientists and linguists to help reduce any potential bias or preconceived understanding as to the validity of an unknown audio sample and a reference template from a potential suspect. Experienced researchers in signal processing and machine learning continue to develop automatic algorithms to effectively perform speaker recognition? with ever-improving performance? to the point where automatic systems start to perform on par with human listeners. In this article, we review the literature on speaker recognition by machines and humans, with an emphasis on prominent speaker-modeling techniques that have emerged in the last decade for automatic systems. We discuss different aspects of automatic systems, including voice-activity detection (VAD), features, speaker models, standard evaluation data sets, and performance metrics. Human speaker recognition is discussed in two parts? the first part involves forensic speaker-recognition methods, and the second illustrates how a na? ve listener performs this task from a neuroscience perspective. We conclude this review with a comparative study of human versus machine speaker recognition and attempt to point out strengths and weaknesses of each.
Motor coordination, activity, and fitness at 6 years of age relative to activity and fitness at 10 years of age.

BACKGROUND Health benefits of physical activity (PA) and physical fitness (PF) are reasonably well established, but tracking studies of PA and PF in childhood have not ordinarily considered the role of motor coordination. OBJECTIVES To compare the growth status, gross motor coordination (GMC), PA, and PF characteristics of children at 6 years of age relative to aerobic fitness (fit, unfit) and PA (active, sedentary) at 10 years. METHODS 285 primary school children (142 girls, 143 boys) resident on the 4 main Azorean islands, Portugal, were measured annually (in the fall) from 6 to 10 years. ANOVA and t tests were computed with SPSS 17. RESULTS Children with either high aerobic fitness or with high level of PA at 10 years of age tended to have a more favorable profile at 6 years compared with those with low fitness or low activity, respectively. Children who were both fit and active at 10 years of age had a more favorable activity and fitness profile and had better GMC at 6 years compared with children who were unfit and sedentary. CONCLUSIONS Results highlight the need to consider not only PA, but also PF and GMC in health promotion through the primary school years.
The costs of physical inactivity in the Czech Republic in 2008.

BACKGROUND Several scientific studies estimate the burden of physical inactivity in different countries, yet in the Czech Republic, this kind of research is still missing. This paper represents one of the first attempts to quantify the costs of physical inactivity in the Czech Republic for 2008. METHODS The analysis, based on scientific literature review, uses the comparative risk assessment methodology and applies it on data available in the Czech Republic. RESULTS In 2008, the financial cost of physical inactivity to public health insurance companies was almost 700 million Kc, or 0.4%, of total healthcare costs. Furthermore, physical inactivity caused 2442, or 2.3%, of all deaths in 2008 and 18,065, or 1.2%, of all disability-adjusted life years in 2004. CONCLUSIONS The costs of physical inactivity in the Czech Republic are considerable, yet slightly smaller than in other comparable studies. The obtained results could be used as an argument for policymakers when conceiving public or private health policy.
Awareness and knowledge of the 2008 Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans.

BACKGROUND To estimate the proportion of U.S. adults aware and knowledgeable of the 2008 Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans. METHODS Analysis is based on a cross-sectional national sample of adults in the 2009 (n = 4281) HealthStyles survey. We estimated the prevalence of adults who reported awareness of government physical activity guidelines and who were knowledgeable of the currently recommended moderate-intensity physical activity guideline (ie, 150 minutes per week) from the 2008 Guidelines. RESULTS In 2009, the percent of adults who reported being aware of government physical activity (PA) guidelines was 36.1%. The percent of adults knowledgeable of the moderate-intensity physical activity guideline was less than 1% (0.56%). CONCLUSIONS Most U.S. adults lack sufficient awareness and knowledge of the 2008 Guidelines, putting them at risk for failure to meet them. The nation needs more effective communication strategies to translate and disseminate PA guidelines.
Correlates of physical activity in adults with rheumatoid arthritis: a systematic review.

BACKGROUND Physical activity (PA) is an important component in the management of Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA). To date the correlates of PA have not been thoroughly investigated in the RA population. The aim of this systematic review was to determine the correlates of PA in the adult RA population. METHODS A search of Medline, EMBASE, AMED, CINAHL plus, Pubmed, Web of Science, and the Cochrane Library was conducted. A manual search of reference lists was conducted to compliment the electronic search. Ten studies fulfilled the inclusion criteria and were assessed for methodological quality. RESULTS Results determined correlates in 4 categories: sociodemographic, physical, psychological and social variables. The variables varied greatly and were inconsistently studied. Changes were noted from a previous review in 2005 in relation to the association between certain variables and PA, including age, gender, disease duration, pain, exercise beliefs and social support. CONCLUSIONS Positive associations with PA were found for motivation, self-efficacy, health perception, and previous PA levels. Negative associations were found for fatigue, a coerced regulation style and certain physiological variables. In addition differences between correlates of PA in the adult RA population and other chronic disease and healthy adult populations have been demonstrated.
Hierarchical Colour-Shift-Keying Aided Layered Video Streaming for the Visible Light Downlink

Colour-shift keying (CSK) constitutes an important modulation scheme conceived for the visible light communications (VLC). The signal constellation of CSK relies on three different-color light sources invoked for information transmission. The CSK constellation has been optimized for minimizing the bit error rate, but no effort has been invested in investigating the feasibility of CSK aided unequal error protection (UEP) schemes conceived for video sources. Hence, in this treatise, we conceive a hierarchical CSK (HCSK) modulation scheme based on the traditional CSK, which is capable of generating interdependent layers of signals having different error probability, which can be readily reconfigured by changing its parameters. Furthermore, we conceived an HCSK design example for transmitting scalable video sources with the aid of a recursive systematic convolutional (RSC) code. An optimization method is conceived for enhancing the UEP and for improving the quality of the received video. Our simulation results show that the proposed optimized-UEP 16-HCSK-RSC system outperforms the traditional equal error protection scheme by ~ 1.7 dB of optical SNR at a peak signal-to-noise ratio of 37 dB, while optical SNR savings of up to 6.5 dB are attained at a lower PSNR of 36 dB.
Flexible estimation of survival curves conditional on non‐linear and time‐dependent predictor effects

Prognostic studies often estimate survival curves for patients with different covariate vectors, but the validity of their results depends largely on the accuracy of the estimated covariate effects. To avoid conventional proportional hazards and linearity assumptions, flexible extensions of Cox's proportional hazards model incorporate non‐linear (NL) and/or time‐dependent (TD) covariate effects. However, their impact on survival curves estimation is unclear. Our primary goal is to develop and validate a flexible method for estimating individual patients' survival curves, conditional on multiple predictors with possibly NL and/or TD effects. We first obtain maximum partial likelihood estimates of NL and TD effects and use backward elimination to select statistically significant effects into a final multivariable model. We then plug the selected NL and TD estimates in the full likelihood function and estimate the baseline hazard function and the resulting survival curves, conditional on individual covariate vectors. The TD and NL functions and the log hazard are modeled with unpenalized regression B‐splines. In simulations, our flexible survival curve estimates were unbiased and had much lower mean square errors than the conventional estimates. In real‐life analyses of mortality after a septic shock, our model improved significantly the deviance (likelihood ratio test = 84.8, df = 20, p < 0.0001) and changed substantially the predicted survival for several subjects. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The effect of 12-month participation in osteogenic and non-osteogenic sports on bone development in adolescent male athletes. The PRO-BONE study

6 7 Objectives: Research investigating the longitudinal effects of the most popular sports on bone 8 development in adolescent males is scarce. The aim is to investigate the effect of 12-month 9 participation in osteogenic and non-osteogenic sports on bone development. 10 Design: A 12-month study was conducted in adolescent males involved in football, swimming and 11 cycling and compared with an active control group. 12 Methods: 116 adolescent males (13.1±0.1 years at baseline): 37 footballers, 37 swimmers, 28 cyclists 13 and 14 active controls were followed for 12 months. Bone mineral content (BMC) was measured by 14 dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry, and bone stiffness was measured by quantitative ultrasound. Bone 15 outcomes at 12 months were adjusted for baseline bone status, age, height, lean mass and moderate to 16 vigorous physical activity. 17 Results: Footballers had higher improvement in adjusted BMC at the total body, total hip, shaft, 18 Ward’s triangle, legs and bone stiffness compared to cyclists (6.3 to 8.0 %). Footballers had 19 significantly higher adjusted BMC at total body, shaft and legs compared to swimmers (5.4 to 5.6 %). 20 There was no significant difference between swimmers and cyclists for any bone outcomes. 21 Swimming and cycling participation resulted in non-significant lower bone development at most sites 22 of the skeleton compared to controls (-4.3 to -0.6 %). 23 Conclusions: Football participation induces significantly greater improvements in BMC and bone 24 stiffness over 12 months compared to cycling and swimming.
Precision of maximum likelihood estimation in adaptive designs

There has been increasing interest in trials that allow for design adaptations like sample size reassessment or treatment selection at an interim analysis. Ignoring the adaptive and multiplicity issues in such designs leads to an inflation of the type 1 error rate, and treatment effect estimates based on the maximum likelihood principle become biased. Whereas the methodological issues concerning hypothesis testing are well understood, it is not clear how to deal with parameter estimation in designs were adaptation rules are not fixed in advanced so that, in practice, the maximum likelihood estimate (MLE) is used. It is therefore important to understand the behavior of the MLE in such designs. The investigation of Bias and mean squared error (MSE) is complicated by the fact that the adaptation rules need not be fully specified in advance and, hence, are usually unknown. To investigate Bias and MSE under such circumstances, we search for the sample size reassessment and selection rules that lead to the maximum Bias or maximum MSE. Generally, this leads to an overestimation of Bias and MSE, which can be reduced by imposing realistic constraints on the rules like, for example, a maximum sample size. We consider designs that start with k treatment groups and a common control and where selection of a single treatment and control is performed at the interim analysis with the possibility to reassess each of the sample sizes. We consider the case of unlimited sample size reassessments as well as several realistically restricted sample size reassessment rules. © 2015 The Authors. Statistics in Medicine Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Advanced Data Exploitation in Speech Analysis: An overview

With recent advances in machine-learning techniques for automatic speech analysis (ASA)-the computerized extraction of information from speech signals-there is a greater need for high-quality, diverse, and very large amounts of data. Such data could be game-changing in terms of ASA system accuracy and robustness, enabling the extraction of feature representations or the learning of model parameters immune to confounding factors, such as acoustic variations, unrelated to the task at hand. However, many current ASA data sets do not meet the desired properties. Instead, they are often recorded under less than ideal conditions, with the corresponding labels sparse or unreliable.
Depression assessment and classification in palliative cancer patients: a systematic literature review

The objective of this study was to review the literature on depression in palliative cancer care in order to identify which assessment methods and classification systems have been used in studies of depression. Extensive electronic database searches in PubMed, CancerLit, CINAHL, PsychINFO, EMBASE and AgeLine as well as hand search were carried out. In the 202 included papers, 106 different assessment methods were used. Sixty-five of these were only used once. All together, the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) was the most commonly used assessment method. However, there were regional differences and while the HADS dominated in Europe it was quite seldom used in Canada or in the USA. Few prevalence and intervention studies used assessment methods with an explicit reference to a diagnostic system. There were in total few case definitions of depression. Among these, the classifications were in general based on cut-off scores (77%) and not according to diagnostic systems. The full range of the DSM-IV diagnostic criteria was seldom assessed, i.e. less than one-third of the assessments in the review took into account the duration of symptoms and 18% assessed consequences and impact upon patient functioning. A diversity of assessment methods had been used. Few studies classified depression by referring to a diagnostic system or by using cut-off scores. Evidently, there is a need for a consensus on how to assess and conceptualize depression and related conditions in palliative care.
A Comparison of Children's Physical Activity Levels in Physical Education, Recess, and Exergaming.

PURPOSE To compare young children's different intensity physical activity (PA) levels in physical education, recess and exergaming programs. METHODS Participants were 140 first and second grade children (73 girls; Meanage= 7.88 years). Beyond the daily 20-minute recess, participants attended 75-minute weekly physical education classes and another 75-minute weekly exergaming classes. Children's PA levels were assessed by ActiGraph GTX3 accelerometers for 3 sessions in the 3 programs. The outcome variables were percentages of time spent in sedentary, light PA and moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA). RESULTS There were significant main effects for program and grade, and an interaction effect for program by grade. Specifically, children's MVPA in exergaming and recess was higher than in physical education. The 2nd-grade children demonstrated lower sedentary behavior and MVPA than the first-grade children during recess; less light PA in both recess and exergaming than first-grade children; and less sedentary behavior but higher MVPA in exergaming than first-grade children. CONCLUSIONS Young children generated higher PA levels in recess and exergaming as compared with physical education. Hence, other school-based PA programs may serve as essential components of a comprehensive school PA program. Implications are provided for educators and health professionals.
The Association Between Exergaming and Physical Activity in Young Adults.

BACKGROUND Compared with traditional nonactive video games, exergaming contributes significantly to overall daily physical activity (PA) in experimental studies, but the association in observational studies is not clear. METHODS Data were available in the 2011 to 2012 wave of the Nicotine Dependence in Teens (NDIT) study (N = 829). Multivariable sex-stratified models assessed the association between exergaming (1-3 times per month in the past year) and minutes of moderate and vigorous physical activity in the previous week, and the association between exergaming and meeting PA recommendations. RESULTS Compared with male exergamers, female exergamers were more likely to believe exergames were a good way to integrate PA into their lives (89% vs 62%, P = .0001). After we adjusted for covariates, male exergamers were not significantly different from male nonexergamers in minutes of PA. Female exergamers reported 47 more minutes of moderate PA in the previous week compared with female nonexergamers (P = .03). There was no association between exergaming and meeting PA recommendations. CONCLUSIONS Exergaming contributes to moderate minutes of PA among women but not among men. Differences in attitudes toward exergaming should be further explored.