Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
LONG TERM FUNCTIONAL GRAFT SURVIVAL RESULTS OF THE 3RD STAGE SINGLE CENTRE LIVING AND CADAVERIC DONOR TRANSPLANTS.

ABSTRACT Aim: Kidney transplantation is the most optimal end stage renal disease (ESRD) treatment. It is more advantageous treatment regard to both its effect on the patient’s life quality or mortality. The number of patients who underwent or followed after renal transplant is constantly increasing while their survival becomes a topic more frequently. Different centers therefore report different survival rates in the post-transplantation process. In this study, the transplantation progress and the functional graft survival rates of the patients who have received renal transplants and are followed in our center and the factors which influence the survival rates are explored. Materials and methods: The patients over 18 years old who applied to Inonu University Turgut Ozal Medical Center Nephrology Department Policlinics who received transplants retrospectively analyzed. Results: While the median for the functional graft period of the patients were 84.8 months, the longest was found to be 324 months. The grafts of our 77% patients are functional, while 3.7% are exitus with functional graft due to various reasons. 5.3% of the patients received HD again, 3% started PD and 1.3% underwent retransplantation Conclusions: While the number of transplants are increasing day by day in Turkey, studies on the long term functional graft survival results and the patients’ pre- and post-transplant characteristics are limited and there is not much literature data related to Turkey. We aimed to contribute to the literature with our data. Also, the duration of ESRD increases, the lower is the functional graft time significantly. The preferred ESRD treatment should, therefore, be renal transplantation. Renal transplants could be preferred in suitable patients or donors of advanced age, and transplant age spectrum could be extended.
Antibiotic susceptibility of Neisseria gonorrhoeae in Vientiane , Lao PDR

Objectives: To determine the antibiotic susceptibility of N. gonorrhoeae in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Laos). Methods: We obtained 158 gonococcal isolates from 12,281 genital samples routinely submitted to a diagnostic laboratory in Vientiane, Laos between 2011 and 2015 and determined their susceptibility to five antibiotics by a standard disk diffusion method. Results: The rates of resistance to penicillin (by beta-lactamase production), tetracycline and ciprofloxacin were 89.9%, 99.3% and 84.8% respectively. All isolates were sensitive to ceftriaxone and spectinomycin. Conclusions: This situation is similar to that in neighboring countries, but fortunately means that the latest Lao national guidelines for treating gonorrhoea should still be effective.
PRODUCTIVITY, INVESTMENT AND WEALTH DYNAMICS UNDER FINANCIAL FRICTIONS: AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION OF THE SELF-FINANCING CHANNEL

We develop a new empirical framework to provide microeconomic evidence on the mechanisms underlying macroeconomic models with financial frictions and assess the selffinancing channel. Using administrative panel data, we estimate firm-level productivity and its effect on firms’ decisions. Our framework is robust to financial frictions, whereas standard methods used to estimate productivity dynamics are biased. The productivity process is largely non-linear, with larger persistence for more productive firms, while persistence can change significantly in the face of extreme events. We uncover a distribution of investment and wealth accumulation propensities in response to productivity shocks. These propensities are heterogeneous in the stock of wealth and productivity level: (i) investment propensities are larger for high-productivity firms and high-wealth firms, and (ii) wealth accumulation propensities are larger for high-productivity firms with low levels of wealth. We provide evidence of collateral-based and earning-based constraints. Our estimates support the existence of self-financing but show that its impact is limited. JEL classification: C33, E23, O11, L0
Physical and biological constraints on the capacity for life-history expression of anadromous salmonids: an Eel River, California, case study

: Recovery of anadromous salmonid populations is complicated by their complex life histories. We examined the spatiotemporal interplay of stream temperature, geomorphic features, and a species ’ thermal sensitivity mediated by biological interactions in a case study of steelhead trout ( Oncorhynchus mykiss ) and Chinook salmon ( Oncorhynchus tshawytscha ) in California ’ s Eel River watershed. We estimated habitat suitability and ﬁ sh capacity for each salmonid run and freshwater life stage during average, cool, and warm years in each of the watershed ’ s subbasins, including a historically occupied high-elevation subbasin upstream of an impassable dam. Our estimates varied depending on whether we accounted for exposure to the Sacramento pikeminnow ( Ptychocheilus grandis ), an introduced predator and competitor. Our results indicate that the dammed subbasin has substantial salmonid capacity relative to the rest of the watershed and could provide an important cool-water refuge during warm years and from pikeminnow, potentially improving the productivity and resilience of multiple anadromous salmonid populations. Our approach can be applied in any setting where spatially explicit habitat metrics can be estimated and population-speci ﬁ c and life-stage-speci ﬁ c habitat criteria can be speci ﬁ ed. Résumé : La complexité
Drone Simulation Using Unreal Engine

Drone simulators differ in many ways and only a section of them supports realistic rendering. Differences between the simulated and the real world can be critical, as just a slight inconsistency could cause the drone model trained in the simulator to crash in the real world. The game industry nowadays produces games with realistic environments using different engines, among which Unreal Engine 5 stands out the most in terms of realism. The core concept of this thesis is to use the Unreal Engine 5 as a base for a photorealistic drone simulator. We introduced and developed a simulator based on the Unreal Engine 5 with features such as a LiDAR sensor, an RGB camera, a position/tilt sensor and multiple drone support. The simulator is divided into multiple TCP/IP servers and allows for fast and reliable communication with the clients. We benchmarked the simulator on various scenarios and compared its performance in different environments and drone counts. We trained two drone models in reinforcement learning tasks and confirmed the ability of the simulator to serve machine learning purposes.
ESTIMATING BASAL-HEAVE STABILITY FOR BRACED EXCAVATIONS IN SOFT CLAY. TECHNICAL NOTE

In this technical note, the author reviews and expands the work of Terzaghi (1943) and Bjerrum and Eide (1956) regarding basal-heave stability in braced excavation systems. The author uses the finite element method to evaluate basal-heave factor of safety for braced excavation systems in soft clay, taking into account the stiffness of the wall and the depth of the embedment. The author concludes that the important factors affecting basal stability are the thickness of the clay layer beneath the bottom of the excavation, the depth of the wall below the bottom of the excavation, the width/height ratio of the excavation, and the stiffness of the wall. Further studies are necessary to expand the range of soil and wall conditions considered.
Reservoir compensation releases and the ecology of the River Derwent, Northumberland.

River regulation is commonplace in England and much of the UK. Regulation for the purposes of public water supply causes flows downstream of a reservoir to be attenuated and the flow regime of the channel to be altered. The impact of channel impoundment on a small, upland UK river, has been assessed and methods for mitigation of ecological impacts explored. The method utilised a unique macroinvertebrate data set for pre- and post-impoundment periods to quantify the impact of Derwent Reservoir and the steady, continuous compensation release into the River Derwent, Northumberland. Impacts on the hydrological regime were also investigated and links drawn between changes in flow regime and changes in macroinvertebrate richness and diversity as a result of impoundment. In response to the claim that the impoundment has caused a change in flow regime and had deleterious effects on fish and macroinvertebrates, a compensation redesign tool (CRAB: Compensation Release Assessment at the Broad scale) was employed to design new compensation release regimes from the reservoir which account for the seasonal flow requirements of a number of key fish species. The impact of impoundment on the current flow regime was modelled and the impacts of predicted new regimes were predicted, using a 1D hydrodynamic model (HEC-RAS), as part of a modelling process known as CRAM (Compensation Release Assessment at the Meso-scale). Depth and velocity were the foci of the analysis as they are the two habitat requirements most well documented for the fish species in question, they could be modelled using HEC-RAS and they can act as surrogates for other habitat parameters such as temperature and substrate. The suitability of the depth and velocity combinations predicted using the HEC-RAS model were assessed using fuzzy rule-based modelling, which allowed the habitat quality of a given parameter combination to be quantified. Based on the results of the investigation it was concluded that there has been a change in flow regime and in ecological community structure since impoundment. The flow regime of the River Derwent has become less flashy with fewer extreme events, while macroinvertebrate richness and diversity have increased. The new flow regimes that were designed by CRAB, based on the depth and velocity requirements of brown trout, grayling and Atlantic salmon were predicted through CRAM to have minimal benefits for the fish populations of the River Derwent and it was concluded that no changes to flow regime should be made based solely on the assessment of habitat for fish. Impacts for the macroinvertebrate communities must also be considered as well as the impacts on other aspects of fish habitat including temperature, substrate and cover. A more detailed, micro-scale investigation into the effects of changing flow regime would be required to warrant a change in compensation release regime from Derwent Reservoir.
Teaching to the Test

American teachers are feeling enormous pressure these days to raise their students' scores on high-stakes tests. As a consequence, some teachers are providing classroom instruction that incorporates, as practice activities, the actual items on the high-stakes tests. Other teachers are giving practice exercises featuring "clone items"—items so similar to the test's actual items that it's tough to tell which is which. In either case, these teachers are teaching to the test.
Aspects on Two Gastrointestinal Motility Disorders in Childhood

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Satellite Observations of the Southeast Pacific Intertropical Convergence Zone

An intertropical convergence zone in the southeast Pacific Ocean is described from monthly mean 1° × 1° ocean vector wind, rainfall, sea surface temperature, and integrated water vapor measurements recorded from satellites. Time interval of the investigation was January 1993 to December 1998, when ocean and atmosphere conditions during 1993–1996 were normal compared to the 1997–1998 El Nino. The southeast Pacific intertropical convergence zone (SITCZ) occurred in March-April at 8°S–2°S, 130°W–90°W. During 1993–1996 the average March-April values of SITCZ surface wind convergence, rain rate, sea surface temperature, and integrated water vapor were 3.3 × 10−6 s−1, 3.3 mm d−1, 27.3°C, and 45.3 mm, respectively. A statistical model of the monthly mean observations predicted rainfall greater than the 2 mm d−1 threshold when surface wind convergence was greater than the 1.5 × 10−6 s−1 threshold and sea surface temperature was above 27°C. During non-El Nino conditions, SITCZ sea surface temperature was greater than sea surface temperature in the 2°S–2°N equatorial band, with maximum difference in March–April which would create a surface wind convergence larger in March-April compared to other months. The Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), which occurred north of the equator throughout the year, and the SITCZ were separated by divergent wind, low (<2 mm d−1) rainfall, and cold (<27°C) surface water, except during the intense 1998 El Nino. The rain rate of the ITCZ was minimum in March-April during 1993–1996 and comparable to the SITCZ rain rate.
THE SEROLOGICAL

IT would not be profitable to consider in detail the numerous reports on the results of alternating' continuous syphilitic therapy since these are in general agreement and, for my purpose, are largely replaced by the complete and elaborate studies of the Co-operative Clinical Group and of the Health Organisation of the League of Nations. The Co-operative Clinical Group of the United States combined the material from five large syphilis clinics and studied the results of regular and irregular treatment. The material consisted of 3,244 patients with syphilis who had been followed for six months or longer. The practice of the clinics concerned leaned largely towards the use of arsphenamine, but 350 cases were collected in which neo-arsphenamine had been the drug employed. The following definitions were accepted for the purposes of comparison.2 " Continuous" treatment is uninterrupted treatment with an arsphenamine or a heavy metal, or both, whether administered in alternation or simultaneously, throughout treatment, including socalled " overlapping " treatment. The distinctive feature of this scheme is its uninterrupted character. " Intermittent" treatment is treatment with an arsphenamine or heavy metal, or both, which is interrupted by short rest intervals throughout treatment, whether they are purposeful or not. The distinctive feature is the rest interval of one month or more duration. The standard course 3 consisted of I2-95 gm. " 6o6 " or approximately 2I-O gm. " 9I4 " and 7-6 gm. bismuth insixty-nine weeks, and the findings in the group which
Wastewater Monitoring for Infectious Disease: Intentional Relationships between Academia, the Private Sector, and Local Health Departments for Public Health Preparedness

The public health emergency caused by the COVID-19 pandemic stimulated stakeholders from diverse disciplines and institutions to establish new collaborations to produce informed public health responses to the disease. Wastewater-based epidemiology for COVID-19 grew quickly during the pandemic and required the rapid implementation of such collaborations. The objective of this article is to describe the challenges and results of new relationships developed in Detroit, MI, USA among a medical school and an engineering college at an academic institution (Wayne State University), the local health department (Detroit Health Department), and an environmental services company (LimnoTech) to utilize markers of the COVID-19 virus, SARS-CoV-2, in wastewater for the goal of managing COVID-19 outbreaks. Our collaborative team resolved questions related to sewershed selection, communication of results, and public health responses and addressed technical challenges that included ground-truthing the sewer maps, overcoming supply chain issues, improving the speed and sensitivity of measurements, and training new personnel to deal with a new disease under pandemic conditions. Recognition of our complementary roles and clear communication among the partners enabled city-wide wastewater data to inform public health responses within a few months of the availability of funding in 2020, and to make improvements in sensitivity and understanding to be made as the pandemic progressed and evolved. As a result, the outbreaks of COVID-19 in Detroit in fall and winter 2021–2022 (corresponding to Delta and Omicron variant outbreaks) were tracked in 20 sewersheds. Data comparing community- and hospital-associated sewersheds indicate a one- to two-week advance warning in the community of subsequent peaks in viral markers in hospital sewersheds. The new institutional relationships impelled by the pandemic provide a good basis for continuing collaborations to utilize wastewater-based human and pathogen data for improving the public health in the future.
Representations of Group Actions and their Applications in Cryptography

Cryptographic group actions provide a flexible framework that allows the instantiation of several primitives, ranging from key exchange protocols to PRFs and digital signatures. The security of such constructions is based on the intractability of some computational problems. For example, given the group action ( G, X, ⋆ ), the weak unpredictability assumption (Alamati et al., Asiacrypt 2020) requires that, given random x i ’s in X , no probabilistic polynomial-time algorithm can compute, on input { ( x i , g ⋆ x i ) } i =1 ,. ,Q , the group element g . In this work, we study such assumptions, aided by the definition of group action representations and a new metric, the linear dimension , that estimates the “linearity” of a group action, or in other words, how much it is far from being linear. We show that under some hypotheses on the group action representation, and if the linear dimension is polynomial in the security parameter, then the weak unpredictability and other related assumptions cannot hold. This technique is applied to some actions from cryptography, like the ones arising from the equivalence of linear codes; as a result, we obtain the impossibility of using such actions for the instantiation of certain primitives. Asanadditional result, some bounds on the linear dimension are given for classical groups, such as S n , GL( F n ) and the cyclic group Z n acting on itself.
FDI and Economic Growth: The Case of Baltic Countries

During the early stages of transition from socialism to capitalism, transition countries experienced a sudden and big initial recession. In the transition period, they look for substantial amounts of finance in order to reverse their negative growth performances. In this context, foreign direct investments (FDI) can be seen as one the most important factors to foster economic growth in transition countries. FDI-economic growth relationship is a much studied topic but it has not lost its importance. Since there are few studies about Baltic countries, this paper explores the interactions between FDI and economic growth of Baltic countries. This is an empirical study which uses panel data method for the 1996-2008 period. At the end, it is founded that FDI has a positive effect on economic growth in Baltic countries.
JAST (Journal of Animal Science and Technology) TITLE PAGE

This study evaluates how different feeding systems impact ruminal fermentation, methane production, 2 and microbiota of Hanwoo steers native to Korea. In a replicated 2 × 2 crossover design over 29 days per 3 period, eight Hanwoo steers (507.1 ± 67.4 kg) were fed twice daily using a separate feeding (SF) system 4 comprising separate concentrate mix and forage or total mixed rations (TMR) in a 15:85 ratio. The TMR-5 feeding group exhibited a considerable neutral detergent fiber digestibility increase than the SF group. 6 However, ruminal fermentation parameters and methane production did not differ between two feeding 7 strategies. In addition, TMR-fed steers expressed elevated Prevotellaceae family, Christensenellaceae R-7 8 group, and an unidentified Veillonellaceae family genus abundance in their rumen, whereas SF-fed steers 9 were rich in the Rikenellaceae RC9 gut group, Erysipelotrichaceae UCG-004, and Succinivibrio . Through 10 linear regression modeling, positive correlations were observed between the Shannon Diversity Index and 11 the SF group’s dry matter intake and methane production. Although feeding systems do not affect 12 methane production, they can alter ruminal microbes. These results may guide future feeding system 13 investigations or ruminal microbiota manipulations as a methane-mitigation practice examining different 14 feed ingredients.
Propogation of Taxosium mucronatum from Softwood Cuttings

Mexican bald cypress (Taxodium mucronatum Ten.) is propagated from seed, but procedures have not been reported for the propagation of this ornamental tree by stem cuttings. This study evaluated the use of softwood cuttings to propagate Mexican bald cypress. Softwood cuttings were collected on 16 October 1998 and 1999 from Las Cruces and Los Lunas, New Mexico, treated with either 3000 or 8000 ppm of indole-3-butyric acid (IBA) and held under intermittent mist in a greenhouse for 13 weeks. In 1998, cuttings sampled from one of two Los Lunas trees showed 48% and 82% rooting when treated with IBA at 3000 or 8000 ppm, respectively. Root number and average root length were 9 and 3 times greater, respectively, with 8000 ppm IBA than with 3000 ppm IBA. More 1998 cuttings rooted (65%) than 1999 cuttings (10%) when means were combined over IBA treatments. Results indicate that efficient propagation of Mexican bald cypress by cuttings depends on exogenous IBA and selection of stock plants amenable to root formation. Introduction Mexican bald cypress or Montezuma cypress (Taxodium mucronatum Ten.) is a deciduous conifer that was distributed across the northern hemisphere but is now limited to Mexico, southern Texas and Guatemala. The plant may be a geographical form of the common bald cypress (Taxodium distichum L.) (Harper, 1902), but Debreczy and Racz (1998) reported that trees of Mexican bald cypress are more compact, have smaller cones (0.6 to 1 inch diameter) with pointed scales and shorter leaves (0.2 to 0.5 inch long) than its northern relative, the bald cypress. Additionally, St. Hilaire (200 1) reported that Mexican bald cypress lacks the distinctive root collar swellings (pneumatophores) that are characteristic ofT. distichum. Mexican bald cypress typically may be propagated from seed (St. Hilaire, 2001 ), but asexual propagation techniques are not well established. Softwood cuttings have been used to propagate T. distichum (Moore, 1970), but there are no reports of whether softwood cuttings may be used to propagate T. mucronatum. In view of the declining range of the plant, initial and the lack of clonal propagation-related data, the objective of this research was to evaluate whether softwood cuttings could be used to propagate Mexican bald