Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Modification of Location Commensurate Power Prior in Clinical Trials

Abstract A statistical approach to incorporate historical data efficiently while maintaining statistical integrity is needed when the use of historical data along with current data is justified. Bayesian statistics enables the utilization of historical data in its priors for inference. In clinical trial analysis, if historical data support current data, incorporating priors can help improve statistical power as well as reduce sample sizes. However, if historical and current data are not compatible, incorporating Bayesian priors can result in estimation bias, hence inflated Type I error. A more recent Bayesian approach, location commensurate power prior (LCPP) helps resolve inflated Type I error issue and gain power in certain scenarios. Our simulation results show that in the presence of large conflicts (a conflict is defined as an average of historical data minus current control data), all Bayesian approaches do not perform well especially in the presence of negative large conflicts, all Bayesian approaches have much lower power compared to frequentist. To address this issue, we propose a modification of location commensurate power prior (mLCPP) that leverages frequentist, traditional Bayesian and LCPP. The proposed approach results in better performance across all conflict profiles. We also apply mLCPP to an adaptive clinical trial design and show that if large conflicts present, mLCPP signals sample size re-estimation in a control arm to avoid under-powered studies and if moderate to no conflicts, it signals partial to full use of historical information, thus improving power while allowing an acceptable inflation of Type I error and offering opportunity for sample size reduction.
Derivation of phase statistics from the Mueller matrix

To answer the question of what radar polarimetry has to offer to the remote sensing of random media, statistics of the phase difference of the scattering matrix elements must be studied. Recent polarimetric measurements of rough surfaces have indicated that the statistical parameters of the phase difference (mean, standard deviation, etc.) are very sensitive to some of the physical parameters. In this paper the probability density function of the phase differences is derived from the Mueller matrix, assuming that the elements of the scattering matrix are jointly Gaussian. It is shown that the probability density functions of the copolarized and cross-polarized phase differences are similar in form, and each can be determined by two parameters (α and ς) completely. The expressions for the probability density functions are verified by comparing the histograms, the mean, and the standard deviations of phase differences derived directly from polarimetric measurements of a variety of rough surfaces to the probability density function, its mean, and standard deviation derived from the Mueller matrices of the same data. The expressions for the probability density functions are of special interest for noncoherent polarimetric radars and noncoherent polarimetric models for random media such as vector radiative transfer.
The Use of Digital Health Interventions for Cardiometabolic Diseases Among South Asian and Black Minority Ethnic Groups: Realist Review

Background Digital health interventions (DHIs) for the prevention and management of cardiometabolic diseases have become increasingly common. However, there is limited evidence for the suitability of these approaches in minority ethnic populations, who are at an increased risk of these diseases. Objective This study aimed to investigate the use of DHIs for cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes among minority ethnic populations in countries with a majority of White, English-speaking populations, focusing on people who identified as South Asian, Black, or African American. Methods A realist methodology framework was followed. A literature search was conducted to develop context-mechanism-outcome configurations, including the contexts in which DHIs work for the target minority ethnic groups, mechanisms that these contexts trigger, and resulting health outcomes. After systematic searches, a qualitative analysis of the included studies was conducted using deductive and inductive coding. Results A total of 15 studies on the uptake of DHIs for cardiovascular disease or diabetes were identified, of which 13 (87%) focused on people with an African-American background. The review found evidence supporting the use of DHIs in minority ethnic populations when specific factors are considered in implementation and design, including patients’ beliefs, health needs, education and literacy levels, material circumstances, culture, social networks, and wider community and the supporting health care systems. Conclusions Our context-mechanism-outcome configurations provide a useful guide for the future development of DHIs targeted at South Asian and Black minority ethnic populations, with specific recommendations for improving cultural competency and promoting accessibility and inclusivity of design.
Vision Transformer With Attentive Pooling for Robust Facial Expression Recognition

Facial Expression Recognition (FER) in the wild is an extremely challenging task. Recently, some Vision Transformers (ViT) have been explored for FER, but most of them perform inferiorly compared to Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN). This is mainly because the new proposed modules are difficult to converge well from scratch due to lacking inductive bias and easy to focus on the occlusion and noisy areas. TransFER, a representative transformer-based method for FER, alleviates this with multi-branch attention dropping but brings excessive computations. On the contrary, we present two attentive pooling (AP) modules to pool noisy features directly. The AP modules include Attentive Patch Pooling (APP) and Attentive Token Pooling (ATP). They aim to guide the model to emphasize the most discriminative features while reducing the impacts of less relevant features. The proposed APP is employed to select the most informative patches on CNN features, and ATP discards unimportant tokens in ViT. Being simple to implement and without learnable parameters, the APP and ATP intuitively reduce the computational cost while boosting the performance by ONLY pursuing the most discriminative features. Qualitative results demonstrate the motivations and effectiveness of our attentive poolings. Besides, quantitative results on six in-the-wild datasets outperform other state-of-the-art methods.
Desired versus actual delivery route: nursing students’ perception about their type of delivery

ABSTRACT Objective: To identify the perception of nursing student mothers regarding the desired type of delivery in relation to the one performed. Method: Qualitative research, supported by the assumptions of Humanization of Obstetric Care, developed remotely with 16 nursing students who experienced the parturition process. The data were collected through an online focus group using the Google Meet program, guided by a semi-structured script. The speeches were analyzed using the Thematic Content Analysis technique. Results: An unsatisfactory discrepancy was identified between the mother’s preference and the realization, predominantly the desire for the vaginal way due to academic knowledge about the benefits. However, the cesarean section was predominant as a procedure performed due to possible complications, fears, financial situation of the parturient woman and control of choice by the health professional. Conclusion: Perception indicates marked disagreements, with the presence of complications, fear, lack of autonomy and predominance of a hegemonic care model, reinforcing the need for expansion and application of the Humanization of Obstetric Care, as a primary condition for proper monitoring.
Vascular Endothelial Barrier Protection Prevents Atrial Fibrillation by Preserving Cardiac Nanostructure

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common cardiac arrhythmia, affecting ∼3% of the US population. It is widely associated with inflammation, vascular dysfunction, and elevated levels of the vascular leak-inducing cytokine, vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF). The mechanism underlying AF is not well understood and current treatments are limited to managing this progressive disease, rather than arresting the underlying pathology. We previously identified edema-induced disruption of sodium channel (NaV1.5) –rich intercalated disk (ID) nanodomains as a novel mechanism for AF initiation secondary to acute inflammation. Therefore, we hypothesized that protecting the vascular barrier can prevent vascular leak-induced atrial arrhythmias. We identified two molecular targets for vascular barrier protection, connexin43 (Cx43) hemichannels and pannexin-1 (Panx1) channels, which have been implicated in cytokine-induced vascular leak. AF incidence was increased in untreated mice exposed to VEGF relative to vehicle controls. VEGF also increased the average number of AF episodes. VEGF shifted NaV1.5 signal to longer distances from Cx43 gap junctions (GJs), measured by a distance transformation-based spatial analysis of 3D confocal images of IDs. Similar effects were observed with NaV1.5 localized near mechanical junctions (MJs) composed of N-cad. Blocking connexin43 hemichannels (αCT11 peptide) or Panx1 channels (PxIL2P peptide) significantly reduced the duration of AF episodes compared to VEGF alone with no treatment. Concurrently, both peptide therapies preserved NaV1.5 distance from GJs to control levels and reduced MJ-adjacent intermembrane distance in these hearts. Notably, similar antiarrhythmic efficacy was also achieved with clinically-relevant small molecule inhibitors of Cx43 and Panx1.
The north-south asymmetry of solar filaments separately at low and high latitudes in solar cycle 23

We present the results of a study on the north-south asymmetry of solar filaments at low (<50°) and high (>60°) latitudes using daily filament numbers from January 1998 to November 2008 (solar cycle 23). It is found that the northern hemisphere is dominant at low latitudes for cycle 23. However, a similar asymmetry does not occur for solar filaments at high latitudes. The present study indicates that the hemispheric asymmetry of solar filaments at high latitudes in a cycle appears to have little connection with that at low latitudes. Our results support that the observed magnetic fields at high latitudes include two components: one comes from the emergence of the magnetic fields from the solar interior and the other comes from the drift of the magnetic activity at low latitudes.
ACE-Vitamin Index and Risk of Glaucoma: The SUN Project

Background: Previous studies regarding antioxidant consumption and glaucoma have shown contradictory results. The aim of this study was to analyze the combined effect of the consumption of three vitamins (A, C and E) on the incidence of glaucoma in the SUN Project. Methods: For this study, 18,669 participants were included. The mean follow-up was 11.5 years. An index including vitamins A, C and E (ACE-Vitamin Index) was calculated. Vitamin intake was extracted from participants’ dietary data and vitamin supplements, if taken. Information on glaucoma incidence was collected by previously validated self-reported questionnaires. The association between glaucoma and vitamin intake was assessed by repeated-measures Cox regression using multi-adjusted hazard ratios. Results: A total of 251 (1.3%) cases of glaucoma were detected. Participants with a higher ACE-Vitamin Index presented a reduced risk of glaucoma compared to participants with lower consumption (adjusted HR = 0.73; 95% CI, (0.55–0.98)). When each vitamin was analyzed individually, none of them had a significant protective effect. The protective effect of the ACE-Vitamin Index was higher in men and older participants (≥55 year). Conclusions: The consumption of vitamins A, C and E considered separately do not seem to exert a protective effect against glaucoma, but when these vitamins are considered together, they are associated with a lower risk of glaucoma.
A Geometric Realization of the m-cluster Category of Affine Type A

We give a geometric realization of a subcategory of the m-cluster category 𝒞 m of type , by using (m + 2)-angulations of an annulus with p + q marked points. We also give a bijection between an equivalence class of (m + 2)-angulations and the mutation class of coloured quivers of type .
Use of the Thermal Concept Evaluation to Focus Instruction

We used the Thermal Concept Evaluation (TCE) published in this journal by Yeo and Zadnik1 in a capstone course for pre-service elementary teachers. The evaluation was given as a pre-test to identify misconceptions that were then addressed by student- and faculty-designed activities. The same instrument was given as a post-test and the normalized gain found to be 33.4%, showing that the pre-test/activity/post-test strategy was successful in improving students' knowledge of thermal concepts. In this paper we argue that the TCE could be improved to help differentiate lack of knowledge from misconceptions and to better identify the misconceptions that students hold.
Quality of Life Following Pelvic Organ Prolapse Treatments in Women: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Introduction: Quality of life (QoL) improvement is one of the main outcomes in the management of pelvic organ prolapse as a chronic illness in women. This systematic review aimed to investigate the impact of surgical or pessary treatment for pelvic organ prolapse (POP) on quality of life. Methods: Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) was applied. Electronic databases, including PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science, were searched for original articles that evaluated the QoL before and after surgical interventions or pessary in pelvic organ prolapse from 1 January 2012 until 30 June 2022 with a combination of proper keywords. Included studies were categorized based on interventions, and they were tabulated to summarize the results. Results: Overall, 587 citations were retrieved. Of these, 76 articles were found eligible for final review. Overall, three categories of intervention were identified: vaginal surgeries (47 studies), abdominal surgeries (18 studies), and pessary intervention (11 studies). Almost all interventions were associated with improved quality of life. The results of the meta-analysis showed a significant association between the employment of surgical approach techniques (including vaginal and abdominal surgeries) and the quality of life (Pelvic Floor Distress Inventory (PFDI) (MD: −48.08, 95% CI: −62.34 to −33.77, p-value < 0.01), Pelvic Floor Impact Questionnaire (PFIQ) (MD: −33.41, 95% CI: −43.48 to −23.34, p < 0.01)) and sexual activity of patients with pelvic organ prolapse (Pelvic Organ Prolapse/Urinary Incontinence Sexual Function Questionnaire (PISQ) (MD: 4.84, 95% CI: 1.75 to 7.92, p < 0.01)). Furthermore, narrative synthesis for studies investigating the effect of the pessary approach showed a positive association between the use of this instrument and improvement in the quality of life and sexual activity. Conclusions: The results of our study revealed a significant improvement in the women’s quality of life following abdominal and vaginal reconstructive surgery. The use of pessary was also associated with increased patient quality of life.
Equilibrium of a Highly Deformable Shallow Shell Pushed Against an Obstacle

Existence of generalized solutions of contact problems for a nonlinear shallow shell with a rigid obstacle is demonstrated. A mathematical model accounting for the presence of an obstacle is proposed. The solution is a minimizer of the total energy functional on the set of admissible displacements. The problem reduces to the solution of a variational inequality in a cone of the energy space.
Simple proofs for the strong converse theorems in some channels

In the coding theory, one of the most important problems is to establish the " capacity " of the channel considered. But, as Wolfowitz pointed out in [5], and [6], to prove that the constant C involved is the capacity, one has to prove a coding theorem and its strong converse. In this paper, we shall prove a general strong converse theorem which is available to various channels. In Section 2, we shall prove the theorem. As applications of the theorem, we shall consider the following two problems: (i) Another proof of the strong converse of the coding theorem for a continuous memoryless channel with additive Gaussian noise (Section 3); (ii) The proof of the strong converse of the time-continuous Gaussian channel with additive Gaussian noise of arbitrary spectrum (Section 4).
Invisible Misconceptions: Student Understanding of Ultraviolet and Infrared Radiation.

The importance of nonvisible wavelengths for the study of astronomy suggests that student understanding of nonvisible light is an important consideration in astronomy classrooms. Questionnaires, interviews, and panel discussions were used to investigate 6–12 student and teacher conceptions of ultraviolet (UV) and infrared (IR). Alternative conceptions about the characteristics and human sensual perception of visible light, UV and IR, were observed in many students and in a subset of teachers. Instruction involving electromagnetic radiation should first address preexisting alternative conceptions, and conceptual questionnaires such as the one used here can help teachers to identify student ideas prior to instruction.
The Follow-Up of Eating Disorders from Adolescence to Early Adulthood: A Systematic Review

Eating disorders (EDs) are common among children and adolescents and are characterized by excessive concerns for physical appearance, distorted body image, and fear of gaining weight. The purpose of this review is to evaluate the follow-up of EDs from adolescence to adulthood, analyzing persistence, relapses, and associated comorbidities. We searched scientific articles in PubMed, PsycInfo, Scopus, and Embase through two research strings, one for quantitative outcomes (recovery/persistence, relapse, and remission) and one for the other outcomes (psychiatric and medical comorbidities, substance use, and social–relational complications). From a total of 8043 retrieved articles, we selected 503 papers after exclusion of duplicates and title/abstract screening. After a full-text evaluation, we included 16 studies eligible for this review. We performed a meta-analysis describing the quantitative results, and we created a narrative synthesis for the qualitative outcomes. Results: Our results confirm that EDs can persist in early adulthood in 40.7% of cases with a relapse percentage of 24.5%. Individuals with an ED more frequently present with an empathy deficit and comorbid anxiety and depressive disorders. EDs are chronic and complex disorders, more frequent in females. In most cases, EDs reduce the autonomy of individuals who present many difficulties in affirming their independence from parental family.
Microparticle RSV Vaccines Presenting the G Protein CX3C Chemokine Motif in the Context of TLR Signaling Induce Protective Th1 Immune Responses and Prevent Pulmonary Eosinophilia Post-Challenge

Layer-by-layer microparticle (LbL-MP) fabrication was used to produce synthetic vaccines presenting a fusion peptide containing RSV G protein CX3C chemokine motif and a CD8 epitope of the RSV matrix protein 2 (GM2) with or without a covalently linked TLR2 agonist (Pam3.GM2). Immunization of BALB/c mice with either GM2 or Pam3.GM2 LbL-MP in the absence of adjuvant elicited G-specific antibody responses and M2-specific CD8+ T-cell responses. Following challenge with RSV, mice immunized with the GM2 LbL-MP vaccine developed a Th2-biased immune response in the lungs with elevated levels of IL-4, IL-5, IL-13, and eotaxin in the bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid and a pulmonary influx of eosinophils. By comparison, mice immunized with the Pam3.GM2 LbL-MP vaccine had considerably lower to non-detectable levels of the Th2 cytokines and chemokines and very low numbers of eosinophils in the BAL fluid post-RSV challenge. In addition, mice immunized with the Pam3.GM2 LbL-MP also had higher levels of RSV G-specific IgG2a and IgG2b in the post-challenge BAL fluid compared to those immunized with the GM2 LbL-MP vaccine. While both candidates protected mice from infection following challenge, as evidenced by the reduction or elimination of RSV plaques, the inclusion of the TLR2 agonist yielded a more potent antibody response, greater protection, and a clear shift away from Th2/eosinophil responses. Since the failure of formalin-inactivated RSV (FI-RSV) vaccines tested in the 1960s has been hypothesized to be partly due to the ablation of host TLR engagement by the vaccine and inappropriate Th2 responses upon subsequent viral infection, these findings stress the importance of appropriate engagement of the innate immune response during initial exposure to RSV G CX3C.
Data-driven robust distributed MPC for collision avoidance formation navigation of constrained nonholonomic multi-robot systems

In this work, we consider the robust collision avoidance formation navigation problem for multiple constrained nonholonomic robots with uncertain dynamics. Distributed model predictive control (MPC) based method is proposed in view of its ability to handle the input and state constraints of the robots explicitly. A synchronous non-iterative distributed algorithm is employed which reduces the communication requirement of the system. Furthermore, to enable the state trajectory prediction under uncertain robot dynamics, a data-driven online learning method is proposed to generate an accurate model of the nonholonomic robots adaptively. Based on the proposed control strategy, it is shown that robust collision avoidance formation navigation is successfully achieved while the input and state constraints of the robots are satisfied. Simulation examples are given to demonstrate the performance of the data-driven learning method and the distributed MPC based formation navigation controller.
Dental Transmigration: An Observational Retrospective Study OF52 Mandibular Canines

Simple Summary Transmigrated canines represent a rare eruptive entity that usually occurs at the mandible. The diagnosis is usually made after radiographic examinations, such as panoramic radiography. Its observation should be analyzed in detail with computerized scanner studies of the CBCT type. Although, in most cases, they are usually asymptomatic, the appearance of odontomas or the risk of developing tooth cysts should be considered. The age of diagnosis and its position will be decisive to assess dental replacement by orthodontic treatment. When this is not possible, surgical treatment is advised. Abstract The aim of this study was to analyze the prevalence of transmigrated canines in a Spanish population by evaluating their clinical and radiological characteristics. The descriptive observational study obtained 6840 orthopantomographs from all patients seeking dental care in the years 2017–21 via the Patient Reception Service and Dentistry Service at the Faculty of Dentistry at the Complutense University of Madrid and the Central Hospital of the Red Cross of Madrid (Spain). In total, 52 patients presented transmigrated canines, establishing a prevalence of 0.76%. This sample comprised 28 women and 24 men. Whenever a transmigrated canine was identified, a CBCT scan was obtained and used to evaluate the clinical and radiological variables associated with canine transmigration. The predominant side of the transmigration was the left (57.69%) compared to the right side (42.30%). The position of the canine, in order of frequency, according to the Mupparapu classification, corresponded to type IV (42.30%), type II (36.53%), type I (15.38%), and type V (5.76%), with no type III transmigrations found. Clinical manifestations were only recorded in 17.30% of cases, and 11.53% of the radiological findings showed the presence of tooth cysts that were confirmed by histopathological studies. Other impactions, in addition to the transmigrated canine, were found in five patients (9.61%), with the majority being the presence of third molars.