Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Clinical Evaluation of Paraspinal Mini-Tubular Lumbar Decompression and Minimally Invasive Transforaminal Lumbar Interbody Fusion for Lumbar Spondylolisthesis Grade I with Lumbar Spinal Stenosis: A Cohort Study

Objective To investigate the clinical outcome data and difference in efficacy between paraspinal mini-tubular lumbar decompression (PMTD) and minimally invasive transforaminal lumbar interbody fusion (MIS TLIF) in the treatment of degenerative lumbar spondylolisthesis grade I with lumbar spinal stenosis (DLS-I-LSS). Methods Patients with DLS-I-LSS, who underwent PMTD or MIS TLIF from September 2017 to March 2020, were included retrospectively. The follow-up period was 24 months after surgery. Outcome measurements included the Oswestry disability index (ODI) score, visual analog scale (VAS) low back pain score, VAS leg pain score, surgical data, and adverse events. Results A total of 104 patients with DLS-I-LSS were included in this study. The average improvement in ODI at 12 months (2.0%, 95% CI, −5.7% to 1.8%; p = 0.30) and 24 months (1.7%, 95% CI, −2.7% to 6.1%; p = 0.45) after surgery between the two groups were not statistically significant. The improvement in VAS low back pain score after 24 months and improvement in VAS leg pain score were not significantly different between the two groups. Compared with the PMTD group, the MIS TLIF group had more estimated blood loss and longer hospital stays. The cumulative reoperation rates were 5.66% and 1.96% in the MIS TLIF and PMTD groups, respectively (p = 0.68). The results of multivariate analysis showed that BMI, diabetes, and baseline ODI score were the main factors influencing the improvement in ODI in patients with DLS-I-LSS after minimally invasive surgery, accounting for 50.5% of the total variance. Conclusions The clinical effectiveness of PMTD was non-inferior to that of MIS TLIF for DLS-I-LSS; however, there was a reduced duration of hospital stay, operation time, blood loss, and hospitalization costs in the PMTD group. BMI, presence or absence of diabetes and baseline ODI score were influencing factors for the improvement of ODI (Trial Registration: ChiCTR2000040025).
Squaric Acid Bisphposphonates for Theranostics of Bone Metastasis – the Easy DOTA-Zoledronate

Bisphosponates are an interesting molecular class and in recent years their application has found its way into radiopharmaceutical research and thus into molecular imaging. In addition to great imaging of bone metastases, bisphospnate-based tracers for imaging also have some significant drawbacks. For example, their synthesis is often difficult. Additionally, this can lead to complex and almost impossible purification and quality control. This has limited the production and labeling of suitable molecular and their widespread use to a few facilities. Our squaric acid-based approach provides a way to overcome these problems and makes the synthesis as well as the purification of the compounds much easier. In addition, we were able to demonstrate that labeling with 68Ga is possible under the typical conditions.
2-Hydroxy-4-Methylselenobutanoic Acid Promotes Follicle Development by Antioxidant Pathway

Selenium (Se) is assumed to promote the follicle development by attenuating oxidative stress. The current study was developed to evaluate the effects of dietary 2-hydroxy-4-methylselenobutanoic acid (HMSeBA) supplementation on the follicle development in vivo and on the function of ovarian granulosa cells (GCs) in vitro. Thirty-six gilts were randomly assigned to fed control diet (CON), Na2SeO3 diet (0.3 mg Se/kg) or HMSeBA diet (0.3 mg Se/kg). The results showed that HMSeBA and Na2SeO3 supplementation both increased the total selenium content in liver and serum compared with control, while HMSeBA increased the total selenium content in liver compared with Na2SeO3 group. HMSeBA tended to increase the total selenium content in ovary compared with control. HMSeBA and Na2SeO3 supplementation both increased the weight of uteri in gilts at the third estrus. Moreover, HMSeBA supplementation down-regulated the gene expression of growth differentiation factor-9 (GDF-9) and bone morpho-genetic protein-15 (BMP-15) in cumulus-oocyte complexes (COCs). HMSeBA supplementation decreased malondialdehyde (MDA) content in serum, liver and ovary, increased activity of T-AOC in liver, TXNRD in ovary and GPX in serum, liver and ovary, while up-regulated the liver GPX2, SOD1 and TXNRD1, ovarian GPX1 gene expression. In vitro, HMSeBA treatment promoted GCs' proliferation and secretion of estradiol (E2). HMSeBA treatment increased the activity of T-AOC, T-SOD, GPX, TXNRD and decreased MDA content in GCs in vitro. Meanwhile, HMSeBA treatment up-regulated SOD2 and GPX1 gene expression in GCs in vitro. In conclusion, HMSeBA supplementation is more conducive to promoting follicle development by antioxidant pathway. Graphical Abstract Model of proposed mechanism of 2-Hydroxy-4-methylselenobutanoic acid (HMSeBA) regulated follicle development by antioxidant pathway.
Diurnal Cortisol in Left-Behind Adolescents: Relations to Negative Family Expressiveness and Internalizing Problems

Despite the accumulating evidence for increased risks for behavioral problems in left-behind adolescents in China, little research has explored their HPA axis functioning, which is hypothesized to play a central role in the association between early adversity and health. In the present study, we designed a longitudinal study to examine HPA axis function in left-behind adolescents and its mediating role in the association between family emotional expressiveness and internalizing problems. Participants were 81 adolescents (44 female; 37 male) aged 11–16 years. Salivary cortisol samples were collected six times a day for two consecutive days on regular school days. Negative family expressiveness (NFE) and internalizing problems were measured using self-report questionnaires. The results showed that NFE was negatively associated with diurnal cortisol, and diurnal cortisol was negatively associated with internalizing problems. Further analysis showed that diurnal cortisol secretion measured by AUC (area under the curve) mediated the association between NFE and internalizing problems. Our findings extended the existing literature about left-behind children via a psychoneuroendocrinological perspective, documenting the negative consequences of the family environment for youth health and development.
Safeguarding Lysosomal Homeostasis by DNAJC5/CSPα-Mediated Unconventional Protein Secretion and Endosomal Microautophagy

Neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis (NCL) is a collection of genetically inherited neurological disorders characterized by vision loss, seizure, brain death, and premature lethality. At the cellular level, a key pathologic hallmark of NCL is the build-up of autofluorescent storage materials (AFSM) in lysosomes of both neurons and non-neuronal cells. Molecular dissection of the genetic lesions underlying NCLs has shed significant insights into how disruption of lysosomal homeostasis may lead to lipofuscin accumulation and NCLs. Intriguingly, recent studies on DNAJC5/CSPα, a membrane associated HSC70 co-chaperone, have unexpectedly linked lipofuscin accumulation to two intimately coupled protein quality control processes at endolysosomes. This review discusses how deregulation of unconventional protein secretion and endosomal microautophagy (eMI) contributes to lipofuscin accumulation and neurodegeneration.
Collaborative Online Annotation: Pedagogy, Assessment and Platform Comparisons

Annotating a text while reading is commonplace and essentially as old as printed text itself. Collaborative online annotation platforms are enabling this process in new ways, turning reading from a solitary into a collective activity. The platforms provide a critical discussion forum for students and instructors that is directly content-linked, and can increase uptake of assigned reading. However, the student viewpoint regarding collaborative online annotation platforms remains largely unexplored, as do comparisons between annotation and traditional reading assessment methods, and comparisons between the two leading platforms (Hypothes.is vs. Perusall) for annotation by the same student population. The results in this study indicate that collaborative online annotation is largely preferred by students over a traditional reading assessment approach, that students regularly exceed annotation requirements indicated by an instructor, and that overall annotation quality increased as the students gained experience with the platforms. The data analysis in this study can serve as a practical exemplar for measurement of student annotation output, where baselines have yet to be established. These findings link the established research areas of peer learning, formative assessment, and asynchronous learning, with an emerging educational technology.
Wetting hydraulic properties of cracked soils

xvi The large scale lateral apparatus was developed to capture large number of cracks in the specimens. Cracked soil specimens were obtained by desiccating the soil in room temperature. Flow rates were measured during the lateral flow tests. Water contents were measured during and at end of tests. Instrumentations were utilized to measure change of water content during one of the large scale lateral flow tests. Numerical analyses were performed to investigate performance of the proposed model to analyze change in water content and matric suction of the cracked soil. The results obtained from numerical analyses were compared with those obtained from laboratory experiments. A parametric study was performed to investigate the effect of variation of crack network on change in water content and matric suction of cracked soils. A computer code to generate random crack networks was developed. The computer code generates random crack network from the statistical parameters of the crack network. Connectivity among cracks endpoints are incorporated in the calculation to imitate the desiccation crack network in soils which is interconnected each other. Numerical analyses using the proposed method of change in water content were performed incorporating variation of crack networks. A comparison of the predicted and measured lateral water flow rates showed that the proposed model was able to predict the lateral flow rate through the crack network quite well. Proposed method to analyze change in water content and matric suction of a cracked soil was also able to predict change in water content and matric suction of cracked soils. The results were closer to the measured values than those obtained by modelling the cracked soil as a continuum. This finding indicated that in order to model change in water content and matric suction of cracked soils, the cracks should be modelled as head boundary conditions. In addition, the parametric study showed that with the same statistical parameters of crack network, different average of water content and matric suction can be obtained. Values of maximum variations in average water content and average matric suction were found in this study.
Performance Study of Eco-Friendly Bendable Concrete with Partial Replacement of Polypropylene and Fly Ash

This study focuses on the properties of bendable concrete, in which the reinforcement is micromechanically designed polymer fiber. It also deals with the strain value of the member made of bendable concrete. It made with polypropylene fiber and fly ash as admixtures. This material exhibits an enhanced flexibility significantly. The fly ash added in the ratios of 1.2%, 1.6%, 2.0%, 2.4% and 2.8% while the fiber kept in the ratio of 2.0% in all the mixes. A suitable mix proportion selected based on the trail mix method. For the study, Mix ratio of 1:1.17:2.13 and water cement ratio of 0.40 are used.
Corporate Governance a Predictor of Banks Failure: Evidence from Registered Commercial Banks in Ghana

The quantitative study sought to identify corporate governance elements that precipitate commercial banks failure in Ghana and to outline policy recommendations to address those factors to make commercial banks more resilient and profitable. The quantitative study seeks to contribute to the body of knowledge by providing understanding on factors that contributes to banks failure in emerging economy like Ghana. A random sampling approach was used to collect annual report and published financial statement on 21 commercial banks. Based on this data, a five-year (5) panel data was formed: using a data range (2012 -2016 multiplied by 21 sampled banks) making a total of one hundred and five (105) observations. A random effect model was used to estimate the relationship between corporate governance elements and banks failure. Next, a correlation analysis was employed to examine the relationships between corporate governance elements, banks-specific financial proxies and exogenous factors and banks failure. Results from the study indicate a significant relationship between corporate governance variables, banks-specific financial information and macroeconomic indicators and banks failure. The study recommends the creation of Ghanaian corporate governance act to propose and increase in the female representation on the governing boards of commercial banks. This measure is to increase gender diversity and skills in the boardroom as it is evident in the study that higher gender diversity reduces the risk of banks failure. More so, the study recommends an effective management of credit default rate (using credit default swap to mitigate credit losses and) to boost financial soundness and profitability of banks in Ghana.
Serum Trimethylamine N-oxide and the Diversity of the Intestinal Microbial Flora in Type 2 Diabetes Complicated by Diabetic Kidney Disease.

BACKGROUND Trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) serves as a metabolite of intestinal bacteria as well as a urotoxin influencing the prognosis of chronic kidney disease (CKD), which has become a research hotspot in the field of kidney disease. This study preliminarily explored the alternations of the microbial flora and serum TMAO in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) complicated with diabetic kidney disease (DKD). METHODS Seventeen T2DM patients at the Affiliated Hospital of Zunyi Medical University between September 2018 and February 2019 were included. Among these patients, 8 patients had T2DM complicated with DKD. Eight healthy volunteers constituted the control group. Fresh stool was collected for Illumina sequencing. Based on the sequencing outcomes, the flora diversity and species differences were analyzed. Serum TMAO, cystatin C, urinary albumin/urine creatinine ratios (ACRs), and routine biochemical outcomes were also compared. RESULTS The DKD group exhibited a significantly higher TMAO level than the remaining groups. The high-TMAO group had a significantly increased ACR level compared with the low-TMAO group. TMAO positively correlated with the ACR. Compared with the control group, the DKD group exhibited a decreased flora diversity. At the genus level, both the T2DM group and the DKD group showed decreased numbers of Alloprevotella and Megasphaera compared with the control group. The difference in Megasphaera between the DKD group and the control group was significant. CONCLUSIONS The alternation of the intestinal microbial flora may participate in the development of DKD, and TMAO and chronic inflammation might be important factors for DKD development.
Comparison of two models in differentially private distributed learning

OF THE THESIS Comparison of two models in differentially private distributed learning by Liyang Xie Thesis Director: Professor Anand D. Sarwate Designing medical systems that can automatically diagnose patient’s conditions from test data can greatly improve healthcare systems. With the help of machine learning tools and differential privacy consideration, this system can be made more efficient and powerful. Empirical risk minimization is a common and useful technique with which we can obtain a good approximation of globally optimal classifier and thus give good statistical classification result. Firstly we introduce three models for medical data learning and two methods for distributed model. Then we compare a novel distributed classification method which we called the ”feature method” with traditional averaging method on different real world data sets to gain an insight into their performance and properties. Next we give analysis on the performance of the feature method under nonprivate and differentially private conditions and conduct some experiments to draw several important conclusions from them. Finally we conclude that the distributed learning system we recommend achieve the best result among the three models.
A Comparative Performance of Optimizers and Tuning of Neural Networks for Spoof Detection Framework

—The breakthroughs in securing speaker verification systems have been challenging and yet are explored by many researchers over the past five years. The compromise in security of these systems is due to naturally sounding synthetic speech and handiness of the recording devices. For developing a spoof detection system, the back-end classifier plays an integral role in differentiating spoofed speech from genuine speech. This work conducts the experimental analysis and comparison of up-to-date optimization techniques for a modified form of Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) architecture which is Light CNN (LCNN). The network is standardized by exploring various optimizers such as Adaptive moment estimation, and other adaptive algorithms, Root Mean Square propagation and Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) algorithms for spoof detection task. Furthermore, the activation functions and learning rates are also tested to investigate the hyperparameter configuration for faster convergence and improving the training accuracy. The counter measure systems are trained and validated on ASV spoof 2019 dataset with Logical (LA) and Physical Access (PA) attack data. The experimental results show optimizers perform better for LA attack in contrast to PA attack. Additionally, the lowest Equal Error Rate (EER) of 9.07 is obtained for softmax activation with SGD with momentum wrt LA attack and 9.951 for SGD with nestrov wrt PA attack.
Relationship between Nurses’ Perception of Transformational Leadership Practices and Control over Nursing Practices

Background: Control over nursing practices provides evidence-based practices for high quality, safe, and cost-effective nursing care. Transformational nurse leaders are needed to create a work environment in which nurses have control over their practices. Objective: This study was aimed at determining the relationship between transformational leadership practices of unit charge nurses and nurses’ control over nursing practices. Methodology: This descriptive and correlational study was performed in two public hospitals in Turkey. The sample of the study consisted of 56 unit charge nurses and 220 staff nurses working with these nurses. Data were collected through the Demographic Data Form, Leadership Practices Inventory Self and Observer and Control Over Nursing Practice Scale. The data were evaluated using SPSS 22.0 Windows package. Descriptive statistics and Spearman Correlation Analysis were used to evaluate data. Results: The mean scores obtained from the overall Leadership Practices Inventory by the unit charge nurses and staff nurses were 129.55 ± 12.11 and 124.00 ± 17.45 respectively. There was no statistically significant difference between the unit charge nurses’ and staff nurses’ total scores on leadership practices or score averages on other leadership practices (p ˃ .05). The mean score for the control over nursing practices scale obtained by the unit charge nurses was 121.12 ± 22.70, which was statistically significantly higher than was that of the staff nurses (106.06 ± 29.54) (p= .001). A moderate and positive significant relationship was determined between the staff nurses’ Leadership Practices Inventory total scores and control over nursing practices scores (r = .43, p = .01) Conclusion: According to this study’s results, nurse managers’ behaviors, such as modeling the way for other nurses with whom they work, enabling others to act, inspiring a shared vision and encouraging the heart are important for improving nurses’ control over nursing practices.
Soil moisture estimation in South Asia via SMAP retrieval assimilation of retrievals

A soil moisture retrieval assimilation framework is implemented across South Asia in an attempt to improve regional soil moisture estimation as well as to provide a consistent regional soil moisture dataset. This study aims to improve the spatiotemporal variability of soil moisture estimates by assimilating Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) near-surface soil moisture retrievals into a land surface model. The Noah-MP (v4.0.1) land surface model is run within the NASA Land Information System software framework to model regional land surface processes. NASA Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis 5 for Research and Applications (MERRA2) and GPM Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals (IMERG) provide the meteorological boundary conditions to the land surface model. Assimilation is carried out using both cumulative distribution function (CDF) corrected (DA-CDF) and uncorrected SMAP retrievals (DA-NoCDF). CDF-matching is applied to correct the statistical moments of the SMAP soil moisture retrieval relative to the land surface model. Comparison of assimilated and model-only soil moisture estimates with publicly-available in-situ measurements highlight the relative improvement in soil moisture esti- 10 mates by assimilating SMAP retrievals. similar to the experiments conducted by Kumar et al. (2015) to evaluate SM retrievals across irrigated areas. Their study showed that bias correction of observations via CDF matching can lead to the removal of the information pertaining to the unmodeled processes from the observations when the estimation bias stems from the absence of such processes in the model.
Bio-inspired Search Approach Cross-Domain Location Mapping for Smart Mobile Service System

: The health care service sector is very critical in every country. Although governments have made significant efforts to improve health infrastructure and train more qualified health professionals, the majority of them cannot find jobs within public health facilities. Furthermore, patients queue at health care facilities for hours daily for basic health care services while job creation and reducing these long queues remains a challenge in most developing countries. By leveraging the ubiquitousness of mobile technology, patients can be assisted to request health care services, to be delivered at their locations by qualified healthcare professionals. Given the critical nature of health care services, it is imperative to deliver services on-time without delays. In this regard, finding an optimal path between the service originator and the location of health care professionals is important. In this study, location data was used to provide near-optimal location information by mapping location data between patient and health professional domains. Our mapping approach centers on the hunting behavior of the Kestrel bird and through this, an algorithm is proposed for cross-domain location mapping. The mathematical model that is proposed in this study's major contribution as well as the application of the Kestrel-based Search Algorithm (KSA) for location data generation to find the optimal distance from an initial location. The result is promising in terms of the optimal distance between two locations using the haversine and equirectangular approximation formulas. The KSA was juxtaposed with other renowned meta-heuristic algorithms such as the BAT, Wolf Search Algorithm with Minus Previous Step (WSA-MP), and Ant Colony Optimization (ACO). Results obtained indicate that the equirectangular approximation formula with the KSA has the minimal distance which in practice implies that nature-inspired algorithms can be adopted in location mapping where randomization is essential, especially in a mobile health application.