Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Self Care Behavior among Patients with Diabetes in Harari, Eastern Ethiopia: The Health Belief Model Perspective

Background Diabetes mellitus is a chronic disease that requires lifelong medical treatments and a life style adjustment. To prevent serious morbidity and mortality, it requires dedication to demanding self-care behaviors in multiple domains. The objective of this study was to identify predictors of self care behaviors among patients with diabetes. Methods From a total of 425 follow up diabetic patients, a quantitative cross sectional study was conducted among 222 of them from three different hospitals in Harar town, from March to April, 2011. The sample was taken using simple random sampling method. Data was collected using pretested questionnaire. Descriptive statistics multiple logistic regression analysis were also used to assess the predicators of self care behaviors among patients with diabetes. Result Majority of the study respondents 134 (60.4%) were female and the mean age was 49.7 (SD±14.7) years. More than half 147(66.2%) of them were medically diagnosed with type-2 diabetes. 208(93.7%) had general knowledge about diabetes and specific knowledge about diabetes self care 207(93.2%). Large proportion of them had moderate perceived susceptibility 174(78.4%) and severity 112(50.5%). More than half of the respondents 149(67.1%) had less perceived barrier while only 30 (13.5%) of them had high self efficacy to self care practices related to diabetes mellitus. Only 87(39.2%) followed the recommended self care practices on diabetes. Conclusions Patients with less frequent information were less likely to take diabetes self care. Patients who were more educated, middle income, had high perceived severity of diabetes and less perceived barrier to self care were more likely to take diabetes self care. To increase the self care behavior, diabetes messages should focus on severity of diabetes and how to overcome barriers for self care by segmenting the audiences based on income and educational status with increasing the frequency and reach of message on diabetes.
Human Empathy, Personality and Experience Affect the Emotion Ratings of Dog and Human Facial Expressions

Facial expressions are important for humans in communicating emotions to the conspecifics and enhancing interpersonal understanding. Many muscles producing facial expressions in humans are also found in domestic dogs, but little is known about how humans perceive dog facial expressions, and which psychological factors influence people’s perceptions. Here, we asked 34 observers to rate the valence, arousal, and the six basic emotions (happiness, sadness, surprise, disgust, fear, and anger/aggressiveness) from images of human and dog faces with Pleasant, Neutral and Threatening expressions. We investigated how the subjects’ personality (the Big Five Inventory), empathy (Interpersonal Reactivity Index) and experience of dog behavior affect the ratings of dog and human faces. Ratings of both species followed similar general patterns: human subjects classified dog facial expressions from pleasant to threatening very similarly to human facial expressions. Subjects with higher emotional empathy evaluated Threatening faces of both species as more negative in valence and higher in anger/aggressiveness. More empathetic subjects also rated the happiness of Pleasant humans but not dogs higher, and they were quicker in their valence judgments of Pleasant human, Threatening human and Threatening dog faces. Experience with dogs correlated positively with ratings of Pleasant and Neutral dog faces. Personality also had a minor effect on the ratings of Pleasant and Neutral faces in both species. The results imply that humans perceive human and dog facial expression in a similar manner, and the perception of both species is influenced by psychological factors of the evaluators. Especially empathy affects both the speed and intensity of rating dogs’ emotional facial expressions.
An insight into domain combinations

Domains are the building blocks of all globular proteins, and are units of compact three-dimensional structure as well as evolutionary units. There is a limited repertoire of domain families, so that these domain families are duplicated and combined in different ways to form the set of proteins in a genome. Proteins are gene products. The processes that produce new genes are duplication and recombination as well as gene fusion and fission. We attempt to gain an overview of these processes by studying the structural domains in the proteins of seven genomes from the three kingdoms of life: Eubacteria, Archaea and Eukaryota. We use here the domain and superfamily definitions in Structural Classification of Proteins Database (SCOP) in order to map pairs of adjacent domains in genome sequences in terms of their superfamily combinations. We find 624 out of the 764 superfamilies in SCOP in these genomes, and the 624 families occur in 585 pairwise combinations. Most families are observed in combination with one or two other families, while a few families are very versatile in their combinatorial behaviour. This type of pattern can be described by a scale-free network. Finally, we study domain repeats and we compare the set of the domain combinations in the genomes to those in PDB, and discuss the implications for structural genomics.
Effects of Rooibos Tea, Bottled Water, and a Carbohydrate Beverage on Blood and Urinary Measures of Hydration After Acute Dehydration

Rooibos tea contains polyphenol antioxidants, including flavonoids and phenolic acids that are potent free radical scavengers and has purported benefits for accelerated rehydration. The objective was to evaluate the effects of three different drinks (rooibos tea, bottled water, and a carbohydrate beverage) on blood and urinary markers of hydration after acute dehydration in collegiate wrestlers. Twenty-three athletes were recruited and followed a randomized, cross-over design with three different study arms comparing the effectiveness of rooibos tea, carbohydrate beverage (6% or 60 grams l−1), or bottled water (placebo) in promoting rehydration after a 3% reduction in body mass. Urine specific gravity (Usg) urine (Uosm) and plasma osmolarity (Posm), and plasma volume were measured pre- and post dehydration and at 1-h after rehydration. Statistical analyses utilized a 3 (conditions) × 3 (times) repeated measures analysis of variance to test main effects. Significant interaction effects were found for Posm and Uosm, both of which remained below basleline after 1-h rehydration in the rooibos tea and water trials. No significant interaction effects were found for either urine Usg or plasma volume shift. The findings of this study demonstrate that rooibos tea was no more effective in promoting rehydration than plain water, with significant changes being found for Posm and Uosm in the carbohydrate/electrolyte solution, in collegiate wrestlers after a 3% reduction in body mass and a rehydration period of 1-h when consuming 100% of their body weight loss.
Exposures to Particulate Matter and Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons and Oxidative Stress in Schoolchildren

Background Air pollution is known to contribute to respiratory and cardiovascular mortality and morbidity. Oxidative stress has been suggested as one of the main mechanisms for these effects on health. Objective The aim of this study was to analyze the effects of exposure to particulate matter (PM) with aerodynamic diameters ≤ 10 μm (PM10) and ≤ 2.5 μm (PM2.5) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) on urinary malondialdehyde (MDA) levels in schoolchildren. Methods The study population consisted of 120 schoolchildren. The survey and measurements were conducted in four cities—two in China (Ala Shan and Beijing) and two in Korea (Jeju and Seoul)—between 4 and 9 June 2007. We measured daily ambient levels of PM and their metal components at the selected schools during the study period. We also measured urinary 1-hydroxypyrene (1-OHP) and 2-naphthol, to assess PAH exposure, and MDA, to assess oxidative stress. Measurements were conducted once a day for 5 consecutive days. We constructed a linear mixed model after adjusting for individual variables to estimate the effects of PM and PAH on oxidative stress. Results We found statistically significant increases in urinary MDA levels with ambient PM concentrations from the current day to the 2 previous days (p < 0.0001). Urinary 1-OHP level also showed a positive association with urinary MDA level, which was statistically significant with or without PM in the model (p < 0.05). Outdoor PM and urinary 1-OHP were synergistically associated with urinary MDA levels. Some metals bound to PM10 (aluminum, iron, strontium, magnesium, silicon, arsenic, barium, zinc, copper, and cadmium) and PM2.5 (magnesium, iron, strontium, arsenic, cadmium, zinc, aluminum, mercury, barium, and copper) also had significant associations with urinary MDA level. Conclusion Exposure to PM air pollution and PAHs was associated with oxidative stress in schoolchildren.
Myasthenia Gravis Induced by Ipilimumab in Patients With Metastatic Melanoma.

Introduction Melanoma is the most aggressive of the cutaneous malignancies, projected to cause over 9,500 deaths in the United States in 2014. More effective immune-based treatments and molecularly targeted therapies have improved the overall outcome and have begun to play an expanding role in the treatment of patients with metastatic melanoma in the last few years. Ipilimumab (Yervoy; Bristol-Myers Squibb, New York, NY) is a fully humanized monoclonal antibody directed against the immune checkpoint cytotoxic T-lymphocyte antigen-4 (CTLA-4) that functionally removes a key modulator of the immune system. Tumor-specific cellular immunity is thereby enhanced by promotion of cytotoxic T cells and, possibly, reduction of intratumoral regulatory T cells. Ipilimumab improved overall survival for patients with melanoma compared with an experimental vaccine in previously treated patients and in combination with dacarbazine in the first-line setting. However, the immune activation caused by ipilimumab may also result in potentially severe autoimmune toxicity, most commonly involving the GI tract, liver, skin, and endocrine system. With increased clinical use, more rare adverse effects are emerging. To our knowledge, no cases of ipilimumabinduced myasthenia gravis have been reported in the medical literature to date. We describe two such cases below.
Visual odometry based on Random Finite Set Statistics in urban environment

This paper presents a novel approach for estimating the vehicle's trajectory in complex urban environments. In previous work, we presented a visual odometry solution that estimates frame-to-frame motion from a single camera based on Random Finite Set (RFS) Statistics. This paper extends that work by combining the stereo cameras and gyroscope sensor. We are among the first to apply RFS statistics to visual odometry in real traffic scenes. The method is based on two phases: a preprocessing phase to extract features from the image and transform the coordinates from the image space to vehicle coordinates; a tracking phase to estimate the egomotion vector of the camera. We consider features as a group target and use the Probability Hypothesis Density (PHD) filter to update the overall group state as the motion vector. Compared to other approaches, our method presents a recursive filtering algorithm that provides dynamic estimation of multiple-targets states in the presence of clutter and high association uncertainty. The experimental results show that this method exhibits good robustness under various scenarios.
Safety critical applications and hard real-time profile for Java: a case study in avionics

Despite Java's initial promise of providing a reliable and cost-effective platform-independent environment, the language appears to be unfavourable in the area of high-integrity systems and real-time systems.To address this issue, the language environment must provide not only a well-defined specification or subset, but also a complete environment with appropriate analysis tools. This paper describes an architecturally neutral real-time frame-work, which is proposed by the HIJA project, for safety critical systems with analysis tools. The goal of this paper is to present an overview of hard real-time profile and report on its current status. An avionic application is selected to experiment with the ANRT framework and the SCJ profile is also illustrated.
Facial alignment by using sparse initialization and random forest

Over the last decade, face alignment researches have been advancing rapidly and have vast applications related to face recognition, pose estimation, and human-robot interaction. Face alignment is typically performed in a two-stage fashion by alternatively using local landmark detector and global shape regularizer. While both landmark detector and shape regularizer have achieved impressive progress recently, shape initialization with mean shape remains a critical issue. In this paper, we present a unique sparse initialization method that is inspired by the sparse model. Experiment results with two datasets selected from the widely used Multi-PIE Database show that our method outperforms conventional initialization techniques. In addition to its capability to handle test data with high shape variability and potential occlusion, our method has merit of simplicity and can be easily integrated with other face alignment approaches.
Female-induced increase of host-plant volatiles enhance specific attraction of aphid male Dysaphis plantaginea (Homoptera: Aphididae) to the sex pheromone

Abstract All aphid species studied so far share the same sex pheromone components, nepetalactol and nepetalactone. Variation by different enantiomers and blends of the two components released by different aphid species are limited and can only partially explain species-specific attraction of males to females. While some host-plant odours are known to enhance specific attraction of aphid species, herbivore-induced plant volatiles that synergise attractiveness to the sex pheromone are unknown. Here, we demonstrate that for the host-alternating rosy apple aphid (Dysaphis plantaginea (Passerini)) specificity of attraction of males to females is triggered by female-induced tree odours in combination with a 1:8 ratio of (4aS,7S,7aR)-nepetalactone and (1R,4aS,7S,7aR)-nepetalactol. Female aphid infestation induces increased release of four esters (hexyl butyrate, (E)-2-hexenyl butyrate, (Z)-3-hexenyl 3-methylbutyrate and hexyl 2-methylbutyrate) from apple leaves. Two different combinations of three esters applied in a 1:1:1 ratio increase the number of male D. plantaginea and decrease the number of other aphid species caught in water traps in the presence of the pheromone components. The ester blend alone was not attractive. Combination of the pheromone blend with each single ester was not increasing attraction of male D. plantaginea. The demonstration that sexual aphid species use herbivore-induced plant volatiles as a species-specific attractant for mate finding adds a new dimension to our understanding of insect species using or manipulating chemical cues of host plants for orientation.
Intranuclear mobility of estrogen receptor α and progesterone receptors in association with nuclear matrix dynamics

We analyzed the intranuclear dynamics of estrogen receptor α (ERα) and progesterone receptor (PR)‐A/B labeled with different spectral variants of green fluorescent protein (GFP) in living cells. The distribution of ERα and PR‐A/B were changed from a diffuse to discrete pattern after the addition of both ligands, but the extent of discrete cluster formation of PR‐A/B was lower than that of ERα. The nuclear areas where PR‐A/B were accumulated were colocalized with the cluster of ERα, suggesting that cross‐talk in the transcriptional regulation occurred in the loci. Fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP) analysis revealed that the mobility of PR‐A/B was hastened by the coexistence of ERα, while the mobility of ERα was not changed by the coexistence of PR‐A/B. Cluster formation was correlated with the nuclear matrix binding, because nuclear matrix binding capacity was also lower in PR‐A/B than ERα. By ATP‐depletion from the cells, most of ERα and PR‐A/B were bound to the nuclear matrix and their mobilities were extinguished both in the absence and presence of ligand. Fluorescent protein (FP) tagged nuclear matrix component protein (NuMA), which was colocalized with ERα and PR‐A/B, showed ATP‐dependent rapid exchange in the nucleus. These results indicate that the mobility of ERα and PR‐A/B is associated with the dynamics of the nuclear matrix. J. Cell. Biochem. 103: 136–148, 2008. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Continuous nearest neighbor monitoring in road networks

Recent research has focused on continuous monitoring of nearest neighbors (NN) in highly dynamic scenarios, where the queries and the data objects move frequently and arbitrarily. All existing methods, however, assume the Euclidean distance metric. In this paper we study k-NN monitoring in road networks, where the distance between a query and a data object is determined by the length of the shortest path connecting them. We propose two methods that can handle arbitrary object and query moving patterns, as well as fluctuations of edge weights. The first one maintains the query results by processing only updates that may invalidate the current NN sets. The second method follows the shared execution paradigm to reduce the processing time. In particular, it groups together the queries that fall in the path between two consecutive intersections in the network, and produces their results by monitoring the NN sets of these intersections. We experimentally verify the applicability of the proposed techniques to continuous monitoring of large data and query sets.
Remarks on Dwell Time Solutions and Stability of Families of Nonlinear Vector Fields

In this note, we discuss the problem of stability of (finite or infinite) families of continuous vector fields, all of them asymptotically stable but, in general, not exponentially stable. Under a multiple Liapunov function condition and an average dwell time constraint, we prove that the system possesses a form of stability, weaker than the standard one. The advantage of our results is that the conditions imposed on the Liapunov functions can be verified a priori, with no previous knowledge of the integral curves of the family.
Quantitative Assessment of Parkinsonian Tremor Based on an Inertial Measurement Unit

Quantitative assessment of parkinsonian tremor based on inertial sensors can provide reliable feedback on the effect of medication. In this regard, the features of parkinsonian tremor and its unique properties such as motor fluctuations and dyskinesia are taken into account. Least-square-estimation models are used to assess the severities of rest, postural, and action tremors. In addition, a time-frequency signal analysis algorithm for tremor state detection was also included in the tremor assessment method. This inertial sensor-based method was verified through comparison with an electromagnetic motion tracking system. Seven Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients were tested using this tremor assessment system. The measured tremor amplitudes correlated well with the judgments of a neurologist (r = 0.98). The systematic analysis of sensor-based tremor quantification and the corresponding experiments could be of great help in monitoring the severity of parkinsonian tremor.
Population Biology of Streptococcus pneumoniae in West Africa: Multilocus Sequence Typing of Serotypes That Exhibit Different Predisposition to Invasive Disease and Carriage

Background Little is known about the population biology of Streptococcus pneumoniae in developing countries, although the majority of pneumococcal infections occur in this setting. The aim of the study was to apply MLST to investigate the population biology of S. pneumoniae in West Africa. Methods Seventy three invasive and carriage S. pneumoniae isolates from three West African countries including The Gambia, Nigeria and Ghana were investigated. The isolates covered seven serotypes (1, 3, 5, 6A, 11, 14, 23F) and were subjected to multilocus sequence typing and antibiotic susceptibility testing. Results Overall, 50 different sequence types (STs) were identified, of which 38% (29) were novel. The most common ST was a novel clone-ST 4012 (6.5%), and some clones including STs 913, 925, 1737, 2160 and 3310 appeared to be specific to the study region. Two STs including ST 63 and ST 4012 were associated with multiple serotypes indicating a history of serotype switching. ST 63 was associated with serotypes 3 and 23F, while ST 4012 was associated with serotypes 6A and 23. eBURST analyses using the stringent 6/7 identical loci definition grouped the 50 STs into 5 clonal complexes and 65 singletons, expressing a high level of genetic diversity among the isolates. Compared to the other serotypes, serotypes 1 and 5 isolates appeared to be more clonal. Internationally recognized antibiotic resistant clones of S. pneumoniae were generally absent in the population investigated and the only multidrug resistant isolate identified (1/66) belong to the Pneumocococcal Epidemiology Network clone ST 63. Conclusions The pneumococcal population in West Africa is quite divergent, and serotypes that are common in invasive disease (such as serotypes 1 and 5) are more likely to be clonal than serotypes that are common in carriage.
Joint Emotion Analysis via Multi-task Gaussian Processes

We propose a model for jointly predicting multiple emotions in natural language sentences. Our model is based on a low-rank coregionalisation approach, which combines a vector-valued Gaussian Process with a rich parameterisation scheme. We show that our approach is able to learn correlations and anti-correlations between emotions on a news headlines dataset. The proposed model outperforms both singletask baselines and other multi-task approaches.
DeepBach: a Steerable Model for Bach Chorales Generation

This paper introduces DeepBach, a graphical model aimed at modeling polyphonic music and specifically hymn-like pieces. We claim that, after being trained on the chorale harmonizations by Johann Sebastian Bach, our model is capable of generating highly convincing chorales in the style of Bach. DeepBach's strength comes from the use of pseudo-Gibbs sampling coupled with an adapted representation of musical data. This is in contrast with many automatic music composition approaches which tend to compose music sequentially. Our model is also steerable in the sense that a user can constrain the generation by imposing positional constraints such as notes, rhythms or cadences in the generated score. We also provide a plugin on top of the MuseScore music editor making the interaction with DeepBach easy to use.