Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Novel Nanomaterial to Enhance Growth and Yield of Wheat

Careful and judicious use of nanotechnology can ensure food security through boosting agriculture production. Nanoparticles have potential to improve growth and yield of wheat crop. This paper reports the effect of silver nanoparticles on germination, seedling growth and yield of wheat cultivar NARC-2009. Silver nanoparticles (10-20 nm size) were synthesized by chemical reduction of silver nitrate with tri-sodium citrate. Wheat seeds were soaked in 0, 25, 50, 75, 100, 125 and 150 ppm solutions of silver nanoparticles for germination test. To determine the effect on seedling growth silver nanoparticles were applied with MS medium and through soil in small plastic pots in two different experiments in lab. To evaluate yield response silver nanoparticles were applied to soil at the time of transfer of seedlings to clay pots. Application of silver nanoparticles either did not affect or decreased germination and germination index. However, number of seminal roots increased significantly with 25 and 50 ppm silver nanoparticles in comparison to control. Leaf area, root biomass, fresh weight and dry weight increased significantly at 25 ppm as compared to control during first week of exposure but decreased during the following two weeks. Higher concentration of silver nanoparticles in solution and longer exposure proved toxic to the seedlings. All levels of silver nanoparticles (0, 25, 50, 100 and 150 ppm) applied to soil in pots significantly enhanced fresh weight, dry weight and chlorophyll content over control. Nonetheless, effect of 25 ppm was more pronounced as compared to other levels of SNPs. Maximum number of grains per spike was recorded with 25 ppm followed by 50 ppm whereas maximum 100-grain weight was obtained for 25 and 125 ppm soil applied silver nanoparticles. Highest grain yield per pot was obtained with 25 and 50 ppm. Silver nanoparticles have definite potential to increase crop growth and yield. Nonetheless, comprehensive experimentation is required to establish the most suitable concentration, size and mode of application of silver nanoparticles for higher growth and maximum yield of wheat.
VITAMIN D DEFICIENCY AND RISK OF DIABETES MELLITUS IN ARAR, KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA: A CROSS SECTIONAL STUDY

Over the past decade, numerous non-skeletal diseases have been reported to be associated with vitamin D deficiency including type2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Studies provide evidence that vitamin D may play a functional role in glucose tolerance through its effects on insulin secretion and insulin sensitivity, no previous community based studies have been conducted in Arar, northern border of Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) addressing this issue could be traced. This study was carried out to show the magnitude of the problem of vitamin D deficiency and how such a deficiency can eventually has associated with DM in Arar population, KSA. Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out during the period from 1, March 2016 to 30, September 2016. A total of 439 subjects aged 20–45 years, attending five randomly selected primary healthcare centers were selected using a systemic random sampling procedure. Data were collected by personal interview using a predesigned questionnaire including the relevant questions for obtaining covering the medical history of diabetes, age, family history of diabetes and other relevant needed data. Blood sample is drawn under complete a septic conditions to determine random blood glucose level. Person considered diabetic if random blood sugar was ≥200 ml/dl. Serum levels of 25-OH vitamin D were measured by ELISA. Anthropometric examination included height and weight measurements was obtained. Body Mass Index (BMI) was calculated. Results: The majority (70.6%) of the participants had normal Vit. D level, 24.8% had deficient level lower than 12 ng/ml and 4.6% had insufficient level (12-20 ng/ml). the prevalence of diabetes mellitus among the studied population was 12.1%. Diabetes mellitus was more prevalent among cases of Vit.D deficiency as it affects 16.3% of them and 10.3% of participants with normal Vit. D level with statistically significant difference (P <0.05). there is also significant effect of sex and exposure to sunlight (P<0.05), but no significant effect of BMI, age, educational level, fast food consumption, milk and dairy products consumption, and frequent eating fruits and vegetables on occurrence of Vit. D deficiency among the studied population (P>0.05). Conclusion: In conclusion, vitamin D deficiency is a common problem in in Arar, KSA, vitamin D deficiency is significantly associated with diabetes mellitus. Health education programs and increased awareness of the health services providers are needed.
COMPARISON OF SPOT AND LANDSAT DATA IN CLASSIFYING WETLAND VEGETATION TYPES

Abstract. The aim of this study was to compare the performances of Landsat and SPOT imagery to map wetland vegetation types in the Klipsriviersberg Nature Reserve, South Africa. The Gauteng Conservation Plan 3.3 (C-Plan 3) was used to delineate the boundaries of the wetlands in the study area. According to the plan, the proposed study area falls within the Critical Biodiversity Areas (CBA) and Ecological Support Areas (ESA). Limited field data were collected within the boundaries of the wetlands during summer 2015 when the vegetation cover was relatively high. These data identified features including sparse vegetation, dense vegetation, grassland and bare land.Additional samples were added from Google Earth image to increase sample size. Both the field data and Google Earth data were used as reference against which the performances of SPOT and Landsat product were compared. Unsupervised classification was used to classify SPOT and Landsat images acquired in summer 2015. The results showed that overall accuracy of SPOT images is higher than Landsat images. This is attributed to its high spatial resolution of 1.5 m compared to 30 m spatial resolution of Landsat imagery. This indicates that SPOT imagery is recommended to map wetland vegetation diversity in a localised area such as the study area. The current high temporal resolution of the image has also an added advantage that conservationists should exploit.
State‐of‐the‐Art Review of HIV‐TB Coinfection in Special Populations

Children and pregnant and postpartum women experience an undue burden of HIV‐associated tuberculosis (TB), but data are lacking on key aspects of their complex management. Often excluded from clinical trials, they are left with limited options for HIV‐TB cotreatment. This review will focus on pharmacologic aspects of the treatment of HIV‐TB coinfection in the special populations of children and pregnant and postpartum women. Pharmacogenomic considerations, rational dosing, drug–drug interactions, safety, immune reconstitution inflammatory syndrome, and ethical and policy aspects of the inclusion of special populations in research will be surveyed. Considerations related to the treatment of both HIV‐associated TB disease and HIV‐associated latent TB infection will be summarized. Relevant knowledge gaps and research priorities in special populations will be outlined.
Fast and Scalable Position-Based Layout Synthesis

The arrangement of objects into a layout can be challenging for non-experts, as is affirmed by the existence of interior design professionals. Recent research into the automation of this task has yielded methods that can synthesize layouts of objects respecting aesthetic and functional constraints that are non-linear and competing. These methods usually adopt a stochastic optimization scheme, which samples from different layout configurations, a process that is slow and inefficient. We introduce an physics-motivated, continuous layout synthesis technique, which results in a significant gain in speed and is readily scalable. We demonstrate our method on a variety of examples and show that it achieves results similar to conventional layout synthesis based on Markov chain Monte Carlo (McMC) state-search, but is faster by at least an order of magnitude and can handle layouts of unprecedented size as well as tightly-packed layouts that can overwhelm McMC.
OLFM4, LY6D and S100A7 as potent markers for distant metastasis in estrogen receptor‐positive breast carcinoma

Metastatic breast cancer is a highly lethal disease, and it is very important to evaluate the biomarkers associated with distant metastasis. However, molecular features of distant metastasis remain largely unknown in breast cancer. Estrogens play an important role in the progression of breast cancer and the majority of stage IV breast carcinomas express estrogen receptor (ER). Therefore, in this study, we examined molecular markers associated with distant metastasis in ER‐positive breast carcinoma by microarray and immunohistochemistry. When we examined the gene expression profile of ER‐positive stage IV breast carcinoma tissues (n = 7) comparing ER‐positive stage I‐III cases (n = 11) by microarray analysis, we newly identified OLFM4, LY6D and S100A7, which were closely associated with the distant metastasis. Subsequently, we performed immunohistochemistry for OLFM4, LY6D and S100A7 in 168 ER‐positive breast carcinomas. OLFM4, LY6D and S100A7 immunoreactivities were significantly associated with stage, pathological T factor, distant metastasis and Ki67 status in the ER‐positive breast carcinomas. Moreover, these immunoreactivities were significantly associated with a worse prognostic factor for distant metastasis‐free and breast cancer‐specific survival in ER‐positive stage I‐III breast cancer patients. However, when we performed immunohistochemistry for OLFM4, LY6D and S100A7 in 40 ER‐negative breast carcinomas, these immunoreactivities were not generally associated with the clinicopathological factors examined, including distant metastasis and prognosis of patients, in this study. These results suggest that OLFM4, LY6D and S100A7 immunoreactivity are associated with an aggressive phenotype of ER‐positive breast carcinoma, and these are potent markers for distant metastasis of ER‐positive breast cancer patients.
Personal Mobile Messaging in Context

Mobile text messaging is one of the most important communication channels today, but it suffers from lack of expressiveness, context and emotional awareness, compared to face-to-face communication. We address this problem by augmenting text messaging with information about users and contexts. We present and reflect on lessons learned from three field studies, in which we deployed augmentation concepts as prototype chat apps in users’ daily lives. We studied (1) subtly conveying context via dynamic font personalisation (TapScript), (2) integrating and sharing physiological data – namely heart rate – implicitly or explicitly (HeartChat) and (3) automatic annotation of various context cues: music, distance, weather and activities (ContextChat). Based on our studies, we discuss chat augmentation with respect to privacy concerns, understandability, connectedness and inferring context in addition to methodological lessons learned. Finally, we propose a design space for chat augmentation to guide future research, and conclude with practical design implications.
Efficacy of Care for Blind Painful Eyes.

PURPOSE Pain relief for a blind painful eye often follows an escalating paradigm of interventions. This study compares the efficacy of common interventions. METHODS A retrospective chart review of blind painful eye cases was conducted at a single tertiary institution from April 2012 to December 2016. Demographics, etiology, treatment, and pain level were assessed. RESULTS Among 99 blind painful eyes, 96 eyes initially received medical therapy (topical steroids, cycloplegics, and/or hypotensives), with pain relief in 39% of eyes. Minimally invasive interventions (laser cyclophotocoagulation, retrobulbar injection, or corneal electrocautery) were performed 41 times in 36 eyes, 34 of which had failed medical therapy, and led to pain relief in 75% of eyes. Evisceration or enucleation was performed in 28 eyes, and long-term pain relief was achieved in 100% of eyes. Surgery allowed discontinuation of oral analgesics in 100% of cases versus 20% for minimally invasive therapy (p = 0.005) and 14% for medical therapy (p = 0.0001). Compared with medical therapy, minimally invasive therapy was 2.5 times more likely to achieve lasting pain relief (p = 0.003) and surgical therapy 35.6 times more likely to achieve lasting pain relief (p = 0.011). High initial pain score was associated with nonsurgical treatment failure. CONCLUSIONS Medical therapy provides pain relief in a moderate number of patients with a blind painful eye. When medical therapy fails, minimally invasive therapy and surgical interventions are successively more effective in relieving ocular pain. High initial pain score is a risk factor for nonsurgical therapy failure and may merit an earlier discussion of surgical intervention.
Towards EEG-based BCI driven by emotions for addressing BCI-Illiteracy: a meta-analytic review

ABSTRACT Many critical aspects affect the correct operation of a Brain Computer Interface. The term ‘BCI-illiteracy’ describes the impossibility of using a BCI paradigm. At present, a universal solution does not exist and seeking innovative protocols to drive a BCI is mandatory. This work presents a meta-analytic review on recent advances in emotions recognition with the perspective of using emotions as voluntary, stimulus-independent, commands for BCIs. 60 papers, based on electroencephalography measurements, were selected to evaluate what emotions have been most recognised and what brain regions were activated by them. It was found that happiness, sadness, anger and calm were the most recognised emotions. Relevant discriminant locations for emotions recognition and for the particular case of discrete emotions recognition were identified in the temporal, frontal and parietal areas. The meta-analysis was mainly performed on stimulus-elicited emotions, due to the limited amount of literature about self-induced emotions. The obtained results represent a good starting point for the development of BCI driven by emotions and allow to: (1) ascertain that emotions are measurable and recognisable one from another (2) select a subset of most recognisable emotions and the corresponding active brain regions.
The Body Speaks: Using the Mirror Game to Link Attachment and Non-verbal Behavior

The Mirror Game (MG) is a common exercise in dance/movement therapy and drama therapy. It is used to promote participants’ ability to enter and remain in a state of togetherness. In spite of the wide use of the MG by practitioners, it is only recently that scientists begun to use the MG in research, examining its correlates, validity, and reliability. This study joins this effort by reporting on the identification of scale items to describe the non-verbal behavior expressed during the MG and its correlation to measures of attachment. Thus, we explored the application of the MG as a tool for assessing the embodiment of attachment in adulthood. Forty-eight participants (22 females, mean age = 33.2) played the MG with the same gender-matched expert players. All MG were videotaped. In addition, participants were evaluated on two central measurements of attachment in adulthood: The Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) and the Experience in Close Relationship questionnaire (ECR). To analyze the data, we developed the “MG scale” that coded the non-verbal behavior during the movement interaction, using 19 parameters. The sub-scales were reduced using factor analysis into two dimensions referred to as “together” and “free. ” The free factor was significantly correlated to both measurements of attachment: Participants classified as having secure attachment on the AAI, received higher scores on the MG free factor than participants classified as insecure [t(46) = 7.858, p = 0.000]. Participants, who were high on the avoidance dimension on the ECR, were low on the MG free factor [r(48) = −0.285, p = 0.007]. This is the first study to examine the MG as it is used by practitioners and its correlation to highly standardized measures. This exploratory study may be considered as part of the first steps of exploring the MG as a standardized assessment tool. The advantages of the MG as a simple, non-verbal movement interaction demonstrate some of the strengths of dance/movement and drama therapy practice.
One-Piece Implants with Smooth Concave Neck to Enhance Soft Tissue Development and Preserve Marginal Bone Levels: A Retrospective Study with 1- to 6-Year Follow-Up

Novel one-piece implants with concave smooth neck have been introduced to promote the formation of a thick mucosal layer and preserve marginal bone. A retrospective study on 70 patients with 1- to 6-year follow-up was carried out. Cumulative survival rates were assessed. Variations of marginal bone level were measured on periapical radiographs as distance of the implant-abutment junction from the bone crest. Influence of different variables on treatment outcome was evaluated. Cumulative success rate after 6 years was 99.4 % at implant level and 98.6 % at patient level. Marginal bone level changed in a significant way over time. After 4 months, an increase of radiographic bone level of 0.173 ± 1.088 mm at implant level and 0.18 ± 1.019 mm at patient level was recorded. Mean marginal bone loss after 5 years was 0.573 ± 0.966 mm at implant level and 0.783 ± 1.213 mm at patient level. Age, sex, smoking habits, implant sites, implant lengths and diameters, prosthetic retentions, and timing of loading did not influence marginal bone remodeling in a statistically significant way. At 4-year follow-up partial restorations lost a mean of 0.96 mm of more marginal bone compared with single restorations. This difference was statistically significant.
Stacked Pooling: Improving Crowd Counting by Boosting Scale Invariance

In this work, we explore the cross-scale similarity in crowd counting scenario, in which the regions of different scales often exhibit high visual similarity. This feature is universal both within an image and across different images, indicating the importance of scale invariance of a crowd counting model. Motivated by this, in this paper we propose simple but effective variants of pooling module, i.e., multi-kernel pooling and stacked pooling, to boost the scale invariance of convolutional neural networks (CNNs), benefiting much the crowd density estimation and counting. Specifically, the multi-kernel pooling comprises of pooling kernels with multiple receptive fields to capture the responses at multi-scale local ranges. The stacked pooling is an equivalent form of multi-kernel pooling, while, it reduces considerable computing cost. Our proposed pooling modules do not introduce extra parameters into model and can easily take place of the vanilla pooling layer in implementation. In empirical study on two benchmark crowd counting datasets, the stacked pooling beats the vanilla pooling layer in most cases.
Bandwidth Allocation Mechanism based on Users' Web Usage Patterns for Campus Networks

Managing the bandwidth in campus networks becomes a challenge in recent years. The limited bandwidth resource and continuous growth of users make the IT managers think on the strategies concerning bandwidth allocation. This paper introduces a mechanism for allocating bandwidth based on the users’ web usage patterns. The main purpose is to set a higher bandwidth to the users who are inclined to browsing educational websites compared to those who are not. In attaining this proposed technique, some stages need to be done. These are the preprocessing of the weblogs, class labeling of the dataset, computation of the feature subspaces, training for the development of the ANN for LDA/GSVD algorithm, visualization, and bandwidth allocation. The proposed method was applied to real weblogs from university’s proxy servers. The results indicate that the proposed method is useful in classifying those users who used the internet in an educational way and those who are not. Thus, the developed ANN for LDA/GSVD algorithm outperformed the existing algorithm up to 50% which indicates that this approach is efficient. Further, based on the results, few users browsed educational contents. Through this mechanism, users will be encouraged to use the internet for educational purposes. Moreover, IT managers can make better plans to optimize the distribution of bandwidth.
Understanding the Role of Advanced Practice Providers in Oncology in the United States

Purpose: Advanced practice providers (APPs, which include nurse practitioners [NPs] and physician assistants [PAs]) are integral members of oncology teams. This study aims first to identify all oncology APPs and, second, to understand personal and practice characteristics (including compensation) of those APPs. Methods: We identified APPs who practice oncology from membership and claims data. We surveyed 3,055 APPs about their roles in clinical care. Results: We identified at least 5,350 APPs in oncology and an additional 5,400 who might practice oncology. Survey respondents totaled 577, which provided a 19% response rate. Results focused on 540 NPs and PAs. Greater than 90% reported satisfaction with career choice. Respondents identified predominately as white (89%) and female (94%). NPs and PAs spent the majority (80%) of time in direct patient care. The top four patient care activities were patient counseling (NPs, 94%; PAs, 98%), prescribing (NPs, 93%; PAs, 97%), treatment management (NPs, 89%; PAs, 93%), and follow-up visits (NPs, 81%; PAs, 86%). A majority of all APPs reported both independent and shared visits (65% hematology/ oncology/survivorship/prevention/pediatric hematology/oncology; 85% surgical/ gynecologic oncology; 78% radiation oncology). A minority of APPs reported that they conducted only shared visits. Average annual compensation was between $113,000 and $115,000, which is approximately $10,000 higher than average pay for nononcology APPs. Conclusion: We identified 5,350 oncology APPs and conclude that number may be as high as 7,000. Survey results suggest that practices that incorporate APPs routinely rely on them for patient care. Given the increasing number of patients with and survivors of cancer, APPs are important to ensure access to quality cancer care now and in the future.
Efficacy and Safety of Aidi Injection Combined with Transcatheter Arterial Chemoembolization on Primary Hepatic Carcinoma: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Objectives To evaluate the efficacy and safety of Aidi injection (ADI) combined with transcatheter arterial chemoembolization (TACE) for primary hepatic carcinoma (PHCC). Methods We conducted a literature search in EMBASE, PubMed, CENTRAL, MEDLINE, CNKI, Wanfang, and VIP databases from the earliest possible year to April 2018. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) involving ADI combined with TACE versus TACE alone for patients with PHCC were included. The Cochrane Risk of Bias tool was applied for quality assessment. Results 22 studies involving 1611 participants were included. The clinical response rate (RR = 1.28, 95% CI: 1.17-1.40; P < 0.00001), KPS score (RR = 1.78, 95% CI: 1.59-2.00; P < 0.00001), survival rate (RR = 1.27, 95% CI: 1.16-1.39; P < 0.00001), immune function (MD = 1.24, 95% CI: 0.98-1.51; P < 0.00001), and adverse effects (RR = 0.62, 95% CI: 0.57-0.68; P < 0.00001) of ADI plus TACE showed significant difference when compared with TACE alone. Conclusions ADI combined with TACE in the treatment of PHCC improved the clinical response rate and safety compared to TACE alone. However, due to poor methodological quality of many of the included RCTs, more rigorously designed and large-scale RCTs are warranted to examine this beneficial effect in the future.