Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The effects of interferon b-1b on depression, anxiety, and quality of life in multiple sclerosis

DOI: 10.4328/JCAM.4832 Received: 08.11. 2016 Accepted: 28.11. 2016 Printed: 01.07. 2017 J Clin Anal Med 2017;8(4): 257-60 Corresponding Author: Ceyhun Can, ANEAH Seyhan Araştırma ve Uygulama Merkezi, Kurttepe Mah. Süleyman Demirel Bulvarı, 01170, Çukurova, Adana, Türkiye. GSM: +905058989099 F. : +90 3223550315 E-Mail: ceyhuncan26@gmail.com Öz Amaç: Multipl Skleroz’un merkezi sinir sistemine doğrudan etkileri, hastalığının kendi stresi, yeti yitimleri ve ilaçların yan etkileri hastanın psikolojisi ve yaşam kalitesi(YK) üzerine olumsuz etki yapabilmektedir. Bu çalışmanın amaçları: Yeni atakla gelen ve IFNβ-1b başlanan atak ve iyileşme ile giden MS hastalarında tedavinin başlangıcında, 1 ve 6 ay sonrasında psikiyatrik ve yaşam kalitesi ölçümleri yapmak ve IFNβ-1b’nin psikiyatrik ölçümler ve yaşam kalitesi değerleri üzerine olan etkilerini değerlendirmek ve karşılaştırmaktır. Gereç ve Yöntem: Otuz atak ve iyileşme ile giden MS hastası çalışmaya dahil edildi. Tüm hastalar altı ay boyunca IFNβ-1b tedavisi aldı. Depresyon [( Beck Depresyon Ölçeği (BDÖ)], anksiyete [Durumluk Kaygı Ölçeği (DKÖ)] ve YK [ Kısa Form-36 (KF-36)] ölçümleri prospektif olarak 30 MS hastasında elde edildi. Bulgular: KF-36’nın fiziksel rol güçlüğü ve ağrı alt ölçeklerinde ilk ve son ölçümlerde çalışma grubundaki tüm hastalarda istatistiksel olarak anlamlı farklılık saptandı ( p<.05, p<.05). Bu değişkenlerde iyileşmeler saptandı. İlk ve son BDÖ ölçümleri arasında istatistiksel anlamlı farklılık saptanmadı (p>.05). Ancak son DKÖ ölçümleri bazal DKÖ ölçümlerine göre yüksekti ve fark istatistiksel olarak anlamlı idi (p<.007). Tartışma: Yeni ataklı atak ve iyileşme ile giden MS hastalarında başlanan interferon bileşiklerinin yaşam kalitesini iyileştirdiği saptandı. Tedavi süresince depresyon ölçümleri üzerine farklılık saptanmazken, IFNβ-1b’nin anksiyete ölçümleri üzerine olumsuz etkisi saptandı.
Histological studies of the mouse palate. Morphological changes of the incisive suture following excision of the incisors in the upper and lower jaws.

In the mature mouse (C57BL/6SrSlc) two-month postnatal morphological changes in the incisive suture (InS) following the excision of the incisors in the upper and lower jaws at the level of their gingival margins were observed histologically. The incisors were excised repeatedly every three or four days because these teeth erupted continuously. The InS of the mature mouse exhibited the complicated interdigitation of the well-developed bone trabeculae at the sutural surfaces of the premaxilla and the maxilla. The bone trabeculae of each bone were firmly connected to each other with collagen fibre bundles of regular orientation. Seven days after excision, the collagen fibre bundles became thinner and their number decreased. Fourteen and twenty-one days after excision, osteoclasts appeared and the blood vessels proliferated and dilated in the suture. At this stage, the sutural surfaces altered and the unused collagen fibre bundles disappeared. Twenty-eight days after excision, the InS reformed. The collagen fibre bundles were thin in thickness and few in number compared with those in the InS of the mouse at sixty days postpartum. The incisors regenerated and regained their masticatory function after we discontinued the excision experiments. The InS of these mice showed morphologically a recovery ofit's connecting function with a remarkable formation of collagen fibre bundles. The thickness and number of the collagen fibre bundles in the sutures of themice which were fed a powder diet indicated an intermediate state between those of the InS of the mouse at sixty days postpartum and at twenty-eight days after the excision of the incisors. These results indicate that the morphology of the InS is closely related to the intensity of the masticatory function of the incisors.
Stride 2 1-D, 2-D, and 3-D Winograd for Convolutional Neural Networks

Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have been widely adopted for computer vision applications. CNNs require many multiplications, making their use expensive in terms of both computational complexity and hardware. An effective method to mitigate the number of required multiplications is via the Winograd algorithm. Previous implementations of CNNs based on Winograd use the 2-D algorithm <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$F(2 \times 2,3 \times 3)$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, which reduces computational complexity by a factor of 2.25 over regular convolution. However, current Winograd implementations only apply when using a stride (shift displacement of a kernel over an input) of 1. In this article, we presented a novel method to apply the Winograd algorithm to a stride of 2. This method is valid for one, two, or three dimensions. We also introduced new Winograd versions compatible with a kernel of size 3, 5, and 7. The algorithms were successfully implemented on an NVIDIA K20c GPU. Compared to regular convolutions, the implementations for stride 2 are 1.44 times faster for a <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$3 \times 3$ </tex-math></inline-formula> kernel, <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$2.04\times $ </tex-math></inline-formula> faster for a <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$5\times 5$ </tex-math></inline-formula> kernel, <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$2.42\times $ </tex-math></inline-formula> faster for a <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$7 \times 7$ </tex-math></inline-formula> kernel, and <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$1.73\times $ </tex-math></inline-formula> faster for a <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$3 \times 3 \times 3$ </tex-math></inline-formula> kernel. Additionally, a CNN accelerator using a novel processing element (PE) performs two 2-D Winograd stride 1, or one 2-D Winograd stride 2, and operations per clock cycle was implemented on an Intel Arria-10 field-programmable gate array (FPGA). We accelerated the original and our proposed modified VGG-16 architectures and achieved digital signal processor (DSP) efficiencies of 1.22 giga operations per second (GOPS)/DSPs and 1.33 GOPS/DSPs, respectively.
A study on the ligand-bound Mn(II) complex

Abstract 5 amino-2,4-dichlorophenol-3,5 ditertbuthylsalisylaldimine-Mn(II) complex was synthesized via the wet chemical method. The Mn(II) complex, characterized by its structural and optical properties, has been used as a sensitizer in a dye-sensitized solar cell structure by growing on TiO2 coated on fluorine-doped tin oxide conductive glass substrate. The power conversion efficiency of the TiO2/Mn (II) complex structure was calculated by current density (J) versus voltage (V) measurement. The calculated power conversion efficiency (η%) of TiO2/Mn(II) complex is %1.44. The obtained result shows that this device can be used as a promising sensitizer in solar cell application.
Boosting Portfolio Choice in the Big Data Era

Markowitz’s mean-variance portfolio optimization is either inefficient or impossible when the number of assets becomes relatively large. To overcome this difficulty, we propose several component-wise boosting learning methods that, in a linear regression specification, can iteratively select the assets (variables) with the largest contribution to the fit from a huge number of assets, and finally form the tangency portfolio. Based on dataset consisting of 897 assets with 624 observations from Ken French data library, we assess the performance of tangency portfolios estimated using our methods. We find that our methods substantially outperform the 1/N portfolio in terms of various popular metrics. For example, our component-wise LogitBoost can reach an out-of-sample Sharpe ratio of 1.03, while the 1/N portfolio achieves a Sharpe ratio of only 0.27.
Assays of In vitro germination of kiwi pollen

Actinidia deliciosa presents a distinctive flavor and appearance that made this cultivar become the most exported of all kiwi species. At the moment, Portugal occupies the 13 position on the world ranking of production of kiwi. Actinidia deliciosa commerce in Portugal faces some fluctuations. PSA bacteria, the inexistence of genotypes fitted to our climate and soil, and the unreliable natural pollination are some of the factors leading to the unstable production of kiwi. Better pollination and germination of pollen grains result in a higher of seed that are directly related to fruit weight. Therefore, pollination is one of the factors that have strong impact on productivity of a vine, and the producers are now investing in artificial pollination in order to make the yields more reliable. Many researchers have described the importance of the Effective Pollination Period and how pollination can affect the production. With this in mind, this research focused on determining when pollen was more fit to pollinate and germinate, and to develop a pollen extender formula that could boost the production. Germination assays performed demonstrated that pollen collected from early branches, from flowers on earlier stages of their development, present higher germination ratios (91%) and therefore have more capability to pollinate. The pollen also showed to be able to germinate and grow when female flowers were pollinated in vitro. Whereas fresh pollen may have higher germination ratios, properly stored pollen can maintain a high capability of germination (83%) and may even present better results when applied combined with hormones and a thickening agent. In order to optimize the artificial pollination, a new pollen extender formula was developed. The pollen extender containing 2,4-D + IBA (both at 1mg/L), carrageenan 0.5% (w/v) and 2 M sucrose gave interesting results increasing germination rates by 10% (92%) and showing a pollen tube length of around 1.4 mm. These results are promising and further tests on the field are necessary to verify whether this extender can be successfully applied.
Quelques résultats d'analyse et de probabilités autour du laplacien de Witten

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés. Quelques résultats d’analyse et de probabilités autour du laplacien de Witten Dorian Le Peutrec
Measuring patient's satisfaction of healthcare services in the UAE hospitals: Using SERVQUAL

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the quality of healthcare services by investigating the factors affecting patient satisfaction in private and public hospitals in the UAE based on five service quality dimensions of the SERVQUAL namely; tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. A modified SERVQUAL questionnaire was used to gather the research data. The respondents of the study consisted of 127 patients who have been admitted within the last 6 months prior to the onset of the investigation. The results of the study revealed that the perceived healthcare services in private hospitals and public hospitals do not significantly vary. Although patients were more satisfied with nursing care, the perceived satisfaction of patients with the quality of services provided by physicians and nurses as well as the quality of the hospital environment do not significantly vary in both public and private hospitals. The dimension of assurance was rated the highest while responsiveness was perceived as the least important of the five SERVQUAL dimensions. The five dimensions of the SERVQUAL appeared to be a consistent and reliable scale for measuring healthcare service quality in the United Arab Emirates context. The modified SERVQUAL may be used to contribute in enhancing the quality of healthcare services in UAE and in other similar environments.
Using psychopathy to identify differences between variants of juveniles who have committed sexual offenses

ABSTRACT According to the literature, offenders with psychopathic traits can be distinguished from other offenders based on behavioural patterns or deficits in the processing of emotional stimuli. One of the aims of this study was to explore the link between psychopathic traits and different subtypes of juveniles who have committed sexual offenses, which very few studies have attempted to do. Participants were 270 juvenile offenders convicted for sexual offenses (n = 141) and non-sexual offenses (n = 129) who were tested with the Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version (PCL: YV). The results indicate that juveniles who have committed general offenses (JGO) tend to have a higher prevalence of psychopathic traits when compared to juveniles who have committed sexual offenses (JCSO). Regarding the differentiation between child sex offenders and peer/adult sex offenders, no significant differences were found. Potential implications concerning psychopathic traits assessment in clinical and forensic contexts are discussed.
Granular Uncertainty and Disastrous Misallocation

We develop a general equilibrium model in which heterogeneous entrepreneurs produce output in the presence of financing constraints. We model granular uncertainty as the shocks that affect the uncertainty in future idiosyncratic productivity without changing the cross-sectional dispersion of productivity. These shocks give rise endogenously to rare disasters through credit misallocation. Intuitively, an increase in granular uncertainty exacerbates the misallocation of credit as productive entrepreneurs' self-financing ability through saving becomes weaker when their productivity becomes transitory. In the presence of financial frictions, the recovery from the state with large misallocation is slow. We propose an approximation method to solve the model without tracking the exact distribution of agents. We show heuristically and numerically that the covariance of cross-sectional wealth and productivity can accurately summarize the economy's aggregate states. Our approximation method provides a closed-form characterization for both the steady states and transitional dynamics of the economy.
Effect of feeding frequency on water quality, growth, and hematological parameters of Nile tilapia Oreochromis niloticus reared using biofloc technology

ABSTRACT The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of feeding frequency on water quality, growth performance, feed efficiency, and hematological parameters of Nile tilapia reared in biofloc technology (BFT) over a period of 45 days. Fish (n = 6,480; 5.36 ± 1.45 g) were randomly distributed in nine outdoor circular tanks (9,000 L) with individual air-water lift by supplementary aeration and hand-fed with commercial diet (32% crude protein) at 5-3% of biomass, following the respective feeding frequencies: two times per day, four times per day, and six times per day. The experimental design was completely randomized with three treatments and three replicates. Feeding frequency at four times per day decreased rotifer density and improved (P < .05) the weight gain and protein efficiency ratio. No significant differences were observed in hematological parameters. Water quality remained within recommended ranges for tilapia culture. Turbidity and floc volume showed significant differences (P < .05) among treatments, with the greatest concentrations at six times per day. Feeding frequency at four times per day promoted the best growth and feed efficiency responses in Nile tilapia (5 - 20 g)cultured in BFT.
Impact of an Herbal Dietary Supplement Containing Spilanthes acmella and Orchis latifolia on Testosterone in Young Men

Attention has been given recently to herbal dietary supplements proposed to elevate testosterone and nitric oxide. This study evaluated the impact of a supplement containing Spilanthes acmella extract and Orchis latifolia extract on total blood testosterone, cortisol, and nitrate/nitrite in healthy men. Methods: Thirteen men (25.0±1.0 years) were randomly assigned (double-blind, cross-over design) to ingest a supplement (containing Spilanthes acmella extract and Orchis latifolia extract) and a placebo daily for 14 days, with a 14-day washout period between assignments. Fasting blood samples were collected on the mornings of days 1, 4, 8, and 15 and analyzed for testosterone, cortisol, and nitrate/nitrite. On day 15, subjects ingested an acute dose of the supplement or placebo and blood was collected every 30 minutes for three hours, and analyzed for testosterone. Results: No increase of significance was noted for any biochemical variable (p>0.05). However, a mean increase in testosterone from day 1 to day 15 of 29% was observed for the 13 subjects when ingesting the supplement, with a mean increase of 56% noted when only considering the 8 subjects who “responded” to treatment. Cortisol was increased approximately 19% when subjects ingested the supplement, compared to only 9% with the placebo. Conclusion: Two weeks of supplementation with an herbal preparation containing Spilanthes acmella extract and Orchis latifolia extract can increase testosterone in selected young men. The supplement also results in a moderate increase in cortisol. Larger scale studies are needed to further evaluate the impact of this herbal combination on testosterone in men.
Improving the Performance of Data Hiding by Designing Three Samples-based Smoothing in Audio

: The internet is widely applied to facilitate the transferring process of data as a means of communication. Some of this transferred message has confidential information and must be protected. One of the techniques to protect is data hiding. It uses carrier media as a cover to hide information inside it, one of which is audio. However, there are some problems in the use of audio, namely the limited capacity and sound quality after data insertion. In this paper, we address these problems by interpolating the audio samples using Modification Lagrange Interpolation (MLI) and exploring Reduce Difference Expansion (RDE) for embedded the secret. Next, samples are smoothed to improve the quality based on three sampling signal points of the stego audio. The testing of proposed method is carried out on fifteen mono audio data sets from various genres the covers and ten files as confidential information data with various file sizes. The results show that using the proposed methods, the performance increases that the average quality of each audio genre raises by about 4dB and able to increase the capacity of message data that can be hidden by 20%.
University curricula and employability: The stakeholders’ views for a future agenda

This article explores which measures are perceived by European key stakeholders (students, employers and academics) as crucial for the development of curricula that provide graduates with working-life competences and key skills that may increase their employability. It also seeks to identify measures that may strengthen cooperation between companies and universities. This was achieved through the application of 1734 questionnaires to key stakeholders in five European countries which are part of the European project #Europehome. The most popular measure identified by all stakeholders was the internship. More specifically, internships are considered of great importance to increase graduates’ employability as well as being the best means of cooperation between universities and companies. In addition, the study identified a range of best practices and measures that may help lay the foundations and sustain the development of well-planned curricula.
Maximality and first-order criteria of r-monotone operators

ABSTRACT In this article, the new notions of maximal r-monotone operator and r-polar are introduced and studied. Then, first-order characterizations for smooth and locally Lipschitz r-monotone maps are established. As a corollary, new second-order characterizations of r-convex functions are derived.
Anthropometric measurement and cross-sectional surveying of ear pinna characteristics in Northern India

Background: Pinna is a part of external ear. Its lateral surface shows various depressions and elevations, which makes it irregularly concave. Variations in ear proportions during growth, aging, and according to sex were reported. These differences were noticed in diverse ethnic groups such as Italian, European, Caucasian, Turkish, Dutch German, North American, and other countries. However, literature regarding the morphometry of pinna in Indians is lacking. Materials and Methods: Four hundred subjects (200 males and 200 females) between 10 and 50 years of age were selected for the study. According to age, the subjects were divided into four groups (A–D). For the purpose of study, unique digital signal processing technology, the megapixel camera was used to enable high-resolution system. Various anthropometric parameters of the external ear including total length of ear, total width of ear (TWE), total lobule length (TLL), and total lobule width (TLW) were measured by indirect method, and variations according to age and sex were studied. Results: All parameters of the cohort for both left and right ears showed an increase in values with increasing age, but this growth was statistically insignificant. Differences in three parameters of the pinna (TWE, TLL, and TLW) were statistically significant (P < 0.05) in both the sexes. Two important indices (auricular and lobule) were calculated in both the sexes. In males, the right lobule index was found to be statistically higher (P = 0.01) as compared to left one. However, it was not so in females. Conclusion: These parameters become a mainstay for plastic reconstructive surgeries. Besides this, the designing of hearing instruments also requires the information regarding anthropometry of ear in different ethnic groups. Ear dimensions exhibit significant effect of gender also.
Effects of Flipped Classroom on High- and Low-achievers’ English Vocabulary Learning

The flipped classroom, an approach that extends learning beyond the classroom, has been extensively and empirically researched in the science and math disciplines. However, whether the flipped classroom is feasible in senior high school education—where variation in student performance is of particular concern—has yet to be examined. In this light, this study set out to verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the flipped classroom in high school education, and to compare its effects with conventional lecture-based instruction on high school students with different levels of foreign language (English) vocabulary knowledge. After six weekly sessions, it was found that both methods of instruction were effective in promoting vocabulary gains. However, the flipped classroom was better able to reduce variation among students in a multi-level class. Importantly, although both high and low achievers benefited from the flipped classroom instruction and were left with a positive attitude toward the additional workload it entailed, the effect of the flipped classroom seems to be more manifest in low achievers. Based on the above findings and the results of questionnaire data, the pedagogical implications are discussed.