Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Electrophysiological biomarkers of brain function in CDKL5 deficiency disorder

Abstract CDKL5 deficiency disorder is a debilitating developmental and epileptic encephalopathy for which no targeted treatment exists. A number of promising therapeutics are under development for CDKL5 deficiency disorder but a lack of validated biomarkers of brain function and clinical severity may limit the ability to objectively assess the efficacy of new treatments as they become available. To address this need, the current study quantified electrophysiological measures in individuals with CDKL5 deficiency disorder and the association between these parameters and clinical severity. Visual and auditory evoked potentials, as well as resting EEG, were acquired across 5 clinical sites from 26 individuals with CDKL5 deficiency disorder. Evoked potential and quantitative EEG features were calculated and compared with typically developing individuals in an age- and sex-matched cohort. Baseline and Year 1 data, when available, were analysed and the repeatability of the results was tested. Two clinician-completed severity scales were used for evaluating the clinical relevance of the electrophysiological parameters. Group-level comparisons revealed reduced visual evoked potential amplitude in CDKL5 deficiency disorder individuals versus typically developing individuals. There were no group differences in the latency of the visual evoked potentials or in the latency or amplitude of the auditory evoked potentials. Within the CDKL5 deficiency disorder group, auditory evoked potential amplitude correlated with disease severity at baseline as well as Year 1. Multiple quantitative EEG features differed between CDKL5 deficiency disorder and typically developing participants, including amplitude standard deviation, 1/f slope and global delta, theta, alpha and beta power. Several quantitative EEG features correlated with clinical severity, including amplitude skewness, theta/delta ratio and alpha/delta ratio. The theta/delta ratio was the overall strongest predictor of severity and also among the most repeatable qEEG measures from baseline to Year 1. Together, the present findings point to the utility of evoked potentials and quantitative EEG parameters as objective measures of brain function and disease severity in future clinical trials for CDKL5 deficiency disorder. The results also underscore the utility of the current methods, which could be similarly applied to the identification and validation of electrophysiological biomarkers of brain function for other developmental encephalopathies.
NOISE LEVEL IDENTIFICATION ON DENTAL CLINIC

Background: Noise is a problem affecting toothache patients psychological and physical aspects. The dental clinic can be a source of noise because it contrasts with the function of the dental clinic as a place of healing. Noise can cause toothache to be more psychologically painful, which causes dryness of the oral cavity. Purpose: Therefore, it is necessary to know how much the noise level in the dental clinic is with the case study of the Benowo dental clinic and where it comes from. Method: The researchers used an explorative method and observations to realize this activity. This study begins by calculating the clinical noise level using a sound meter, and then the results are compared with a literature study. Result: The highest noise recorded in this clinic reaches 84 dB. This is very far from the sound level recommended by SNI 03-6386-2000, which is 45 dB for dental clinics. Outside noise comes from roads, trains, and parking areas. The nature of noise from outside is sporadic, but the intensity of the noise is very high. Sources of noise from inside come from activities in the medicine room, patient conversations, drills, scaling, and compressors. Noise from within is continuous but less intense. Conclusion: The design of the dental clinic must consider the acoustic aspect as the central aspect. Further research is needed to choose the right design concept to protect the dental clinic from noise.
Resource use efficiency of milk production among different types of dairy farms in Kerala

The present study analysed the resource use efficiency of milk production among different types of dairy farms in Kerala. The area of study and the respondents were selected using a stratified multi-stage random sampling technique. The farmers/farm households were categorized into small farms (1-2 cows), medium (3-10 cows), and large farms (more than ten cows). The relationship between inputs and milk production has been explored through the production function approach. Resource use efficiency was essentially a comparison between the Marginal Value Product (MVP) of an input with its price that gave direction on the use of that particular input in order to maximize profit. The results showed that in small farms, the MVPs of two inputs viz. roughages and labour was significantly less than unity, signifying overutilisation of these inputs. The MVP value of concentrate was significantly higher than unity, indicating their underutilisation in the milk production process. The MVP of concentrate was positive and significantly greater than unity in medium and large farms, also indicating their underutilisation.
Leveraging Class Balancing Techniques to Alleviate Algorithmic Bias for Predictive Tasks in Education

Predictive modeling is a core technique used in tackling various tasks in learning analytics research, e.g., classifying educational forum posts, predicting learning performance, and identifying at-risk students. When applying a predictive model, it is often treated as the first priority to improve its prediction accuracy as much as possible. Class balancing, which aims to adjust the unbalanced data samples of different class labels before using them as input to train a predictive model, has been widely regarded as a powerful method for boosting prediction accuracy. However, its impact on algorithmic bias remains largely unexplored, i.e., whether the use of class balancing methods would alleviate or amplify the differentiated prediction accuracy received by different groups of students (e.g., female versus male). To fill this gap, our study selected three representative predictive tasks as the testbed, based on which we 1) applied two well known metrics (i.e., hardness bias and distribution bias) to measure data characteristics to which algorithmic bias might be attributed; and 2) investigated the impact of a total of eleven class balancing techniques on prediction fairness. Through extensive analysis and evaluation, we found that class balancing techniques, in general, tended to improve predictive fairness between different groups of students. Furthermore, class balancing techniques (e.g., SMOTE and ADASYN), which add samples to the minority group (i.e., oversampling) can enhance the predictive accuracy of the minority group while not negatively affecting the majority group. Consequently, both fairness and accuracy can be improved by applying these oversampling class balancing methods. All data and code used in this study are publicly accessible via https://github.com/lsha49/FairCBT.
Molecular characterisation of virulence genes in Staphylococcus aureus associated with clinical bovine mastitis

Staphylococcus aureus is the most frequently isolated pathogen from bovine mastitis including subclinical, clinical, and chronic infections. Virulence factors possessed by S. aureus aid in causing infection and inflammation by producing toxins and proteins, which are responsible for the pathogenesis of the disease. In the current study out of 51 animals presented with clinical mastitis, S. aureus was isolated from the milk of 18 animals. S. aureus was confirmed by genus and species level identification using polymerase chain reaction. Molecular characterization of selected virulence genes including thermonuclease (nuc) and Panton Valentine Leucocidin (PVL) was performed in all the S. aureus isolates. Presence of nuc gene was observed in all the isolates (100 %) of S. aureus. No isolates were found to be positive for the presence of PVL gene. Profiling the virulence genes is an important tool for epidemiological studies of mastitis, which can be employed for the prevention and control of the disease.
Accurately Identifying Cerebroarterial Stenosis from Angiography Reports Using Natural Language Processing Approaches

Patients with intracranial artery stenosis show high incidence of stroke. Angiography reports contain rich but underutilized information that can enable the detection of cerebrovascular diseases. This study evaluated various natural language processing (NLP) techniques to accurately identify eleven intracranial artery stenosis from angiography reports. Three NLP models, including a rule-based model, a recurrent neural network (RNN), and a contextualized language model, XLNet, were developed and evaluated by internal–external cross-validation. In this study, angiography reports from two independent medical centers (9614 for training and internal validation testing and 315 as external validation) were assessed. The internal testing results showed that XLNet had the best performance, with a receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) ranging from 0.97 to 0.99 using eleven targeted arteries. The rule-based model attained an AUROC from 0.92 to 0.96, and the RNN long short-term memory model attained an AUROC from 0.95 to 0.97. The study showed the potential application of NLP techniques such as the XLNet model for the routine and automatic screening of patients with high risk of intracranial artery stenosis using angiography reports. However, the NLP models were investigated based on relatively small sample sizes with very different report writing styles and a prevalence of stenosis case distributions, revealing challenges for model generalization.
Human periodontitis-associated salivary microbiome affects the immune response of diabetic mice

ABSTRACT Background The bidirectional association between periodontitis and diabetes mellitus has been well accepted; however, pathways connecting them remain unclear. Some oral bacteria are able to induce immunologic changes favoring insulin resistance individually. However, it is unclear if and how the systemic immune system responds to a disturbed oral microbial community in diabetic sufferers. Aim This study aimed to investigate the impact of the human periodontitis-associated salivary microbiome on the splenic immune responses of diabetic mice. Methods An in vivo diabetic animal model was established by feeding high fat food. After microbial depletion with quadruple antibiotic treatment, human saliva from healthy and periodontitis volunteers was transplanted into the mouth of these diabetic mice (N = 3), respectively. Results Osteoclasts and expression levels of TNF-α and IL-1β were significantly increased in periodontal tissues of mice receiving periodontitis patients donated microbiome compared to these transplanted with healthy subjects donated microbiome. The proportion of monocyte (an innate immunocyte) decreased in mice receiving periodontitis patients donated microbiome. However, the abundance of an adaptive immunocyte Th17 was up-regulated. The IL17 production of ILC3 cells in human periodontitis-associated salivary microbiome recipient mice was significantly impaired. Conclusions A disturbed oral microbiome imposes a stress on the splenic immune responses of diabetic mice.
Adsorption of Hydrophobic Ions on Environmentally Relevant Sorbents

Environmental monitoring and remediation often requires the collection of harmful substances from aqueous solutions. Absorption with solids is a useful technique for binding such substances even at very low concentration levels. Many of these contaminants are weak acids or bases. Some novel, nonionic polymeric sorbents, such as hypercrosslinked polymers or polymers with balanced hydrophilic-lipophilic properties (HLB) have been found to bind weak acids and bases with high distribution coefficients even at pH values where these compounds are almost completely ionized (typically near pH 7). To understand this phenomenon and its practical consequences, we have experimentally studied the adsorption of ionizable weak acids and bases as a function of pH and ionic strength on a the OASIS® HLB sorbent. Not surprisingly, the ionic forms of the weak acids and bases were found to be much less bound in the aqueous solution than their neutral forms. In spite of this, OASIS® HLB binds weak acids and bases around pH 7 considerably better than typical hydrophobic sorbents. The high overall distribution coefficients around pH 7 could be explained by two factors. One is that on OASIS® HLB, and on some other novel polymeric sorbents, the binding constant of the moderately hydrophobic neutral form is on the order of 100,000, i.e., much higher than on typical hydrophobic sorbents. Thus, even if the proportion of the neutral form in solution is only around 1% near pH 7, the adsorption of the neutral form is still significant. On the other hand, the binding of the apparently hydrophilic ionized forms occurs with distribution coefficients well above 100. The distribution coefficient of the ionic form appears to depend on ionic strength and the presence of competing ions. Adsorption of the ionic forms is found to be very similar to the adsorption of ionic surfactants. The pH dependence of the total adsorption of neutral and ionic forms together, is found to be steep around pH 7, and therefore the varying pH of natural waters may strongly influence the binding efficiency in practical applications, such as the collection (concentration) of contaminants or their passive sampling.
ÉTICA NO SERVIÇO PÚBLICO FEDERAL: CONTEXTO E REFLEXÕES

O objetivo do presente ensaio e contextualizar a etica no servico publico federal por meio do codigo de etica dos servidores publicos federais. Para o alcance do objetivo proposto utilizou-se como metodologia a pesquisa bibliografica de autores que propoem um debate sobre os conceitos de etica e moral,a importância da elaboracao de codigos de etica para as categorias profissionais e os conceitos e deveres do codigo de etica dos servidores publicos federais.Os resultados alcancados apos a conclusao da pesquisa demonstram que a conduta etica de um grupo e regida pela aceitacao coletiva dos conceitos morais. Os codigos de etica sao elaborados para compilar as normas e condutas que orientam os profissionais de determinada categoria profissional. Desta forma, o Decreto no 1.171/94 institui os parâmetros de etica que devem ser observados pelos servidores publicos federais
The Genomic 3′ UTR of Flaviviruses Is a Translation Initiation Enhancer

Viruses rely on the cellular machinery of host cells to synthesize their proteins, and have developed different mechanisms enabling them to compete with cellular mRNAs for access to it. The genus Flavivirus is a large group of positive, single-stranded RNA viruses that includes several important human pathogens, such as West Nile, Dengue and Zika virus. The genome of flaviviruses bears a type 1 cap structure at its 5′ end, needed for the main translation initiation mechanism. Several members of the genus also use a cap-independent translation mechanism. The present work provides evidence that the WNV 5′ end also promotes a cap-independent translation initiation mechanism in mammalian and insect cells, reinforcing the hypothesis that this might be a general strategy of flaviviruses. In agreement with previous reports, we show that this mechanism depends on the presence of the viral genomic 3′ UTR. The results also show that the 3′ UTR of the WNV genome enhances translation of the cap-dependent mechanism. Interestingly, WNV 3′ UTR can be replaced by the 3′ UTR of other flaviviruses and the translation enhancing effect is maintained, suggesting a molecular mechanism that does not involve direct RNA-RNA interactions to be at work. In addition, the deletion of specific structural elements of the WNV 3′ UTR leads to increased cap-dependent and cap-independent translation. These findings suggest the 3′ UTR to be involved in a fine-tuned translation regulation mechanism.
Implementation of an On-board Embedded System for Monitoring Drowsiness in Automobile Drivers

The development of technologies for detecting or preventing drowsiness at the wheel has been a major challenge in the area of accident avoidance systems. Due to the hazard that drowsiness presents on the road, methods need to be developed for its early detection. This study implements a Haar cascade technique on a Raspberry Pi module and evaluates the performance of the developed system. The results obtained from the evaluation of the standalone embedded system show that a precision of 80.11% and recall (sensitivity) of 99.81% were achieved. The results of the system usability test (based on an administered questionnaire) reveal that the mean System Usability Scale (SUS) score for the 20 participants is 77.38, with a standard deviation of 9.40. The minimum and maximum score are 57.50 and 92.50, respectively. The mean SUS score of 77.38 indicates that user satisfaction is adequate.
Effect of Corpus-based Activities on Learning Verb–Noun 
Collocations in Saudi EFL Classes

This study investigates the effect of corpus-based activities on learning verb–noun collocations in Saudi EFL classes. The differences between those who were instructed through the corpus-based method and those who were taught using the traditional method were analysed using pre- and post-collocation tests provided to 62 female university students. Fifteen verb–noun collocations were used. The results of the study show a significant positive change in the learning level of the experimental group that was given corpus-based activities. There were significant differences between the experimental and the control group; the latter group was only exposed to coursebooks and dictionaries. These findings will help facilitate the verb–noun collocations learning process for learners of English as a foreign language. They will also benefit language teachers and curriculum designers in focusing on modifying teaching methods. Keywords: Corpus-based materials, verb–noun collocations, corpus linguistics, EFL classes, Saudi.
Dispersive Quantum Systems: a class of isolated non-time reversal quantum systems

A "dispersive quantum system" is a quantum system which is both isolated and non-time reversal invariant. This article presents precise definitions for those concepts and also a characterization of dispersive quantum systems within the class of completely positive Markovian quantum systems in finite dimension (through a homogeneous linear equation for the non-Hamiltonian part of the system's Liouvillian). To set the framework, the basic features of quantum mechanics are reviewed focusing on time evolution and also on the theory of completely positive Markovian quantum systems, including Kossakowski-Lindblad's standard form for Liouvillians. After those general considerations, I present a simple example of dispersive two-level quantum system and apply that to describe neutrino oscillation.
Frequency of Adrenal Insufficiency in Patients With Hypoglycemia in an Emergency Department: A Cross-sectional Study

Abstract Context In most patients presenting with hypoglycemia in emergency departments, the etiology of hypoglycemia is identified. However, it cannot be determined in approximately 10% of cases. Objective We aimed to identify the causes of unknown hypoglycemia, especially adrenal insufficiency. Methods In this cross-sectional study, we evaluated the etiology of hypoglycemia among patients in our emergency department with hypoglycemia (plasma glucose level < 70 mg/dL (3.9 mmol/L)] between April 1, 2016 and March 31, 2021 using a rapid adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) test. Results There were 528 cases with hypoglycemia included [52.1% male; median age 62 years (range 19-92)]. The majority [389 (73.7%)] of patients were using antidiabetes drugs. Additionally, 33 (6.3%) consumed alcohol; 17 (3.2%) had malnutrition; 13 (2.5%), liver dysfunction; 12 (2.3%), severe infectious disease; 11 (2.1%), malignancy; 9 (1.7%), heart failure; 4 (0.8%), insulin autoimmune syndrome; 3 (0.6%), insulinoma; 2 (0.4%) were using hypoglycemia-relevant drugs; and 1 (0.2%) suffered from non-islet cell tumor. Rapid ACTH tests revealed adrenal insufficiency in 32 (6.1%). In those patients, serum sodium levels were lower (132 vs 139 mEq/L, P < 0.01), eosinophil counts were higher (14 vs 8%, P < 0.01), and systolic blood pressure was lower (120 vs 128 mmHg, P < 0.05) at baseline than in patients with the other etiologies. Conclusion The frequency of adrenal insufficiency as a cause of hypoglycemia was much higher than what we anticipated. When protracted hypoglycemia of unknown etiology is recognized, we recommend that the patient is checked for adrenal function using a rapid ACTH test.
The Propagation of Magnetocentrifugally Launched Jets. I.

We present simulations of the propagation of magnetized jets. This work differs from previous studies in that the cross-sectional distributions of the jets's state variables are derived from analytical models for magnetocentrifugal launching. The source is a magnetized rotator whose properties are specified as boundary conditions. The jets in these simulations are considerably more complex than the "top-hat" constant density, etc. profiles used in previous work. We find that density and magnetic field stratification (with radius) in the jet leads to new behavior including the separation of an inner jet core from a low density collar. We find this "jet within a jet" structure, along with the magnetic stresses, leads to propagation behaviors not observed in previous simulation studies. Our methodology allows us to compare MHD jets from different types of sources whose properties could ultimately be derived from the behavior of the propagating jets.
Possibilities of Mechanochemical Synthesis of Apatites with Different Ca/P Ratios

Apatite is widely used in medicine as a biomaterial for bone tissue restoration. Properties of apatite depend on its composition, including the Ca/P ratio. This paper shows what range of Ca/P ratio can be attained in apatite by the mechanochemical method of synthesis, providing fast formation of a single-phase product. The synthesis was carried out from a reaction mixture of CaHPO4 and CaO at different Ca/P ratios in the range of 1.17–2.10. The products were studied by PXRD, FTIR and NMR spectroscopy, HRTEM, and STA. In mixtures with a low initial Ca/P ratio (1.17–1.48), directly in the mill, the formation of calcium orthophosphate with whitlockite structure containing an HPO42− group and structural water is shown for the first time. This phosphate has structure similar to that of whitlockites of hydrothermal origin and differs from high-temperature β-tricalcium phosphate that has composition Ca3(PO4)3. A series of samples of apatite was obtained with varied composition, which depends on the initial Ca/P ratio. At Ca/P < 1.67, the formation of two types of calcium-deficient apatite was documented. At Ca/P > 1.67, the existence of two types of calcium-rich apatite is confirmed.