Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Childhood asymptomatic malaria and nutritional status among Port Harcourt children.

OBJECTIVE Our study in Port Harcourt children with asymptomatic malaria aimed at assessing the baseline anthropometric indices of nutritional status, and whether their nutritional status (especially under nutrition) offers any advantage for living in malaria endemic areas. DESIGN Cross-sectional study was used. SETTING Rumueme Community in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. SUBJECTS Apparently healthy children aged 1-8 years of both sexes (Boys = 117, Girls = 123; Ratio 1:1.05), 240 children from randomly selected households within the study community participated in the study. RESULTS Of the 240 children, 66 (27.5%) were infected with malaria (P falciparum). Children below 5 years had a higher parasitaemic rate (36.36%) than those in 5-8 years group (21.27%). Our baseline data showed that 17.5% were underweight (WFA Z < -2), 3.75% were stunted (HFA Z < -2) and 22.5% were wasting (WFH Z < -2). Children who are underweight were found to be at higher risk of acquiring malaria infection than the well nourished children (RR = 1.02, chi2 = 0.320, p < 0.02, 95% CI 0.34-2.37). Under nutrition was more prominent in the children below 5 years than the older children (RR = 3.625, chi2 = 10.36, p < 0.006, 95% CI 1.81-5.43). The haemoglobin value of parasitized children (10.8 +/- 1.9 g/dl) was significantly lower than the non-parasitized group (11.3 +/- 1.7 g/dl,) (p < 0.01). CONCLUSION We concluded that the presence of under nutrition places children (especially below 5 years of age) at higher risk of malaria related morbidity. Children in malaria endemic areas need adequate nutrition to withstand the negative impact of malaria.
Multiscale Representations for Manifold-Valued Data

We describe multiscale representations for data observed on equispaced grids and taking values in manifolds such as the sphere $S^2$, the special orthogonal group $SO(3)$, the positive definite matrices $SPD(n)$, and the Grassmann manifolds $G(n,k)$. The representations are based on the deployment of Deslauriers--Dubuc and average-interpolating pyramids "in the tangent plane" of such manifolds, using the $Exp$ and $Log$ maps of those manifolds. The representations provide "wavelet coefficients" which can be thresholded, quantized, and scaled in much the same way as traditional wavelet coefficients. Tasks such as compression, noise removal, contrast enhancement, and stochastic simulation are facilitated by this representation. The approach applies to general manifolds but is particularly suited to the manifolds we consider, i.e., Riemannian symmetric spaces, such as $S^{n-1}$, $SO(n)$, $G(n,k)$, where the $Exp$ and $Log$ maps are effectively computable. Applications to manifold-valued data sources of a geometric nature (motion, orientation, diffusion) seem particularly immediate. A software toolbox, SymmLab, can reproduce the results discussed in this paper.
Definitions and Outcome Measures in Pediatric Functional Upper Gastrointestinal Tract Disorders: A Systematic Review

Objectives: Functional disorders of the upper gastrointestinal tract are frequently diagnosed in children. Four different clinical entities are addressed by the Rome III committee: functional dyspepsia (FD), cyclic vomiting syndrome (CVS), adolescent rumination syndrome (ARS), and aerophagia. Management of these disorders is often difficult leading to a wide variety in therapeutic interventions. We hypothesize that definitions and outcome measures in these studies are heterogeneous as well. Our aim is to systematically assess how these disorders and outcomes are defined in therapeutic randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Study Design: CENTRAL, Embase, and MEDLINE/PubMed were searched from inception to February 25, 2015. Search terms were FD, CVS, ARS, and aerophagia. Therapeutic RCTs, or systematic reviews of RCTs, in English language including subjects ages 4 to 18 years (0–18 years for CVS) were evaluated. Quality was assessed using the Delphi list. Results: A total of 1398 articles were found of which 8 articles were included. Seven concerned FD and 1 concerned CVS. In all of the studies, Rome criteria or similar definitions were used; all the studies however used different outcome measures. Seventy-five percent of the trials were of good methodological quality. Only 57% used validated pain scales. Conclusions: Different outcome measures are used in therapeutic trials on functional disorders of the upper gastrointestinal tract. There is a clear paucity of trials evaluating different treatment regimens regarding CVS, ARS, and aerophagia. Uniform definitions, outcome measures, and validated instruments are needed to make a comparison between intervention studies possible.
Explaining Broadband Adoption in Rural Australia: Modes of Reflexivity and the Morphogenetic Approach

Universal fast broadband is currently being implemented by the Australian government. It is the largest single project in Australia's history. Represented as a nation-building exercise by the government and many public and private promoters, it is vilified by others as a massive waste of taxpayers' money. Ultimately the target of successful universal availability will require that metropolitan installations subsidize rural adoption. The take-up of these facilities, particularly in regional and remote areas, constitutes a complex, multifactorial scenario in which political, personal, and organizational decisions are shaped by physical, cultural, economic, and ideological elements. Critical realism is proposed here as an aid for examining the complex reality of rural adoption for communities and small businesses in the regions. This article highlights the importance of considering individual reflexivity in explaining the adoption decision and potential adoption barriers.
Human Capital as a Basis of Comparative Advantage Equations in Services Outsourcing: A Cross Country Comparative study

International outsourcing of services has come to occupy an increasingly important part of international trade. Analytically services outsourcing is the export of services by a country to the outsourcing nation. Given this, the pattern of trade in these services would be decided in line with country specific comparative advantage equations. Since services are typically intensive in skilled labour and educated manpower, what matters for a country's comparative advantage in services is its resource base in terms of skilled and educated manpower. This is a cross country study which uses the intuitive logic of the Hecksher Ohlin model to determine comparative advantage for a sample of developed countries such as the US, that essentially constitute outsourcers, and developing nations such as India and China that carryout outsourcing. Different definitions of human capital are compared to identify comparative advantage. A key conclusion is that for services outsourcing, the definition of human capital needs to be restricted to secondary and particularly tertiary students rather than literacy. This is further validated by the significance of size of tertiary students in cross country equations estimating business service exports. Secondly, what matters for comparative advantage is the absolute size of the human capital base rather than in percentage terms
Analyzing graph structure via linear measurements

We initiate the study of graph sketching, i.e., algorithms that use a limited number of linear measurements of a graph to determine the properties of the graph. While a graph on n nodes is essentially O(n2)-dimensional, we show the existence of a distribution over random projections into d-dimensional "sketch" space (d<< n2) such that the relevant properties of the original graph can be inferred from the sketch with high probability. Specifically, we show that: 1. d = O(n · polylog n) suffices to evaluate properties including connectivity, k-connectivity, bipartiteness, and to return any constant approximation of the weight of the minimum spanning tree. 2. d = O(n1+γ) suffices to compute graph sparsifiers, the exact MST, and approximate the maximum weighted matchings if we permit O(1/γ)-round adaptive sketches, i.e., a sequence of projections where each projection may be chosen dependent on the outcome of earlier sketches. Our results have two main applications, both of which have the potential to give rise to fruitful lines of further research. First, our results can be thought of as giving the first compressed-sensing style algorithms for graph data. Secondly, our work initiates the study of dynamic graph streams. There is already extensive literature on processing massive graphs in the data-stream model. However, the existing work focuses on graphs defined by a sequence of inserted edges and does not consider edge deletions. We think this is a curious omission given the existing work on both dynamic graphs in the non-streaming setting and dynamic geometric streaming. Our results include the first dynamic graph semi-streaming algorithms for connectivity, spanning trees, sparsification, and matching problems.
H 3 K 9 methyltransferase G 9 a and the related molecule GLP

The discovery of Suv39h1, the first SET domain-containing histone lysine methyltransferase (HKMT), was reported in 2000. Since then, research on histone methylation has progressed rapidly. Among the identified HKMTs in mammals, G9a and GLP are the primary enzymes for monoand dimethylation at Lys 9 of histone H3 (H3K9me1 and H3K9me2), and exist predominantly as a G9a–GLP heteromeric complex that appears to be a functional H3K9 methyltransferase in vivo. Recently, many important studies have reported that G9a and GLP play critical roles in various biological processes. The physiological relevance of G9a/GLP-mediated epigenetic gene regulation is discussed.
Respiratory syncytial virus infection does not increase allergen‐induced type 2 cytokine production, yet increases airway hyperresponsiveness in mice

Severe respiratory syncytial virus (RSV)‐induced disease is associated with childhood asthma and atopy. We combined murine models of allergen‐sensitization and RSV infection to explore the interaction of allergic and virus‐induced airway inflammation and its impact on airway hyperresponsiveness (AHR). We found that RSV infection during ova‐sensitization (OVA/RSV) increasedtlsb and prolonged AHR compared to mice only RSV‐infected (RSV) or ova‐sensitized (OVA). AHR is known to be associated with an increase in Type 2 cytokines (IL‐4, IL‐5, and IL‐13) in allergen‐sensitized mice. Therefore, we hypothesized that RSV‐induced enhancement of AHR was a result of potentiating the Type 2 cytokine profile promoted by ova‐sensitization. Surprisingly, we found that Type 2 cytokines induced by ova‐sensitization were not increased by RSV infection despite the increase in AHR, and in some cases were diminished. RNAse protection assay revealed no difference in IL‐4 and IL‐5 mRNA levels between the OVA and OVA/RSV groups, and IL‐13 mRNA was significantly decreased in the OVA/RSV mice compared to the OVA group. Flow cytometric analysis of Type 2 cytokines demonstrated the same frequency of IL‐4 and IL‐5 production in lung‐derived T lymphocytes from the OVA/RSV and OVA groups. Direct cytokine ELISA measurements of lung supernatant showed the level of IL‐13 was significantly decreased in the OVA/RSV group compared to OVA mice, while there was no difference in either IL‐4 or IL‐5 between these two groups. These data indicate that the enhanced and prolonged AHR caused by the interaction of allergic airway inflammation and virus‐induced immune responses is a complex process that can not be explained simply by aug‐mented production of Type 2 cytokines. J. Med. Virol. 63:178–188, 2001. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Recombinant AAV-Mediated BEST1 Transfer to the Retinal Pigment Epithelium: Analysis of Serotype-Dependent Retinal Effects

Mutations in the BEST1 gene constitute an underlying cause of juvenile macular dystrophies, a group of retinal disorders commonly referred to as bestrophinopathies and usually diagnosed in early childhood or adolescence. The disease primarily affects macular and paramacular regions of the eye leading to major declines in central vision later in life. Currently, there is no cure or surgical management for BEST1-associated disorders. The recently characterized human disease counterpart, canine multifocal retinopathy (cmr), recapitulates a full spectrum of clinical and molecular features observed in human bestrophinopathies and offers a valuable model system for development and testing of therapeutic strategies. In this study, the specificity, efficiency and safety of rAAV-mediated transgene expression driven by the human VMD2 promoter were assessed in wild-type canine retinae. While the subretinal delivery of rAAV2/1 vector serotype was associated with cone damage in the retina when BEST1 and GFP were co-expressed, the rAAV2/2 vector serotype carrying either GFP reporter or BEST1 transgene under control of human VMD2 promoter was safe, and enabled specific transduction of the RPE cell monolayer that was stable for up to 6 months post injection. These encouraging studies with the rAAV2/2 vector lay the groundwork for development of gene augmentation therapy for human bestrophinopathies.
Preprocessing Method for NaXi Pictographs Character Recognition Using Wavelet Transform

Preprocessing, a major component of Character Recognition System, has direct effect on the recognition system by its performance. Using wavelet transform, this paper mainly focuses on noise filtering and Edge Detection in a Preprocessing method for NaXi Pictographs Character Recognition. Image denoising is an important issue in image preprocessing. Based on the analysis of thresholding function and thresholding, which are very important in image denoising, we put forward the procedures of wavelet denoising for NaXi Pictographs. The experimental results turned out that wavelet denoising is a better method for NaXi Pictographs Recognition Preprocessing than linear denoising, median denoising or adaptive denoising. The images are broken down into the approximate parts and detail parts by wavelet. The approximate part is an approximate representation for the original image after filtering the high frequency part. Removed the high frequency component, the approximate part can detect the edge which the original image cannot detect. The wavelet based edge detection also has better effect than the traditional operators like Prewitt, Sobel, Roberts, Laplacian of Gaussian, Canny and others.
Using Hypnosis in the Treatment of Anxiety Disorders: Pros and Cons

In psychotherapy outcome research, many empirical studies have shown that cognitive be‐ havioural treatments are efficacious for many disorders [1]. In a recent systematic review of 27 studies, Hofmann and Smits [2] show that cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) has pro‐ ven to be an unquestionably efficacious treatment for adult anxiety disorder when com‐ pared to both pharmacological and psychological placebos. However, they conclude that there was considerable room for improvement. Moreover, the high complexity and co-mor‐ bidity that is often found with anxiety disorders sometimes requires the use of two or more treatment methods that are flexible and adjustable to one other [3]. According to Kirsch, Lynn, and Rue [4] and Schoenberger [5], hypnosis can be integrated easily into current cog‐ nitive and behavioural interventions in clinical practice. Indeed, CBT and hypnosis share a number of aspects that render their combination natural; for example, imagery and relaxa‐ tion, which are found in both techniques [6]. Hypnosis has been used effectively in a variety of medical settings (surgery, dentistry, chronic pain management, labour etc.) and several studies report its efficacy in the treatment of anxiety disorders [7-13]. A recent systematic re‐ view of randomized controlled trials concludes that current evidence is not sufficient to sup‐ port the use of hypnosis as a sole treatment for anxiety [14]. However, in a meta-analysis, Kirsch, Montgomery, and Sapirstein [15] found that the addition of hypnosis to CBT sub‐ stantially enhanced the treatment outcome for several problems (anxiety, obesity, pain, etc.). The addition of hypnosis to CBT helps the patient in several aspects of therapy, such as the preparation for in-vivo exposure, imagery exposure, developing coping skills, and cognitive restructuring [6, 16-18]. Moreover, patients using hypnosis effectively develop a better sense of self-efficacy, which is known to enhance self-regulation and is linked to lower psychologi‐
Accuracy Guarantees for Phylogeny Reconstruction Algorithms Based on Balanced Minimum Evolution

Distance-based phylogenetic methods attempt to reconstruct an accurate phylogenetic tree from an estimated matrix of pairwise distances between taxa. This paper examines two distance-based algorithms (GREEDYBME and FASTME) that are based on the principle of minimizing the balanced minimum evolution score of the output tree in relation to the given estimated distance matrix. This is also the principle that underlies the neighbor-joining (NJ) algorithm. We show that GREEDYBME and FASTME both reconstruct the entire correct tree if the input data are quartet consistent, and also that if the maximum error of any distance estimate is ϵ, then both algorithms output trees containing all sufficiently long edges of the true tree: those having length at least 3ϵ. That is to say, the algorithms have edge safety radius 1/3. In contrast, quartet consistency of the data is not sufficient to guarantee the NJ algorithm reconstructs the correct tree, and moreover, the NJ algorithm has edge safety radius of 1/4: Only edges of the true tree of length at least 4ϵ can be guaranteed to appear in the output. These results give further theoretical support to the experimental evidence suggesting FastME is a more suitable distance-based phylogeny reconstruction method than the NJ algorithm.
Is syntactic knowledge probabilistic ? Experiments with the English dative alternation ∗

Theoretical linguistics traditionally relies on linguist ic intuitions such as grammaticality judgments for data. But the massive growth of language te chnologies has made the spontaneous use of language in natural settings a rich an d easily accessible alternative source of data. Moreover, studies of usage as well as i ntuitive judgments have shown that linguistic intuitions of grammaticality are dee ply flawed, because (1) they seriously underestimate the space of grammatical possibil ity y ignoring the effects of multiple conflicting formal, semantic, and contextual cons traints, and (2) they may reflect probability instead of grammaticality. Both of these p oints are richly exemplified by studies of the English dative alternation (Green 1971; Gr ies 2003, 2005; Fellbaum 2005; Bresnan and Nikitina 2003; Bresnan, Cueni, Nikitina a d Baayen in press; Lapata 1999; Bresnan and Hay 2006; Hay and Bresnan 2006), which is the linguistic domain of the present study.
Concept of transformer-feedback degeneration of low-noise amplifiers

Owing to its well-known properties of possible power-noise match as well as superior noise performance, the inductively-degenerated low-noise amplifier is nowadays the most-widely used RF pre-amplifier topology. However, there is not much flexibility when setting the amplifier's input impedance to match the source impedance, as for a given biasing condition, matching is achievable only for a particular value of the degenerative inductance. Moreover, to cancel the imaginary part of the input impedance, a particular excess inductance is necessary at the input of the amplifier, directly degrading the over-all amplifier performance. On the other hand, the transformer-feedback degeneration, introduced in this paper, offers the possibility, for low-noise amplifiers, of simultaneous matching to the source impedance of both the imaginary and the real part of the input impedance, in an orthogonal way. What is more, by controlling the amount of feedback, the amplifier is relieved from the burden of having the lossy input inductor. Detailed analysis shows a novel representation of the input impedance as well as a novel power-matching scheme of the transformer-feedback degenerated low-noise amplifier.
Rapid Detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Rifampin Resistance by Use of On-Demand, Near-Patient Technology

ABSTRACT Current nucleic acid amplification methods to detect Mycobacterium tuberculosis are complex, labor-intensive, and technically challenging. We developed and performed the first analysis of the Cepheid Gene Xpert System's MTB/RIF assay, an integrated hands-free sputum-processing and real-time PCR system with rapid on-demand, near-patient technology, to simultaneously detect M. tuberculosis and rifampin resistance. Analytic tests of M. tuberculosis DNA demonstrated a limit of detection (LOD) of 4.5 genomes per reaction. Studies using sputum spiked with known numbers of M. tuberculosis CFU predicted a clinical LOD of 131 CFU/ml. Killing studies showed that the assay's buffer decreased M. tuberculosis viability by at least 8 logs, substantially reducing biohazards. Tests of 23 different commonly occurring rifampin resistance mutations demonstrated that all 23 (100%) would be identified as rifampin resistant. An analysis of 20 nontuberculosis mycobacteria species confirmed high assay specificity. A small clinical validation study of 107 clinical sputum samples from suspected tuberculosis cases in Vietnam detected 29/29 (100%) smear-positive culture-positive cases and 33/39 (84.6%) or 38/53 (71.7%) smear-negative culture-positive cases, as determined by growth on solid medium or on both solid and liquid media, respectively. M. tuberculosis was not detected in 25/25 (100%) of the culture-negative samples. A study of 64 smear-positive culture-positive sputa from retreatment tuberculosis cases in Uganda detected 63/64 (98.4%) culture-positive cases and 9/9 (100%) cases of rifampin resistance. Rifampin resistance was excluded in 54/55 (98.2%) susceptible cases. Specificity rose to 100% after correcting for a conventional susceptibility test error. In conclusion, this highly sensitive and simple-to-use system can detect M. tuberculosis directly from sputum in less than 2 h.
A Survey on Load Management Schemes in Routing Algorithms of Multi-Hop, Multi-Gateway Wireless Mesh Networks

Wireless Mesh Networks (WMN) is emerging as a promising technology platform for future generation wireless networking. It has distinct technical advantages over other available wireless technologies. However, the increasing requirement of smart users drives heavy data traffic in WMNs and hence their load management becomes crucial for efficient network operation. Smarter load management also leads to higher WMN reliability, enhanced throughput, scalability and network availability. This paper provides a detailed investigation of various load management techniques for WMNs proposed so far that will enable us to better understand load balancing and associated challenges.