Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
MEASUREMENT OF RENAL SIZE IN RELATION TO BODY HABITUS USING COMPUTED TOMOGRAPHY

Aim: Measurement of renal size in relation to body habitus using computed tomography Objectives: To measure the renal sizes. To find the variation between age, gender and body mass index (BMI). Methodology: By using MDCT kidney length & width were measured on oblique coronal reformatted CT images of 93 patients who all received routine abdominal CT scan with no pathology associated with renal. The patients had normal creatinine levels, no history of renal disease, & normal-appearing on CT. patient weight, height, & gender were recorded. Result: The mean of LRT (length of right kidney) in males 94.6±7.45 SD and in females 96.82±7.73 SD. Mean of LLT (length of left kidney) in males 95.42±6.76 and in females 97.56± 6.88SD. Mean WRT (width of right kidney) in males 45.08 ± 5.0 and in females 46.73±4.50 SD and WLT (width of left kidney) in females 47.63 ± 4.95 SD, Keeping P-value of 0.05. There was no statistical significance difference between the renal size with body habitus also with age and gender. Conclusion: Normal renal size does not vary according to patient’s body habitus. No relationship was found between renal sizes and age. Renal size is independent of the age and BMI. Similarly the gender also does not affect the renal size. Coronal section of abdominal CT predicts the renal length more accurately than any other imaging techniques, but all imaging techniques were always associated with small prediction errors. Further studies are possible with a larger sample size to find out the variation.
The Elimination Game or: Beam Selection based on M-ary Sequential Competition & Elimination

To solve the problem of deciding which among M unknown amplitude levels is the strongest one in a scenario where exact knowledge of the underlying PDFs and in particular the current SNR value is not available a so-called sequential competition test was proposed recently. By comparing the sequence metrics of M observation sequences to a 'no signal'- hypothesis the one which first crosses a termination threshold is selected. This amounts to a variable length test that adapts itself to an unknown SNR in contrast to a fixed length test. In this work we demonstrate that the average test length can be further reduced by eliminating stochastical paths (=competitors) already during the competition if these have become highly unlikely to be selected. In addition we investigate how the termination and elimination thresholds should be set in order to fulfill a given performance constraint defined as an average fraction of the maximum achievable rate.
Traffic big data assisted broadcast in vehicular networks

Multi-hop broadcast communications are required for vehicular Internet-of-Things applications including intelligent transport systems, autonomous driving, and collision avoidance systems. However, conducing efficient broadcasting in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) is particularly challenging due to the vehicle mobility and various vehicle densities. In this paper, we propose a traffic big data assisted broadcast scheme in VANETs. The proposed scheme uses vehicle traffic big data to estimate vehicle density, and then uses the prediction information to enhance the procedure of multi-hop broadcasting. By enhancing a receiver-oriented broadcast approach with vehicle density prediction, the proposed scheme can provide a high dissemination ratio with low broadcast redundancy. We use real traffic big data to conduct prediction and then generate realistic vehicular network simulations to show the performance of the proposed scheme.
A Mobile Augmented Reality Interface for Teaching Folk Dances

This paper presents a prototype mobile augmented reality interface for assisting the process of learning folk dances. As a case study, a folk dance was digitized based on recordings from professional dancers. To assess the effectiveness of the technology, it was comparatively evaluated with a large back-projection system in laboratory conditions. Sixteen participants took part in the study, and their movements were captured using motion capture system and then compared with the recordings from the professional dancers. Experimental results indicate that augmented reality has the potential to be used for learning folk dances.
Grundy domination and zero forcing in Kneser graphs

In this paper, we continue the investigation of different types of (Grundy) dominating sequences. We consider four different types of Grundy domination numbers and the related zero forcing numbers, focusing on these numbers in the well-known class of Kneser graphs K n , r . In particular, we establish that the Grundy total domination number γ gr t ( K n , r ) equals (2 r choose r ) for any r ≥ 2 and n ≥ 2 r + 1 . For the Grundy domination number of Kneser graphs we get γ gr ( K n , r ) = α ( K n , r ) whenever n is sufficiently larger than r . On the other hand, the zero forcing number Z ( K n , r ) is proved to be ( n choose r ) − (2 r choose r ) when n ≥ 3 r + 1 and r ≥ 2 , while lower and upper bounds are provided for Z ( K n , r ) when 2 r + 1 ≤ n ≤ 3 r . Some lower bounds for different types of minimum ranks of Kneser graphs are also obtained along the way.
Towards Dynamic Positioning of Text Content on a Windshield Display for Automated Driving

Windshield displays (WSDs) are a promising new technology to augment the entire windscreen with additional information about vehicle state, highlight critical objects in the surrounding, or serve as replacement for conventional displays. Typically, augmentation is provided in a screen-fixed manner as overlay on the windscreen. However, it is unclear to date if this is optimal in terms of usability/UX. In this work, we propose ”StickyWSD” – a world-fixed positioning strategy – and evaluate its impact on quantitative measures compared to screen-fixed positioning. Results from a user study conducted in a virtual reality driving simulator (N = 23) suggest that the dynamic world-fixed positioning technique shows increased performance and lowered error rates as well as take-over times. We conclude that the ”StickyWSD” approach offers lot of potential for WSDs that should be researched further.
Migrant parents: Political, socio-economic and cultural influences on breastfeeding and weaning in the UK

Infant feeding behaviours impact upon maternal and child health not only in the short term but throughout the lifespan. Large scale cohort studies show that that mothers migrating to the United Kingdom (UK) are more likely to practise healthy behaviours on arrival than after settlement, with mothers 5% less likely to breastfeed to 4 months for every additional 5 years spent in the UK1. Despite the potential impact upon the health of babies and their mothers, there is currently little exploration of the breastfeeding and weaning behaviours of migrant mothers in empirical research, and to date there have been few attempts in practice to address this decrease in healthy infant feeding behaviours among this growing sector of the population. Jayaweera 2 highlights that current research and policy are predominantly concerned with ethnic equalities in health, rarely considering the specific impact of migration. Additionally the health needs of refugees and asylum seekers have attracted more research than the health needs of those who come to study or work, and those from more established groups. This paper explores infant feeding behaviours among a variety of migrant groups and is based upon two qualitative studies carried out in South West England between 2013 and 2015. Romanian Roma mothers and grandmothers (n = 22) took part in semi-structured interviews focused on breastfeeding and weaning in the first year of life, taking into account social norms within their ethnic group and the effect of moving to the UK on individual and community normative behaviours. Mono-cultural focus groups were held with parents (n = 28) who had migrated to the UK within the last ten years, and discussion centred on how parents keep their pre-school children healthy in the UK following recent migration from EU accession countries, Somalia and South Asia . Both studies contribute to a highly nuanced picture of how infant feeding behaviours are influenced by the context of family life post-migration. Participants described work, study, family and community as impacting upon the choices parents made about how to feed their babies. Findings illustrate the differences in the context of daily life, both intra- and inter -nationalities, which drive change in the country of adoption. Feeding behaviours were particularly shaped by socio-economic status pre and post-migration. These findings add to the existing body of research about infant feeding among migrant mothers, providing in-depth contextual detail around the influence of migration in addition to ethnicity. It is known that moving to the UK from another culture can lead to changes in lifestyle, which have a long term impact upon the health of children. This study contributes to an understanding of infant feeding practices, beliefs and choices among migrant parents, and the factors which shape them. This provides insights for health professionals, researchers and commissioners who seek to promote better health for migrants and their children.
Symptom Burden in Patients With Home Care Who Are at Risk for Malnutrition: A Cross-Sectional Study

In Sweden, patients in early palliative stages of illness are cared for in primary care and often offered home care. Many are older and at risk for malnutrition, but little is known about their symptom burden and nutritional problems. This cross-sectional study divided older patients in home care into those with and without risk for malnutrition and compared symptom burden in the 2 groups. Participants were patients in Stockholm County (n = 121) in early palliative stages of disease cared for at home by primary care professionals from 10 health-care centers. The Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA) was used to identify risk for malnutrition. Symptoms and/or nutritional status in patients with and without risk were assessed with the Functional Assessment of Anorexia/Cachexia Therapy (FAACT), Patient-Generated Subjective Global Assessment Short Form (PG-SGA), and Edmonton Symptom Assessment System (ESAS). Forty-two percent of the patients were at risk for malnutrition (MNA). Appetite (P = .012), tiredness (P = .003), and anxiety (P = .008) were worse in these patients than in those without risk (ESAS; significance level, P ≤ .015). Patients at risk were also more concerned about how thin they looked (P = .006), agreed more strongly that their family or friends were pressuring them to eat (P = .000; FAACT; significance level, P ≤ .029), had a higher symptom burden (P = .005), had lower physical activity (P = .000), and more lost weight over time (P = .032; PG-SGA; significance level, P ≤ .040). This study adds a more detailed picture of the symptom burden in older patients at risk for malnutrition. Such information is needed to identify risk for malnutrition earlier and improve patients’ health.
Adult age differences in the use of temporal and semantic context in dual-list free recall.

Healthy older adults experience episodic memory deficits when temporal context reinstatement is required, but they also have preserved semantic memory. Semantic associations can therefore support or impair older adults' retrieval from a specific temporal context. The present experiment characterized the roles of pre- and postretrieval processing in age-related memory differences when semantic and temporal contexts worked together or in opposition. Participants studied 2 lists of exemplars from either the same category or different categories and recalled from one list. During recall, participants reported all words that came to mind and made source monitoring judgments. Both groups initiated first retrievals similarly from primacy positions on delayed tests, but older adults initiated first retrievals from later recency positions on immediate tests. Older adults took longer on average to initiate subsequent retrievals, especially when recalling from List 1 and when exemplars from the same category appeared in both lists. Further, trial-level analyses showed that retrieval latencies were longer when fewer responses were produced, and older adults produced fewer responses. When response production was equated, retrieval latencies were more comparable for both age groups. Finally, when lists included exemplars from the same category, older adults produced intrusions earlier and monitored them less effectively on immediate tests, but both age groups showed near-perfect intrusion monitoring when lists included exemplars from different categories. Collectively, these findings show that both pre- and postretrieval processing contributed to age-related recall differences when semantic associations facilitated or opposed reinstatement and monitoring of temporal context. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
Changes in CD4+CD25+FoxP3+ Regulatory T Cells and Serum Cytokines in Sublingual and Subcutaneous Immunotherapy in Allergic Rhinitis with or without Asthma

Background: Few studies have directly compared the immunologic responses to specific subcutaneous immunotherapy (SCIT) and sublingual immunotherapy (SLIT). Objective: We aimed to directly compare clinical efficacy and immunological responses between SLIT and SCIT in allergic rhinitis (AR) sensitized to house dust mites. Methods: Sixty-seven patients (age 5–55 years) with moderate-severe Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus (Der-p) and Dermatophagoides farinae AR with or without asthma were randomized (2:2:1) into SLIT (n = 27), SCIT (n = 26) and placebo (n = 14) groups. Symptom and medication scores, visual analogue score, serum Der-p specific immunoglobulin G4 (Der-p-sIgG4), CD4+CD25+FoxP3+ regulatory T cells (Tregs) and serum cytokines were measured. Results: After 1-year treatment, a significant improvement of total rhinitis score (TRS), total rhinitis medication score (TRMS) and visual analogue score occurred in both SLIT and SCIT. There were no differences in clinical efficacy except for TRMS (p = 0.026) when SLIT and SCIT were directly compared. CD4+CD25+FoxP3+ Tregs had a trend towards upregulation in the 2 modes and inversely correlated with TRS (p = 0.024) only in SLIT. Der-p-sIgG4 significantly increased in SLIT and SCIT (p < 0.05), and it was 30 times higher in SCIT than SLIT after the treatment (p < 0.05). Serum interferon-γ significantly increased only in SCIT after 1 (p = 0.008), 6 (p = 0.007) and 12 (p = 0.008) months of treatment and inversely correlated with TRS (p = 0.032). Conclusion: While SCIT and SLIT have similar rates of clinical improvement, the 2 modes reveal heterogeneous changes of CD4+CD25+Foxp3+ Tregs, sIgG4 and cytokines.
High-Frequency Sensorineural Hearing Loss Alters Cue-Weighting Strategies for Discriminating Stop Consonants in Noise

There is increasing evidence that hearing-impaired (HI) individuals do not use the same listening strategies as normal-hearing (NH) individuals, even when wearing optimally fitted hearing aids. In this perspective, better characterization of individual perceptual strategies is an important step toward designing more effective speech-processing algorithms. Here, we describe two complementary approaches for (a) revealing the acoustic cues used by a participant in a /d/-/g/ categorization task in noise and (b) measuring the relative contributions of these cues to decision. These two approaches involve natural speech recordings altered by the addition of a “bump noise. ” The bumps were narrowband bursts of noise localized on the spectrotemporal locations of the acoustic cues, allowing the experimenter to manipulate the consonant percept. The cue-weighting strategies were estimated for three groups of participants: 17 NH listeners, 18 HI listeners with high-frequency loss, and 15 HI listeners with flat loss. HI participants were provided with individual frequency-dependent amplification to compensate for their hearing loss. Although all listeners relied more heavily on the high-frequency cue than on the low-frequency cue, an important variability was observed in the individual weights, mostly explained by differences in internal noise. Individuals with high-frequency loss relied slightly less heavily on the high-frequency cue relative to the low-frequency cue, compared with NH individuals, suggesting a possible influence of supra-threshold deficits on cue-weighting strategies. Altogether, these results suggest a need for individually tailored speech-in-noise processing in hearing aids, if more effective speech discriminability in noise is to be achieved.
Transduced Tat-CIAPIN1 reduces the inflammatory response on LPS− and TPA-induced damages

Cytokine-induced apoptosis inhibitor 1 (CIAPIN1), known as an anti-apoptotic and signal-transduction protein, plays a pivotal role in a variety of biological processes. However, the role of CIAPIN1 in inflammation is unclear. We investigated the protective effects of CIAPIN1 in lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-exposed Raw 264.7 cells and against inflammatory damage induced by 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate (TPA) in a mouse model using cell-permeable Tat-CIAPIN1. Transduced Tat-CIAPIN1 significantly reduced ROS production and DNA fragmentation in LPS-exposed Raw 264.7 cells. Also, Tat-CIAPIN1 inhibited MAPKs and NF-κB activation, reduced the expression of Bax, and cleaved caspase-3, COX-2, iNOS, IL-6, and TNF-α in LPS-exposed cells. In a TPA-induced animal model, transduced Tat-CIAPIN1 drastically decreased inflammation damage and inhibited COX-2, iNOS, IL-6, and TNF-α expression. Therefore, these findings suggest that Tat-CIAPIN1 might lead to a new strategy for the treatment of inflammatory skin disorders.
Deep learning-based automatic blood pressure measurement: evaluation of the effect of deep breathing, talking and arm movement

Abstract Objectives: It is clinically important to evaluate the performance of a newly developed blood pressure (BP) measurement method under different measurement conditions. This study aims to evaluate the performance of using deep learning-based method to measure BPs and BP change under non-resting conditions. Materials and methods: Forty healthy subjects were studied. Systolic and diastolic BPs (SBPs and DBPs) were measured under four conditions using deep learning and manual auscultatory method. The agreement between BPs determined by the two methods were analysed under different conditions. The performance of using deep learning-based method to measure BP changes was finally evaluated. Results: There were no significant BPs differences between two methods under all measurement conditions (all p > .1). SBP and DBP measured by deep learning method changed significantly in comparison with the resting condition: decreased by 2.3 and 4.2 mmHg with deeper breathing (both p < .05), increased by 3.6 and 6.4 mmHg with talking, and increased by 5.9 and 5.8 mmHg with arm movement (all p < .05). There were no significant differences in BP changes measured by two methods (all p > .4, except for SBP change with deeper breathing). Conclusion: This study demonstrated that the deep learning method could achieve accurate BP measurement under both resting and non-resting conditions. Key messages Accurate and reliable blood pressure measurement is clinically important. We evaluated the performance of our developed deep learning-based blood pressure measurement method under resting and non-resting measurement conditions. The deep learning-based method could achieve accurate BP measurement under both resting and non-resting measurement conditions.
A case control study of environmental risk factors in Indians with multiple sclerosis

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a multi-factorial disease with different epidemiological patterns in various populations. The prevalence of MS in India is low and the climatic and environmental situation is much different from countries where MS is more common. The objective of the study was to evaluate environmental and other risk factors of MS patients in India. A total of 63 cases of clinically definite MS and equal number of age and sex matched controls were studied. The study subjects were interviewed by a physician and a social worker with a questionnaire containing the various risk factors. The study showed that there was significant association in history of childhood mumps, contact with dogs, daily consumption of dairy products and positive history of autoimmune diseases among Indians with MS.
A novel Css-MRTpo approach to simulate oral plasma concentration–time profiles of the partial glucokinase activator PF-04937319 and its disproportionate N-demethylated metabolite in humans using chimeric mice with humanized livers

Abstract A Css-MRTpo superposition method was devised to predict (retrospectively) oral plasma concentration–time profiles of PF-04937319 and its MIST-related metabolite, M1, in humans using chimeric mice with humanized liver. Original PK data were taken from a published report in which PF-04937319 and M1 were given to chimeric mice orally and/or intravenously. Human CL and Vss were predicted by single-species allometry and MRTiv,pred were calculated as Vss,pred/CL,pred. MRTpo,human were assumed to be MRTiv,pred plus MAT or mean metabolite formation time (MFT). Human Css was calculated by dividing the corrected oral dose by Vss,pred. Chronological sampling time and measured plasma concentrations were corrected by MRTpo,human and Css,human, respectively, and transformed to the corresponding values in humans. The obtained concentration-time profile of PF-04937319 was superimposed well with the observed data after single and repeated oral administration to humans. The transformed plasma concentration of M1 was somewhat lower than the observed value, but a slow increase of the simulated metabolite reflected gradual increase of observed M1 on Day 1. Transformed M1 gave an almost-flat concentration–time profile on Day 14, which was consistent with the curve observed in humans. Application of this novel method to other MIST-related compounds is discussed.
The psychology of experimental psychologists: Overcoming cognitive constraints to improve research: The 47th Sir Frederic Bartlett Lecture

Like many other areas of science, experimental psychology is affected by a “replication crisis” that is causing concern in many fields of research. Approaches to tackling this crisis include better training in statistical methods, greater transparency and openness, and changes to the incentives created by funding agencies, journals, and institutions. Here, I argue that if proposed solutions are to be effective, we also need to take into account human cognitive constraints that can distort all stages of the research process, including design and execution of experiments, analysis of data, and writing up findings for publication. I focus specifically on cognitive schemata in perception and memory, confirmation bias, systematic misunderstanding of statistics, and asymmetry in moral judgements of errors of commission and omission. Finally, I consider methods that may help mitigate the effect of cognitive constraints: better training, including use of simulations to overcome statistical misunderstanding; specific programmes directed at inoculating against cognitive biases; adoption of Registered Reports to encourage more critical reflection in planning studies; and using methods such as triangulation and “pre mortem” evaluation of study design to foster a culture of dialogue and criticism.