Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Molecular Characterization and Antibiotic Susceptibility of Non-PCV13 Pneumococcal Serotypes among Vaccinated Children in Cape Coast, Ghana

Preventive strategies involving the use of pneumococcal conjugate vaccines (PCVs) are known to drastically reduce pneumococcal disease. However, PCV vaccination has been plagued with serotype replacement by non-PCV serotypes. In this study, we describe the prevalence and molecular characteristics of non-PCV13 serotypes (non-vaccine serotypes, NVTs) from pneumococcal carriage isolates obtained from children < 5 years old in Cape Coast, Ghana, after PCV introduction. The isolates were subjected to antibiotic susceptibility testing and multilocus sequence typing (MLST), and molecular techniques were used to detect the presence of virulence genes. Serotypes 11A, 13, 15B, 23B, and 34 formed the top five of the 93 NVT isolates. As such, 20 (21.5%), 49 (48.4%), and 70 (74.3%) isolates were non-susceptible to penicillin, tetracycline, and cotrimoxazole, respectively. Sixteen (17.2%) multidrug-resistant isolates were identified. However, non-susceptibility to ceftriaxone and erythromycin was low and all isolates were fully susceptible to levofloxacin, linezolid, and vancomycin. Whereas pcpA, pavB, lytA, and psrP genes were detected in nearly all serotypes, pilus islet genes were limited to serotypes 11A, 13, and 23B. MLST for predominant serotype 23B isolates revealed three known and seven novel sequence types (STs). ST172 and novel ST15111 were the most dominant and both STs were related to PMEN clone Columbia23F-26 (ST338). In conclusion, non-PCV13 serotype 23B was the most prevalent, with characteristics of rapid clonal expansion of ST172 and ST15111, which are related to international clones of the pneumococcus. Continuous monitoring of NVTs in Ghana is, therefore, essential, as they have the potential to cause invasive disease, show high antibiotic resistance, and attenuate the effects of PCV vaccination.
ENTREPRENEURIAL ORIENTATION AND MEDICATION THERAPY MANAGEMENT SERVICES

Purpose: This study examined the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and medication therapy management services delivery of community pharmacies in Rivers State, Nigeria. Methodology: Correlational research design was adopted for the study using the survey method. All community pharmacies in Rivers State registered with the Pharmacists Council of Nigerian (PCN) constituted the population of the study and the study had a population of 462 from which a sample size of 214 community pharmacies was determined. The sampling unit of the study were superintendent pharmacists of the community pharmacies. Primary data were collected using a well-structured questionnaire whose reliability tested on the Cronbach Alpha scale using SPSS version 24.0 was 0.810. Regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses. Results: The findings of the study showed that there was a positive and significant relationship between risk taking propensity and medication therapy management services delivery of community pharmacies in Rivers State, Nigeria with R value of 0.915 at p<0.05. The correlation between proactiveness and the delivery of medication therapy management was positive and significant with R value of 0.894 at p-value <0.05 while the correlation between innovativeness and competitive aggressiveness and medication therapy management services delivery was also positive and significant with R values of 0.899 and 0.916 respectively at p-values <0.05. Conclusion: Based on the research findings, the study thus concluded that entrepreneurial orientation (risk-taking propensity, pro-activeness, innovativeness, and competitive aggressiveness) can be considered a potent factor in the sustained delivery of medication therapy management services of community pharmacies. Recommendation: The study recommended amongst others that Community pharmacies/pharmacists in Rivers State should improve in their innovativeness by delivering quality cognitive services.
Appendix for "Differentially Private SGDA for Minimax Problems" A Motivating Examples

where f = (1 − p)(h(θ;x) − a)I[y = 1] + p(h(θ;x) − b)I[y = −1] + 2(1 + v)(ph(θ;x)I[y = −1] − (1 − p)h(θ;x)I[y = 1])] − p(1 − p)v and p = P[y = 1]. Such problem is (non)convex-concave. In particular, Liu et al. [2020] showed that when h is a one hidden layer neural network the objective f satisfies the Polyak-Łojasiewicz condition. Differential privacy has been applied to learn private classifier by optimizing AUC [Wang et al., 2021]. The proposed privacy mechanisms there are objective perturbation and output perturbation. Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs). GAN is introduced in Goodfellow et al. [2014] which can be regarded as a game between a generator network Gv and a discriminator network Dw. The generator network produces synthetic data from random noise ξ, while the discriminator network discriminates between the true data and the synthetic data. In particular, a popular variant of GAN named as WGAN [Arjovsky et al., 2017] can be written as a minimax problem
Nutritional value of pastoral species indigenous to Eastern Moroccan rangelands

In Eastern Morocco, rangelands constitute an important feed resource for livestock. Therefore, determining the nutritional value of pastoral species is useful for efficient and sustainable management of these arid areas. This study aims to determine the chemical composition and nutritional value of 20 native pastoral species collected from different localities of Eastern Morocco. Nutritional composition of species was estimated by determining levels of dry matter, mineral matter, organic matter, total nitrogenous matter, neutral detergent fiber, acid detergent fiber and lignin detergent fiber. Results show that there were a highly significant differences among the species for all chemical compositions (P<0.001). Asphodelus fistulosus , Peganum harmala , Suaeda vera , Atriplex halimus , Anabasis aphylla and Atriplex semibaccata , were highly nutritious, containing high concentrations of total nitrogen matter (9.87 to 25.49% DM), digestible organic matter (up to 69.92 gr /kg DM), high energy value (up to 0.83 UF/Kg DM) and low lignin (2.80 to 9.50 % DM) and crude cellulose contents (7.70 to 19.19% DM). In contrast, Stipa tenacissima, Launaea arborescens, Deverra scoparia, Salsola tetragona and Lygeum spartum are less nutritious and show the lowest total nitrogen matter content (3.80 to 6.73% DM) and relatively high crude cellulose content (36.57 to 44.33 % DM). This study reveals that indigenous species could offer considerable potential as a fodder resource for livestock and constitute an alternative for the diversification of the introduced pastoral species in these degraded rangeland areas.
OPTH_A_383091 3405..3413

Purpose: To evaluate OC-01 [varenicline solution nasal spray (VNS)] tear production and symptom outcomes in patients with dry eye disease by age, gender, race, ethnicity, and artificial tear use status. Patients and Methods: Adults ≥22 years of age diagnosed with dry eye disease, with Ocular Surface Disease Index score ≥23, corneal fluorescein staining score ≥2 in ≥1 region or ≥4 for all regions, and baseline Schirmer Test Score (STS) ≤10 mm, with no restrictions on eye dryness score (EDS). Efficacy was assessed using integrated data from ONSET-1 and ONSET-2 [vehicle control (VC), n=294; OC-01 VNS 0.03 mg, n=308]. Subgroups included age (≤55, 56−65, >65 years), gender (male, female), race (White, Black or African American), ethnicity (Hispanic or Latino, Not Hispanic or Latino), and artificial tear use (yes, no). Analysis of covariance models, with the covariates treatment, study site, and baseline severity measures, were used to calculate treatment−VC differences. Consistency of effect among subgroups was evaluated by conducting interaction tests. Results: Consistency of treatment effect across subgroups was observed for all endpoints, with P value for all treatment−subgroup interaction terms >0.05. For % of patients with ≥10mm improvement in STS and least squares (LS) mean change from baseline in STS and EDS, there was improvement in tear production across demographic group categories. Artificial tear use did not change STS or EDS outcomes with OC-01 VNS. Conclusion: OC-01 VNS improved tear production and patient-reported symptom outcomes across a broad range of patients by age, gender, race, and ethnicity, and regardless of artificial tear use status at baseline. OC-01 VNS demonstrated a consistent benefit across an extensive range of patients with dry eye disease.
Exploiting Structure in Solution: Decomposing Composed Models

Since their introduction nearly ten years ago, compositionality has been reported as one of the major attractions of stochastic process algebras. The bene(cid:12)ts that compositionality provides for model construction are readily apparent and have been demonstrated in numerous case studies. Early research on the compositionality of the languages focussed on how the inherent structure could be used, in conjunction with equivalence relations, for model simpli(cid:12)cation and aggregation. In this paper we consider how far we have been able to take advantage of compositionality when it comes to solving the Markov process underlying a stochastic process algebra model and outline directions for future work in order for current results to be fully exploited.
Downregulation of DKK-1 and Upregulation of β-Catenin in Cancer Floating Spheroids is Associated with Chemoresistance to Wnt Signaling Pathway Inhibitors

DKK-1, a negative regulator of β-catenin in the Wnt pathway is commonly upregulated in cancer cells but its expression and association to chemoresistance have not been investigated extensively. Our aim was to evaluate the expression of DKK-1 and β-catenin as well as the effect of the Wnt pathway modulators iCRT-14 (iCRT) and WAY626611 (WAY) alone or in combination with Nigericin (NIG) on the viability of cancer cells grown under routine conditions (RC) or as floating spheroids (FSs). Methods: RC or FSs from human prostate (PC3 and LnCAP) and breast (MCF-7 and MDA-MB231) cells were treated for 72 hs with WAY or iCRT. Cell viability was determined by the MTT or the CCK-8 assays and protein expression was determined by western blot analysis. Results: DKK-1 was expressed at different basal levels in RC but was undetectable in FSs. β-catenin expression was increased in FSs. RC of PC3 and MCF-7 were sensitive to both iCRT and WAY but FSs generated from these cell lines were resistant to both drugs. NIG potentiated the effect of both Wnt inhibitors in FSs. Conclusion: Marked changes in the expression of Wnt pathway proteins, DKK-1 and β-catenin in FSs are associated with resistance to WAY and iCRT. Abstract Cite This Article: Kaushik V, Yakisich JS, Kulkarni Y, Azad N, V. Iyer AK. Downregulation of DKK-1 and Upregulation of β-Catenin in Cancer Floating Spheroids is Associated with Chemoresistance to Wnt Signaling Pathway Inhibitors. EJMO 2022;6(3):241–246.
On the signi ﬁ cance of form-induced stress in rough wall turbulent boundary layers

This paper presents a review of recent experimental and numerical studies which deal with the analysis of form-induced stress in rough wall turbulent boundary layers. The aim of the paper is to assess the importance of this stress for various rough wall geometries and flow conditions. Analysis of the significance of form-induced stress is first performed by comparing its magnitude with the magnitude of Reynolds stress for each data set available in literature. Then, by selecting a special set of data, we analyze the comparison between the gradients of both stresses. We point out that the comparison of stress gradients gives a different perspective on the role of form-induced stress in rough wall boundary layers.
Use of Slightly Pressurized Carbon Dioxide to Enhance the Antimicrobial Properties of Brines in Naturally Processed Black Table Olives

Naturally fermented black table olives are processed at low pH in the presence of high sodium chloride concentrations ranging from 8 to 12% (w v−1). Reducing the salt content of brine has become an urgent issue as it is responsible for several health and environmental problems. The study aim was to evaluate slightly pressurized CO2 (spCO2) as a third barrier to microbial growth in naturally processed black table olives with low pH and a reduced NaCl concentration. Based on the assessments performed on a pilot plant scale, an spCO2 of 1 bar completely inhibited the growth of the bacteria and molds in the presence of reduced saline concentrations. Furthermore, the amount of yeast decreased in the brine as a function of the NaCl content. Laboratory tests performed under spCO2 conditions using a single yeast species from the same habitat confirmed the high sensitivity of some oxidizing yeasts and indicated that the fermenting yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, is the most tolerant species. Overall, in the brine of naturally processed olives with a low pH between 4 and 4.2, the antimicrobial properties observed with the high concentrations of NaCl can be achieved with a lower salt dose of 5% (w v−1) when combined with spCO2.
Research Article Cyclosporine (0.05%) Combined with Diclofenac Sodium Eye Drops for the Treatment of Dry Eye Disease

Objective . To assess the clinical efficacy of cyclosporine (0.05%) combined with diclofenac sodium eye drops (0.1%) in the treatment of dry eye disease. Methods . A prospective analysis was performed on clinical information of 128 patients diagnosed with dry eye at the ophthalmic clinic of the General Hospital of Xinjiang Military Command of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army from August 2020 to August 2021. Specifically, patients were randomly divided into a control group and a study group. In addition to conventional treatment, patients in the control group were treated with cyclosporine (0.05%) eye drops; while in the study group, patients received cyclosporine (0.05%) combined with diclofenac sodium eye drops (0.1%). Subsequently, comparisons and analysis were performed before and after treatment between the two groups in the clinical symptom questionnaire score of dry eye disease, the corneal fluorescein staining (CFS) score, determination of tear film break-up time (BUT), Schirmer I test (SIT) score, and curative effect. Results . After treatment, the clinical symptom scores and CFS scores were decreased while the BUTand SITscores were increased in both groups; besides, compared with the control group, the clinical symptom scores and CFS scores were much lower while the BUTand SITscores were higher in the study group. Moreover, the overall response rate in the study group (96.9%) was much better than that in the control group (79.7%); and the differences between the two groups were statistically significant ( p < 0.05). Conclusion . The combination of cyclosporine (0.05%) and diclofenac sodium eye drops (0.1%) based on conventional treatment can be applied to the clinical treatment of dry eye disease due to its good clinical effects on relieving dry eye symptoms.
Status and future development of Heating and Current Drive for the EU DEMO f , Contributors from all Laboratories which have contributed to the Work Package HCD during 2014-2020

The European DEMO is a pulsed device with pulse length of 2 hours. The functions devoted to the heating and current drive system are: plasma breakdown, plasma ramp-up to the flat-top where fusion reactions occur, the control of the plasma during the flat-top phase, and finally the plasma ramp-down. The EU-DEMO project was in a Pre-Concept Design Phase during 2014-2020, meaning that in some cases, the design values of the device and the precise requirements from the physics point of view were not yet frozen. A total of 130 MW was considered for the all phases of the plasma: in the flat top, 30 MW is required for neoclassical tearing modes (NTM) control, 30 MW for burn control, and 70 MW for the control of thermal instability (TI), without any specific functions requested from each system, Electron Cyclotron (EC), Ion Cyclotron (IC), or Neutral Beam (NB) Injection. At the beginning of 2020, a strategic decision was taken, to consider EC as the baseline for the next phase (in 2021 and beyond). R & D on IC and NB will be risk mitigation measures. In parallel with progresses in Physics modelling, a decision point on the heating strategy will be taken by 2024. This paper describes the status of the R & D development during the period 2014-2020. It assumes that the 3 systems EC, IC and NB will be needed. For integration studies, they are assumed to be implemented at a power level of at least 50 MW. This paper describes in detail the status reached by the EC, IC and NB at the end of 2020. It will be used in the future for further development of the baseline heating method EC, and serves as starting point to further develop IC and NB in areas needed for these systems to be considered for DEMO.
OP-SOCO220058 1..38

Do sovereign ratings influence social spending in developed countries? Ratings are highly publicized and fiscally consequential assessments of countries’ creditworthiness shown to penalize welfare-largesse. We hypothesize that downgrades induce governments to retrench social spending, and test this hypothesis via panelanalyses of 23 OECD countries between 1995 and 2019. Our event-study shows that downgrades are associated with spending reductions, but upgrades have no effect. Our error-correction models demonstrate that, since the global financial crisis, spending on social services and transfers is reduced after downgrades, with reductions in social transfers occurring over the longer run. Reductions are particularly pronounced in country-years with high public debt and social–democratic executives but are independent of elections. We conclude that ratings became a binding constraint on social spending since the crisis drove home developed countries’ fallibility in international debt markets.
Benchmarking the Covariate Shift Robustness of Open-world Intent Classification Approaches

Task-oriented dialog systems deployed in real-world applications are often challenged by out-of-distribution queries. These systems should not only reliably detect utterances with unsupported intents (semantic shift), but also generalize to covariate shift (supported intents from unseen distributions). However, none of the existing benchmarks for open-world intent classification focus on the second aspect, thus only performing a partial evaluation of intent detection techniques. In this work, we propose two new datasets ( and ) that include utterances useful for evaluating the robustness of open-world models to covariate shift. Along with the i.i. d. test set, both datasets contain a new cov-test set that, along with out-of-scope utterances, contains in-scope utterances sampled from different distributions not seen during training. This setting better mimics the challenges faced in real-world applications. Evaluating several open-world classifiers on the new datasets reveals that models that perform well on the test set struggle to generalize to the cov-test. Our datasets fill an important gap in the field, offering a more realistic evaluation scenario for intent classification in task-oriented dialog systems.
World Journal on Educational Technology: Current Issues Improving pre- service chemistry teachers’ critical thinking and problem-solving skills using project-based learning

Studies confirmed that students ’ critical thinking skills (CTS) and their problem-solving skills (PSS) tend to be low. Thus, this quantitative study aims to improve students ’ CTS and PSS using Project-Based Learning (PjBL). In a quasi-experimental design, a total of 50 pre-service chemistry teachers from a public university in Indonesia were recruited as participants. To collect data, the Critical Thinking Skills Test (CTST) and the Problem-Solving Skills Test (PSST) were pre- and post-tested. Paired and independent samples t -tests and Cohen ’ s d were executed to explain the difference in CTS and PSS scores before and after treatment. The results indicated that there was a significant increase from pre- to post-test in terms of CTS and PSS scores. In addition, there is a significant difference in the CTS and PSS scores between the two groups in favor of the experimental group. It can be concluded that PjBL is an effective method to promote CTS and PSS in the General Chemistry course. As a powerful method, we recommend that lecturers implement PjBL to promote CTS and PSS as an alternative to online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Scattering of massless scalar waves by magnetically charged black holes in Einstein–Yang–Mills–Higgs theory

The existence of the classical black hole solutions of the Einstein–Yang–Mills–Higgs equations with non-Abelian Yang–Mills–Higgs hair implies that not all classical stationary magnetically charged black holes can be uniquely described by their asymptotic characteristics. In fact, in a certain domain of parameters, there exist different spherically-symmetric, non-rotating and asymptotically-flat classical black hole solutions of the Einstein–Yang–Mills–Higgs equations which have the same ADM mass and the same magnetic charge but significantly different geometries in the near-horizon regions. (These are black hole solutions which are described by a Reissner–Nordström metric on the one hand and the black hole solutions with non-Abelian Yang–Mills–Higgs hair which are described by a metric which is not of Reissner–Nordström form on the other hand). One can experimentally distinguish such black holes with the same asymptotic characteristics but different near-horizon geometries classically by probing the near-horizon regions of the black holes. We argue that one way to probe the near-horizon region of a black hole which allows one to distinguish magnetically charged black holes with the same asymptotic characteristics but different near-horizon geometries is by classical scattering of waves. Using the example of a minimally-coupled massless probe scalar field scattered by magnetically charged black holes which can be obtained as solutions of the Einstein–Yang–Mills–Higgs equations with a Higgs triplet and gauge group SU(2) in the limit of an infinite Higgs self-coupling constant we show how, in this case, the scattering cross sections differ for the magnetically charged black holes with different near-horizon geometries but the same asymptotic characteristics. We find in particular that the characteristic glory peaks in the cross sections are located at different scattering angles.
Influence of Social Media Food Advertisement Factors on Consumers’ Purchase Intention in Seri Kembangan,

Online shopping has become a new normal in Malaysia during the COVID-19 pandemic. More people tend to purchase food and groceries through social media and shopping online platforms. This study aimed to identify the influence of social media food advertisements factors on consumers’ purchase intention in Seri Kembangan, Selangor. The study was conducted in Seri Kembangan, Selangor with 200 respondents chosen by convenience sampling. Data collection has been done through an online platform. The results showed that age, household income, household size, and education level influenced consumers' purchase intention towards food advertisements on social media. Marketing factors such as price and quality perception were not significantly related to the purchase intention of consumers (p>0.05), while convenience perception was significantly related to consumers’ purchase intention (P<0.05) when it comes to food advertisements on social media. In conclusion, convenience perception is the only marketing factor that influences the purchase intention of consumers after viewing food advertisements on social media. Thus, this study can create awareness among consumers on the factors that influence food product purchasing and help marketers/food sellers by understanding the factors of food advertisements towards consumer purchase intention.