Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Rotavirus Vaccination and the Global Burden of Rotavirus Diarrhea Among Children Younger Than 5 Years

Importance Rotavirus infection is the global leading cause of diarrhea-associated morbidity and mortality among children younger than 5 years. Objectives To examine the extent of rotavirus infection among children younger than 5 years by country and the number of deaths averted because of the rotavirus vaccine. Design, Setting, and Participants This report builds on findings from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016, a cross-sectional study that measured diarrheal diseases and their etiologic agents. Models were used to estimate burden in data-sparse locations. Exposure Diarrhea due to rotavirus infection. Main Outcomes and Measures Rotavirus-associated mortality and morbidity by country and year and averted deaths attributable to the rotavirus vaccine by country. Results Rotavirus infection was responsible for an estimated 128 500 deaths (95% uncertainty interval [UI], 104 500-155 600) among children younger than 5 years throughout the world in 2016, with 104 733 deaths occurring in sub-Saharan Africa (95% UI, 83 406-128 842). Rotavirus infection was responsible for more than 258 million episodes of diarrhea among children younger than 5 years in 2016 (95% UI, 193 million to 341 million), an incidence of 0.42 cases per child-year (95% UI, 0.30-0.53). Vaccine use is estimated to have averted more than 28 000 deaths (95% UI, 14 600-46 700) among children younger than 5 years, and expanded use of the rotavirus vaccine, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, could have prevented approximately 20% of all deaths attributable to diarrhea among children younger than 5 years. Conclusions and Relevance Rotavirus-associated mortality has decreased markedly over time in part because of the introduction of the rotavirus vaccine. This study suggests that prioritizing vaccine introduction and interventions to reduce diarrhea-associated morbidity and mortality is necessary in the continued global reduction of rotavirus infection.
Lowercase Letters in Text-Based CAPTCHA: A Visual Perception Analysis

CAPTCHA needs a string of letters to verify if a user is human. Each letter has distinctive visual features, making it perceivably different. No empirical work has yet examined which letters included in text-based CAPTCHA would have high correct response rates from users. The current study hopes to fill this gap. A user test on 6,389 iterations of the lowercase letters used in 1,844 CAPTCHA tests confirmed (1) users' correct response rates to the letters with the short feature had higher correct response rates than those without this feature, and (2) neither the ascending nor the descending feature had impact on the correct response rate. In addition to the theoretical insight into the use of letter perception literature in text-based CAPTCHA design, the findings do have implications for security practitioners.
Thermodesulfobium sp. strain 3baa, an acidophilic sulfate reducing bacterium forming biofilms triggered by mineral precipitation

Sulfate reducing prokaryotes are promising candidates for the remediation of acidic metal-rich waste waters. However, only few acidophilic species have been described to date. Chemolithoautotrophic strain 3baa was isolated from sediments of an acidic mine pit lake. Based on its 16S-rRNA gene sequence it belongs to the genus Thermodesulfobium. It was identified as an acidophile growing in artificial pore water medium in the range of pH 2.6-6.6. Though the highest sulfate reduction rates were obtained at the lower end of this range, elongated cells and extended lag phases demonstrated acid stress. Sulfate reduction at low pH was accompanied by the formation of mineral precipitates strongly adhering to solid surfaces. A structural investigation by laser scanning microscopy, electron microscopy and X-ray microanalysis revealed the formation of Al hydroxides and Fe sulfides which were densely populated by cells. Al hydroxides precipitated first, enabling initial cell attachment. Colonization of solid surfaces coincided with increased sulfate reducing activity indicating more favourable growth conditions within biofilms compared with free-living cells. These findings point out the importance of cell-mineral interaction for biofilm formation and contribute to our understanding how sulfate reducing prokaryotes thrive in both natural and engineered systems at low pH.
An Annotation Scheme for Free Word Order Languages

We describe an annotation scheme and a tool developed for creating linguistically annotated corpora for non-configurational languages. Since the requirements for such a formalism differ from those posited for configurational languages, several features have been added, influencing the architecture of the scheme. The resulting scheme reflects a stratificational notion of language, and makes only minimal assumptions about the interrelation of the particular representational strata.
Fingerprint Recognition on Mobile Devices: Widely Deployed, Rarely Understood

Only a few studies have addressed the users' conception of how fingerprint recognition used for different purposes on mobile devices works. This study contributes by investigating how different groups of individuals think that the fingerprint recognition works, why they think so, and also by pointing out differences in pin code and fingerprint issues. The study furthermore yields some results concerning individuals' attitudes towards how sensitive the use of fingerprint sensors is: non-users tended to be more afraid of third-party access than users. On the other hand, users tended to regard the fingerprint pattern as more sensitive than non-users. This study also manages to give some methodological contributions, namely that mockup user interfaces do not bias the parameters studied in this paper (e.g. understanding of access to fingerprint data), and that self-estimation of knowledge in Computer Security is not a good indicator of respondents' understanding of fingerprint security and privacy. Moreover, people who connected a low degree of sensitivity to fingerprint patterns gave very different reasons for their estimation of sensitivity. This prompts for more research, as it is unclear if different groups would benefit from different information and modes of visualisation to understand what are the issues involved in fingerprint recognition on mobile devices.
Classification of a family of completely transitive codes

The completely regular codes in Hamming graphs have a high degree of combinatorial symmetry and have attracted a lot of interest since their introduction in 1973 by Delsarte. This paper studies the subfamily of completely transitive codes, those in which an automorphism group is transitive on each part of the distance partition. This family is a natural generalisation of the binary completely transitive codes introduced by Sole in 1990. We take the first step towards a classification of these codes, determining those for which the automorphism group is faithful on entries.
Somatic development at birth as influenced by maternal characteristics – an analysis of the German Perinatal Survey

Abstract We investigated the effects of maternal age, body weight, body height, weight gain during pregnancy, smoking during pregnancy, previous live births and being a single mother on somatic development at birth. We analysed data from the German Perinatal Survey for the years 1998–2000 from eight German federal states. We had available data on 508,926 singleton pregnancies and neonates in total; for 508,893 of which we could classify the neonates as small, appropriate or large for gestational age (SGA, AGA or LGA) based on the 10th and 90th birth weight percentiles. Multivariable regression analyses found statistically significant effects of a clinically relevant magnitude for smoking during pregnancy [odds ratio (OR) 2.9 for SGA births for women smoking >10 cigarettes per day], maternal height (OR 1.4 for SGA births for women <162 cm; OR 1.4 for LGA births for women >172 cm), maternal weight (OR 1.5 for SGA births for women <59 kg; OR 1.9 for LGA births for women >69 kg), weight gain during pregnancy (OR 1.9 for SGA births for women with a weight gain <8 kg; OR 2.0 for LGA births for women with a weight gain >18 kg) and previous live births (OR 2.1 for LGA births for women with one or more previous live births). Maternal age and being a single mother also had significant effects but their magnitude was small. Our analysis confirms the clinically relevant effects of smoking, maternal anthropometric measures and weight gain during pregnancy on neonatal somatic development.
Active Recovery Induces Greater Endurance Adaptations When Performing Sprint Interval Training

Abstract Yamagishi, T and Babraj, J. Active recovery induces greater endurance adaptations when performing sprint interval training. J Strength Cond Res 33(4): 922–930, 2019—This study sought to determine effects of recovery intensity on endurance adaptations during sprint interval training (SIT). Fourteen healthy young adults (male: 9 and female: 5) were allocated to 1 of 2 training groups: active recovery group (ARG, male: 4 and female: 3) or passive recovery group (PRG, male: 5 and female: 2). After having completed a 2-week control period, both groups performed 6 sessions of 4- to 6 30-second sprints interspersed with 4-minute recovery over 2 weeks. However, only ARG cycled at 40% V[Combining Dot Above]O2peak during the 4-minute recovery periods, while PRG rested on the bike or cycled unloaded. After the 2-week training intervention, both groups improved 10-km time-trial performance to a similar extent (ARG: 8.6%, d = 1.60, p = 0.006; PRG: 6.7%, d = 0.96, p = 0.048) without gains in V[Combining Dot Above]O2peak. However, critical power was increased by ARG only (7.9%, d = 1.75, p = 0.015) with a tendency of increased maximal incremental power output (5.3%, d = 0.88, p = 0.063). During the training, active recovery maintained V[Combining Dot Above]O2 and heart rate at a higher level compared with passive recovery (V[Combining Dot Above]O2: p = 0.005, HR: p = 0.018), suggesting greater cardiorespiratory demands with the active recovery. This study demonstrated that greater endurance performance adaptations are induced with active recovery when performing SIT over a short time frame. The findings of the current study indicate that, with active recovery, individuals can gain greater training benefits without increasing total training commitment time. Further studies are required to determine whether differences are seen with recovery intensity over a longer period.
Wireless Security with Beamforming Technique

This thesis focuses on the wireless security in the physical layer with beamforming technique. One of the emerging areas is the security enhancement in the physical layer, which exploits the intrinsic properties of the wireless medium. Beamforming, which has been proved to have many advantages, can also be applied to enhance the wireless security. One of the most common threats, i.e., passive eavesdropping, is addressed in this thesis. To reduce the risk of leaking information to the eavesdroppers, the physical region where the transmission is exposed to eavesdropping has been studied. In this thesis, the exposure region based beamforming technique is proposed to combat the threat from the randomly located eavesdroppers in a fading channel. In this system model, the large-scale path loss and a general Rician fading channel model are considered. The exposure region is established to describe the secrecy performance of the system, based on which the probability that the secrecy outage event occurs is defined to evaluate the security level of the exposure region. The antenna array is one of the most important factors that affect the secrecy performance of the exposure region based beamforming technique. The potential of using different array geometry and array configuration to improve security is explored. In this thesis, two common arrays, i.e., linear and circular arrays, are considered.Analytic expressions for general array geometry and for the linear and circular arrays are derived. Based on the empirical results, numerical optimization algorithms are developed to exploit the array configuration to enhance the system security level. In addition, experiments are carried out to study the performance of the beamformer with linear and circular arrays. Especially, the impact of the mutual coupling on the security performance is investigated.
Corals sustain growth but not skeletal density across the Florida Keys Reef Tract despite ongoing warming

Through the continuous growth of their carbonate skeletons, corals record invaluable information about past environmental conditions and their effect on colony fitness. Here, we characterize century-scale growth records of inner and outer reef corals across ~200 km of the Florida Keys Reef Tract (FKRT) using skeletal cores extracted from two ubiquitous reef-building species, Siderastrea siderea and Pseudodiploria strigosa. We find that corals across the FKRT have sustained extension and calcification rates over the past century but have experienced a long-term reduction in skeletal density, regardless of reef zone. Notably, P. strigosa colonies exhibit temporary reef zone-dependent reductions in extension rate corresponding to two known extreme temperature events in 1969-70 and 1997-98. We propose that the subtropical climate of the FKRT may buffer corals from chronic growth declines associated with climate warming, though the significant reduction in skeletal density may indicate underlying vulnerability to present and future trends in ocean acidification.
Smart Detection and Reporting of Potholes via Image-Processing using Raspberry-Pi Microcontroller

One of the causes of local road accidents in developing countries, such as the Philippines, is due to road damages such as potholes. In addition, there is no proper road maintenance in the local roads, and so the checking of pothole is done manually. Hence, in this paper we propose a simple and robust design of a portable and affordable device that will be suitable for local jeepney (cab) drivers here in the Philippines. A distinguishing feature of this proposal is that it does not need a sophisticated Smartphone to automatically send the reports, and was tested in an actual moving vehicle. Furthermore, the system can be installed in a moving vehicle to automatically detect and report potholes via image-processing of Raspberry-Pi microcontroller. Integration of several image-processing schemes has been used to produce an algorithm using Python Language from the OpenCV library that can detect and report potholes automatically from a moving vehicle. The reported image of the pothole and its location are stored and viewed through the use of the Internet, Dropbox, and web server. The system was tested on a Hyundai Eon city car with maximum speed of 10kph-40kph during daytime. With a rate of about 8 frames per second, images were processed per frame to detect potholes by analyzing its color, depth, and area. Overall, the whole system was successfully implemented using the Raspberry-Pi microcomputer and was able to detect and report potholes from a moving car with 100% reporting success rate.
A Trial of Calcium and Vitamin D for the Prevention of Colorectal Adenomas.

BACKGROUND Epidemiologic and preclinical data suggest that higher intake and serum levels of vitamin D and higher intake of calcium reduce the risk of colorectal neoplasia. To further study the chemopreventive potential of these nutrients, we conducted a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of supplementation with vitamin D, calcium, or both for the prevention of colorectal adenomas. METHODS We recruited patients with recently diagnosed adenomas and no known colorectal polyps remaining after complete colonoscopy. We randomly assigned 2259 participants to receive daily vitamin D3 (1000 IU), calcium as carbonate (1200 mg), both, or neither in a partial 2×2 factorial design. Women could elect to receive calcium plus random assignment to vitamin D or placebo. Follow-up colonoscopy was anticipated to be performed 3 or 5 years after the baseline examinations, according to the endoscopist's recommendation. The primary end point was adenomas diagnosed in the interval from randomization through the anticipated surveillance colonoscopy. RESULTS Participants who were randomly assigned to receive vitamin D had a mean net increase in serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels of 7.83 ng per milliliter, relative to participants given placebo. Overall, 43% of participants had one or more adenomas diagnosed during follow-up. The adjusted risk ratios for recurrent adenomas were 0.99 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.89 to 1.09) with vitamin D versus no vitamin D, 0.95 (95% CI, 0.85 to 1.06) with calcium versus no calcium, and 0.93 (95% CI, 0.80 to 1.08) with both agents versus neither agent. The findings for advanced adenomas were similar. There were few serious adverse events. CONCLUSIONS Daily supplementation with vitamin D3 (1000 IU), calcium (1200 mg), or both after removal of colorectal adenomas did not significantly reduce the risk of recurrent colorectal adenomas over a period of 3 to 5 years. (Funded by the National Cancer Institute; ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT00153816.).
Reply to: Association Between Alendronate and All‐Cause Mortality and Cardiovascular Mortality Among Hip Fracture: An Alternative Explanation

To the Editor: We are thankful to Prof. Nguyen and Dr. Tran for their interest in our study and we appreciate the opportunity to respond to their comments. As Prof. Nguyen and Dr. Tran suggested that censoring patients at the time of switching medications might have inflated the effect size, we investigated this potential bias by excluding patients with switching of medications. Of the 3,081 alendronate-treated patients, 281 patients (9.1%) switched the therapy during the study period. After excluding these patients, we observed similar findings (Table), suggesting that bias due to treatment of censoring data should be minimal in our study.
Rank-1 Convolutional Neural Network

In this paper, we propose a convolutional neural network(CNN) with 3-D rank-1 filters which are composed by the outer product of 1-D filters. After being trained, the 3-D rank-1 filters can be decomposed into 1-D filters in the test time for fast inference. The reason that we train 3-D rank-1 filters in the training stage instead of consecutive 1-D filters is that a better gradient flow can be obtained with this setting, which makes the training possible even in the case where the network with consecutive 1-D filters cannot be trained. The 3-D rank-1 filters are updated by both the gradient flow and the outer product of the 1-D filters in every epoch, where the gradient flow tries to obtain a solution which minimizes the loss function, while the outer product operation tries to make the parameters of the filter to live on a rank-1 sub-space. Furthermore, we show that the convolution with the rank-1 filters results in low rank outputs, constraining the final output of the CNN also to live on a low dimensional subspace.
Single Stage Transoral Laser Microsurgery for Early Glottic Cancer

Objectives: The purpose of the study was to present the outcome of our management protocol of a single stage transoral laser microsurgery (SSTLM), with the intention of complete removal of a lesion, considered to be an early glottic cancer. Methods: Between January 2015 to February 2017 patients with the clinical appearance of an early glottic cancer, who were candidates for (SSTLM) management protocol, were included in this study. Type of cordectomy was determined by pre- and intra-operative evaluation of the extent of lesion in cord layers. Results: Thirty patients (6 females, 24 males; mean age 65 years) underwent SSTLM. Twenty-two patients had malignant histopathological diagnosis of severe dysplasia or Cis in 4 patients, microinvasice carcinoma in 3 patients and invasive carcinoma in 15 patients (T1a tumor in 14 and T1b tumor in 1). Eight patients had a nonmalignant histological diagnosis of keratosis without atypia in 2 patients, mild dysplasia in 2 patients and moderate dysplasia in 3 patients. Based on pre- and intra-operative evaluation, 14 subepithelial (type I), 10 subligamental (type II), and 6 transmuscular (type III) cordectomies were performed. Comparison of cordectomies types with postoperative histopathologic diagnosis showed an adequate extent of resection in 26 out of 30 patients (87%). Considering only patients without recent background of direct laryngoscopy and biopsy, an adequate resection was performed in 90% of patients. None of the patients was further treated by external beam radiation. At average follow-up of 21 months, none of the patients developed local recurrence. Conclusion: In selected cases, a SSTLM for clinical appearance of an early glottic cancer, allows a reliable histopathologic diagnosis and a high local control rate with favorable cost effectiveness. A careful pre- and intraoperative evaluation for selecting the appropriate cases for this management is required in order to avoid under- or over-treatment.
Delphinidin Ameliorates Hepatic Triglyceride Accumulation in Human HepG2 Cells, but Not in Diet-Induced Obese Mice

Anthocyanin consumption is linked to benefits in obesity-related metabolic alterations and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), though the functional role of delphinidin (Dp) is yet to be established. Therefore, this study examined the effects of Dp on metabolic alterations associated with NAFLD, and molecular mechanisms in HepG2 cells and diet-induced obese mice. Cells incubated with palmitate to induce lipid accumulation, concomitantly treated with Dp, reduced triglyceride accumulation by ~53%, and downregulated gene expression of CPT1A, SREBF1, and FASN without modifying AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) levels. C57BL/6Nhsd mice were fed a standard diet (control) or a high-fat/high-carbohydrate diet (HFHC) for 16 weeks. Mice in the HFHC group were subdivided and treated with Dp (HFHC-Dp, 15 mg/kg body weight/day) or a vehicle for four weeks. Dp did not affect body weight, energy intake, hyperglycemia, insulin resistance, or histological abnormalities elicited by the HFHC diet. Furthermore, the messenger RNA (mRNA) expressions of Acaca, and Fasn in hepatic or epididymal adipose tissue, and the hepatic sirtuin 1 (SIRT1)/liver kinase B1 (LKB1)/AMPK and proliferator-activated receptor alpha (PPARα) signaling axis did not significantly change due to the HFHC diet or Dp. In summary, Dp effectively reduced triglyceride accumulation in vitro through the modulation of lipid metabolic gene expression. However, a dose of Dp administrated in mice simulating the total daily anthocyanin intake in humans had no effect on either metabolic alterations or histological abnormalities associated with HFHC diets.
Pervasive Attention: 2D Convolutional Neural Networks for Sequence-to-Sequence Prediction

Current state-of-the-art machine translation systems are based on encoder-decoder architectures, that first encode the input sequence, and then generate an output sequence based on the input encoding. Both are interfaced with an attention mechanism that recombines a fixed encoding of the source tokens based on the decoder state. We propose an alternative approach which instead relies on a single 2D convolutional neural network across both sequences. Each layer of our network re-codes source tokens on the basis of the output sequence produced so far. Attention-like properties are therefore pervasive throughout the network. Our model yields excellent results, outperforming state-of-the-art encoder-decoder systems, while being conceptually simpler and having fewer parameters.