Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Attention 3D U-Net with Multiple Skip Connections for Segmentation of Brain Tumor Images

Among researchers using traditional and new machine learning and deep learning techniques, 2D medical image segmentation models are popular. Additionally, 3D volumetric data recently became more accessible, as a result of the high number of studies conducted in recent years regarding the creation of 3D volumes. Using these 3D data, researchers have begun conducting research on creating 3D segmentation models, such as brain tumor segmentation and classification. Since a higher number of crucial features can be extracted using 3D data than 2D data, 3D brain tumor detection models have increased in popularity among researchers. Until now, various significant research works have focused on the 3D version of the U-Net and other popular models, such as 3D U-Net and V-Net, while doing superior research works. In this study, we used 3D brain image data and created a new architecture based on a 3D U-Net model that uses multiple skip connections with cost-efficient pretrained 3D MobileNetV2 blocks and attention modules. These pretrained MobileNetV2 blocks assist our architecture by providing smaller parameters to maintain operable model size in terms of our computational capability and help the model to converge faster. We added additional skip connections between the encoder and decoder blocks to ease the exchange of extracted features between the two blocks, which resulted in the maximum use of the features. We also used attention modules to filter out irrelevant features coming through the skip connections and, thus, preserved more computational power while achieving improved accuracy.
Special values of elliptic functions at points of the divisors of Jacobi forms

The main result of the paper gives an explicit formula for the sum of the values of even order derivatives with respect to z of the Weierstrass -function (τ, z) for the lattice Zr ○+ Z (where τ is in the upper half-plane) extended over the points in the divisor of O(τ,.) (where O(τ, z) is a meromorphic Jacobi form) in terms of the coefficients of the Laurent expansion of O(τ, z) around z = 0.
Essential Amino Acid Ingestion Facilitates Leucine Retention and Attenuates Myofibrillar Protein Breakdown following Bodyweight Resistance Exercise in Young Adults in a Home-Based Setting

Home-based resistance exercise (RE) has become increasingly prevalent, but its effects on protein metabolism are understudied. We tested the effect of an essential amino acid formulation (EAA+: 9 g EAAs, 3 g leucine) and branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs: 6 g BCAAs, 3 g leucine), relative to a carbohydrate (CHO) placebo, on exogenous leucine retention and myofibrillar protein breakdown following dynamic bodyweight RE in a home-based setting. Twelve recreationally active adults (nine male, three female) participated in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover study with four trial conditions: (i) RE and EAA+ (EX-EAA+); (ii) RE and BCAAs (EX-BCAA); (iii) RE and CHO placebo (EX-CHO); and (iv) rest and CHO placebo (REST-CHO). Total exogenous leucine oxidation and retention (estimates of whole-body anabolism) and urinary 3-methylhistidine:creatinine ratio (3MH:Cr; estimate of muscle catabolism) were assessed over 5 h post-supplement. Total exogenous leucine oxidation and retention in EX-EAA+ and EX-BCAA did not significantly differ (p = 0.116) but were greater than EX-CHO (p < 0.01). There was a main effect of condition on urinary 3MH:Cr (p = 0.034), with post hoc analysis revealing a trend (p = 0.096) for reduced urinary 3MH:Cr with EX-EAA+ (32%) compared to EX-CHO. By direct comparison, urinary 3MH:Cr was significantly lower (23%) in EX-EAA+ than EX-BCAA (p = 0.026). In summary, the ingestion of EAA+ or BCAA provided leucine that was ~60% retained for protein synthesis following home-based bodyweight RE, but EAA+ most effectively attenuated myofibrillar protein breakdown.
Optical control of charged exciton states in tungsten disulfide

A method is presented for optically preparing WS2 monolayers to luminescence from only the charged exciton (trion) state–completely suppressing the neutral exciton. When isolating the trion state, we observed changes in the Raman A1g intensity and an enhanced feature on the low energy side of the E12g peak. Photoluminescence and optical reflectivity measurements confirm the existence of the prepared trion state. This technique also prepares intermediate regimes with controlled luminescence amplitudes of the neutral and charged exciton. This effect is reversible by exposing the sample to air, indicating the change is mitigated by surface interactions with the ambient environment. This method provides a tool to modify optical emission energy and to isolate physical processes in this and other two-dimensional materials.
Uplink Performance Analysis of Oversampled Wideband Massive MIMO with One-Bit ADCs

Use of 1-bit analog-to-digital converters in massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems has been investigated widely due to the very low power consumption and implementation complexity they have. In this study, we present the benefits of temporal oversampling at the receiver side in 1-bit quantized uplink wideband massive MIMO systems. By expressing the oversampled system in a simple form, we derive the zero-forcing (ZF) detector. With ZF detector, oversampling provides up to 9 dB SNR gain in terms of symbol error rate compared to symbol rate sampling case. We also make the error rate analysis of such systems. Moreover, we show that the necessary number of antennas at the receiver side can be reduced significantly with temporal oversampling.
Detection of Depression-Related Posts in Reddit Social Media Forum

Depression is viewed as the largest contributor to global disability and a major reason for suicide. It has an impact on the language usage reflected in the written text. The key objective of our study is to examine Reddit users’ posts to detect any factors that may reveal the depression attitudes of relevant online users. For such purpose, we employ the Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques and machine learning approaches to train the data and evaluate the efficiency of our proposed method. We identify a lexicon of terms that are more common among depressed accounts. The results show that our proposed method can significantly improve performance accuracy. The best single feature is bigram with the Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier to detect depression with 80% accuracy and 0.80 F1 scores. The strength and effectiveness of the combined features (LIWC+LDA+bigram) are most successfully demonstrated with the Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) classifier resulting in the top performance for depression detection reaching 91% accuracy and 0.93 F1 scores. According to our study, better performance improvement can be achieved by proper feature selections and their multiple feature combinations.
South African Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Plan as a response to South African economic crisis

The impact of the current Covid-19 pandemic on the economy presents an opportunity for an economic reset in South Africa. The economic reset will provide a chance for structural transformation that will underpin economic growth and sustainable development. The Covid-19 pandemic has entrenched and exposed South Africa’s inequality. Unemployment is at an all-time high and over half of South Africans, the majority which is African live in extreme poverty. This inequality has created a conducive environment for the recent instabilities that led to mass looting and property destruction. In response to the economic crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic, the South African government adopted the South African Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Plan to reconstruct and reset the economy. However, the South African Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Plan do not present an opportunity for the economic reset but it’s a perpetuation of neoliberalism. Therefore, the call “to build a new, inclusive economy that benefits all South Africans” is nothing but buzzwords without any meaning. The plan mimics rhetorical calls for job creation and industrialization made by previous policies i.e. National Development Plan (NDP) and New Growth Path (NGP) without any operational plan and a new course of action. In addition, the plan is intended for South Africa to move towards the target set in the NDP, vision 2030. This paper analyzes the South African Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Plan as a response to the economic crisis. Moreover, the paper seeks to determine whether the plan will lead to desired results of economic reconstruction. In conclusion, the paper determines whether neoliberalism is the correct trajectory for South African development or is there a need for a developmental state.
Association between Dietary Patterns and the Risk of Depressive Symptoms in the Older Adults in Rural China

Geriatric depression, a chronic condition, has become a substantial burden in rural China. This study aimed to assess the association between dietary patterns and the risk of geriatric depression in rural China. Between March 2018 and June 2019, 3304 participants were recruited for this cross-sectional study in rural Tianjin, China. Principal component analysis was used to determine the major dietary patterns. The associations between dietary patterns and the risk of geriatric depression were assessed using a logistic regression model. Four dietary patterns were identified: vegetables-fruit, animal food, processed food, and milk-egg. The study found that vegetable-fruit (Q2 vs. Q1: OR = 0.62, 95% CI: 0.46–0.83; Q3 vs. Q1: OR = 0.54, 95% CI: 0.38–0.75; Q4 vs. Q1: OR = 0.39, 95% CI: 0.26–0.57) and animal food patterns (Q3 vs. Q1: OR = 0.69, 95% CI: 0.50–0.95; Q4 vs. Q1: OR = 0.58, 95% CI: 0.41–0.82) were associated with a decreased risk of depression, and inflammatory dietary pattern (Q2 vs. Q1: OR = 1.71, 95% CI: 1.23–2.38; Q3 vs. Q1: OR = 1.70, 95% CI: 1.22–2.36; Q4 vs. Q1: OR = 1.44, 95% CI: 1.03–2.03) was associated with an increased risk of depression. The present findings reinforce the importance of adopting an adequate diet consisting of vegetables, fruit and animal foods, while limiting the intake of pro-inflammatory foods, to decrease the risk of depression.
Linear Algebraic Groups

These are the exercises (with solutions) and the exam for the course Algebra II, winter term 2014/2015 at Bonn. Students were not assumed to have heard algebraic geometry before, just algebra. In particular, basic affine and projective geometry were introduced from scratch. The course covered the standard material up to the structure results about maximal tori and Borel subgroups. Root systems and data were covered, as well as how to associate a root system to a semisimple group.
On the lithosphere‐atmosphere coupling of seismo‐electromagnetic signals

Employing borehole and terrestrial antennas, vertical electric field components of the naturally occurring very low frequency electromagnetic emissions at the frequency of 3 kHz have been monitored simultaneously at Agra (geographic latitude 27.8°N, longitude 78°E), India, from 15 March 1999 to 30 September 1999. This period of observation included a major seismic swarm activity in the months of March and April which occurred in the Chamoli hills of north India, the next two months of May and June being quiet with respect to local lightning and spheric activities, and the rest of the three months from July to September being highly disturbed due to local lightning and thunderstorm activities. The abnormal electric field changes occurred in the form of noise bursts of varying amplitude and duration and included three kinds of data: (1) noise bursts observed by borehole antenna only, (2) noise bursts observed by terrestrial antenna only, and (3) noise bursts observed by both the antennas. We find that the occurrence of the first kind of data is positively correlated with major seismic activities in the region over the period of observations. The third kind of data indicates coupling between the two antennas dominated overall by atmospheric emissions. The long distance propagation of the seismo‐electromagnetic emissions through the middle layer crust working as waveguide or through seismic faults is found to be associated with large attenuation ≈13 dB/km. Hence, the observation of the emissions at Agra, about 400 km from Chamoli, is interpreted in terms of leakage to the atmosphere through “windows” of low conductivity in the skin layer near the epicenter, possibly produced by some geophysical formations as discussed by other workers and then propagation in the Earth‐ionosphere waveguide.
Peripheral Inflammatory Indexes Neutrophil/Lymphocyte Ratio (NLR) and Red Cell Distribution Width (RDW) as Prognostic Biomarkers in Advanced Solitary Fibrous Tumour (SFT) Treated with Pazopanib

Simple Summary Pazopanib treatment in advanced solitary fibrous tumour patients, assessed in the prospective GEIS-32 phase II clinical trial, has shown longer progression-free survival and overall survival versus chemotherapy treatment in control patients. In recent years, the interest in the prognostic and predictive value of different peripheral inflammatory indexes, such as neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio, platelet/lymphocyte ratio, and red cell distribution width, has been increased in sarcomas, showing significant results in different soft tissue sarcomas. However, they have not been previously analysed in solitary fibrous tumour (SFT) patients. These indexes were retrospectively analysed in the typical- and malignant-SFT cohorts treated with pazopanib of the GEIS-32 trial to evaluate their predictive or prognostic value. Abstract Pazopanib was assessed prospectively in the GEIS-32 phase II study (NCT02066285) on advanced solitary fibrous tumour (SFT), resulting in a longer progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) compared with historical controls treated with chemotherapy. A retrospective analysis of peripheral inflammatory indexes in patients enrolled into GEIS-32 was performed to evaluate their prognostic and predictive value. Patients received pazopanib 800 mg/day as the first antiangiogenic line. The impacts of baseline neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio (NLR), platelet/lymphocyte ratio (PLR), and red cell distribution width (RDW) on PFS, OS, and Choi response were evaluated by univariate and multivariate analysis. Metastasis-free interval (MFI), mitotic count, and ECOG were also included as potential prognostic factors. Sixty-seven SFT patients, enrolled in this study, showed a median age of 63 years and a female/male distribution of 57/43. The median follow-up from treatment initiation was 16.8 months. High baseline NLR, PLR, and standardised RDW were significantly associated with worse PFS and OS. NLR, RDW, MFI, and mitotic count were independent variables for PFS, while RDW and ECOG were independent for OS. Further, NLR and mitotic count were independent factors for Choi response. High baseline NLR and RDW values were independent prognostic biomarkers for worse outcome in advanced SFT patients treated with pazopanib.
Probing eV-mass scale axions with a Micromegas detector in the CAST experiment

The CAST (CERN Axion Solar Telescope) experiment is searching for axions, an hypothetical particle that emerges as a possible solution to the well known CP violation problem in strong interactions. CAST is using a decommissioned LHC dipole magnet able to track the Sun as a possible source of solar axions, and to convert them to X-rays photons detectable with low background X-ray detectors. CAST continues its data taking period scanning masses up to 1eV. This thesis presents the data obtained with a Micromegas detector for the scanned axion mass range up to 0.64eV. The working principle, characterization and analysis of the Micromegas detectors operating in CAST are detailed in this work. Moreover, the last detector data corresponding to the new data taking period, with 3He gas inside the bores, was used to obtain a preliminar and conservative upper limit on the axion-photon coupling for the new axion mass range explored, g_{a\gamma} < 2.44 10^{-10} GeV^{-1}.
RSSI-Based Ranging for Pedestrian Localization

Pedestrians are particularly vulnerable traffic participants with a very high fatality rate. An important component of Advanced Driver Assistant Systems is the accurate localization of pedestrians and other vulnerable traffic participants using various sensors and other technologies. Localization using radio frequency (RF) signals is commonly used, because of the widespread availability of wireless radios, ease of deployment, and the fact that RF-based ranging will work in all weather and light conditions. However, the accuracy of RF-based ranging in vehicular networks is easily affected by high device dynamics and mobility, leading to varying impacts of shadowing and multipath fading. In this paper, we introduce a new ranging algorithm that first uses a novel filtering scheme that reduces the impact of mutipath fading and shadowing. Then, we use an exhaustive search method to minimize an MSE function that represents the difference between the filtered RSSI values and the expected RSSI values (based on the channel model) to estimate the distance between transmitter and receiver. The performance of the proposed ranging algorithm is evaluated using real field measurements in terms of accuracy and convergence time.
Mental Number Line

The speed of processing in simple number tasks, such as magnitude comparison (“which number is larger? ”), reveals much about the cognitive representation of numbers. Three effects, in particular, point to a “mental number line” as the universal representation of number meaning in our minds. First, we usually find that the time to discriminate two numbers decreases with increasing numerical distance between them: we know that 8 is larger than 2 before we know that 4 is larger than 2. This distance effect holds regardless of number format (digits, words, dot patterns, Roman numerals), stimulus modality (visual, auditory), or response modality (verbal, button press). Second, if we hold the distance between numbers constant (as in the pairs 4 − 2 vs. 8 − 6) we need less time to process small than large numbers, and are also more accurate (the size effect). Finally, varying their spatial arrangement (4 − 2 vs. 2 − 4) often reveals faster responses with smaller numbers on the left and larger numbers on the right side. This spatial-numerical association of response codes (SNARC) effect does, however, depend on cultural factors. Keywords: cognition; problem solving
Thromboembolic Events in Users of Warfarin Treated with Different Skeletal Muscle Relaxants

Background and Objectives: Warfarin and a skeletal muscle relaxant are co-treatments in nearly a quarter-million annual United States (US) office visits. Despite international calls to minimize patient harm arising from anticoagulant drug interactions, scant data exist on clinical outcomes in real-world populations. We examined effects of concomitant use of warfarin and individual muscle relaxants on rates of hospitalization for thromboembolism among economically disadvantaged persons. Materials and Methods: Using 1999–2012 administrative data of four US state Medicaid programs, we conducted 16 retrospective self-controlled case series studies: half included concomitant users of warfarin + one of eight muscle relaxants; half included concomitant users of an inhaled corticosteroid (ICS) + one of eight muscle relaxants. The ICS analyses served as negative control comparisons. In each study, we calculated incidence rate ratios (IRRs) comparing thromboembolism rates in the co-exposed versus warfarin/ICS-only exposed person-time, adjusting for time-varying confounders. Results: Among ~70 million persons, we identified 8693 warfarin-treated subjects who concomitantly used a muscle relaxant, were hospitalized for thromboembolism, and met all other inclusion criteria. Time-varying confounder-adjusted IRRs ranged from 0.31 (95% confidence interval: 0.13–0.77) for metaxalone to 3.44 (95% confidence interval: 1.53–7.78) for tizanidine. The tizanidine finding was robust after quantitatively adjusting for negative control ICS findings, and in numerous prespecified secondary analyses. Conclusions: We identified a potential >3-fold increase in the rate of hospitalized thromboembolism in concomitant users of warfarin + tizanidine vs. warfarin alone. Alternative explanations for this finding include confounding by indication, a native effect of tizanidine, or chance.
Call for Asymmetric Health Decentralisation in Indonesia

Disparities, Inequalities and inequities are still significant problems after decades of experiencing health decentralisation. This study arranges massive issues on health decentralisation to endorse improvement. The analysis offers insight into decentralisation practices in Indonesia to perform health affairs. A systematic review approach was practised to identify the Scopus database and PubMed MEDLINE from 1999 to 2020, using the terms "health" and "decentralisation. " Inclusion criteria were final manuscript, full-text access, and elaborate health administration in the decentralised era. Non-journal articles and non-Indonesia research sites were applied as exclusion criteria. The study analysed 32 reports through Vosviewer tools to confirm health decentralisation trends based on word frequency mentioned in the abstract. Using Atlas.ti qualitative apps tools, the full text of the identified manuscript was analysed into the categorisation of main decentralisation issues; 1) intergovernmental relations, 2) fiscal capacity, 3) regional capacity and capability to elaborate on implementation gap, obstacles, and pros and cons of Indonesia's experience in health decentralisation. The study found that changing decentralisation patterns that mismanaged unequal distribution of health resources raises inequality issues. Second, there is conflictual relation between national and regional health administration-sandwich function caused by the unclear division of government authority. Third, the health policy necessity of a symmetrical approach to coping with regional disparities in fiscal capacity, local government capacity, and capability to provide health services, and inequity problems follow. Moreover, various specific local needs and contexts do not fit in with national health policy. In this context, an asymmetrical approach to managing health answers diverse context responses in implementing decentralisation and inequality and inequity issues.
A Stochastic Realization Approach to the Smoothing Problem. Revised.

Abstract : The purpose of this paper is to develop a theory of smoothing for finite dimensional linear stochastic systems in the context of stochastic realization theory. The basic idea is to embed the given stochastic system in a class of similar systems all having the same output process and the same Kalman-Bucy filter. This class has a lattice structure with a smallest and a largest element; these two elements completely determine the smoothing estimates. This approach enables us to obtain stochastic interpretations of many important smoothing formulas and to explain the relationship between them. (Author)