Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Clinical experience with progestogen only injectable contraceptive in a tertiary institution in southern Nigeria: a ten year review

Background: Progestogen-only injectable contraceptive (POIC) is reversible and widely accepted contraceptive method. Although commonly associated with menstrual irregularities, it seems a common choice among contraceptive users. Objective: To determine the socio-demographic characteristics of acceptors, prevalence rate, safety profile and efficacy of injectable progestogen only injectable contraceptives in Port Harcourt, southern Nigeria. Design: Retrospective, hospital based study. Setting: Family Planning Clinic, University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital, Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Subjects: One thousand and seventy five women who accepted and used progestogenonly injectable contraceptives between 1st January 2004 and 31st December, 2013. Results: There were 1075 (32.15%) acceptors of POIC out of the 3481 total acceptors of contraception during this period. Six hundred and seventy seven (62.98%) used depot medroxyprogesterone acetate while 398 (37.02%) women used norethisteroneenanthate. Up to 614 (57.1%) clients used it to space pregnancies while 461 (42.9%) used it for ‘terminal’ contraception. Secondary amenorrhoea was the most common side effect occurring in 781 (72.7%) women. Eight hundred and fifty six (79.6%) were lost to follow up while 57 discontinued POIC use due to desire for pregnancy, implant insertion and complications such as weight gain, giving a discontinuation rate of 5.30%. No pregnancy was reported among these women during this period, giving a pearl pregnancy index of zero. Conclusion: Progestogen only injectable contraceptive is still a common contraceptive option in our centre. Though efficacy and safety profile is relatively high, acceptance is dropping.
Comparison of arthroscopic lavage, needle lavage, and lavage volume on the recovery of colored microspheres from the tarsocrural joint of the horse

Comparison of arthroscopic lavage, needle lavage, and lavage volume on the recovery of colored microspheres from the tarsocrural joint of the horse Patrick G Loftin DVM; Warren L Beard DVM, MS, DACVS; Megan E Guyan BS; Brad J White DVM, MS Objectives: To quantify recovery of colored microspheres from cadaver tarsocrural joints via arthroscopic or needle lavage, and to compare recovery for 1-5L of lavage fluid. Study design: Randomized experimental trial. Methods: 8 adult Quarter Horse cadavers had 1.5 million 15μm, colored microspheres injected into each tarsocrural joint. Each joint was randomly assigned to receive lavage with an arthroscope and egress cannula (group A) or three (1 ingress, 2 egress) 14 gauge needles (group N) with 5L 0.9% NaCl. The egress fluid from each liter of lavage was collected separately, and the number of microspheres present in each recovered liter was determined via spectrophotometry. Results: A significant interaction (p<0.01) was present between treatment group and liter. The number of microspheres recovered in the first liter of lavage fluid was significantly higher in the needle group than in the arthroscope group (p<0.01). For both groups the number of microspheres recovered in the first liter of lavage fluid represented a majority of the total microspheres collected, and was significantly different from the subsequent liters collected (p<0.01). The number of microspheres recovered did not differ between liters 2, 3, 4, and 5, within or between treatment groups. Conclusions: In this model, tarsocrural lavage with three 14-gauge needles was more effective at removing colored microspheres from the joint than arthroscopic lavage, suggesting the number or placement of portals present may be more important than portal size and flow rate. No difference in microsphere recovery was seen with lavage volumes greater than 1L.
Use of Online Focus Groups for Nutrition and Health Studies

Supplemental Digital Content is Available in the Text. Online focus groups (OFGs) in health research allow researchers to gain insight into sensitive health topics, reach people with disabilities, and overcome geographic, physical, and medical limitations in data collection. The OFGs can be held synchronously in real time with all participants online simultaneously, or asynchronously, enabling participants to join at their convenience. In this article, we compare OFGs with face-to-face focus groups in nutrition and health-related research with respect to administration and data quality retrieval. As part of a multistate research project on assessment of the nutrition environment for older adults that used OFGs, the researchers' firsthand review experience and lessons learned are discussed.
The Predictive Value of On-treatment Virological Response for Sustained Virological Response in Chronic Hepatitis C Patients Receiving a Personalized Treatment Program

Abstract Objective To investigate the effects of individualised treatment with peginterferon alpha-2a (40 kD) plus ribavirin in Chinese patients with CHC. Methods Total of 297 consecutive Chinese patients were enrolled, including 250 naïve cases and 47 cases who were previously treated. Treatment duration was determined according to viral genotypes, prior treatment history and viral responses at week 4, 12 and 24. Results Totally, 235 patients (79.1%) completed treatment and 186 (87.3%) achieved SVR. And 219 out of 289 (75.8%) patients achieved HCV RNA negative at week 4 (RVR) and 259 of 276 (93.8%) at week 12. Among the 164 patients with RVR who completed follow-up, 158 (96.3%) achieved SVR. Patients with RVR had lower baseline viral loads than patients without RVR (P = 0.034). The positive predictive value (PPV) of RVR for SVR was 90.7% (OR 2.10 vs. non-RVR, 95% CI: 0.50 - 8.7). Similar outcomes were observed among patients with HCV undetectable at week 12. Conclusions Complete viral suppression by week 4 is associated with a high rate of treatment success in treatment naïve and experienced patients receiving individualized CHC therapy.
An analytical study of intestinal parasitosis in children

Background: Intestinal parasitosis (IP) is an important public health problem worldwide, most commonly seen in school age children and lead to nutritional deficiency, anemia and impaired cognition. Dearth of data regarding parasitic prevalence in the pediatric population triggered such a retrospective study planned by the Departments of Pediatrics and Microbiology, of two Medical Colleges whereby all the symptomatic children (>1 year and <12 years, divided into less than 5 year and 5-12 year groups) were examined for IP. Methods: Total 1000 parasite positive stool samples were collected for a period of two years and included for the study. Routine macroscopic and microscopic (saline and Lugol’s iodine wet mounts) examinations were carried out for the presence of ova, cysts and parasites. Results: Out of the 1000 positive samples, Enterobius vermicularis was predominant with 287 (28.7%) of all cases. The next in order were Giardia lamblia 243 (24.3%), Entamoeba histolytica 219 (21.9%), Ascaris lumbricoides 143 (14.3%), Ancylostoma duodenale 39 (3.9%), Taenia 27 (2.7%) and others 42 (4.2%). The distribution of parasites were heavier among the 5 to 12 year group (74.6%) than the below 5 year one (25.4%), with single parasitic isolate. Lack of hygienic practices like open field defecation, faecal contamination of water and improper hand washing aggravate infestation. Conclusions: Thus our study revealed that steps are to be taken by both the government and society to promote healthcare awareness in mothers, and mass scale deworming through school campaigns in order to lower the parasitic burden in children.
New method for sex prediction using the human non-adult auricular surface of the ilium in the Collection of Identified Skeletons of the University of Coimbra

Sex estimation in non-adult skeletons is crucial in bioarchaeology and forensic anthropology. It was not extensively considered in the past, mainly because it was stated that the dimorphic osteological features were difficult to identify before adulthood. Over the past few years, this statement was disproved, and the study of numerous dimorphic non-adult skeletal traits was approached. This paper presents a new methodology that evaluates the auricular surface of the non-adult ilia. Several morphological and continuous variables were recorded for 34 individuals (21 females and 13 males) aged between 7 and 18 from the Coimbra Identified Skeletons Collection (University of Coimbra, Portugal). The results show low intra and inter-observer errors for all the variables, which renders the methodology replicable. Two ratios related to the shape of the anterior area of the auricular surface offer the most dimorphic data (proportions of cases correctly assigned: 0.82 and 0.88; sexual allocation probabilities: 0.85 for both variables). A discriminant function and a logistic regression were developed, which correctly classified the 82.35 and the 88.23% of the individuals, respectively. Moreover, two qualitative variables, referred to as the overall morphology and the apex morphology, also show statistically significant differences between males and females (proportions of correct assignation: 0.82 and 0.76; sexual allocation probabilities: 0.79 and 0.76). These variables can be incorporated in a multifactorial approach together with other indicators already available in the specialised literature in order to help improve the accuracy of the results obtained. This methodological procedure has to be applied with other identified samples, including younger individuals, so as to test whether the trends presented in this context are maintained and are useful in populations from a different geographical provenience.
Methane Emission Reduction Enhanced by Hydrophobic Biochar-Modified Soil Cover

The microbial oxidation of CH4 in biochar-modified soil cover is considered a potent option for the mitigation of emissions from old landfills or sites containing wastes full of low CH4 generation rates. The mechanism of methane oxidizing bacteria (MOB) can be enhanced by amending the landfill cover soil with biochar, which is recalcitrant to biological degradation and can adsorb CH4 while facilitating the growth and activity of MOB within its porous structure. However, the increase in the permeability coefficient and water content of the cover due to the addition of biochar also affects the methane removal efficiency. A hydrophobic biochar modified by KH-570 was employed to reduce the water content and to promote the diffusion and oxidation of CH4 in the cover. Several series of small-scale column tests were conducted to quantify the CH4 oxidation properties of the landfill cover soil amended with biochar and hydrophobic biochar under different levels of exposed CH4 concentrations (5% and 15%), heights (10–66 cm), and temperatures (15–40 °C). After 30 days of domestication, the removal rate of the hydrophobic biochar-modified soil cover reached 98.8%. The water holding capacity of the cover and the CH4 oxidation efficiency under different moisture contents were investigated in different columns. The hydrophobic biochar-modified soil cover has a weak water holding capacity, low saturated water content, and optimal CH4 oxidation efficiency at this time.
The pleurophocercous cercariae infection in snail Family Thiaridae Grey, 1847 Northern, Thailand

of many of heterophyid and opisthorchid instance, newcombi are the primary intermediate hosts for Stellantchasmus falcatus [19] . In Northern Thailand, there have been a number of ABSTRACT Objective: To investigate the prevalence of pleurophocercous cercariae infection in thiarid snails from natural infection in 12 provinces of Northern Thailand. Methods: The snail specimens were collected and examined for pleurophocercous cercariae infection using crushing method. The morphological characteristics of cercariae, which were identified by a light microscope and illustration were done using a camera lucida. Results: Based on a sample of 2 075 thiarid snails of four snail species, it was found that Melanoides tuberculata, Tarebia granifera, Thiara scabra, and Adamieta hoesei served as the first intermediate hosts of heterophyid trematode with an overall prevalence of 14.78%, revealing four different morphological characteristic types. Pleurophocercous cercaria Type I had the highest the prevalence (13.06%), followed by the pleurolophocercous cercaria Type II (0.29%), pleurolophocercous cercaria Type III (0.05%), and pleurophocercous cercaria Type IV (1.4%), respectively. Conclusions: This research report will serve a preliminary step providing new and fundamental information regarding the current geographical distribution trends of opisthorchiid and/or heterphyid trematodes infection. The findings of this study will be useful to the development of effective control measures for this type of parasitic infection in Northern
StacNAS: Towards Stable and Consistent Differentiable Neural Architecture Search

Differentiable Neural Architecture Search algorithms such as DARTS have attracted much attention due to the low search cost and competitive accuracy. However, it has been observed that DARTS can be unstable, especially when applied to new problems. One cause of the instability is the difficulty of two-level optimization. In addition, we identify two other causes: (1) Multicollinearity of correlated/similar operations leads to unpredictable change of the architecture parameters during search; (2) The optimization complexity gap between the proxy search stage and the final training leads to suboptimal architectures. Based on these findings, we propose a two-stage grouped variable pruning algorithm using one-level optimization. In the first stage, the best group is activated, and in the second stage, the best operation in the activated group is selected. Extensive experiments verify the superiority of the proposed method both for accuracy and for stability. For the DARTS search space, the proposed strategy obtains state-of-the-art accuracies on CIFAR-10, CIFAR-100 and ImageNet. Code is available at this https URL.
Hepatitis B and C Profile, and Choice of ART Among HIV-Infected Patients: A Review of Patients of an Urban Tertiary Hospital Who Received Home Care

Due to similar routes of transmission, human immunodeficiency virus infection is often associated with the risk of co-infection with hepatitis B and/or C virus infection, the consequence of which is an accelerated progression to chronic liver disease. Screening for hepatitis and early commencement of antiretroviral therapy with tenofovir-based dual Nucleoside Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitor (NRTI) backbone has been recommended for co-infected persons as this could reduce the disease burden in them. Unfortunately, in developing countries, due to financial constraints, very few HIV care programs can provide these benefits for their patients. This study was undertaken at a center where hepatitis screening and tenofovir-based regimen were available, and aimed to assess the presence of co-infection with Hepatitis B and/or Hepatitis C in a population of HIV patients, and its impact on the choice of NRTI backbone in the patients’ antiretroviral regimen. Methods: After excluding 12 records due to missing hepatitis screening results, data of 140 HIV-infected patients enrolled at the Jos University Teaching Hospital antiretroviral therapy (ART) clinic, who also received home based care from September 2008 to December 2013, were reviewed. Relevant information was extracted and analyzed using Epi info version 7. Results: Of 140 patients, 22.8% and 8.6% tested positive to HBV and HCV respectively, while 4.3% tested positive to both HBV and HCV. The age group 30-39 years had the highest frequency of those co-infected. More females tested positive to HBV (71.9%) and HCV (66.7%), but equal proportions of both genders had both HBV and HCV (50%). Of those who tested positive to hepatitis (81.6%) were on ART as follows: 22 (84.6%) of HBV co-infected, 3 (50%) of HCV co-infected and 6 (100%) of HBV/HCV co-infected were on the recommended ART regimen that contained dual NRTI backbone while 3 (11.5%) of HBV co-infected and 1(16.7%) of HCV co- infected were on ART regimen with the less ideal mono NRTI backbone. Three (eight percent) patients with hepatitis (1 HBV and 2 HCV) were not on ART. Conclusion: The rate of co-infection with HBV and HCV was high among these patients, and consequently, a majority of them were on the recommended dual NRTI backbone regimen. This reflects a reasonable extent of conformity with recommendations for HIV-hepatitis care. There is however a need to evolve improved strategies to ensure that, all patients are screened and placed on the appropriate regimen.
Enhancing Exposure Therapy for PTSD: Virtual Reality and Imaginal Exposure with a Cognitive Enhancer

Abstract : During this research period, three enrollment sites, Weill Cornell Medical College, the Southern California Institute forResearch and Education (SCIRE) at the VA Long Beach Healthcare System (Long Beach VA), and the National IntrepidCenters for Excellence (NICoE) in Bethesda, Maryland have continued enrolling, assessing, and treating participants in accordance with the protocol. Extensive recruitment efforts are being undertaken at all sites, and site specific and study-wide recruitment strategies have been developed. As of this writing, across the three enrolling sites, 228 individuals have completed the telephone screen, 79 have completed the baseline assessment, 34 have completed treatment, 21 have completed the 3-month follow-up assessment, 12 people are currently in treatment, and 9 have dropped out of the study. New Virtual Iraq/Afghanistan virtual reality scenarios have been created, and cyclical quality assurance has been continuous throughout the research period.
Endosidin20 targets cellulose synthase catalytic domain to inhibit cellulose biosynthesis

Cellulose is synthesized by rosette structured cellulose synthase (CESA) complexes (CSCs), each of which is composed of multiple units of CESAs in three different isoforms. CSCs rely on vesicle trafficking for delivery to the plasma membrane where they catalyze cellulose synthesis. Although the rosette structured CSCs were observed decades ago, it remains unclear what amino acids in plant CESA that directly participate in cellulose catalytic synthesis. It is also not clear how the catalytic activity of CSCs influences their efficient transport at the subcellular level. Here we report characterization of the small molecule Endosidin20 (ES20) and present evidence that it represents a new CESA inhibitor. We show data from chemical genetic analyses, biochemical assays, structural modeling, and molecular docking to support our conclusion that ES20 targets the catalytic site of Arabidopsis CESA6. Further, chemical genetic analysis reveals important amino acids that potentially form the catalytic site of plant CESA6. Using high spatiotemporal resolution live-cell imaging, we found that inhibition of CSC catalytic activity by inhibitor treatment, or by creating missense mutation at amino acids in the predicted catalytic site, causes reduced efficiency in CSC transport to the plasma membrane. Our results show that the catalytic activity of plant CSCs is integrated with subcellular trafficking dynamics. One sentence summary Endosidin20 targets cellulose synthase at the catalytic site to inhibit cellulose synthesis and the inhibition of catalytic activity reduces cellulose synthase complex delivery to the plasma membrane.
Genomic repeats detection using Boyer-Moore algorithm on Apache Spark Streaming

Genomic repeats, i.e., pattern searching in the string processing process to find repeated base pairs in the order of Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA), requires a long processing time. This research builds a big-data computational model to look for patterns in strings by modifying and implementing the Boyer-Moore algorithm on Apache Spark Streaming for human DNA sequences from the Ensemble site. Moreover, we perform some experiments on cloud computing by varying different specifications of computer clusters with involving datasets of human DNA sequences. The results obtained show that the proposed computational model on Apache Spark Streaming is faster than standalone computing and parallel computing with multicore. Therefore, it can be stated that the main contribution in this research, which is to develop a computational model for reducing the computational costs, has been achieved.
Modulation Strategy for Multi-Phase Matrix Converter with Common Mode Voltage Elimination and Adjustment of the Input Displacement Angle

In the last several years, thanks to the development and continuous improvement of semiconductor switching elements, and the simultaneous increase in interest in multi-phase drives, the investigation into constructing multi-phase converters has been growing. The matrix converter (MC) is considered to be one of the contenders for use in the multi-phase drive. In the context of using MC in the drive, it is expected to eliminate the common mode voltage (CMV). Another important problem is the ability to correct the input displacement angle to ensure the operation of the MC with unity input power factor. The purpose of the article is to present an MC modulation strategy that implements both CMV elimination and input displacement angle adjustment. Analytical and simulation analyses of the strategy, in application to three-to-multi-phase MC is presented. The suggested modulation strategy in applying to three-to-multi-phase MC is implemented in ATP-EMTP (Alternative Transients Program-ElectroMagnetic Transients Program) software. Simulation results are provided for a three-to-three-phase three-to-six-phase and three-to-nine-phase MC. The proposed modulation strategy is validated using an experimental approach.
A guide to primary care of people with HIV / AIDS. 2004 ed.

This book addresses several important aspects of HIV/AIDS care and treatment in a concise accessible format; it is not meant to be a comprehensive reference book. Recommended references and citations are provided for the reader to be able to access in-depth information on topics that are particularly important and/or controversial. Appropriate use of antiretroviral drugs treatment of opportunistic infections symptom management treatment of concurrent medical conditions and other specific interventions to treat HIV disease and its complications are addressed. The format of this guide is designed to provide practical information for the common questions that arise in the care of patients with HIV infection. Recognizing the broader array of best practices that contribute to effective clinical outcomes among patients with a complex array of service needs the authors also address patient evaluation adherence mental health substance abuse overall clinic management and other factors that lead to improved patient outcomes according to the Chronic Care Model. Last because the authors recognize the challenges of maintaining clinical practices in the face of rapidly changing and ever more complex treatment interventions a chapter on sources for updated and in-depth clinical information is provided. Pediatric HIV/AIDS treatment is not addressed in this book. (excerpt)