Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement versus Medical Management among Patients with Aortic Stenosis and Left Ventricular Systolic Dysfunction

ABSTRACT Background: There is limited evidence regarding outcomes of patients with severe aortic stenosis (AS) and concomitant left ventricular systolic dysfunction (LVSD). We evaluated mortality in patients with severe AS and LVSD undergoing transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) compared with a matched medically managed cohort. Methods: We studied 206 patients who underwent TAVR at Duke University and had a transthoracic echocardiogram within 6 months prior to the procedure and a matched medically managed historical cohort (n = 206). All TAVR patients were matched 1:1 by AS resting mean gradient and/or peak velocity, age, left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) and EuroSCORE. We used Cox multivariable modeling to assess the relationship between TAVR and all-cause mortality. Two survival analyses were completed to evaluate mortality—first in patients with LVEF≤ 35% and then with LVEF≤ 35% versus 36–50%. Results: The median age of patients was 82 (IQR 76–86). Patients who underwent TAVR were more likely to be male, have a history of ischemic heart disease, renal insufficiency, heart failure and coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) (all p < 0.05). TAVR was associated with mortality reduction compared with medical management (HR 0.31, 95%CI 0.21–0.45, p < 0.0001), which persisted after multivariable adjustment (HR 0.26, 95%CI 0.18–0.39, p < 0.0001). After adjustment, TAVR provided a larger estimated decrease in mortality risk in patients with LVEF> 35% (HR 0.23, 95%CI 0.15–0.35), than in patients with LVEF≤ 35% (HR 0.60, 95%CI 0.23–1.52, p-interaction = 0.0605). Conclusion: Compared with medical management, TAVR is associated with longer survival in all patients, including those with LVSD. TAVR should be explored further as a therapeutic option in this patient population.
How Effective are Preconception Care Services for Women with Type 1 or Type 2 Diabetes: A Systematic Review

Introduction: The NICE guidelines provide extensive information on the importance of preconception care for women with type 1 and type 2 diabetes. However, there still remains dispute as to whether it is effective in improving maternal and foetal outcomes. This systematic review aims to establish the effectiveness of preconception care services for women with type 1 and/or type 2 diabetes and to evaluate the factors which prevent women from accessing these services by examining the current primary literature. Methods: This review involved conducting a thorough electronic search of studies using EMBASE, MEDLINE, CINAHL and grey literature. There was limited research in this area and as such, the main types of studies included were randomised controlled trials, population based studies and perspective cohort studies. The primary outcomes were to assess the level of glycaemic control, the uptake rate of women taking folic acid supplementation and the rate of attendance to preconception clinics. Results: In total, six studies with a total of two thousand, two hundred and thirty-four participants were included. The studies revealed varying results regarding the relationship between preconception care and overall pregnancy outcomes. Five out of the six included studies showed an overall improvement in glycaemic control. Only three of the studies showed an improved rate in women taking folic acid; whilst only one study stated the neural tube defect rate. The overall patient participation in preconception care services varied amongst studies due to the differences in social demographics of participants. Conclusions: Preconception care has been noted to improve maternal and foetal outcomes for women with diabetes. The NICE guidelines (2015) have set the standards at which care should be delivered. However the methods in encouraging women from disadvantaged backgrounds needs to be improved. Further qualitative primary research is required to establish how to improve on this and encourage wider participation. Research Article
The development and validation of the disaster adaptation and resilience scale

viii Chapter One: Introduction. 1 Chapter Two: Review of Literature. 8 Chapter Three: Methods. 27 Chapter Four: Results. 53 Chapter Five: Discussion. 79 References. 91 Appendix. 113 Vita. 129
Battlefield trauma care

Introduction: Rapid and structured medical care is important to increase wounded patients’ chances of survival in modern warfare. This requires a functioning medical chain. Aim: The aim of this study was to expand the knowledge of how the battlefield trauma care affects patient outcome in situations with a large number of casualties in the Swedish armed forces. Methods: An empirical study with a convergent parallel mixed methods design, which included observations and semi-structured interviews. Results: The results show that the trauma care performed at Role 1-units functioned well. The most prominent issue discovered was deficiency in transportation resources for medical evacuation throughout the entire medical chain. Conclusion: Despite that the trauma care performed at Role 1-units functions well, casualties are at risk for preventable complications or death. Improved transportation logistics are required to improve the medical capabilities of the Swedish armed forces.
Q-Learning: Theory and Applications

Q-learning, originally an incremental algorithm for estimating an optimal decision strategy in an infinite-horizon decision problem, now refers to a general class of reinforcement learning methods widely used in statistics and artificial intelligence. In the context of personalized medicine, finite-horizon Q-learning is the workhorse for estimating optimal treatment strategies, known as treatment regimes. Infinite-horizon Q-learning is also increasingly relevant in the growing field of mobile health. In computer science, Q-learning methods have achieved remarkable performance in domains such as game-playing and robotics. In this article, we ( a) review the history of Q-learning in computer science and statistics, ( b) formalize finite-horizon Q-learning within the potential outcomes framework and discuss the inferential difficulties for which it is infamous, and ( c) review variants of infinite-horizon Q-learning and the exploration-exploitation problem, which arises in decision problems with a long time horizon. We close by discussing issues arising with the use of Q-learning in practice, including arguments for combining Q-learning with direct-search methods; sample size considerations for sequential, multiple assignment randomized trials; and possibilities for combining Q-learning with model-based methods.
Electronic Tongue for Tea Quality Assessment

Biochemical means of tea quality evaluation is quite accurate, but it requires very costly instruments and takes a long time to conduct the experiment. Researches show that thearubigin (TR) and theaflavin (TF) are the two most important biochemical compounds present in tea liquor on which liquor characteristics of black CTC tea depends. Consequently, this fact may be the basis of determining tea quality by assessment of TR and TF via electronic tongue (ET) response. This technique is free from subjective factors. In literature, there are only two research works using this technique so more research work is required to address the problem. This chapter proposes a modeling technique of ET response using sparse decomposition technique to estimate TR and TF content in a given tea sample. For each tea sample, sparse model coefficients obtained from the ET response is considered as a characteristic attribute of it. Experimental results using dissimilar regression models show high prediction accuracies which justify the efficacy of the proposed method.
Assessment of Occlusal Characteristics in Primary Dentition of Preschool Children in Amritsar, Punjab, India

Background: The occlusal relationship and spacing in deciduous dentition are known to have an imperative demeanor on the setting up of the normal occlusal relationship in permanent dentition. The attribute set of features of this dentition acts as a mirror for the prevalence of malocclusion in the permanent dentition. The properly placed teeth in the dental arch not only uphold the health of the oral cavity and the supporting structures but also sway the persona of the children. Aims and objectives: The objective of this study is to assess the characteristic features of occlusion in primary dentition (spacing, molar, and canine relation) among the urban and rural preschool children of Amritsar. Materials and methods: Preschool children 3–5 years of age having the complete set of deciduous teeth were included in the study. Informed consent for the child’s participation was taken from their parents and school principal. The dentition was examined under natural daylight, and the data was recorded. All the school children were screened for spaced and non-spaced dentition, molar, and canine relationship according to Foster and Hamilton criteria (1969). The data will be compared and analyzed. Results: Straight terminal plane 60.5%, distal step 3.3%, mesial step 36.3%. Class 1, 2, and 3 canine relationships were 78%, 4%, and 18%, unilateral and bilateral posterior crossbite were 3.3% and 0%,Primate spacing was found in 75.3% of the population. Overjet >3 mm was registered in 3.8%, openbite in 2.0%, and overbite >3 mm in 6.8% of the preschool children. Conclusion: Flush terminal plane, class I canine relation, ideal overjet, ideal overbite, and spaced arches prevailed among the majority of the study population without any gender variations or variations in the urban and rural areas of Amritsar city.
Dietary and Lifestyles assessment among Obese Women in Gaza City, Palestine

Obesity is recognized as a multi-factor metabolic change of epidemic proportions [1]. Factors such as inadequate dietary intake, sedentary lifestyle, patterns of physical activity, social and environmental variables were involved in the development of obesity [2]. Other factors like individual susceptibility; determined by unmodi ied factors such as genetic and family history factors were also considered [2].
An Empirical Study of Smoothing Techniques for Language Modeling

We present an extensive empirical comparison of several smoothing techniques in the domain of language modeling, including those described by Jelinek and Mercer (1980), Katz (1987), and Church and Gale (1991). We investigate for the first time how factors such as training data size, corpus (e.g., Brown versus Wall Street Journal), and n-gram order (bigram versus trigram) affect the relative performance of these methods, which we measure through the cross-entropy of test data. In addition, we introduce two novel smoothing techniques, one a variation of Jelinek-Mercer smoothing and one a very simple linear interpolation technique, both of which outperform existing methods.
Logic-Based Technologies for Intelligent Systems: State of the Art and Perspectives

Together with the disruptive development of modern sub-symbolic approaches to artificial intelligence (AI), symbolic approaches to classical AI are re-gaining momentum, as more and more researchers exploit their potential to make AI more comprehensible, explainable, and therefore trustworthy. Since logic-based approaches lay at the core of symbolic AI, summarizing their state of the art is of paramount importance now more than ever, in order to identify trends, benefits, key features, gaps, and limitations of the techniques proposed so far, as well as to identify promising research perspectives. Along this line, this paper provides an overview of logic-based approaches and technologies by sketching their evolution and pointing out their main application areas. Future perspectives for exploitation of logic-based technologies are discussed as well, in order to identify those research fields that deserve more attention, considering the areas that already exploit logic-based approaches as well as those that are more likely to adopt logic-based approaches in the future.
Efficacy of intense pulsed light in hirsutism treatment: A clinical trail study

Introduction: Unwanted hair growth is a common cosmetic problem. The need for a rapid method with long-term relief has led to the discovery of various light source techniques. Regarding this, the present study was conducted to evaluate the effect of intense pulsed light (IPL) source on unwanted facial hair growth in the Iranian women suffering
Comparative Review of Floating-Point Multiplier Systems

This paper presents a comprehensive comparative review of existing floating-point multiplier systems. The study focuses on single, double, quadruple and multi-precision floating point multiplier architectures and seeks to identify engineering techniques involved in their development. A comparison of the performance of these systems in terms of metrics such as path delay, hardware utilization and even power consumption in some case are carried out. Weaknesses in the systems reviewed along with possible gaps in the area of research are identified. This paper also serves to identify several recommendations and considerations for the development of a multi-precision floating point multiplier system capable of treating with the weaknesses of multiplier systems identified.
Effec ts of Dietary Choline, Folic acid and Vitamin B 12 on Laying Hen Performance, Egg Components and Egg Phospholipid Composition

This study was designed to determine the effect of choline and folic acid on egg production, egg quality and the phospholipid composition of egg yolk. A corn-soy basal diet was formulated with three levels of supplemental choline (0, 500 and 1000 ppm) and three levels of supplemental folic acid (0, 2 and 4 ppm) in a 3 x 3 factorial arrangement. Folic acid at 2 ppm increased egg production (p≤0.04). Egg wt was higher at 500 ppm of choline (p≤0.06) and 0 ppm (p≤0.01) of folic acid supplementation. There were choline by folic acid interaction effects on feed intake (p≤0.001), albumen wt (p≤0.005) and yolk wt (p≤0.03). At lower levels of choline supplementation (0 and 500 ppm), 4 ppm folic acid inclusion increased feed intake and egg albumen compared to 0 ppm folic acid; while at the highest level of choline inclusion (1000 ppm) high folic acid (2 and 4 ppm) decreased feed intake and egg albumen. Yolk wt was highest at 1000 ppm of choline with 0 ppm of folic acid addition. Plasma folate and egg folate showed an increase (p≤0.0001) with added levels of dietary folic acid. Phosphatidylcholine (PC) concentration showed a trend to increase with higher levels of choline and folic acid supplementation.
RED: A ReRAM-Based Efficient Accelerator for Deconvolutional Computation

Deconvolution is a key component in contemporary neural networks, especially, generative adversarial networks (GANs) and fully convolutional networks (FCNs). Due to extra operations of deconvolution compared to convolution, considerable degradation of performance, as well as energy efficiency is incurred when implementing deconvolution on the existing resistive random access memory (ReRAM)-based processing-in-memory (PIM) accelerators. In this article, we propose an ReRAM-based accelerator design, RED, for providing high-performance and low-energy deconvolution. We analyze the deconvolution execution on the existing ReRAM-based PIMs and utilize its interior computation pattern for design optimization. RED includes two major contributions: 1) pixel-wise mapping scheme and 2) zero-skipping data flow. Pixel-wise mapping scheme removes the zero insertion and performs convolutions over several ReRAM arrays and thus enables parallel computations with nonzero inputs. Zero-skipping data flow, assisted with customized input buffers design, enhances the computation parallelism and input data reuse. In evaluation, we compare RED against the existing ReRAM-based PIMs and CMOS-based counterpart with a variety of GAN and FCN models, each of which contains multiple deconvolution layers. The experimental results show that RED achieves a <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$4.0\times $ </tex-math></inline-formula>–<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$56.16\times $ </tex-math></inline-formula> speedup and a <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$1.05\times $ </tex-math></inline-formula>–<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$18.17\times $ </tex-math></inline-formula> energy efficiency improvement over previous related accelerator designs.
Cataract in children in sub-Saharan Africa: an overview

ABSTRACT Introduction: Cataract is a leading cause of avoidable blindness in children in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). We provide an overview of the epidemiological evidence about childhood cataract in SSA, we look at the resources in place to address the needs of affected children and families, the remaining challenges, and bring a perspective about the way forward for the next five years. Areas covered: The paper covers the following areas: epidemiology of the disease; barriers of access and mitigation strategies; management of childhood cataract, and the human resources that should be in place across the whole continuum of care – from case finding to the achievement of optical outcomes and educational placement after the delivery of low vision and rehabilitation services. Expert commentary: Despite the creation of new Child Eye Health Tertiary Facilities (CEHTF) in recent years, there is still a shortage of pediatric ophthalmologists and other staff members in SSA. Accessing training opportunities is challenging, especially in Francophone Africa, and a more systematic, multidisciplinary, and strategic approach to training for CEHTF as well as supporting CEHTF is needed to strengthen the delivery of comprehensive long-term care. The links between the eye care and the education sectors need to be strengthened throughout SSA.
Investigating the elicitation of employees’ support towards digital workplace transformation

ABSTRACT Digital transformation is currently one of the most prominent topics in information systems research. Existing work in this context mainly focuses on the digitalisation of business models and impacts on economy or society. However, with the transformation of business models also come significant IT-induced changes of workplace environments. In this paper, success factors of digital workplace transformation are investigated, thereby adding a micro-perspective to the ongoing research stream on digital transformation. We will show for an organisation in the wholesale industry that the expected work design characteristics have an important influence on the employees’ attitude towards digital workplace transformation. In more detail, we will show that enabling employees to expect being autonomous, competent and connected at the workplace is not only vital for their expected future work performance, but also for their expected well-being in the workplace. Both of the latter, in turn, increase employees’ positive attitudes towards digital workplace transformation and consequently their intentions to actively support the necessary change process.
Health maintenance tables and completion of cervical cancer screening: a cross-sectional observational study

Significant gaps exist in evidence-based screening for cervical cancer. Effective interventions to improve screening rates are essential to bridge this gap and reduce morbidity and mortality. To improve screening, we created a provider reminder tool called the health maintenance table (HMT). The aim of this study was to investigate the association of HMT use with cervical cancer screening. We hypothesized that HMT utilization in the documentation by primary care providers (PCPs) is associated with higher completion of evidence-based cervical cancer screening. The University of Florida (UF) IRB approved this retrospective study. We included female patients 21 to 65 years of age without a history of cervical cancer or hysterectomy who visited the internal medicine clinic at the Medical Plaza at UF between 05/31/2016-06/21/2016. PCPs in the clinic had the option of using the HMT, a computer-generated reminder . HM, a typed annotation of preventive care, or nothing at all. Analysis, based on logistic regression models, was completed in 2016. HMT use was strongly associated with completing cervical cancer screening compared to HMT non-use, (OR = 4.18, 95% CI = [1.723, 10.144], p-value = 0.002), after adjusting for potential confounding variables and risk factors in the multiple logistic regression model . Our findings suggest that HMTs may provide a sustainable model for improving completion of evidence-based cervical cancer screening. The HMT has several benefits, including being adaptable to fit each patient and placed within a visit note as both a reminder and documentation for all steps involved in offering preventive care measures. *Correspondence to: Maryam Sattari, Division of General Internal Medicine, University of Florida College of Medicine, PO Box 103204, 1329 SW 16th Street, Suite 5140, Gainesville, FL 32610-0277, USA, Tel: (352) 265-0651; Fax: (352) 265-0153; E-mail: maryam.sattari@medicine.ufl. edu
Validation of molecular biomarkers for preoperative diagnostics of human papillary thyroid carcinoma in fine needle aspirates.

Background Despite substantial efforts, reliable preoperative diagnostic for human thyroid malignancies in case of cytologically indeterminate nodules is still missing, resulting in high number of unnecessary thyroidectomies. In an attempt to increase precision of existing preoperative diagnostics, we aimed at validating the panel of molecular biomarkers predictive for papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) in preoperative fine needle aspirate (FNA) samples. Methods In this prospective study conducted in preoperative thyroid FNA from 44 thyroid nodules, expression levels of 11 molecular biomarkers previously validated on the postoperative samples of PTCs were measured by Cell-to-CT and QuantiGene Plex methods and correlated with final diagnosis. Results The QuantiGene Plex resulted in reliable gene expression measurements for FNA and core-needle biopsy (CNB) samples, however this method was less sensitive than pre-amplification based Cell-to-CT. Measurements conducted on the same samples by the two methods significantly correlated for most of the genes. Expression levels of TIMP1, c-MET and ARNTL were upregulated in PTC nodules as compared to benign counterparts, supporting previous post-operative studies. Strong correlation was observed between these biomarker alterations in the same samples. Within the sub-group of 15 indeterminate nodules (Bethesda II-V), TIMP1 had 100% specificity and 83% sensitivity for PTC cases. Conclusions Assessment of TIMP1, c-MET and core-clock gene ARNTL expression levels by QuantiGene Plex assay in FNA samples holds promise as an ancillary method to the cytological preoperative diagnostics.