Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Prediction of Lung maturity with Fetal breathing movement and Pulmonary artery Doppler Indices

Background: A great effort has been made to predict fetal lung maturity to determine when a fetus is likely to develop neo-natal complications. The fetal pulmonary artery Doppler velocimetry may be useful to predict FLM. The aim of this work was to predict Lung maturity with fetal breathing movements and Pulmonary artery Doppler indices, the outcome measures will be correlated with respiratory distress syndrome (RDS) and admission in neonate intensive care unit. Methods: This cross-sectional study was carried out on 66 pregnant women had a singleton pregnancy with gestational ages from 34-36 weeks admitted in the unit for inevitable preterm labour. Neonates were further subdivided in to two groups regarding RDS: Group I without RDS included 42 cases and Group II with RDS included 16 cases. All patients were subjected to clinical examination, Spectral Doppler ultrasound was used to obtain fetal main pulmonary artery waveforms, fetal biometry. Results: It was found that there was a significant positive correlation between HC and BPD, AC and HC, PSV and FL, S/D and BPD, PI and BPD, RI and HC, AT/ET and FL, and AT/ET and PSV. And there was significant negative correlation between FL and BPD, PSV and BPD, PSV and HC, PI and PSV, AT/ET and BPD, AT/ET and HC, and AT/ET and PI. PI, RI, PSV, AT/ET, BPD, HC and FL were significant predictors for the fetal lung maturity. Conclusions: Ultrasound evaluation of Fetal Mean Pulmonary Artery Doppler can be used as a rapid non-invasive accurate method for prediction of fetal lung maturity and neonatal respiratory distress syndrome, PI, RI, PSV, AT/ET, BPD, HC and FL can be used for prediction of fetal lung maturity.
AN EMPIRICAL COMPARISON OF SIMULATED ANNEALING AND ITERATED LOCAL SEARCH FOR THE HIERARCHICAL SINGLE ALLOCATION HUB MEDIAN LOCATION PROBLEM

Hub location problem (HLP) has been an attractive area of research for more than four decades. A recently proposed problem in the area of hub location is the hierarchical single-allocation hub median problem (SA-H-MP) which is associated with finding the location of a number of hubs and central hubs, so that the total routing cost is minimized. Owing to the problem’s complexity and intractability, this paper puts forward two metaheuristics, simulated annealing (SA) and iterated local search (ILS), and compares their performances. Results show that while both algorithms are able to reach optimal solutions on the standard CAB dataset, their runtimes are negligible and considerably lower compared to the runtimes of exact methods.
Maximally Selected Chi Square Statistics for Small Samples

Two samples can be compared by selecting a cut point and forming a 2 x 2 table of the numbers of observations above and below the cut point in each sample. Different cut points correspond to the maximum chi square statistic, the maximum squared log odds ratio, and the generalized Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistic. We simulated the small-sample null distribution of these statistics. The distributions of the maximally selected chi square statistic and the squared log odds ratio statistic are compared to each other and to the large-sample results of Miller and Siegmund (1982, Biometrics 38, 1011-1016. The distributions of and agreement among the three cut points are also considered.
Challenges in the Vaccination of the Elderly and Strategies for Improvement

In recent years, the elderly has become a rapidly growing proportion of the world’s population as life expectancy is extending. Immunosenescence and inflammaging contribute to the increased risk of chronic non-communicable and acute infectious diseases. Frailty is highly prevalent in the elderly and is associated with an impaired immune response, a higher propensity to infection, and a lower response to vaccines. Additionally, the presence of uncontrolled comorbid diseases in the elderly also contributes to sarcopenia and frailty. Vaccine-preventable diseases that threaten the elderly include influenza, pneumococcal infection, herpes zoster, and COVID-19, which contribute to significant disability-adjusted life years lost. Previous studies had shown that conventional vaccines only yielded suboptimal protection that wanes rapidly in a shorter time. This article reviews published papers on several vaccination strategies that were developed for the elderly to solve these problems: more immunogenic vaccine formulations using larger doses of antigen, stronger vaccine adjuvants, recombinant subunit or protein conjugated vaccines, newly developed mRNA vaccines, giving booster shots, and exploring alternative routes of administration. Included also are several publications on senolytic medications under investigation to boost the immune system and vaccine response in the elderly. With all those in regard, the currently recommended vaccines for the elderly are presented.
On Major and Minor Branches of Rooted Trees

Let denote a rooted tree with n nodes. (For definitions not given here, see, e.g. [4]). For any node v of , let B(v) denote the subtree of determined by v and all nodes u such that v is between u and the root of ; node v serves as the root of B(v). The branches of are the subtrees B(v) such that node v is joined to the root of . A branch B with i nodes is a primary branch of if n/2 ≦ i ≦ n – 1; if has a primary branch B with i nodes, then a branch C with j nodes is a secondary branch if (n – i)/2 ≦ j ≦ n – 1 ≦ i; if has a primary branch B with i nodes and a secondary branch C with j nodes, then a branch D with h nodes is a tertiary branch if
Decasubstituted Pillar[5]arene Derivatives Containing L-Tryptophan and L-Phenylalanine Residues: Non-Covalent Binding and Release of Fluorescein from Nanoparticles

Sensitive systems with controlled release of drugs or diagnostic markers are attractive for solving the problems of biomedicine and antitumor therapy. In this study, new decasubstituted pillar[5]arene derivatives containing L-Tryptophan and L-Phenylalanine residues have been synthesized as pH-responsive drug nanocarriers. Fluorescein dye (Fluo) was loaded into the pillar[5]arene associates and used as a spectroscopic probe to evaluate the release in buffered solutions with pH 4.5, 7.4, and 9.2. The nature of the substituents in the pillar[5]arene structure has a huge influence on the rate of delivering. When the dye was loaded into the associates based on pillar[5]arene derivatives containing L-Tryptophan, the Fluo release occurs in the neutral (pH = 7.4) and alkaline (pH = 9.2) buffered solutions. When the dye was loaded into the associates based on pillar[5]arene with L-Phenylalanine fragments, the absence of release was observed in every pH evaluated. This happens as the result of different packing of the dye in the structure of the associate. This fact was confirmed by different fluorescence mechanisms (aggregation-caused quenching and aggregation-induced emission) and association constants. It was shown that the macrocycle with L-Phenylalanine fragments binds the dye more efficiently (lgKa = 3.92). The experimental results indicate that the pillar[5]arene derivatives with amino acids fragments have a high potential to be used as a pH-responsive drug delivery devices, especially for promoting the intracellular delivering, due to its nanometric size.
MHD Flow of a Jeffrey Fluid with Newtonian Heating

The combined effects of Joule and Newtonian heating in magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) flow of Jef- frey fluid over a stretching cylinder with heat source/sink are addressed. Suitable transformations are considered to reduce the non-linear boundary layer partial differential equations into the ordinary differ- ential equations. Convergent series solutions of the resulting dimensionless problems are obtained. Effects of emerging physical parameters on the velocity and temperature profiles are examined. Com- parison between viscous and Jeffrey fluids for different cases of flat plate and cylinder is made. Numer- ical values of skin friction coefficient and local Nusselt number are tabulated and analyzed for different values of emerging parameters.
Hitting times for random dynamical systems

The purpose of this article is to study the hitting times for random dynamical systems. For general systems we give a lower bound in terms of the local dimension. For fast mixing systems we obtain an equality. Moreover, under a power law decay of correlations we obtain lower and upper bounds of the hitting times for absolutely continuous stationary measures.
Improving positive food waste behaviors: An egocentric network analysis evaluation of leading women in agriculture’s advice networks

The multidimensionality of COVID-19’s consequences on food access and food waste behaviors was not immune to one gender versus another. The role of agricultural women leaders in alleviating food security concerns is not widely understood. An egocentric network analysis was conducted to assess the attributes possessed by social network peers and to discover variables that impact women’s food waste behavior. Researchers found that women’s advice networks were composed primarily of family or friends, known for more than five years, communicate weekly, can be described as an opinion leader, and share mutual trust. The density of women’s networks needs to be researched further to determine a strategic plan to expose women leaders to new information and other social networks. Data indicated women’s food waste behavior was influenced by their perceptions of COVID-19 as an opportunity for food waste change, innovation, and reputation enhancement. The need to develop current and future women agricultural leaders to improve food access and food sovereignty within global communities cannot be overstated.
Enhancing the Performance of WSD Task Using Regularized GNNs With Semantic Diffusion

The ambiguity of a polysemous word, regardless of its language, is referred to as the ability to have more than one meaning. Many techniques from Word Sense Disambiguation (WSD) have been used to clarify the ambiguity. With these techniques, the correct sense of a word according to its particular context can be determined. In English, there exist many ambiguous words. For example, the word cell may have different meanings based on its context. For instance, it may mean the basic structural unit of all organisms in biology domains, or it may mean a device that delivers an electric current as the result of a chemical reaction in textual materials about technology or electricity, or it completely means another different thing: a room where a prisoner is kept in textual materials about prison. In this study, to enhance the performance of the WSD task, we develop a methodology with Graph Convolutional Neural Networks (GCN), including normalization, thresholding, and regularization modules. We attempt to improve the traditional Text GCN algorithm with a semantic diffusion process, which increases the classification performance of the WSD task. As far as we know, there is no work for such a comprehensive classifier for the WSD task in English. To show the effect of the suggested model, we performed experiments on the SensEval dataset, which is a very popular dataset and benchmark in the WSD domain. The experiment results show that the regularization effect and diffusion process in GCN and Text GCN architectures are powerful strategies for the WSD task.
Morpho-anatomical characterization, gene expression and protein cell wall modifications associated with natural finger drop in bananas

Banana (Musa spp.) is one of the main fruits consumed worldwide. However, finger drop, is a physiological disorder that causes many postharvest problems, which eventually reduces market value and consumer acceptance. Therefore, the objective of the study was to evaluate the anatomical changes that occur in the pedicel rupture area (drop zone) of bananas diploids (BB França) and tetraploid (BRS Pioneira) in three ripening stages. The levels of gene expression involved in the natural ripening process and in the development of finger drop, was also investigated. The accumulation of their mRNAs and those of expansin (EXP1), pectate lyase (PEL1) and xyloglucan endotransglucosylase/hydrolase protein (XTH4) genes already isolated from bananas were measured by quantitative polymerase chain reaction in three ripening stages. BB França presented a higher resistance to finger drop due to the presence of some specific morphoanatomical characteristics, such as larger parenchymal cells and greater deposition of lignin. In contrast, there was degeneration of the pedicel parenchymal tissue of the BRS Pioneira genotype, forming large empty spaces during the ripening of the fruits, mainly in stage 6, which contributed to the finger drop. The diploid BB França is a strong candidate for use in banana breeding programs aimed at fruit drop resistance. This will certainly improve the quality of banana varieties. Moreover, PEL1 proved to be an excellent candidate gene for functional studies of finger drop in bananas.
APOBEC3A/B Polymorphism Is Not Associated with Human Papillomavirus Infection and Cervical Carcinogenesis

The persistence of a high-risk Human papillomavirus (HPV-HR) infection of the cervix results in different manifestations of lesions depending on the immunologic capacity of the host. Variations in apolipoprotein B mRNA editing enzyme catalytic polypeptide (APOBEC)-like genes, such as the APOBEC3A/B deletion hybrid polymorphism (A3A/B), may contribute to cervical malignancy in the presence of HPV. The aim of this study was to investigate the association between the A3A/B polymorphism and HPV infection and the development of cervical intraepithelial lesions and cervical cancer in Brazilian women. The study enrolled 369 women, who were categorized according to the presence of infection and subdivided according to the degree of intraepithelial lesion and cervical cancer. APOBEC3A/B was genotyped by allele-specific polymerase chain reaction (PCR). As for the A3A/B polymorphism, the distribution of genotypes was similar between groups and among the analyzed subgroups. There were no significant differences in the presence of infection or development of lesions, even after exclusion of confounding factors. This is the first study to show that the A3A/B polymorphism is not associated with HPV infection and the development of intraepithelial lesions and cervical cancer in Brazilian women.
Echocardiographic assessment of right ventricular dysfunction and outcome in patients with severe Covid-19 Pneumonia

ABSTRACT Background Fatal cardiovascular complications and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) account for the majority of SARS-CoV-2-associated deaths. The objective of this research was to find transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) of right ventricular (RV) dysfunction parameters that can be utilized to predict outcomes in individuals with severe COVID-19 pneumonia; Methods This observational research included 90 cases with severe COVID-19 pneumonia subjected to TTE on the day of admission and 3rd day to determine the relationship between severity, mortality in severe COVID-19 pneumonia and RV function parameters; Results TAPSE, SPAP, RVD, RV-WT, and RV-FAC had significant differences among the two groups. PaO2/FiO2 and average MAP were significantly correlated with all RV parameters. Adjusted multivariate regression analysis on day 1 showed that TAPSE and SPAP followed by RVFAC were significantly related to mortality. While on day 3, it was revealed that RVFAC then SPAP were significantly related to mortality. SPAP, with a cutoff point >46 mmHg, was the most sensitive parameter, while the most specific to predict mortality was TAPSE, with a cutoff point ≤15 mm. Conclusions In cases with severe COVID-19 pneumonia, prediction of mortality can be performed by measuring RV parameters by TTE with high sensitivity and specificity. Highlights Relation between RV and COVID-19 RV TE parameters could be used to predict mortality and TTE has high sensitivity. What are the main findings? TTE parameters of the RV had high sensitivity and specificity Prediction of death in patients with severe COVID-19 pneumonia.
The Relationship of HLA-B27 and HLA-B51 on Non-Behcet Uveitis

Aims: The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship of human leukocyte antigen (HLA)B27 and HLA-B51 on the clinical characteristics, demographic features, localization, laterality, treatment modalities and visual prognosis in non-Behcet uveitis patients Study Design: Retrospective study.
Phosphorylation of Neurofilament Light Chain in the VLO Is Correlated with Morphine-Induced Behavioral Sensitization in Rats

Neurofilament light chain (NF-L) plays critical roles in synapses that are relevant to neuropsychiatric diseases. Despite postmortem evidence that NF-L is decreased in opiate abusers, its role and underlying mechanisms remain largely unknown. We found that the microinjection of the histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor Trichostatin A (TSA) into the ventrolateral orbital cortex (VLO) attenuated chronic morphine-induced behavioral sensitization. The microinjection of TSA blocked the chronic morphine-induced decrease of NF-L. However, our chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP)-qPCR results indicated that this effect was not due to the acetylation of histone H3-Lysine 9 and 14 binding to the NF-L promotor. In line with the behavioral phenotype, the microinjection of TSA also blocked the chronic morphine-induced increase of p-ERK/p-CREB/p-NF-L. Finally, we compared chronic and acute morphine-induced behavioral sensitization. We found that although both chronic and acute morphine-induced behavioral sensitization were accompanied by an increase of p-CREB/p-NF-L, TSA exhibited opposing effects on behavioral phenotype and molecular changes at different addiction contexts. Thus, our findings revealed a novel role of NF-L in morphine-induced behavioral sensitization, and therefore provided some correlational evidence of the involvement of NF-L in opiate addiction.
Diagnosis and Treatment of Invasive Aspergillosis Caused by Non-fumigatus Aspergillus spp.

With increasing frequency, clinical and laboratory-based mycologists are consulted on invasive fungal diseases caused by rare fungal species. This review aims to give an overview of the management of invasive aspergillosis (IA) caused by non-fumigatus Aspergillus spp. —namely A. flavus, A. terreus, A. niger and A. nidulans—including diagnostic and therapeutic differences and similarities to A. fumigatus. A. flavus is the second most common Aspergillus spp. isolated in patients with IA and the predominant species in subtropical regions. Treatment is complicated by its intrinsic resistance against amphotericin B (AmB) and high minimum inhibitory concentrations (MIC) for voriconazole. A. nidulans has been frequently isolated in patients with long-term immunosuppression, mostly in patients with primary immunodeficiencies such as chronic granulomatous disease. It has been reported to disseminate more often than other Aspergillus spp. Innate resistance against AmB has been suggested but not yet proven, while MICs seem to be elevated. A. niger is more frequently reported in less severe infections such as otomycosis. Triazoles exhibit varying MICs and are therefore not strictly recommended as first-line treatment for IA caused by A. niger, while patient outcome seems to be more favorable when compared to IA due to other Aspergillus species. A. terreus-related infections have been reported increasingly as the cause of acute and chronic aspergillosis. A recent prospective international multicenter surveillance study showed Spain, Austria, and Israel to be the countries with the highest density of A. terreus species complex isolates collected. This species complex seems to cause dissemination more often and is intrinsically resistant to AmB. Non-fumigatus aspergillosis is difficult to manage due to complex patient histories, varying infection sites and potential intrinsic resistances to antifungals. Future investigational efforts should aim at amplifying the knowledge on specific diagnostic measures and their on-site availability, as well as defining optimal treatment strategies and outcomes of non-fumigatus aspergillosis.
Pairings of Homotopy Sets Over and Under B

Abstract We define pairings and copairings in the category of topological spaces over and under B. We prove a relation between pairings of homotopy sets induced by a pairing and a copairing of topological spaces over and under B. We obtain some properties of the axes of pairings and the homotopy set of the axes of pairings in the category of topological spaces over and under B. We also prove the dual results.
Comparison of Overall Knowledge about Improved Agricultural Practices of Wheat Production Technology of Beneficiaries and Non Beneficiaries’ Farmers at KVK Operational Area Banswara and Dungarpur Districts of South Rajasthan

The Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Banswara and Dungarpur of southern Rajasthan are engaged in providing skill oriented vocational trainings to the farmers, farm women and rural youth since 1983 and 1992 respectively in their operational areas. The present study was planned to see the effectiveness of training programmes organized by KVKs on wheat crop for tribal farmers of southern Rajasthan. For this purpose, 120 beneficiary tribal farmers and 120 non beneficiary tribal farmers were selected for the present study from the two tribal population dominated district namely Banswara and Dungarpur. Findings of the study showed the significant difference between beneficiary tribal farmers and non- beneficiary tribal farmers regarding their level of over all knowledge about improved cultivation practices of wheat production technology. It shows the effectiveness of the training programmes organized by KVKs.
Estimating population changes in humpback whales Megaptera novaeangliae migrating past Cape Vidal, South Africa

Shore-based surveys of humpback whales Megaptera novaeangliae were performed from Cape Vidal, on the east coast of South Africa (iSimangaliso Marine Protected Area, Indian Ocean), from two independent platforms between 27 June and 7 August in 2018 and 2019, to estimate the relative abundance and growth rate of the C1 breeding substock of the species. Observed whale groups were tracked by analogue survey theodolites, and observed numbers were adjusted to account for daily sighting effort and the proportions of groups missed by observers. Daily sighting frequency was aggregated across the season to result in annual relative abundance estimates of 10 499 (2018) and 11 009 (2019) individuals, with peak frequencies from 28 July to 3 August in both years. When compared with previous estimates from the same study area, we estimated an average annual increase rate of 7.4% to 8.8% over 31 years from 1988. These results indicate a slowing of the rate of increase from previous estimates, which could suggest that the population is approaching pre-exploitation numbers or that yet unidentified threats are negatively impacting the growth rate. Continued monitoring of the recovering humpback whale stocks is critical to identify any possible effects of Southern Ocean ecosystem changes on the stock health of these whales.