Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Household Demographic Predictors of Drug and Substance Abuse among High School Students in Kisumu East Sub County, Kisumu County – Kenya

Purpose: The accessibility, affordability, and consumption of abused drugs by the youths have attracted great concern among public health personnel. This descriptive cross-sectional study investigated household demographic predictors of drugs and substance abuse among high school students in Kisumu East Sub-County, Kisumu County. Methods: Sample size of 434 was calculated using Yamane formula and the participants selected through Snow ball, random, cluster and stratified sampling. Descriptive data was summarized using tables while inferential statistic done using Chi square and logistic regression. Data collection done through observation and semistructured questionnaires. P value <0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: Overall, 219 (61.17%) students reported to have engaged in drug and illicit substance abuse with higher proportion reported among the Christians as compared to Islamic and Hinduism. Religion, Parental / guardian’s level of education and the person living with the student were found to significantly predict the abuse of drug and illicit substance among high school students (p<0.05). Conclusion: Drug and illicit substance abuse remains a major public health problem among all age groups worldwide with several negative impacts. Due to its magnitude, it calls for concerted multi-sectorial effort by all stakeholders for the dream of drug free world to be achieved.
The burden of nosocomial covid-19: results from the Wales multi-centre retrospective observational study of 2518 hospitalised adults.

Objectives: To define the burden of nosocomial (hospital-acquired) novel pandemic coronavirus (covid-19) infection among adults hospitalised across Wales. Design: Retrospective observational study of adult patients with polymerase chain reaction (PCR) confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection between 1st March to 1st July 2020 with a recorded hospital admission within the subsequent 31 days. Outcomes were collected up to 20th November using a standardised online data collection tool. Setting: Service evaluation performed across 18 secondary or tertiary care hospitals. Participants: 4112 admissions with a positive SARS-CoV-2 PCR result between 1st March to 1st July 2020 were screened. Anonymised data from 2518 participants were returned, representing over 60% of adults hospitalised across the nation of Wales. Main outcome measures: The prevalence and outcomes (death, discharge) for nosocomial covid19, assessed across of a range of possible case definitions. Results: Inpatient mortality rates for nosocomial covid19 ranged from 38% to 42% and remained consistently higher than participants with community acquired infection (31% to 35%) across a range of case definitions. Participants with nosocomial-acquired infection were an older, frailer, and multi-morbid population than those with community-acquired infection. Based on the Public Health Wales case definition, 50% of participants had been admitted for 30 days prior to diagnostic testing. Conclusions: This represents the largest assessment of clinical outcomes for patients with nosocomial covid-19 in the UK to date. These findings suggest that inpatient mortality rates from nosocomial-infection are likely higher than previously reported, emphasizing the importance of infection control measures, and supports prioritisation of vaccination for covid-19 negative admissions and trials of post-exposure prophylaxis in inpatient cohorts. Trial registration: This project was approved and sponsored by the Welsh Government, as part of a national audit and quality improvement scheme for patients hospitalised covid-19 across Wales.
Enhancing the Human Health Status Prediction: The ATHLOS Project

ABSTRACT Preventive healthcare is a crucial pillar of health as it contributes to staying healthy and having immediate treatment when needed. Mining knowledge from longitudinal studies has the potential to significantly contribute to the improvement of preventive healthcare. Unfortunately, data originated from such studies are characterized by high complexity, huge volume, and a plethora of missing values. Machine Learning, Data Mining and Data Imputation models are utilized a part of solving these challenges, respectively. Toward this direction, we focus on the development of a complete methodology for the ATHLOS Project – funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program, which aims to achieve a better interpretation of the impact of aging on health. The inherent complexity of the provided dataset lies in the fact that the project includes 15 independent European and international longitudinal studies of aging. In this work, we mainly focus on the HealthStatus (HS) score, an index that estimates the human status of health, aiming to examine the effect of various data imputation models to the prediction power of classification and regression models. Our results are promising, indicating the critical importance of data imputation in enhancing preventive medicine’s crucial role.
Meta-Analysis of Robustness of COVID-19 Diagnostic Kits During Early Pandemic

Background Accurate detection of severe acute respiratory syndrome corona virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is necessary to mitigate the coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) pandemic. However, the test reagents and assay platforms are varied and may not be sufficiently robust to diagnose COVID-19. Methods We reviewed 85 studies (21,530 patients), published from five regions of the world, to highlight issues involved in the diagnosis of COVID-19 in the early phase of the pandemic, following the standards outlined in the PRISMA statement. All relevant articles, published up to May 31, 2020, in PubMed, BioRiXv, MedRiXv, and Google Scholar, were included. We evaluated the qualitative (9749 patients) and quantitative (10,355 patients) performance of RT-PCR and serologic diagnostic tests for real-world samples, and assessed the concordance (5,538 patients) between methods in meta-analyses. Results The RT-PCR tests exhibited heterogeneity in the primers and reagents used. Of 1,957 positive RT-PCR COVID-19 participants, 1,585 had positive serum antibody (IgM +/- IgG) tests (sensitivity 0.81, 95%CI 0.66-.90). While 3,509 of 3581 participants RT-PCR negative for COVID-19 were found negative by serology testing (specificity 0.98, 95%CI 0.94-0.99). The chemiluminescent immunoassay exhibited the highest sensitivity, followed by ELISA and lateral flow immunoassays. Serology tests had higher sensitivity and specificity for laboratory-approval than for real-world reporting data. Conclusions The robustness of the assays/platforms is influenced by variability in sampling and reagents. Serological testing complements and may minimize false negative RT-PCR results. Lack of standardized assay protocols in the early phase of pandemic might have contributed to the spread of COVID-19.
Assessing burden and its determinants in caregivers of chronic kidney disease patients undergoing haemodialysis.

Background Caregivers face a lot of adversities while supporting their near ones undergoing haemodialysis, and their burden is often ignored by health professionals. The paucity of research in the Indian context has kept their needs out of sight. Aim To explore the level of burden in the caregivers of patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) undergoing haemodialysis and to assess whether patient related variable affects the burden. Methods Fifty-one patients and their caregivers from two dialysis units in Sikkim, India, were assessed cross-sectionally. The Zarit Caregiver Burden Scale (ZCBS) was administered to measure the caregiver burden. The Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) and the Charlson's Comorbidity Index (CCI) assessed the patient's depression and medical comorbidities, respectively. Descriptive analysis was done for the sociodemographic and clinical variables. Chi-square test was used to find the association between the categorical data. Kruskal-Wallis tested the association between categorical and quantitative variables. Results Mean age of patient was 46.13 (±13.15) years and that of the caregiver was 44.78 (±12.14) years. 68.6% of caregivers had mild to severe levels of caregiver burden. Caregivers who were unemployed and educated till secondary school were more likely to report caregiver burden. Female gender, older caregivers, and caregivers attending patients with a longer history of haemodialysis reported a more severe burden. Conclusion The level of burden in caregivers of CKD patients is significant and is affected by various factors, which, in turn, also affects patient's wellbeing. Further research in this area is needed in our country for better management of patients and policymaking.
Serum norepinephrine and homocysteine levels are correlated with the severity of obstructive sleep apnea hypopnea syndrome

Objective: To investigate the correlation between serum norepinephrine (NE) and homocysteine (Hcy) levels and the severity of obstructive sleep apnea hypopnea syndrome (OSAHS). Methods: Seventy-eight patients (22 with mild disease, 32 with moderate disease, and 24 with severe disease according to the apnea hypopnea index, AHI) with a confirmed diagnosis of OSAHS were recruited for this study from August 2016 to July 2018 at the Zhuji Affiliated Hospital of Shaoxing University. All the patients received a polysomnography examination. The serum NE and Hcy levels were determined using an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and compared among the mild, moderate, and severe groups. The correlations between the serum NE and Hcy levels and the severity of OSAHS in the patients were evaluated using the Pearson correlation test. Results: Significant statistical differences were found among the mild, moderate, and severe groups for serum NE and Hcy (P<0.05). The serum NE and Hcy levels of the severe group were significantly higher than the levels in the moderate and mild groups (P<0.05). There were no significant statistical differences in the systolic pressure among the mild, moderate, and severe groups (P>0.05). However, the diastolic pressure in the severe group was significantly higher than the level in the mild group with a significant difference (P<0.05); The LSaO2 were 82.57±7.77 (%), 78.79±6.83 (%), and 66.79±6.09 (%) for the mild, moderate, and severe groups respectively with a significant difference (P<0.05). There were significant correlations between the serum Hcy and NE levels in the mild, moderate, and severe groups (P<0.05). And a negative correlation (rPearson=-0.38, P=0.03) was found between NE and LSaO2 in the moderate group. Conclusion: Serum NE and Hcy levels are elevated with the development of OSAHS and correlate with disease severity.
FLIGHT ARRIVAL SCHEDULING MODELS FOR INCORPORATING COLLABORATIVE DECISION-MAKING CONCEPTS INTO TIME-BASED FLOW MANAGEMENT

This paper proposes a flight scheduling scheme – 2-optswap, which assigns controlled times of arrival (CTAs) for flights reaching the Freeze Horizon and allows certain slot swapping between different flights with the goal of reducing total controlled arrival delay cost over all carriers. The allowable swaps are predicated on models of carrier preferences following a Collaborative Decision-Making paradigm. Monte Carlo simulations were designed to prove the benefits of this new CTA scheduling scheme, compared to a baseline model of first-come-first-served discipline, which is currently used in Time-Based Flow Management. Keywordscollaborative decision-making; flow management; TimeBased Flow Management
Reports from Friday Harbor Laboratories Fish Swimming Course 2017:

The circadian rhythms of an animal highlight important activity patterns that an individual exhibits over a 24-hour period, which can vary greatly between species even within the same family. Activity and performance of a species can vary over their circadian cycle, however many studies conduct data collection during times which suit human circadian rhythms and can overlook the study species circadian rhythms. This has the potential to misrepresent the study species performance and could create unreliable results. The pile perch Rhacochilus vacca has shown to be crepuscular, having heightened activity during twilight hours, and tending to be also more nocturnally active, with its lowest rest activity during daylight hours. In this study we aimed to test the difference between the performance of pile perch (Rhacochilus vacca) during the morning (0600) and evening (1800) using critical swimming speed (UCrit) and aerobic scope. We found that there were no significant differences in the UCrit (p=0.84) or aerobic scope (p=0.94) between morning or evening. Through this study we have seen that the UCrit and aerobic scope of a nocturnal fish species with crepuscular activity peaks does not change
Improved Session based Recommendation using Graph-based Item Embedding

Recommendation systems greatly benefit from good user and item representations. We consider the task of session-based recommendation where users are anonymous and thus the representation of items plays a key role in the effectiveness of recommendations. We propose an enhanced item embedding method that captures the relationships between items by taking into account item pair co-occurrence across sessions using a graph-based embedding approach. Specifically, we construct a heterogeneous graph of items and sessions, where two items are connected through a session if they co-occurred within the session. We learn embeddings for items and sessions by considering the triplets of the form (Previous item, Session, Next item) using a knowledge graph embedding approach called TransE. We use a neural attention based Recommendation model and apply it on two benchmark datasets. We show that the learned item representations improve the performance of our recommendation model and achieve state-of-the-art results. Combining the graph-based embedding with standard Prod2Vec embedding gives further improvement.
Politeness in Instagram: The Employment of Gratitude Speech Act by Male and Female English and Persian Users

The present research scrutinized the use of politeness strategies in gratitude expressions of English and Persian users of Instagram. For that purpose, 200 gratitude posts were collected, 100 of which belonged to English users and the other 100 posts were composed by Persian users of Instagram. This investigation alsoevaluated gender roles in the production of gratitude utterances. Seeking to discover the politeness patterns for each language on Instagram, the data were analyzed based on Brown and Levinson's (1987) taxonomy of positive and negative politeness strategies. The findings suggested some differences in the use of the second (Exaggeration), the forth (Use of in-group identity markers), and seventh (Presuppose/raise/assert common ground) positive politeness strategies, and the seventh negative politeness strategy (Impersonalizing the speaker and the hearer) between the English and Persian users which might be due to some existent cultural transfer, and regarding the gender investigation, no significant differences were observed between females and males of each language. This is indicative of the idea that Instagram has turned into a distinguished genre of language possessing certain features such as gender-free, direct, and intimate language.
Speculation, Bubbles, and Manias∗

We present a finite-horizon model of asset pricing with rational speculation and behavioral trading. Unlike the existing literature, our model brings together three key elements characteristic of the bitcoin, dot com, and housing bubbles: (i) time-varying risk based on market sentiment which may evolve into mass hysteria (manias), (ii) inherent difficulties of rational speculation to time the market, and (iii) relatively low volatility of the asset fundamental value. We study various properties of the equilibrium dynamics as well as changes in trading volume. The impact of new information on equilibrium values may be magnified by arbitrageurs’ preemptive motive to move away from the risky asset. JEL: G12, G14.
Pore diffusion model for dye adsorption onto peat in batch adsorbers

The adsorption of Acid Blue 25, Basic Blue 69, Basic Orange 2, and Disperse Blue 7, on peat has been studied using a series of batch adsorption runs. A model has been developed based on external mass transfer and internal diffusion to explain the concentration decay curves. Two system variables, namely, adsorbate concentration and adsorbent concentration, have been studied. The paper presents a rapid analytical solution for predicting the concentration decay curve in batch adsorbers using peat as a cheap adsorbent to remove various classes of dyestuffs from aqueous solution. The analytical solution depends on the assumption of a psdeudo-irreversible isotherm and that the internal diffusion process occurs via a pore diffusion mechanism. External mass transfer coefficients and internal diffusivities have been estimated for the various systems. On a etudie l'adsorption sur la tourbe des colorants suivants: Acid Blue 25, Basic Blue 69, Basic Orange 2 et Disperse Blue 7, dans une serie d'operations d'adsorption discontinue. Pour expliquer les courbes de decroissance de la concentration, on a developpe un modele pour le transfert de masse externe et la diffusion interne. On a etudie deux variables, a savoir la concentration de l'adsorbat et celle de l'adsorbant. On presente une solution analytique rapide pour prevoir la courbe de decroissance de la concentration dans les adsorbeurs discontinus, en employant la tourbe comme un adsorbant peu coǔteux pour enlever differentes classes de colorants d'une solution aqueuse. La solution analytique depend de l'hypothese d'une isotherme pseudo-irreversible et d'un processus de diffusion interne par diffusion dans les pores. On a evalue, pour les differents systemes, les coefficients de transfert de masse externe et les diffusivites internes.
Efficacy of Ischemia Reversal Program (IRP) in Elderly Patients of Ischemic Heart Disease with Known History of Hypertension

Context: The prevalence figures of major cardiovascular diseases (CVDs)Ischemic heart diseases (IHD) and Hypertension (HTN) have escalated to epidemic levels, in both developing and developed countries. Ischemia Reversal Program (IRP) is a combination of Panchakarma and allied therapy. Aims: This study was conducted to evaluate the effect of IRP on VO2max, Duke’s Treadmill Score, systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP) in IHD patients with known history of HTN. Original Research Article Sane et al.; AJCR, 1(1): 1-8, 2018; Article no.AJCR. 43618 2 Setting and Design: This observational study was conducted from January 2017 to January 2018, wherein the data of IHD patients (inducible ischemia on stress testing) with history of HTN, who attended out-patient departments (OPDs) at Madhavbaug clinics in Maharashtra, India were identified. Materials and Methods: Data of patients who were administered IRP (60-75 minutes) with minimum 7 sittings over 90 days (± 15 days) were considered. Variables were compared between day 1 and day 90 of IRP. Results: Out of 30 enrolled patients, 24 were males while 6 females. There was a significant improvement in Duke's score with subjects at moderate (43.3 %) and high (46.7 %) risk at baseline were significantly decreased to low (50 %) and moderate (50 %) after 90 day of therapy. IRP also showed significant improvement in VO2max from 18.14 ± 7.82 to 27.88 ± 7.31; p<0.001), SBP from 133.5 ± 16.36 to 121.87 ± 11.67, p< 0.004), DBP from 79.53 ± 8.53 to 75.3 ± 8.09, p< 0.05). Dependency on concomitant medicines was reduced. Number of patients not taking any conventional medicine increased from 10% at day 1 to 27% at day 90 of IRP. Conclusion: IRP was effective in management of elderly IHD patients with history of hypertension; it had triple benefits i.e. anti-ischemic effect, as well as reducing the blood pressure and reducing the dependency on conventional medications, which carries favourable prognosis.
Domain Adaptation for Conversation Response Ranking

In this work we explore to what extent conversation response ranking models trained on some domains and applied to others (e.g., domains for which few or no training instances exist) can be improved when employing two—on first sight opposite —regularization approaches. We investigate the effectiveness of domain-aware and domain-agnostic representations obtained via regularization under two conditions: (i) domain granularity and (ii) regularization depth (i.e., at which network layer to incorporate the regularization loss). We conduct a comprehensive set of experiments 1 on four dialogue datasets and focus on the out-of-domain effectiveness. We demonstrate that domain-aware representations consistently outperform domain-agnostic ones in a fine-grained domain setting (i.e., topics as domains ), while domain-agnostic representations proves to be more effective in a coarse-grained domain setting (i.e., datasets as domains ). With respect to the regularization depth, we find regularization in the initial layers to be more effective than regularization employed in later (i.e., deeper) layers.
Direct Approaches for Consumer Based Brand Equity Measurement: A Comprehensive Review

Article History Received: 07 July 2017 Accepted: 09 August 2017 Published Online: 13August 2017 The concept of brand equity has been there since 1980s. Since then it has got the attention of business developers from different areas of economies. Successful brands not only provide competitive edge but also are vital for long term sustainability of the company and the products in market. Consumer-based brand equity takes into consolidation the consumers’ feelings of a particular product to associations that are not necessarily related to specific product attributes, that is, associations that exist independent of the product itself. The customer level measurement, basis its perception of brand value originating entirely from the consumers (what they buy, how they buy, why they buy, etc.). Many researchers have focused on measuring the brand equity in order to evaluate its contribution the success of business. In our study an intense survey of literature and secondary data was done to analyze the ways, means and types for direct evaluation of brand equity. The research is an attempt to review the direct measures for consumer based brand equity approach. The implication of this study is that it will help to fill the missing link in the direct measurement of consumer based brand equity.
Role of Nonfermenting Gram-Negative Bacilli Responsible for Respiratory Tract Infections seen in the Laboratory of the University Hospital of Befelatananana Antananarivo Madagascar

1Biologist doctor, Medical Biology Department of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Antananarivo, Madagascar 2Public Health Specialist, Public Health Department of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Antananarivo, Madagascar 3Professor in biological hematology, Medical Biology Department of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Antananarivo, Madagascar 4Professor of Immunology, Medical Biology Department of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Antananarivo, Madagascar