Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Original Article International Journal of Basic and Applied Physiology

Background: Dengue is a self-limiting acute viral disease characterized by fever, muscle & joint pains, headache, rash, nausea & vomiting. It is transmitted by female mosquitoes mainly of the species Aedes aegypti and less by, Aedes albopictus. Dengue virus infection may be asymptomatic or may cause undifferentiated febrile illness (viral syndrome), dengue fever (DF), or dengue haemorrhagic fever (DHF) including dengue shock syndrome (DSS). Objectives: To evaluate the haematological profile for early clinical diagnosis & prompt management. Methods: Study was done in 100 patients diagnosed as dengue fever. IgM positive or NS 1 positive patients of dengue fever with age group between 18-60 years patients were taken. Parameters of haematological profile was taken in all patients. Result: Out of 100 patients, 22% had mild thrombocytopenia, 47% had moderate thrombocytopenia and 29% had severe thrombocytopenia. Overall 98% of patients had thrombocytopenia. About haematocrit, 36% patients having haematocrit below 40% and 49 % of patients having haematocrit between 40 to 45%, and only 15 % of patients having haematocrit above 45%. Leucopenia was seen in 29 % of patients. Conclusion: Thrombocytopenia was key finding in our study & other associated findings included leucopenia, rise in haematocrit.
From Preference Elicitation to Participatory ML: A Critical Survey & Guidelines for Future Research

The AI Ethics community faces an imperative to empower stakeholders and impacted community members so that they can scrutinize and influence the design, development, and use of AI systems in high-stakes domains. While a growing chorus of recent papers has kindled interest in so-called “participatory ML” methods, precisely what form participation ought to take and how to operationalize these ambitions are seldom addressed. Our survey of the relevant literature shows that in many papers, participation is reduced to highly structured, computational mechanisms designed to elicit mathematically tractable approximations of narrowly-defined moral values. Of papers that actually engage with real people, these engagements typically consist of one-time interactions with individuals that are often unrepresentative of the relevant stakeholders. Motivated by these clear limitations, we introduce a consolidated set of axes to evaluate and improve participatory approaches. We use these axes to analyze contemporary work in this space and outline future AI research directions that could meaningfully contribute to operationalizing the ideal of participation.
“☑ Fairness Toolkits, A Checkbox Culture?” On the Factors that Fragment Developer Practices in Handling Algorithmic Harms

Fairness toolkits are developed to support machine learning (ML) practitioners in using algorithmic fairness metrics and mitigation methods. Past studies have investigated practical challenges for toolkit usage, which are crucial to understanding how to support practitioners. However, the extent to which fairness toolkits impact practitioners’ practices and enable reflexivity around algorithmic harms remains unclear (i.e., distributive unfairness beyond algorithmic fairness, and harms that are not related to the outputs of ML systems). Little is currently understood about the root factors that fragment practices when using fairness toolkits and how practitioners reflect on algorithmic harms. Yet, a deeper understanding of these facets is essential to enable the design of support tools for practitioners. To investigate the impact of toolkits on practices and identify factors that shape these practices, we carried out a qualitative study with 30 ML practitioners with varying backgrounds. Through a mixed within and between-subjects design, we tasked the practitioners with developing an ML model, and analyzed their reported practices to surface potential factors that lead to differences in practices. Interestingly, we found that fairness toolkits act as double-edge swords — with potentially positive and negative impacts on practices. Our findings showcase a plethora of human and organizational factors that play a key role in the way toolkits are envisioned and employed. These results bear implications for the design of future toolkits and educational training for practitioners and call for the creation of new policies to handle the organizational constraints faced by practitioners.
Survey on Secure Keyword Search over Outsourced Data: From Cloud to Blockchain-assisted Architecture

Secure keyword search is a prevailing search service offered in outsourced environments. However, with the increasingly severe security vulnerabilities of conventional centralized outsourcing, the architecture of secure keyword search, with searchable encryption (SE) as the underlying technique, has recently shifted from cloud-centered models to blockchain-assisted models. Existing surveys commonly fail to capture such an evolution and the corresponding benefits. What on earth does blockchain bring about and what are the unexplored challenges? This survey provides a systematic review of secure keyword search over outsourced data from cloud to blockchain-assisted architectures. We propose a taxonomy assorting present studies, depending on whether cloud/blockchain and data sharing are included, in which blockchain-assisted architecture is further divided into blockchain-side and cloud-side keyword search, respectively. Technically, we conclude five types of representative SE techniques with fitting architectures, either cryptographic-based or hardware-dependent. Notably, we propose comprehensive methodologies to select relevant papers, discuss, and compare existing schemes regarding functionalities, security, efficiency, and fairness (up to 21 compared items). Finally, open issues and potential research directions are identified for future work. We aspire to help pave the way for addressing the theoretical and empirical aspects of secure keyword search and full-fledged real-world implementation of blockchain-based keyword search applications.
AN INVESTIGATION OF DISTRICT SPATIAL VARIATIONS OF CHILDHOOD DIARRHOEA AND FEVER MORBIDITY IN MALAWI

Although diarrhoea and malaria are among the leading causes of child mortality and morbidity in Sub-Saharan Africa, few detailed studies have examined the patterns and determinants of these ailments in the most affected communities. In this paper, we investigate the spatial clustering of observed diarrhoea and fever morbidity in Malawi using the 2000 Malawi Demographic and Health survey. Clustering was achieved by mapping the residual district spatial effects using a Bayesian geo-additive logistic model that simultaneously control for spatial dependence in the data and potential nonlinear effects of covariates. For both ailments, we were able to identify a distinct district pattern of childhood morbidity. The spatial patterns emphasise the role of remoteness as well as climatic and geographic factors on morbidity. The fixed effects show the importance of exclusively breastfeeding for diarrhoea and maternal education for both ailments. Diarrhoea and fever were both observed to show an interesting association with a child's age.
Using functional transcranial Doppler ultrasonography to assess language lateralisation: Influence of task and difficulty level

Language is lateralised to the left hemisphere in most people, but it is unclear whether the same degree and direction of lateralisation is found for all verbal tasks and whether laterality is affected by task difficulty. We used functional transcranial Doppler ultrasonography (fTCD) to assess the lateralisation of language processing in 27 young adults using three tasks: word generation (WG), auditory naming (AN), and picture story (PS). WG and AN are active tasks requiring behavioural responses whereas PS is a passive task that involves listening to an auditory story accompanied by pictures. We also examined the effect of task difficulty by a post hoc behavioural categorisation of trials in the WG task and a word frequency manipulation in the AN task. fTCD was used to measure task-dependent blood flow velocity changes in the left and right middle cerebral arteries. All of these tasks were significantly left lateralised: WG, 77% of individuals left, 5% right; AN, 72% left: 4% right; PS, 56% left: 0% right. There were significant positive relationships between WG and AN ( r (cid:1) 0.56) as well as AN and PS ( r (cid:1) . 76) but not WG and PS ( r (cid:1) (cid:2) 0.22). The task difficulty manipulation affected accuracy in both WG and AN tasks, as well as reaction time in the AN task, but did not significantly influence laterality indices in either task. It is concluded that verbal tasks are not interchangeable when assessing cerebral lateralisation, but that differences between tasks are not a consequence of task difficulty. Two further mean activation and LI latency. The mean activation was calculated as the average left and right blood flow velocity relative to baseline levels at the peak left minus right difference and LI latency reflects the time in seconds of the peak left minus right difference, relative to the of the
The current fire situation in the Russian Federation: Implications for enhancing international and regional cooperation in the UN Framework and the Global Programs on Fire Monitoring and Assessment

During the last decade a number of international projects and programmes have been initiated to address the ecological role and the environmental and humanitarian impacts of wildland fires. Considering the importance of the role of Eurasia’s forests in the functioning of the global system and the potential threats by wildland fire to the sustainability of vegetation cover in the region the participation of the Russian Federation in these initiatives is crucial.
Paleogene and Neogene lithostratigrafic units (Belgium)

The presented lithostratigraphy of the Paleogene and Neogene deals only with the formal lithostratigraphic units of formation rank or higher (groups). The names of the lower rank units (members and beds) are just mentioned without description or other information. This lithostratigraphy corresponds largely with the legend of the new series of geological maps of Belgium - Flanders Region on scale 1:50.000, edited since 1993.
Prevalence of Obesity among Type 2 Diabetic Patients: Non-Smokers Housewives Are the Most Affected in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

Objective: To identify the high risk group for developing obesity among a cohort of Saudi diabetic patients. Methods: A cross sectional study on a random sample of known type 2 diabetic patients who were visiting seven primary health care centers in Jeddah,Saudi Arabiawas conducted. Participants were categorized according to their Body Mass Index BMI into 4 groups. Prevalence of obesity was correlated to patients’ gender, age, smoking, educational level and employment status to identify the significant ones. Results: A total of 723 diabetics were included. Males to females’ ratio were almost equal (50.8% and 49.2% respectively). The mean BMI of group was 29.3 ± 6.1. Only (21.9%) of the studied diabetics were in their ideal range of body weight. The remaining was almost equally categorized as overweight or obese. More than one third (38.3%) were obese; among the obese: 22.4% had mild obesity, and 15.9% severe obesity. Percentage of severely obese females were almost triple that of males. The housewives were the least to have normal BMI ratio (15.2%). According to the calculated BMI it is found that being a non-smoker housewife is the significant predicting factor for being obese p 0.05. Conclusion: Prevention and educational programs should target non-smokers housewives Saudi diabetic patients who are at higher risk for developing obesity.
The social landscape of depopulation: The northern San Juan, A.D. 1150--1300

Population decline and relocation are often associated with periods of societal turmoil and reorganization, but they do not always lead to the complete depopulation of a region. What circumstances cause entire societies to leave an area, particularly when innumerable social and socio-natural interactions contributed to creating the conditions prompting large-scale widespread emigration? My research uses the example of the Northern San Juan region---also known as the Mesa Verde region---of the U.S. Southwest to better understand a specific social landscape known to have fostered a complete regional depopulation involving the emigration of thousands of ancestral Puebloan people in the late 13 th century. I use five subregions---Totah, Mesa Verde Proper, McElmo-Monument, West Mesa Verde, and Lower San Juan---as analytical units to explore intraregional variation in demography, the distribution of community centers and public architecture, and patterns of intraregional pottery circulation. I compiled two regional databases for this analysis: a Northern San Juan Pueblo III Period habitation site database with more than 3,720 sites to examine site distributions and occupation histories; and a Pueblo III Period INAA database with over 1,000 samples to assess pottery production and circulation. My results suggest there were three phases of development and change leading up to regional depopulation: the Post- Chacoan Transition (A.D. 1150--1200), Eastern Expansion (A.D. 1200--1240), and Mesa Verde Florescence (A.D. 1240--1300). It is in the context of the historical perspective obtained from conceptualizing the social landscape in this framework that we can understand how intraregional population movement contributed to creating an environment conducive to social change. Specifically, the influx of migrants from the western portion of the region into the eastern subregions coupled with on-going aggregation into community centers resulted in ritual transformation and the intensification of ceremonialism. Noticeable emigration from the eastern Northern San Juan began by A.D. 1260, which precedes the extreme drought conditions and intense violence in the 1270s and 1280s. Consequently, it appears that the stimulus underlying widespread emigration was, in part, associated with the disruption of eastern ceremonial practices and social networks.
Content-Based Photo Quality Assessment

Automatically assessing photo quality from the perspective of visual aesthetics is of great interest in high-level vision research and has drawn much attention in recent years. In this paper, we propose content-based photo quality assessment using both regional and global features. Under this framework, subject areas, which draw the most attentions of human eyes, are first extracted. Then regional features extracted from both subject areas and background regions are combined with global features to assess photo quality. Since professional photographers adopt different photographic techniques and have different aesthetic criteria in mind when taking different types of photos (e.g., landscape versus portrait), we propose to segment subject areas and extract visual features in different ways according to the variety of photo content. We divide the photos into seven categories based on their visual content and develop a set of new subject area extraction methods and new visual features specially designed for different categories. The effectiveness of this framework is supported by extensive experimental comparisons of existing photo quality assessment approaches as well as our new features on different categories of photos. In addition, we propose an approach of online training an adaptive classifier to combine the proposed features according to the visual content of a test photo without knowing its category. Another contribution of this work is to construct a large and diversified benchmark dataset for the research of photo quality assessment. It includes 17,673 photos with manually labeled ground truth. This new benchmark dataset can be down loaded at http://mmlab.ie. cuhk.edu. hk/CUHKPQ/Dataset.htm.
The effects of anesthesia induction and positive pressure ventilation on right-ventricular function: A 3D echocardiography-based prospective observational study

Background: General anesthesia induction with the initiation of positive pressure ventilation creates a vulnerable phase for patients. The impact of positive intrathoracic pressure on cardiac performance has been studied but remains controversial. 3D echocardiography is a valid and MRI-validated bedside tool to evaluate the right ventricle (RV). The aim of this study was to assess the impact of anesthesia induction (using midazolam, sufentanil and rocuronium, followed by sevoflurane) with positive pressure ventilation (PEEP 5, tidal volume 6 – 8 ml/kg) on 2D and 3D echocardiography derived parameters of RV function. Methods: A prospective observational study on fifty-three patients undergoing elective cardiac surgery in a tertiary care university hospital was designed. Transthoracic echocardiography exams were performed before and immediately after anesthesia induction and were recorded together with hemodynamic parameters and ventilator settings. Results: TAPSE as a parameter reflecting the movement of the lateral tricuspid annulus was significantly reduced (mean difference -1.6mm (95% CI -2.6mm to -0.7mm; p=0.0013). Tissue Doppler derived tricuspid annulus peak velocity was also significantly reduced (mean difference -1.9% (95% CI: -2.6 to -1.2; p<0.0001), but global right ventricular ejection fraction (p=0.1607) and right ventricular stroke volume (p=0.1838) did not change. Conclusions: This data shows a preserved right ventricular ejection fraction and right ventricular stroke volume despite reduced baso-apical right ventricular function after anesthesia induction and initiation of positive pressure ventilation. Because only small changes were seen the clinical impact has yet to be determined.
New Gramians for Switched Linear Systems: Reachability, Observability, and Model Reduction

In this paper, we propose new algebraic Gramians for continuous-time switched linear systems, which satisfy generalized Lyapunov equations. The main contribution of this paper is twofold. First, we show that the ranges of those Gramians encode the reachability and observability spaces of a switched linear system. As a consequence, a simple Gramian-based criterion for reachability and observability is established. Second, a balancing-based model order reduction technique is proposed and, under some sufficient conditions, stability preservation and an error bound are shown. Finally, the efficiency of the proposed method is illustrated by means of numerical examples.
is associated with

: Background: Immunosuppressive therapy used in the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is known to reduce vaccine immunogenicity. Aims: This study aimed to 1) predict the humoral response elicited by SARS-CoV-2 vaccination in IBD patients based on their ongoing treatment and other relevant patient and vaccine characteristics and 2) assess the humoral response to a booster dose of mRNA vaccine. Methods: We conducted a prospective study in adult IBD patients. Anti-spike (S) IgG antibodies were measured after initial vaccination and again after one booster dose. A multiple linear regression model was created to predict anti-S antibody titer following initial complete vaccination in different therapeutic groups
Basement Types, Lower Eocene Series, Upper Eocene Olistostromes and the Initiation of the Southern Thrace Basin, NW Turkey

The Eocene sequence of the southern Thrace Basin unconformably overlies two types of basement: (1) Slate, limestone and phyllite crop out in small inliers under the Upper Eocene conglomerates and limestones in the Mecidiye region, north of Saros Bay. These low-grade metamorphic rocks form the eastern extension of the Circum-Rhodope Belt of Greece. (2) In the Şarkoy region south of the Ganos Fault, tectonically elevated basement consisting of serpentinite, metadiabase and Upper Cretaceous blueschists is unconformably overlain by the upper Bartonian to lower Priabonian shallow marine limestones of the Sogucak Formation. In some places erosional remnants of an upper Ypresian transgressive sequence (the newly discovered Disbudak series) underlie the Sogucak Limestones. This Disbudak series starts with sandstone and conglomerate and passes up into sandy limestone, marl and shale. Hydrocarbon exploration wells south of the Ganos Fault have also encountered an ophiolitic melange basement under the Disbudak series and/or under the Sogucak Formation. The Ganos Fault forms the boundary between the two basement types. The Sogucak Limestone is overlain by an Upper Eocene to Early Oligocene flysch sequence with olistostromes. The clasts in the flysch include the Sogucak Limestone, Cretaceous and Palaeocene pelagic limestone, serpentinite, basalt, gabbro, greywacke, quartz-diorite and greenschist. They range in size from sand grains to olistoliths up to one kilometre across. Composite olistoliths consist of pelagic limestone or basalt overlain by the Upper Eocene limestone. The Upper Eocene mass flows were probably formed in an extensional setting and were derived from the south from the flanks of large normal faults related to the opening of the southern Thrace Basin. The Disbudak series is absent along the observed basement-Eocene contacts, which implies that the main transgression leading to the development of the southern Thrace Basin started in the late Bartonian.
Lightning strike density for the contiguous United States from thunderstorm duration records

An improved lightning ground strike climatology has been obtained from thunderstorm duration data recorded by 450 air weather stations. From lightning strike location data collected in Florida and Oklahoma, it was found that strike density could be estimated from thunderstorm duration by the equation N/sub s/ = 0.054H/sup 1/ /sup 1/, where N/sub s/ is the number of strikes per square kilometer and H is thunderstorm duration in hours. This relationship was applied to thunderstorm duration data from the aviation stations to obtain lightning strike density for the contiguous United States.
Serum Derived Exosomes From Pancreatic Cancer Patients Promoted Metastasis: An iTRAQ-Based Proteomic Analysis

Background: Pancreatic cancer (PC) is one of the most aggressive malignancies and has a poor prognosis despite being extensively researched. The role of serum-derived exosomes in tumorigenesis and the development of PC is still unclear. Method: The present study employed iTRAQ-based proteomic analysis to search for differences between the serum exosomes of PC patients and those from control patients. Then, bioinformatics methods were used to analyze the functions of the identi ﬁ ed proteins, and the possible functions were veri ﬁ ed through cell culture experiments. Results: A total of 611 proteins were identi ﬁ ed from exosomes, and 141 proteins were differentially expressed, with 91 up- and 50 down regulated proteins in PC cancer compared to healthy controls. Further analysis indicated that APOE serves as an important hub in the network. In addition, CRP, VWF, APOA2, NIN, and GSK3B potentially interact with many other proteins. We then tested the effect of patient serum-derived exosomes on pancreatic cancer cells and found that patient serum-derived exosomes, but not those from healthy controls, induced cell proliferation, migration, and EMT, supporting the role of exosomes in metastasis. Conclusion: Our data suggest that exosomes derived from PC patients may promote