Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Trends in Perinatal Mortality in Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital: 13 Years Review

Introduction : The perinatal mortality rate (PMR) in Nepal is still very high. In major hospitals of Nepal, it is still ranging from 20-30 per thousand births. This study was carried out with the objective to review PMR and classifying it according to Wigglesworth classification to identify the causes of perinatal deaths at Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital (TUTH), Kathmandu, Nepal over the past 13 years and assess need for improvement in care. Material and Methods: It was a retrospective study carried out in TUTH. Data of all stillbirths from 28 weeks of pregnancy and neonatal deaths within first seven days of life in the hospital was taken from monthly perinatal audit and annual mortality review. All the perinatal deaths were then classified according to Wigglesworth classification. Results: Over a 13 year period, there were total 42,746 births and 921 perinatal deaths giving a perinatal mortality of 21.5 per thousand births. Over this period PMR has decreased from 31 to 18 per thousand births. Still births contributed almost 50% of the perinatal deaths; deaths related to prematurity show an increasing trend and have increased by almost 70% in past 5 years. Deaths due to perinatal asphyxia were static. Conclusion: PMR over the years has shown declining trend at TUTH. There is need to improve antenatal, obstetric as well as intrapartum services to further reduce the still birth as well as deaths due to prematurity and perinatal asphyxia. J. Nepal Paediatr. Soc. 32(2) 2012 150-153 doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.3126/jnps.v32i2. 6898
Thalamic infarct presenting as apparent life‐threatening event in infants

Thalamic infarction with distinct manifestations is well‐described in adults but less well‐delineated in children. We report two infants who presented with an apparent life‐threatening event (ALTE) with very early magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) demonstrating a unilateral thalamic infarction. Subsequent MRI demonstrated bilateral changes in the brain stem and basal ganglia, which were in keeping with profound hypoxic ischaemic injury. We propose the thalamic infarction to be the primary event precipitating a profound hypoxic ischaemic injury as an alternative explanation to the neuroimaging observation.
Illustrating performance indicators and course characteristics to support students’ self-regulated learning in CS1

In higher education, quality feedback for students is regarded as one of the main contributors to improve student learning. Feedback to support students’ development into self-regulated learners, who set their own goals, self-monitor their actual performance according to these goals, and adjust learning strategies if necessary, is seen as an important aspect of contemporary feedback practice. However, only those students who are aware of the course demands and the impact of certain study behaviors on their final achievement are in a position to self-regulate their learning on an informed basis. Learning analytics is an emerging field primarily concerned with using predictive models to inform educational instructors or learners about projected study outcomes. In a scoping study, over 200 students of an introductory programming course (CS1) were supplied with information revealing performance indicators for different stages on the course and projecting final performance for various achievement levels. The study was set out to explore the impact of this type of feedback in the confined context of a CS1 course as well as to learn about students’ attitudes toward diagnostic course data in general. The results from the study suggest that students valued the information, but, despite high engagement with the information, students’ study behavior and learning outcome remained rather unaffected for the aspects investigated. Given these multi-layered results, we suggest further exploration on the provision of feedback based on diagnostic course data – a vital step toward more transparency for students to foster their active role in the learning process.
Phosphatidylinositol 3-Kinase Activation Is Required for Stress Protocol-induced Modification of Hippocampal Synaptic Plasticity*

Stress dramatically affects the induction of hippocampal synaptic plasticity; however, the molecular details of how it does so remain unclear. Phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) signaling plays a crucial role in promoting neuronal survival and neuroplasticity, but its role, if any, in stress-induced alterations of long term potentiation (LTP) and long term depression (LTD) is unknown. We found here that inhibitors of PI3K signaling blocked the effects of acute restraint-tail shock stress protocol on LTP and LTD. Therefore, the purpose of the present study is to explore the signaling events involving PI3K in terms of its role in mediating stress protocol-induced alterations of LTP and LTD. We found that stress protocol-induced PI3K activation can be blocked by various inhibitors, including RU38486 for glucocorticoid receptors, LY294002 for PI3K, and dl-2-amino-5-phosphonopentanoic acid for N-methyl-d-aspartate receptors or brain-derived neurotrophic factor antisense oligonucleotides. Also, immunoblotting analyses revealed that stress protocol induced a profound and prolonged phosphorylation of numbers of PI3K downstream effectors, including 3-phosphoinositide-dependent protein kinase-1, protein kinase B, mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR), p70 S6 kinase, and eukaryotic initiation factor 4B in hippocampal CA1 homogenate, which was prevented by the PI3K inhibitor pretreatment. More importantly, we found that stress protocol significantly increased the protein expression of dendritic scaffolding protein PSD-95 (postsynaptic density-95), which is known to be involved in LTP and LTD, in an mTOR-dependent manner. These results identify a key role of PI3K signaling in mediating the stress protocol-induced modification of hippocampal synaptic plasticity and further suggest that PI3K may do so by invoking the protein expression of PSD-95.
Effect of mode of polymerization of bonding agent on shear bond strength of autocured resin composite luting cements.

PURPOSE There have been anecdotal reports of low bond strength with autocured resin composite materials, particularly when light-cured bonding agents that combine primer and adhesive in a 1-bottle preparation are used. The objective of this study was to determine if the mode of polymerization of the bonding agent influences the strength of the attachment of autocured resin composite luting cements to dentin. METHODS The shear bond strength of 2 resin luting cements, Calibra and RelyX ARC, polymerized by autocuring, in combination with 4 different bonding agents, Scotchbond Multipurpose Plus, Prime & Bond NT, IntegraBond and Single Bond, polymerized to bovine dentin by light-curing, autocuring or dual-curing, was determined. The pH of each bonding agent and its components was measured. Two-way analysis of variance was used to test the effect of cement and adhesive on shear bond strength. For each bonding agent, the adhesive variable combined the factors product brand and mode of polymerization. With significant interaction among the above variables, the least square means of the 16 combinations of resin cement and adhesive were compared. RESULTS There was no consistent relationship between shear bond strength and mode of polymerization of the bonding agent. Significant differences in bond strength were specific to the proprietary brand of bonding agent. The pH of the bonding agent depends on the manufacturer's formulation, and low pH may contribute to low bond strength. CONCLUSIONS The low in vitro bond strength occurring with some combinations of bonding agent and resin cement could be clinically significant.
On detectability of Zeeman broadening in optical spectra of F- and G-dwarfs

We investigate the detectability of Zeeman broadening in optical Stokes I spectra of slowly rotating sun-like stars. To this end, we apply the LTE spectral line inversion package SPINOR to very-high quality CES data and explore how fit quality depends on the average magnetic field, Bf. One-component (OC) and two-component (TC) models are adopted. In OC models, the entire surface is assumed to be magnetic. Under this assumption, we determine formal 3σ upper limits on the average magnetic field of 200 G for the Sun, and 150 G for 61 Vir (G6V). Evidence for an average magnetic field of ∼500 G is found for 59 Vir (G0V), and of ∼1000 G for HD 68456 (F6V). A distinction between magnetic and non-magnetic regions is made in TC models, while assuming a homogeneous distribution of both components. In our TC inversions of 59 Vir, we investigate three cases: both components have equal temperatures; warm magnetic regions; cool magnetic regions. Our TC model with equal temperatures does not yield significant improvement over OC inversions for 59 Vir. The resulting Bf values are consistent for both. Fit quality is significantly improved, however, by using two components of different temperatures. The inversions for 59 Vir that assume different temperatures for the two components yield results consistent with 0−450 G at the formal 3σ confidence level. We thus find a model dependence of our analysis and demonstrate that the influence of an additional temperature component can dominate over the Zeeman broadening signature, at least in optical data. Previous comparable analyses that neglected effects due to multiple temperature components may be prone to the same ambiguities.
TU-AB-BRA-02: An Efficient Atlas-Based Synthetic CT Generation Method.

PURPOSE A major obstacle for MR-only radiotherapy is the need to generate an accurate synthetic CT (sCT) from MR image(s) of a patient for the purposes of dose calculation and DRR generation. We propose here an accurate and efficient atlas-based sCT generation method, which has a computation speed largely independent of the number of atlases used. METHODS Atlas-based sCT generation requires a set of atlases with co-registered CT and MR images. Unlike existing methods that align each atlas to the new patient independently, we first create an average atlas and pre-align every atlas to the average atlas space. When a new patient arrives, we compute only one deformable image registration to align the patient MR image to the average atlas, which indirectly aligns the patient to all pre-aligned atlases. A patch-based non-local weighted fusion is performed in the average atlas space to generate the sCT for the patient, which is then warped back to the original patient space. We further adapt a PatchMatch algorithm that can quickly find top matches between patches of the patient image and all atlas images, which makes the patch fusion step also independent of the number of atlases used. RESULTS Nineteen brain tumour patients with both CT and T1-weighted MR images are used as testing data and a leave-one-out validation is performed. Each sCT generated is compared against the original CT image of the same patient on a voxel-by-voxel basis. The proposed method produces a mean absolute error (MAE) of 98.6±26.9 HU overall. The accuracy is comparable with a conventional implementation scheme, but the computation time is reduced from over an hour to four minutes. CONCLUSION An average atlas space patch fusion approach can produce highly accurate sCT estimations very efficiently. Further validation on dose computation accuracy and using a larger patient cohort is warranted. The author is a full time employee of Elekta, Inc.
Shear Stress, Temperature, and Inoculation Concentration Influence the Adhesion of Water-Stressed Helicobacter pylori to Stainless Steel 304 and Polypropylene

ABSTRACT Although molecular techniques have identified Helicobacter pylori in drinking water-associated biofilms, there is a lack of studies reporting what factors affect the attachment of the bacterium to plumbing materials. Therefore, the adhesion of H. pylori suspended in distilled water to stainless steel 304 (SS304) coupons placed on tissue culture plates subjected to different environmental conditions was monitored. The extent of adhesion was evaluated for different water exposure times, using epifluorescence microscopy to count total cell numbers. High shear stresses—estimated through computational fluid dynamics—negatively influenced the adhesion of H. pylori to the substrata (P < 0.001), a result that was confirmed in similar experiments with polypropylene (P < 0.05). However, the temperature and inoculation concentration appeared to have no effect on adhesion (P > 0.05). After 2 hours, H. pylori cells appeared to be isolated on the surface of SS304 and were able to form small aggregates with longer exposure times. However, the formation of a three-dimensional structure was only very rarely observed. This study suggests that the detection of the pathogen in well water described by other authors can be related to the increased ability of H. pylori to integrate into biofilms under conditions of low shear stress. It will also allow a more rational selection of locations to perform molecular or plate culture analysis for the detection of H. pylori in drinking water-associated biofilms.
Mitochondrial neurogastrointestinal encephalomyopathy: diagnostic features of two patients.

Mitochondrial neurogastrointestinal encephalomyopathy is a rare, multisystem disorder characterized by gastrointestinal dysmotility, ptosis, neurologic findings (e.g., peripheral neuropathy), leukoencephalopathy, and thin body habitus. Gastrointestinal motility studies and skeletal muscle biopsy are recommended diagnostic tools. We report two patients that highlight the diagnostic characteristics of this rare entity.
Sign Language and Chinese Characters on Visual-Spatial Memory: A Literature Review

Long-term use of a sign language may enhance visual abilities. Deaf signers consistently outscore their hearing nonsigning counterparts on visual memory tests. In a similar vein, the long-term use of a logographic script, Chinese characters appears to boost visual memory. Both learning a sign language and mastering Chinese characters involve a relatively complex task of visual recognition and memory. This review of the literature suggests that daily use of either a sign language, one not based on sound, or Chinese characters, a script which maps language at the word level rather than at the phonemic level, may facilitate recall of visual forms.
Assessment of Symptom Network Density as a Prognostic Marker of Treatment Response in Adolescent Depression

One in 4 adolescents with depression does not respond favorably to treatment.1 Prognostic markers to identify this nonresponder group are lacking and urgently needed.2 It has been suggested that the network structure of depressive symptoms (ie, group-level covariance or connectivity between symptoms) may be informative in this regard.3 Intuitively, one may expect that more densely connected networks would be more inclined to result in negative spirals (eg, sleeplessness causes an individual to be too tired to go out, which leads to a lack of friends, resulting in sadness) and therefore more liable to nonresponse. An influential naturalistic study by van Borkulo et al published in JAMA Psychiatry3 reported that adult patients with depression who continue to experience problems in subsequent years have more densely connected networks at baseline than patients who later recover. Here, we performed a conceptual replication of that study in adolescents with depression who participated in a psychological treatment trial. We tested whether network characteristics at baseline were prognostic for long-term outcomes.1
Application of a least squares predictive-transform modeling methodology to space-time adaptive array processing

In a companion paper, an efficient least squares (LS) predictive transform (PT) multichannel modeling framework was presented that arose as an inherent byproduct of the optimization of a PT signal source "encoder. " In this correspondence, the LS PT approach is applied to the space-time adaptive array processing problem arising in airborne moving target indicator (MTI) radar. Simulation results are presented that demonstrate the utility of the LS PT approach.
Is mate choice copying or aggregation responsible for skewed distributions of females on leks?

In several lek-breeding populations of birds and mammals, females arriving on leks tend to join males that already have females in their territories. This might occur either because females have an evolved preference for mating with males that are attractive to other females, or because they join groups of other females to obtain greater safety from predation or dangerous harassment by males. We have previously used controlled experiments to show that oestrous fallow deer females join males with established harems because they are attracted to female groups rather than to the males themselves. Here we demonstrate that the preference for males with females over males without females is specific to oestrous females and weak or absent in anoestrous ones, and that it is not associated with a preference for mating with males that have previously been seen to mate with other females. Furthermore, oestrous females given the choice between males that do not already have females with them show no significant preference for antlered over deantlered males or for older males over younger ones. We conclude that female attraction to other females on the lek is likely to be an adaptation to avoiding harassment in mixed-sex herds. In this situation, a male’s ability to maintain the cohesion of his harem may be the principal cause of variation in mating success between males.
Expert Systems With Applications

Facial beauty analysis has been an emerging subject of multimedia and biometrics. This paper aims at exploring the essence of facial beauty from the viewpoint of geometric characteristic toward an interactive attractiveness assessment (IAA) application. As a result, a geometric facial beauty analysis method is proposed from the perspective of machine learning. Due to the troublesome and subjective beauty labeling, the accurately labeled data scarcity is caused, and result in very few labeled data. Additionally, facial beauty is related to several typical features such as texture, color, etc., which, however, can be easily deformed by make-up . For addressing these issues, a semi-supervised facial beauty analysis framework that is characterized by feeding geometric feature into the intelligent attractiveness assessment system is proposed. For experimental study, we have established a geometric facial beauty (GFB) dataset including Asian male and female faces. Moreover, an existing multi-modal beauty (M 2 B) database including western and eastern female faces is also tested. Experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. Some new perspectives on the essence of beauty and the topic of facial aesthetic are revealed. The impact of this work lies in that it will attract more researchers in related areas for beauty exploration by using intelligent algorithms. Also, the signiﬁcance lies in that it should well promote the diversity of expert and intelligent systems in addressing such challenging facial aesthetic perception and rating issue. © 2017 Elsevier
Parents’ and children’s beliefs and concerns about taking medicines

Working with children and families means that we have to negotiate many different belief systems and allay the concerns that children and their parents have about their illness and treatment. This involves entering into dialogue with the families to ascertain what worries they may have and trying to ensure that we provide tailored education and responses that meet their needs. However, this is not always easy as we may not fully appreciate the level of knowledge that families have or be aware of their deeply held beliefs and how these can shape their engagement with treatments. One area that deserves attention is medication, not least because it is such an everyday occurrence for us as health professionals. However, for children and families, medication can be a major issue to come to terms with and may influence adherence to medication treatment plans. Parental anxiety about medications can have a strong impact on whether or not the child receives his/her prescribed treatment, and such concerns seem to be fairly universal. Conn et al. (2005) note in their study of parents of children with persistent asthma living in urban America that although most parents recognized the importance of the medications in maintaining their child’s health, a third of them expressed ‘strong concerns’ and that these concerns impacted negatively on medication adherence. Similar findings from Fernandez-Castillo and Vilchez-Lara’s (2014) study in Spain noted how negative beliefs (e.g. beliefs about the threat of the medicine) result in higher levels of anxiety, which in turn may be implicated in higher levels of non-adherence. It is also interesting to note that, in this study, fathers expressed ‘more negative beliefs, more abuse beliefs, and more beliefs about damage of the medicines than mothers’ (Fernandez-Castillo and Vilchez-Lara, 2014: 121), which is at odds with other studies that suggest higher anxiety among mothers. Children may also hold misconceptions about medicines. Dawood et al. (2015), in their study based in Malaysia, found that the beliefs that children hold are influenced by their age, gender, race as well as their parents’ education level, occupation and socio-economic status. The children in Dawood et al.’s study were generally found to have inadequate knowledge and some misconceptions. Some believed that bitter medicine works better than non-bitter medicine, although,
Activities of Gemifloxacin and Five Other Antimicrobial Agents against Listeria monocytogenes and Coryneform Bacteria Isolated from Clinical Samples

ABSTRACT The in vitro activities of gemifloxacin, ciprofloxacin, ampicillin, doxycycline, gentamicin, and vancomycin were evaluated against 15Listeria monocytogenes strains and 205 coryneform bacteria isolated from clinical samples. The percentages of strains inhibited by gemifloxacin at 0.5 μg/ml were 100% (L. monocytogenes), 93.3% (Brevibacterium spp.), 90% (Corynebacterium minutissimum), 42.5% (Corynebacterium amycolatum), 20% (Corynebacterium striatum), 12.5% (Corynebacterium jeikeium), and 10% (Corynebacterium urealyticum). One hundred percent of the L. monocytogenes strains were inhibited by 0.25 μg of gemifloxacin per ml, whereas 0% of the strains were inhibited by 0.25 μg of ciprofloxacin per ml. Vancomycin at 2 μg/ml inhibited all strains. Doxycycline and gentamicin at 4 μg/ml inhibited 94 and 49% of the strains, respectively, while ampicillin at 0.5, 2, and 8 μg/ml inhibited 24, 61, and 66% of the strains, respectively. It is concluded that gemifloxacin shows good in vitro activity againstL. monocytogenes and coryneform bacteria exceptC. jeikeium and C. urealyticum.