Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Sporadic accelerations during labor strongly indicate normal pH, whereas periodic accelerations do not: a case–control study

Abstract Purpose To determine the association between the occurrence of sporadic and periodic fetal heart rate accelerations during labor and acidemia at birth. Materials and methods This is a case–control study of fetal heart rate patterns from 364 neonates with acidemia at birth (cord blood pH <7.05 at vaginal birth, or pH <7.10 at birth after first stage cesarean delivery) and 731 controls with pH ≥7.15. The last 30–60 min of the cardiotocographic traces before birth from the neonates born with acidemia and from the corresponding stage in labor for the controls were scrutinized. Odds ratios (OR) with 95% confidence interval for acidemia at birth were determined. Results During the first stage, ≥2 sporadic accelerations were present in 16% of cases and 78% of controls; OR for acidemia (compared to 0–1 accelerations) 0.05 (0.02–0.10). In the second stage, the corresponding rates were 13% and 60%, OR 0.09 (0.06–0.14). Isolated periodic accelerations were infrequent. A weak negative association between ≥2 periodic accelerations and acidemia (compared with 0–1 accelerations) was found in the second stage, OR 0.51 (0.30–0.86), but was not significant in the first stage, OR 0.24 (0.04–1.4). Even among fetuses with normal fetal heart rate variability (5–25 beats per minute) the occurrence of less than two sporadic accelerations was associated with an increased risk of acidemia, OR 10.3 (7.2–14.8). Conclusions Sporadic accelerations indicate a very low probability of acidosis but are absent in 40% of fetuses with normal pH during a 30–60 min second-stage recording.
A Particle Simulation of Auroral Omega Bands and Torch-Like Structures.

The mechanism for omega bands and torch structures as observed on the poleward boundary of the postmidnight diffuse aurora is studied by a two-dimensional electrostatic particle simulation for the motion of magnetospheric plasma perpendicular to the geomagnetic field. This type of diffuse aurora is caused by precipitation of energetic electrons with energies in excess of a few keV. In the model, the diffuse aurora (which may be identified with the central plasmasheet) is embedded within a less energetic but hot plasma which extends to higher latitudes. The temporal evolution of the diffuse auroral pattern can be visualized by following the cluster of the energetic electrons. Electric dipoles can grow on the poleward boundary of the hot plasma, due to charge separation induced by magnetic drifts. As a result of these dipoles, there is a spatial modulation of the energetic electrons, which leads to the formation of omega bands and the subsequent evolution into torch structures. The magnetospheric (or ionospheric) potential distribution obtained in the simulation is consistent with observed distribution of ionospheric electric fields and field-aligned currents in events of torches/omega bands.
Toward a Better Understanding of the Contribution of Wastewater Treatment Plants to Microplastic Pollution in Receiving Waterways

Microplastics (1 µm–5 mm), are ubiquitous in daily‐use products and regularly end up in the wastewater. The main part of the wastewater is treated in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), which allow for at least partial removal of microplastics. The present study aimed to understand the contribution of domestic wastewater to microplastic pollution in Flanders (Belgium) via two main discharge routes of microplastics: (1) the effluent, and (2) removed fractions. Furthermore the effect of effluent discharge on the microplastic contamination in the waterway was studied in both surface water and sediment samples of upstream and downstream locations of the discharge from three WWTPs. On average, 12.64 ± 20.20 microplastic/L entered a WWTP (10 µm–5 mm). The effluent contained on average 0.41 ± 0.91 microplastic/L, resulting in an average removal efficiency of 97.46% ± 2.33%, which is comparable with various (non‐)European countries. Removal efficiencies are both polymer‐ and size‐specific, and data suggest that smaller particles are less efficiently removed from the wastewater, which also causes an increased input of smaller particles to the environment. The sludge is the most efficient treatment process to remove microplastics. Despite the high removal efficiencies, still 1.11 × 107 ± 3.07 × 107 microplastics end up in the nearby waterway daily. Nonetheless, based on the results gathered in the present study, this does not seem to impact the microplastic concentration in the waterway significantly. In summary, the present study offers a holistic approach in the research on the impact of wastewater on microplastic pollution in the ecosystem, integrating different discharge routes and measuring the impact on environmental microplastic pollution. Environ Toxicol Chem 2023;42:642–654. © 2022 SETAC
Towards End-to-End Semantically Aware 2D Plot Tactile Generation

An estimated 1.5 million Canadians identify as having vision loss, reaching up to 253 million people worldwide. The most effective way of delivering visual information to people with visual disabilities is through tactile graphics. Tactile graphics have textured or raised surface that makes them understandable by touching. To generate tactile graphics, a designer usually uses software such as CorelDraw to draw a grayscale image of the subject which will then be printed by an embosser. The goal of this thesis is to automate the process of converting 2D plots including Bézier curves, scatter plots, polygons, and bar charts to tactile format. Ultimately, our model can be used as an add-on to speed up the translation process that tactile designers execute. The end user of this model can be tactile designers not people with visual disability themselves, since implementing an end-to-end pipeline for tactile generation without the need to a designer is beyond the scope of this thesis. We defined the problem as an image-to-image translation task where the source domain belongs to 2D plots and the target domain is the tactile equivalent of the input plot. The proposed method is based on the pix2pix architecture which is one of the seminal works on paired image-to-image translation. The proposed models use UNet++ as the generator. We also propose to use gradient penalty and perceptual loss to further enhance the results.
Computation of unsteady turbulent boundary layers with flow reversal, and evaluation of two separate turbulence models

In this paper we extend the unsteady laminar boundary-layer method of Cebeci to turbulent boundary layers with flow reversal. Using the algebraic eddy-viscosity formulation of Cebeci and Smith, we consider several test cases to investigate the proposition that unsteady turbulent boundary layers also remain free of singularities. Since the accuracy of turbulent flow calculations also depends on the closure assumption for the Reynolds shear-stress term, we also perform calculations by using the turbulence model of Bradshaw, Ferriss and Atwell; we solve th e governing equations for both models by using the same numerical scheme and compare their predictions, restricting the comparisons to cases in which wall shear is positive. The study reveals that, as in laminar flows, the unsteady turbulent boundary layers seem to be free from singularities but there is a clear indication of rapid thickening of the boundary layer with increasing flow reversal. The study also reveals that the predictions of both turbulence models are the same for all practical purposes.
Ultra-Endurance Participation and Acute Kidney Injury: A Narrative Review

Increasingly popular, ultra-endurance participation exposes athletes to extremely high levels of functional and structural damage. Ultra-endurance athletes commonly develop acute kidney injury (AKI) and other pathologies harmful to kidney health. There is strong evidence that non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, common amongst ultra-athletes, is linked to increased risk and severity of AKI and potentially ischaemic renal injury, i.e., acute tubular necrosis. Ultra-endurance participation also increases the risk of exertional rhabdomyolysis, exercise-associated hyponatremia, and gastrointestinal symptoms, interlinked pathologies all with potential to increase the risk of AKI. Hydration and fuelling both also play a role with the development of multiple pathologies and ultimately AKI, highlighting the need for individualised nutritional and hydration plans to promote athlete health. Faster athletes, supplementing nitrates, and being female also increase the risk of developing AKI in this setting. Serum creatinine criteria do not provide the best indicator for AKI for ultra-athletes therefore further investigations are needed to assess the practicality and accuracy of new renal biomarkers such as neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (NGAL). The potential of recurring episodes of AKI provide need for further research to assess the longitudinal renal health impact of ultra-participation to provide appropriate advice to athletes, coaches, medical staff, and event organisers.
Steady nonlinear Ekman--Hartmann boundary layers

The steady, axially symmetric Ekman‐Hartmann boundary layer on a flat insulating surface is analyzed in its fully nonlinear form. Emphasis is placed on evaluation of Ekman pumping and induced Hartmann current as functions of Rossby number, magnetic interaction parameter, and magnetic Prandtl number. Significant quantitative departures from the estimates of linear theory are found. Yet, for some purposes (such as for predicting its influence on spin‐up) the strength of this hydromagnetic pump is shown to be adequately described by an analytic series solution truncated after the terms quadratic in Rossby number.
EEG Conformer: Convolutional Transformer for EEG Decoding and Visualization

Due to the limited perceptual field, convolutional neural networks (CNN) only extract local temporal features and may fail to capture long-term dependencies for EEG decoding. In this paper, we propose a compact Convolutional Transformer, named EEG Conformer, to encapsulate local and global features in a unified EEG classification framework. Specifically, the convolution module learns the low-level local features throughout the one-dimensional temporal and spatial convolution layers. The self-attention module is straightforwardly connected to extract the global correlation within the local temporal features. Subsequently, the simple classifier module based on fully-connected layers is followed to predict the categories for EEG signals. To enhance interpretability, we also devise a visualization strategy to project the class activation mapping onto the brain topography. Finally, we have conducted extensive experiments to evaluate our method on three public datasets in EEG-based motor imagery and emotion recognition paradigms. The experimental results show that our method achieves state-of-the-art performance and has great potential to be a new baseline for general EEG decoding. The code has been released in https://github.com/eeyhsong/EEG-Conformer.
The effect of Quran recitation on t-cell lymphocyte activity in mice model of breast cancer

Introduction: Breast cancer is the leading cause of death in women. Many studies of adjuvant therapy have used the Quran recitation (later will be mentioned as the murotal approach). The murotal approach has been shown to induce feelings of well-being, enhance therapeutic response, and aid in patient healing. This study aimed to analyze the effect of the murotal approach on lymphocytic cell activity in inducing programmed cancer cell necrosis in a breast cancer mouse model. Methods: After testing in a fully randomized design using 24 female mice (Mus musculus) BALB/c strain, a real-world experimental study with a control group design method. The mice were divided into four groups: negative control (K-), positive control (K+), treatment group (P1) which receiving the murotal approach for 2 hours and 30 minutes per day for a week, and the (P2) which receiving the murotal approach for 30 minutes in five times a day for a week. Mice were subcutaneously injected with DMBA 0.56 mg/20 g every 2 days for 3 weeks. The murotal approach was using specifically in Surah al-Faatihah and Al-Baaqarah from Qori' Al-Mathrud. Cancer tissue was harvested 5 weeks after her. The data were analyzed using the Kruskal-Wallis hypothesis test. Results: There was a significant difference (P<0.05) in the effect between the P2 treatment group that received murotal therapy for 30 minutes at each prayer time and the other groups. The efficacy of treatment murotal for 2 hours and 30 minutes per day does not affect the extent of lymphocytic infiltration. Conclusion: From the research, the dosage of murotal therapy to increase the degree of lymphocyte infiltration is for 30 minutes five times a day, or during prayer time.
The random packing of fibres in three dimensions

An investigation has been carried out of the limiting packing density of an array of long straight rigid fibres distributed randomly in space as a function of the length of the fibre. We derive an approximate relationship between the limiting volume fraction Vf and the slenderness λ of the fibres defined as length divided by diameter. The formula agrees well with our experimental results and those found in the literature.
Use of clinicopathological factors to predict prognosis of fertility-sparing treatment for endometrial endometrioid carcinoma and atypical hyperplasia

The incidence of endometrial endometrioid carcinoma (EEC) has been gradually increasing over the past decade. Fertility-sparing therapy with progestin is a treatment option for EEC or endometrial atypical hyperplasia (AH). The present study evaluated the role of numerous prognostic factors following fertility-sparing therapy for EEC or AH. Furthermore, the present study assessed the strength of various clinicopathological indicators for the prediction of treatment efficacy. A retrospective analysis was performed of patients with EEC and AH who received fertility-sparing therapy between August 2013 and September 2021 at Peking University People's Hospital (Beijing, China). Endometrial specimens were obtained from each patient after 3 months of treatment and at the end of the fertility-sparing therapy, before treatment efficacy and prognosis were evaluated using the χ2 test. Furthermore, the protein expression levels of EEC biomarkers, such as estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR), paired box 2 (PAX2), PTEN and p53 were assessed using immunohistochemistry. The overall complete response (CR) rate of fertility-sparing treatment in the EEC group was 67.39% (31/46), whereas that in the AH group was 86.49% (32/37). The difference between the CR rates in the EEC and AH groups was statistically significant (P<0.05). There was no association between prognosis after treatment and ER, PAX2, PTEN or Ki-67 expression in the initially untreated AH or EEC groups. However, tissues with >50% positive PR expression were demonstrated to have a higher CR rate compared with those with ≤50% positive PR expression in both the EEC and AH groups. Furthermore, the PAX2-positive group tended to demonstrate higher CR rates compared with the PAX2-negative group in the patients with EEC. In conclusion, these data suggested that fertility-sparing therapy is effective for patients with EEC and AH who wish to remain fertile after treatment. Specifically, in the AH group, a higher proportion of patients achieved a CR whilst also achieving this more rapidly. Furthermore, PR was demonstrated to be a useful marker for the evaluation of EEC and AH.
Does advanced paternal age affect global DNA methylation of human spermatozoa and intracytoplasmic sperm injection outcome?

Objective: This study was performed to (I) evaluate the potential effect of advanced paternal age on global DNA methylation in spermatozoa, and (II) to investigate the association between the outcome of intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), semen parameters, and advanced paternal age. Material and Methods: This study comprised 230 semen samples collected from males with a mean age of 38.2±8.5 years. Medical records were used to gather clinical information related to the female partner. The participants were divided into three groups depending on age: age <30 years; age 30-40 years; and age >40 years. The DNA was extracted from purified spermatozoa. Then the sperm global DNA methylation, sperm DNA fragmentation, and chromatin decondensation were evaluated by an ELISA, TUNEL, and Chromomycin A3 staining, respectively. Results: The sample counts were n=50 (21.8%), n=90 (39.1%) and n=90 (39.1%) for the <30, 30-40 and >40 year age-groups, respectively. A significant variation was found in the age of males included in this study (p<0.001). There was a significant reduction in sperm count, total motility, and non-progressive motility in the older group compared to the younger group (p<0.001). There was also a significant elevation in chromatin decondensation, DNA fragmentation, and global DNA methylation of spermatozoa in the older age group (p<0.001). Finally, there was a significant positive correlation between the percentage of non-motile sperm, sperm chromatin decondensation, DNA fragmentation, global DNA methylation status, and paternal age (p<0.001). Conclusion: These results suggest that advanced paternal age increased the DNA fragmentation, chromatin decondensation, and global DNA methylation level in human spermatozoa, which negatively affects the ICSI outcomes in couples undergoing ICSI cycles.
Reduction of Turbulent Skin Friction by Microbubbles

Measurements of the effect of microbubbles on a zero pressure gradient turbulent boundary layer generated on the test section wall of a water tunnel are described. Microbubbles are created by injecting air through a 0.5 μm sintered stainless steel plate immediately upstream of a floating element drag balance. At the downstream edge of the balance the length Reynolds number is as high as ten million. Integrated skin friction reduction of greater than 80% is observed. The drag balance results are confirmed by measurements with a surface hot‐film probe. For the case in which buoyancy tends to keep the bubbles in the boundary layer, the skin friction data are shown to collapse when plotted against the ratio of air to water volume flow rate. The effects of buoyancy on skin friction reduction are also documented.
Between innovation and tradition: The balancing act of the ‘protean’ music student

Innovation is being called for to renew higher music education (HME) due to substantial societal changes, yet the implications of this trajectory remain unclear. By turning to institutional theory and Foucauldian theory, this article investigates how innovation is perceived in HME. Drawing from a case study in which twenty-four music performance students and professors were interviewed in Norway and the Netherlands, the findings suggest that the call for innovation is enmeshed with institutional politics. Indeed, innovative practices (e.g. genre independent programmes) have caused institutional resistance but also fostered necessary renewal. Thus, the balancing act between innovation and tradition is discussed.
A Century of Key Trends and Debates in Social Stratification in Social Forces

Selected references from this article are available for free public access for 3 months: Coser (1973) https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/52.1. 31 ; Cox (1942) https:// doi.org/10.2307/2570563 ; Davis and Robinson (1998) https://doi.org/10.1093/ sf/76.3. 1063 ; Kerckhoff (1989) https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/68.1. 17 ; and Mueller and Mazur (1996) https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/74.3. 823
Supportive Self-Management Program for People With Chronic Headaches and Migraine

Background and Objectives Chronic headache disorders are a major cause of pain and disability. Education and supportive self-management approaches could reduce the burden of headache disability. We tested the effectiveness of a group educational and supportive self-management program for people living with chronic headaches. Methods This was a pragmatic randomized controlled trial. Participants were aged 18 years or older with chronic migraine or chronic tension–type headache, with or without medication overuse headache. We primarily recruited from general practices. Participants were assigned to either a 2-day group education and self-management program, a one-to-one nurse interview, and telephone support or to usual care plus relaxation material. The primary outcome was headache related-quality of life using the Headache Impact Test (HIT)-6 at 12 months. The primary analysis used intention-to-treat principles for participants with migraine and both baseline and 12-month HIT-6 data. Results Between April 2017 and March 2019, we randomized 736 participants. Because only 9 participants just had tension-type headache, our main analyses were on the 727 participants with migraine. Of them, 376 were allocated to the self-management intervention and 351 to usual care. Data from 586 (81%) participants were analyzed for primary outcome. There was no between-group difference in HIT-6 (adjusted mean difference = −0.3, 95% CI −1.23 to 0.67) or headache days (0.9, 95% CI −0.29 to 2.05) at 12 months. The Chronic Headache Education and Self-management Study intervention generated incremental adjusted costs of £268 (95% CI, £176–£377) (USD383 [95% CI USD252–USD539]) and incremental adjusted quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) of 0.031 (95% CI −0.005 to 0.063). The incremental cost-effectiveness ratio was £8,617 (USD12,322) per QALY gained. Discussion These findings conclusively show a lack of benefit for quality of life or monthly headache days from a brief group education and supportive self-management program for people living with chronic migraine or chronic tension–type headache with episodic migraine. Trial Registration Information Registered on the International Standard Randomized Controlled Trial Number registry, ISRCTN79708100 16th December 2015 doi.org/10.1186/ISRCTN79708100. The first enrollment was April 24, 2017. Classification of Evidence This study provides Class III evidence that a brief group education and self-management program does not increase the probability of improvement in headache-related quality of life in people with chronic migraine.
Infrared Color-selected Quasars and Seyfert 1 Galaxies

Selection d'objets extragalactiques chauds a partir du catalogue de sources IRAS verifiant le critere suivant: F 25 /F 60 >0,25. Cette recherche a permis de decouvrir de nouveaux quasars, des galaxies de Seyfert et bien d'autres galaxies a raies d'emission
Probing the LHS Catalog. II. Faint Proper‐Motion Stars

We present low‐resolution spectroscopic observations of faint proper‐motion stars from the LHS Catalogue, concentrating on stars with mr>16.5 and μ>0. ″5 yr−1. The present paper includes observations and spectral classifications for 294 M dwarfs, M subdwarfs (sdM), and extreme M subdwarfs (esdM). We also identify white dwarfs among the faintest LHS stars. We have cross‐referenced this sample against the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) sources, and list data for the detected objects. We discuss stars of individual interest, as well as the characteristics of the overall sample. As expected, a significant number of the stars in this proper‐motion–selected sample are halo subdwarfs, including an esdM dwarf, LHS 3481, that is likely to lie within 20 pc of the Sun. None of the subdwarfs show Hα emission.