Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Number of ideas in spontaneous speech predicts cognitive impairment and frailty in community-dwelling older adults nine years later

Abstract Objective To investigate the associations between linguistic parameters in spontaneous speech at baseline and cognitive impairment and frailty nine years later. Methods A prospective analysis was carried out on data of the Frailty in Brazilian Older People Study (FIBRA) Study, a population-based study on frailty. From a probabilistic sample of 384 individuals aged 65 and older at baseline (2008–2009), 124 aged 73 years and older at follow-up were selected, as they had scored above the cutoff values of cognitive screening for dementia adjusted by years of schooling at baseline and had answered to the question What is healthy aging and had no frailty at baseline. Verbal responses were submitted to content analysis and had its ideas and words counted. Number of ideas corresponded to the frequency of meaning categories and number of words to all identified significant textual elements in the text constituted by the sample answers to that question. Results Multivariate logistic regression analyses, controlling for the effects of age, sex, and education, showed that individuals with a high number of ideas at baseline had lower chance of having cognitive impairment (OR = 0.39; 95% CI 0.22 − 0.69) and frailty (OR 0.66; 95% CI 0.44 − 0.99) nine years later than those with low number of ideas. Conclusions Higher number of ideas, but not number of words, in spontaneous speech seems to be associated to a more positive prognosis in mental and physical health nine years later. Linguistic markers may be used to predict cognitive impairment and frailty in older individuals.
Polarization mode dispersion power penalty; influence of rise/fall times, receiver Q and amplifier noise

A new approach for studying the power penalty due to polarization mode dispersion (PMD) is discussed in detail. By using quasianalytical techniques, running statistical averages over the involved random variables and fitting simple functions to the obtained results, a closed form expression for the transmission impairment of PMD is obtained. This expression collects in a single formula the influence of transmitter rise/fall times, receiver Q factor and amplifier noise.
Research on bamboo craft development from perspective of green design

Along with advanced industry and commerce and ever-changing technologies, environmental destruction becomes a major problem presently. Life modes to which human beings have been accustomed sig- nificantly influence the earth's environment. Due to rising of issues on green sustainable development, design field also begins to value green conceptions. Therefore, "green design" gradually becomes an important ide- ological trend of design academia. Under exhaustion of global energy and promotion of traditional handicraft revival, the two topics "environment" and "culture" valued by various countries around the world integrate green design idea with traditional craft and become a new trend of craft and design industries. From viewpoint of green design, this study makes investigation through three stages:The first stage explains trend of global green design and sustainable environmental protection. The second stage discusses sustainable conceptions of bamboo craft: green materials, green manufacturing and green use. The third stage is about relationship between bamboo craft and 6R principles of environmental protection.By virtue of investigations in this paper, we can find out ideas of green design from our forefathers' wisdom and know new concept trends of "green craft" formed through a combination of traditional craft with green design ideas, so as to give new inspiration to modern designers, provide a reference for scholars' researches on bamboo craft products and enhance possibility of craft product design and innovative design.
How Do Education Champions Promote School Innovation? The Mediating Role of Boundary Activities

ABSTRACT This study explores how champions promote innovation in schools. The model examines the mediating role of champions’ boundary activities (internal processes and external activities with the environment in which it operates) in the relationship between champion behavior and school innovation (creativity and innovation implementation). Eighty-six champions, 621 teachers, 267 subject coordinators, and 86 principals were studied. The findings reveal a positive relationship between champion behavior and internal and external activities, as well as between internal activities and school creativity. Furthermore, the results confirm the mediating role of internal activities in the relationship between champion behavior and school creativity.
The impact of novel COVID-19 initial pandemic on orthopedic healthcare: an experience from a single institution of South Korea

Background: This study was to investigate the cancellation rate and trend of orthopedic surgeries during the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Moreover, we assessed the psychologic status of orthopedic healthcare workers, and investigated the details of the preventive surgeries underwent in COVID-19-positive patients.Methods: For 3 months after January 20, 2020, cancellation rates of elective surgeries were investigated, and the number of elective surgeries conducted in the same period over the last two years was compared. Four different questionnaires were used to investigate psychologic status among the orthopedic health care workers. We compared the outcomes according to occupation (physician or nurse), and type of work (faculty staff or resident physician). Outcomes according to occupation and type of work were compared. Preventive surgeries underwent in patients who could not wait for the results of the COVID-19 diagnosis were investigated.Results: Spine and hip surgery had relatively lower cancellation rates, and elective surgeries were significantly reduced. During the initial pandemic, the cancellation rate of orthopedic elective surgeries was significantly higher than in the same period of the previous year and was different for each subdivision depending on the degree of pain or disability. The psychological outcomes were within the normal range and there were no significant differences between groups. After preventive surgery, all medical staff involved in the operation tested negative.Conclusion: During the COVID-19 pandemic, the cancellation rate of orthopedic elective surgeries was significantly higher than in the same period of the previous year. Orthopedic health care workers did not seem to have significant psychological distress. As a result of the preventive surgery in specialized facilities, all the medical staff who participated in the operation tested negative.
SOFIE project – 3D shaking table test on a seven‐storey full‐scale cross‐laminated timber building

Multi‐storey buildings made of cross‐laminated timber panels (X‐lam) are becoming a stronger and economically valid alternative in Europe compared with traditional masonry or concrete buildings. During the design process of these multi‐storey buildings, also their earthquake behaviour has to be addressed, especially in seismic‐prone areas such as Italy. However, limited knowledge on the seismic performance is available for this innovative massive timber product.
fMRI Findings in Cortical Brain Networks Interactions in Migraine Following Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation

Background Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) is one of the high-potential non-pharmacological methods for migraine treatment. The purpose of this study is to define the neuroimaging markers associated with rTMS therapy in patients with migraine based on data from functional MRI (fMRI). Materials and Methods A total of 19 patients with episodic migraine without aura underwent a 5-day course of rTMS of the fronto-temporo-parietal junction bilaterally, at 10 Hz frequency and 60% of motor threshold response of 900 pulses. Resting-state functional MRI (1.5 T) and a battery of tests were carried out for each patient to clarify their diagnosis, qualitative and quantitative characteristics of pain, and associated affective symptoms. Changes in functional connectivity (FC) in the brain's neural networks before and after the treatment were identified through independent components analysis. Results Over the course of therapy, we observed an increase in FC of the default mode network within it, with pain system components and with structures of the visual network. We also noted a decrease in FC of the salience network with sensorimotor and visual networks, as well as an increase in FC of the visual network. Besides, we identified 5 patients who did not have a positive response to one rTMS course after the first week of treatment according to the clinical scales results, presumably because of an increasing trend of depressive symptoms and neuroimaging criteria for depressive disorder. Conclusions Our results show that a 5-day course of rTMS significantly alters the connectivity of brain networks associated with pain and antinociceptive brain systems in about 70% of cases, which may shed light on the neural mechanisms underlying migraine treatment with rTMS.
Absence of significant genetic alterations in the VSX1, SOD1, TIMP3, and LOX genes in Brazilian patients with Keratoconus

ABSTRACT Purpose To identify inherited or acquired mutations in the VSX1, SOD1, TIMP3 and LOX genes from the combined analysis of corneal and blood samples from patients with Keratoconus. Methods The casuistry was consisted of samples of peripheral blood and corneal epithelium from 35 unrelated patients with Keratoconus who were submitted to corneal crosslink treatment. Also, blood and corneal epithelium samples from 89 non-keratoconic patients were used to compose the control group. Ophthalmologic evaluations included a clinical examination, topography and tomography. DNA samples were extracted from peripheral blood and from corneal epithelium in both groups and all coding regions of the VSX1, SOD1, TIMP3 and LOX genes were amplified by polymerase chain reaction, denatured and subjected to polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. Mutational screening was performed by single-strand conformation polymorphism and direct DNA sequencing. Results No pathogenic variant was found in all coding regions of VSX1, SOD1, TIMP3 and LOX genes, we detected only few SNPs (single-nucleotide polymorphisms). Among the polymorphisms stand out three of them, corresponding to the synonymous exchange of amino acids: exon 3 of VSX1 Ala182Ala and exon 3 of TIMP3 His83His and Ser87Ser; in patients with Keratoconus and also in control subjects. All the polymorphisms were found in samples of corneal epithelium and corresponding blood. Conclusion There is absence of KC pathogenic related to mutations in the VSX1, SOD1, TIMP3 and LOX genes in the studied patients.
Position control of ultrasonic motors using MRAC and dead-zone compensation with fuzzy inference

The ultrasonic motor has a heavy nonlinearity, which varies with driving conditions, and possesses variable dead-zone in the control input associated with applied load torque. This dead-zone is a problem as an accurate positioning actuator for industrial applications and it is important to eliminate the deadzone in order to improve the control performance. This paper proposes a new position control scheme for ultrasonic motors to overcome dead-zone employing model reference adaptive control with dead-zone compensation with fuzzy inference. The deadzone is compensated by fuzzy inference, whereas model reference adaptive control performs accurate position control. Mathematical models are formulated and experimental results are given to validate the proposed position control scheme.
Effects of hot water and calcium lactate treatments on fresh-cut quality of papaya

Purpose: Papaya is one of the most common fruits which has been produced in southern part of Iran for fresh consumption. Demand for fresh-cut products has increased due to the changes in consumer attitudes. However, fresh-cut papaya is prone to softening during storage. This study carried out to determine effects of calcium lactate and hot water treatments (HWT) for maintaining fresh-cut papaya quality. Research method: After preparing fresh cut cubes of papayas, the pieces were dipped in calcium lactate (CaL) or combined with HWT. Physico-chemical parameters including calcium concentration (Ca), firmness and soluble solids concentration, catalase and peroxidaseactivities, pectin methyl esterase (PME) and polygalacturonase activities (PG),total phenolic content and radical scavenging activities, and microbial growth were measured during 9 days of storage at 5 ◦C. Findings: At the end of storage, CaL treatment combined with HWT increased calcium (Ca) concentration, catalase activity, total phenolic content and radical scavenging activities (DPPH) of papaya slices, but decreased peroxidase, PG and PME activities compared to the control. In addition, these treatments reduced microbial growth compared to the control. Limitations: No limitations were encountered. Originality/Value: Both HWT with CaL showed potential for increasing markeabitity on fresh cut papaya with their generally recognized as safe status for consumers.
Efﬁcient Max-Pressure Trafﬁc Signal Control for Large-Scale Congested Urban Networks

Tra ﬃ c responsive signal control systems bear high potential in reducing delays in congested networks due to their ability of dynamically adjusting right-of-way assignment among conﬂicting movements, based on real-time tra ﬃ c measurements. In this work, we focus on distributed tra ﬃ c signal control for large-scale networks based on the existing Max-Pressure controller, which has been shown to stabilize queues and maximize throughput in congested conditions. Max-Pressure constitutes a feedback control law that tries to balance queues around an intersection by updating green times between signal stages as a function of current queue measurements. Nevertheless, its increased infrastructure requirements impose high implementation costs. Our objective is to investigate how network performance changes when controller is installed only in subsets, (instead of all) of network nodes, while exploring strategies of identifying the most critical nodes. A modiﬁed version of Store-and-Forward tra ﬃ c model is used to emulate spatio-temporal tra ﬃ c evolution in a large-scale network and evaluate system performance for di ﬀ erent controller layouts. Firstly, we observe signiﬁcant improvement in terms of total delay and network MFD production when Max-Pressure control is applied. More than 85% of the improvement observed when controlling all network nodes can be achieved by controlling only 25% of properly selected nodes, thus reducing implementation costs to one fourth. Further research is needed in order to optimize node selection for the Max-Pressure layout, through evaluation of node impact to network performance. Moreover, investigating the potential of further gains via combining Max-Pressure with centralized control strategies, e.g. perimeter control, is a promising research direction.
lsolation and Purification of an Antibiotic Polyketide JBIR-99 from the Marine Fungus Meyerozyma guilliermondii by High-Speed Counter-Current Chromatography

JBIR-99 is a natural compound isolated from marine source which possesses strong antibiotic activity. An efficient approach using a combination of size exclusion chromatography with a Sephadex LH-20 and high-speed counter-current chromatography (HSCCC) has been successfully developed for the isolation and purification of a polyketide from the solid-state fermentation of Meyerozyma guilliermondii, a strain of marine fungus isolated from Indian Ocean. The active compound was isolated with purity >95% by HSCCC using an optimized solvent system composed of petroleum ether–ethyl acetate– 95% ethanol–water (5: 3: 5: 3, v/v/v/v) after size exclusion chromatography. This compound was successfully purified in the quantity of 68 mg from 120 mg of the crude extract. The structure of JBIR-99 was elucidated and assigned by 1D, 2D NMR spectroscopic, and positive HRESITOFMS. Moreover, the relative configuration of compound JBIR-99, displaying a quite complex multi-ring structure, is determined by X-ray crystallography for the first time. The purification method developed for JBIR-99 will facilitate the further investigation and development of this antibiotic agent as a lead compound. Furthermore, it is suggested that the combination of size exclusion chromatography and HSCCC could be more widely applied for the isolation and purification of polyketides from marine fungi.
Sanitary products, absenteeism and psychosocial well- being: Evidence from a three-arm cluster randomized controlled feasibility study in Western Kenya

Does access to sanitary products improve schoolgirls’ well-being? We conduct the first cluster randomized controlled feasibility study to provide different sanitary technologies (sanitary pads or menstrual cup or usual practice) to 644 primary schoolgirls in western Kenya, across 30 schools with 10 schools per treatment arm. Inclusion restrictions were: ages 14-16 years, having experienced at least three menses, and no precluding disabilities. We find that disposable sanitary pads led to a 7.9 percentage point reduction in absenteeism. In addition, using a wider dataset from the 30 schools, we show that (1) boys have similar levels of absences to girls, (2) replication of the results using official school register data fails to detect the treatment effect, illustrating the need for high quality data on school absences. Narrow focus on absences limits our understanding of the effect that sanitary products have on schoolgirls’ welfare: both sanitary pads and menstrual cups improved physical, emotional, social and educational well-being over time. Physical well-being improved in the sanitary pads group by 6.2%, and girls with heavy periods reported 10.1% improvements in emotional well-being from the menstrual cup. The results tapered off toward the end of the study in the sanitary pad group, but remained in the menstrual cup group—highlighting the trade off between strong initial effects of an easy to adopt disposable product compared with delayed and sustained effects of a complex, reusable technology at a significantly lower unit cost.
Microbial Assessment of Chronic Suppurative Otitis Media in a Tertiary Care Center of Rajasthan

Introduction: Chronic Suppurative Otitis Media (CSOM) is defined as infection of the middle ear that lasts for more than three months and is accompanied by otorrhoea and tympanic membrane perforation. Aims: Purpose of the study was to determine the prevalence of microbiological agents in CSOM, associated risk factors and establish antimicrobial resistance pattern of these micro-organisms. Materials and Methods: The study was conducted after ethical approval by ethical committee in Department of Microbiology, Dr. S. N. Medical College, Jodhpur Rajasthan. Two pus swabs were collected with sterile cotton swabs from CSOM patients attending ENT OPD. Isolation, identification and characterization of bacterial isolate were done by standard phenotypic microbiological procedure. Observations & Results: Out of 150 cases 137(91.34%) was culture positive and 13 (8.66%) no growth (sterile) was obtained. Peak age of presentation was 11-20 years. Out of 150 cases 58% were males and 42% females. Most of these resides in rural area 53.3% and 46.7% belongs to urban area . Among the 150 cases 134 (89.3%) were unilateral while 16 (10.7%) bilateral CSOM patients. Out of total 78% patients already received antibiotic treatment while remaining 22% patients did not receive any treatment. Bacterial isolates were found to be present in 127 (92.7%) cases and rest 10 (7.3%) was Fungal was isolates. Pseudomonas aeruginosa showed highest resistance to Ceftazidime and least resistance to imipenem. Staphylococcus aureus showed highest resistance to Methicillin and least resistance to linezolid. Conclusion: The increasing rate Ceftazidime resistance and MRSA in our study is likely due to misuse of antibiotics and decrease concerns about infections caused by antibiotic resistant bacteria.
Testing Market Reaction On Stock Market Delisting In Russia

This paper expands the available information on the effects of delisting in Russia, and represents a rare empirical analysis of the impact of external events on securities prices in this major global market. We seek to evaluate how stock prices of competing companies fluctuate around the dates of stock market delisting announcements and completion. We analyse stock prices as correlated with company delisting events from 2004 to 2019 on 552 companies on the Russian MOEX Exchange. The event study methodology is used to evaluate the abnormal returns of rival companies close to relevant delisting dates. These data were checked for statistical significance using the standardised Patell residual test. The results indicate a significant competitive effect on stock prices both on the dates of delisting announcement and on completion, with more significant returns close to announcement dates. These effects were found to influence the prospects not just of individual groups of companies, but of all market participants. We may conclude from our results that delisting is not an event limited in effect to only one company, but impacts the industry as a whole, temporarily changing its value. As such, it will interest both shareholders and managers of public companies, and any participants of industries in which delisting occurs.
Robust Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensing with ultraflat microaxicons

Recently developed Shack-Hartmann sensors with axicon beam shapers show an enhanced robustness compared to setups with spherical microlenses. With ultraflat axicon arrays, further improvements were obtained. Very extended, fringeless nondiffracting beams or "needle beams" with self-reconstructing properties can be produced. Specific advantages of thin-film structures like low dispersion and reflective operation can be implemented. Here we report on first systematic studies of angular tolerance and displacement sensitivity of different types of refractive, reflective and diffractive Shack-Hartmann devices. A quantitative description of the functionality is given on the basis of higher order spatial statistical moments. This method enables for identifying optimum parameter ranges to determine wavefront curvatures under extreme conditions.
Automatic 3D Video Analysis of Upper and Lower Body Movements to Identify Isolated REM Sleep Behavior Disorder: A Pilot Study*

Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep behavior disorder (RBD) is a parasomnia characterized by dream enactment, abnormal jerks and movements during REM sleep. Isolated RBD (iRBD) is recognized as the early stage of alpha-synucleinopathies, i.e. dementia with Lewy bodies, Parkinson’s disease and multiple system atrophy. The certain diagnosis of iRBD requires video-polysomnography, evaluated by experts with time-consuming visual analyses. In this study, we propose automatic analysis of movements detected with 3D contactless video as a promising technology to assist sleep experts in the identification of patients with iRBD. By using automatically detected upper and lower body movements occurring during REM sleep with a duration between 4s and 5s, we could discriminate 20 iRBD patients from 24 patients with sleep-disordered breathing with an accuracy of 0.91 and F1-score of 0.90. This pilot study shows that 3D contactless video can be successfully used as a non-invasive technology to assist clinicians in identifying abnormal movements during REM sleep, and therefore to recognize patients with iRBD. Future investigations in larger cohorts are needed to validate the proposed technology and methodology.