Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Age and time on dialysis are major associations with carotid plaques in non-diabetic HD patients

Introduction: Accelerated atherosclerosis is a well-recognized characteristic of end stage renal disease (ESRD), as one of the leading factors associated with the high cardiovascular morbidity and mortality in this patient population. Several studies have been done correlating the presence of atherosclerotic carotid plaques with nutritional status and inflammation in this setting. Nevertheless, traditional risk factors like hypertension, smoking and dyslipidemia must always be taken into account in the context of the specific ethnic, geographic and cultural aspects of a given renal population. Aim: The present study was designed to describe the prevalence of advanced atherosclerosis, as detected by the presence of carotid plaques, and its correlation with epidemiological data, traditional and nontraditional risk factors in non-diabetic hemodialysis (HD) patients. Methods: Thirty-nine patients on a regular HD program were evaluated (mean age: 47.0±12.8 years, 20 men, mean time on dialysis: 5.2±2.9 years). Atherosclerosis was assessed by carotid Doppler and inflammation by serum C reactive protein (CRP). Data on nutritional status, biochemical parameters, and arterial pressure (AP) were also analyzed. Results: Carotid plaque was a prevalent finding, observed in 64.1% of the patients. The age (50.8±10.6 years) and time on dialysis (6 [1-15] years) were significantly higher in the group of patients with plaques, compared to the group of patients without plaques (41.3±14.5 and 4 [1-11], respectively, P<0.05). There was no statistical difference between the groups regarding CRP, nutritional status, biochemistry parameters, and mean pre and post HD arterial, diastolic and systolic pressure. Carotid plaques were associated with age higher than 38 (OR.: 28.29; 95% CI.: 2.68-712.8; p < 0.001), and time on dialysis higher than 4 years (OR.: 5.5; 95% CI.: 1.02-33.37; p<0.05). In addition, 70% of patients with post HD diastolic AP lower than 90 mmHg presented carotid plaques. Conclusions: The age and time on dialysis were the major factors associated with the presence of carotid plaques in non-diabetic HD population studied. In addition, the data on arterial pressure support the search for advanced atherosclerosis in patients presenting low levels of post HD diastolic arterial pressure. carotid plaques, arterial pressure. None of the markers of inflammation or nutritional status was associated with these atherosclerotic lesions.
Damage identification of civil structures via response reconstruction

I PUBLICATIONS ARISING FROM THE THESIS . V ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . VII CONTENT . IX LIST OF FIGURES . XV LIST OF TABLES . XXV LIST OF NOTATIONS . XXVII LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS . XXXV CHAPTER
A Code-Oriented Partitioning Computation Offloading Strategy for Multiple Users and Multiple Mobile Edge Computing Servers

In this article, we investigate code-oriented partitioning computation offloading strategy for multiple user equipments (UEs) and multiple mobile edge computing servers with limited resources (i.e., limited computing power and waiting task queues with finite capacity). This article aims to develop an offloading strategy to decide the execution location, CPU frequency, and transmission power for UE while minimizing the execution overhead (i.e., a weighted sum of energy consumption and computational time) of UE's applications, which is an NP-hard problem. To achieve the objective, first, we transform the problem into a convex optimization problem and find the optimal solution. Second, we propose a decentralized computation offloading strategy (DCOS) algorithm for UE, and define a dictionary data structure for recording the strategy of the UE to reduce the algorithm complexity. Finally, the effectiveness of DCOS, and the impact of various key parameters on the strategy and overhead are demonstrated by simulation experiments.
Comparative Study and Measurement of Form Errors for the Component Printed by FDM and PolyJet Process

Received: 17 April 2019 Accepted: 26 July 2019 In Rapid Prototyping (RP) parts are manufactured layer-upon-layer. The part accuracy primarily influenced by process parameters, material, geometry of parts and types of RP technology used. This work presents the comparative study of dimensional accuracy, form error (roundness, flatness and cylindricity), surface roughness, cost analysis and tolerance grade of a automotive parts (connecting rod) generated through fused deposition modeling system (Ultimaker-2, MakerBot Replector-2) and polyjet 3D printing system (Objet30). CATIA-V6 was used for the 3D modeling and coordinate measuring machine (CMM) was employed for the measurements of dimensions. Optical profilometer was considered to measure the surface roughness of component. ISO UNI EN 20286-I (1995) and DIN 16901 standards was used for the evaluating IT grades for each selected dimension. Total cost of prototype generated by different 3D printers was calculated on the basis of cost of build material, cost of support material, labour cost and machine cost. The results of measurement show that quality of prototype fabricated by Objet30 is better than Ultimaker and MakerBot. Form error and surface roughness of objet30 printer was good enough to produce industrial grade prototype. The novel contribution of this work lies in the fact that no such studies was conducted using complex shape geometry in the archival literature.
Computational hemodynamic investigation of a new bileaflet mechanical heart valve

In this paper, we perform a numerical analysis for simulating steady, two-dimensional, laminar blood flow through our proposed design, known as the Butterfly mechanical heart valve, where the leaflets are fully opened. Blood has been assumed to be Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluid using the Casson model for shear-thinning behavior. A non-uniform Cartesian grid generation technique is presented to generate a two-dimensional grid for the irregular geometry of the Butterfly valve. The governing Navier–Stokes equations of flow, written in a stream function–vorticity formulation, are solved by the finite difference method with hybrid differencing of the convective terms. The computed results show that the blood’s non-Newtonian nature significantly affects the flow field with the existence of recirculation and consequently stagnation causing thrombus formation, as well as an increase of the shear stress along the wall, which contributes to hemolytic blood damage. The results demonstrate that the model is capable of predicting the hemodynamic features most interesting to physiologists. It can be used to assess thromboembolic problems occurring with heart valves and in the design of cardiac prostheses.
Penerapan Aplikasi Multimedia Interaktif Pembelajaran Membaca Metode Suku Kata dan Digital Media Dongeng Karakter

Masa depan teknologi informasi akan melibatkan banyak penggunaan teknologi informasi canggih dan kecepatan tinggi teknologi komunikasi dalam jaringan global. Dengan dasar teknologi multimedia dan didukung oleh sistem komputer berkecepatan tinggi, sistem informasi layanan dapat disajikan menjadi lebih menarik dan bentuk nyata dalam bentuk informasi multimedia, juga mudah dikelola dan digunakan untuk komputer pribadi. Metode Pengembangan perangkat aplikasi multimedia menggunakan metode Luther yaitu proses yang digunakan untuk membantu pengembang perangkat lunak dalam membentuk model dari perangkat lunak yang harus dibuat. Dalam pembuatan aplikasi ini, menggunakan kolaborasi dalam bentuk bantuan aplikasi media menggambar, animasi, dan juga authoring terdiri dari Adobe photoshop, Adobe Director, Adobe Flash, dan aplikasi suara Sony Vegas. Multimedia pembelajar interaktif berbasis mobile dapat membantu siswa belajar dan memahami cara membaca metode suku kata dengan tambahan digital media dongeng karakter. Salah satu multimedia interaktif telah dibuat untuk membantu anak-anak dalam belajar membaca metode suku kata. Program multimedia tersebut dibuat dengan menggabungkan beberapa animasi, gambar, film, dan permainan yang terhubung dengan materi untuk membaca metode suku kata. Gambar virtual digunakan untuk anak-anak untuk memahami dan belajar dari materi dengan membandingkan dengan hal-hal nyata dalam hidup kita. Multimedia pembelajar interaktif ini dikemas dalam bentuk aplikasi mobile, yang dapat diakses di google playstore. Program multimedia interaktif yang dibuat untuk anak-anak Kelas Baca Anakku Sayang. Dengan adanya aplikasi ini diharapkan dapat memberi nilai tambah bagi anak.
MEDSAFE: PROTOTYPE OF A VIRTUAL GAME ON THE PREPARATION AND ADMINISTRATION OF
 MEDICATIONS

Objective: to build and validate a virtual learning object configured as a digital simulation game about the medication administration process. Method: a methodological study that presents the process of construction and validation of an educational game. After the construction of the prototype, questionnaires were applied to validate quality content and usability. Seven lecturers participated in the research as judges and five Nursing students as representatives of the target audience. Data were analyzed based on the content validity index and on the level of agreement between the items of the created scales. Results: after the creation stages of the game entitled MedSafe, lecturers were invited as judges for content validation, obtaining an index of 0.78. The quality assessment was performed by the target audience and proved a satisfactory mean value. In the usability evaluation, in which lecturers and students participated, a low level of agreement was reached, reinforcing the need for improvements in the game system. Conclusions: the prototype of the MedSafe game demonstrated its potential to be used in the teaching of the medication administration process and, from the results of this prototyping stage, modifications will be made and will allow for the improvement of the game that will be applied in future research studies.
ManiGAN: Text-Guided Image Manipulation

The goal of our paper is to semantically edit parts of an image matching a given text that describes desired attributes (e.g., texture, colour, and background), while preserving other contents that are irrelevant to the text. To achieve this, we propose a novel generative adversarial network (ManiGAN), which contains two key components: text-image affine combination module (ACM) and detail correction module (DCM). The ACM selects image regions relevant to the given text and then correlates the regions with corresponding semantic words for effective manipulation. Meanwhile, it encodes original image features to help reconstruct text-irrelevant contents. The DCM rectifies mismatched attributes and completes missing contents of the synthetic image. Finally, we suggest a new metric for evaluating image manipulation results, in terms of both the generation of new attributes and the reconstruction of text-irrelevant contents. Extensive experiments on the CUB and COCO datasets demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed method.
Consumers' Risk Perceptions of Prescription and Over-the-Counter Medications

Background: Flawed judgments about medication risks potentially jeopardize efforts to protect the public. It has been shown that positive risk/benefit perceptions by patients and providers lead to better patient outcomes, higher acceptance of drug therapy, and higher adherence rates. Objective: To explore consumers' level of familiarity with 10 best-selling over-the-counter (OTC) and prescription drug products, correlate familiarity with risk perceptions regarding those agents, and ascertain common sources of information regarding the medications studied. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in the major metropolitan tri-county area of south Florida using a facilitator-administered survey instrument. Data collection involved asking consumers about the extent to which they agreed with statements related to risk perceptions, familiarity, and sources of information for 10 best-selling medications. Participants were recruited from a convenience sample of 1,035 south Florida residents. Results: When ranking the drugs by familiarity, 972 respondents reported a higher level of familiarity with OTC than prescription medications. Overall, prescription agents were perceived to be riskier than OTC products (p < 0.01); however, individual respondents tended to perceive the listed drugs as either risky or not regardless of their OTC or prescription status. Direct-to-consumer advertisements were mentioned most frequently as information sources. Conclusions: As shown in this study, marketing status, provider interaction, and effects of an undefined health risk are variables that contribute to consumers' decision-making regarding the medication use process.
Was gibt es Neues in den neuen Leitlinien zur Clostridium difficile-Infektion?

Clostridium difficile, ein gram-positives sporenbildendes anaerobes Stäbchen, wurde 1935 in der Darmflora gesunder Neugeborener beschrieben [1]. C. difficile gilt als der heutzutage wichtigste Erreger der nosokomialen Diarrhö. Die Erstbeschreibung der durch Toxine von C. difficile ausgelösten pseudomembranösen Kolitis erfolgte 1978 durch Bartlett [2]. Insbesondere die Verordnung von Cephalosporinen und anderen Breitspektrum-Betalactamen, neueren Fluorochinolonen und Clindamycin, aber auch von anderen antimikrobiell wirksamen Substanzen kann zur durch C. difficile ausgelösten Diarrhö (CDAD) und Colitis führen; es gibt zahlreiche weitere Risikofaktoren, zu denen auch hohes Alter gehört [3–11].
Playful learning with sound-augmented toys: comparing children with and without visual impairment

Sound-augmented toys producing factual knowledge were thought to encourage incidental, playful learning in children with visual impairments (VIs). A group of 15 children with VIs and 22 sighted controls played with a sound-augmented savannah landscape and listened to an informative story in a counterbalanced order. Children's knowledge about savannah animals was assessed at baseline and after each condition in order to quantitatively compare knowledge gains between conditions. Results indicated that children with VIs gained more knowledge than sighted controls from playing with the sound-augmented toy. Furthermore, offering both the augmented toy and the informative story led to higher knowledge gains than a single medium, especially in children with VIs. Sound-augmented toys could therefore be a useful addition to the current curriculum in special education for children with VIs.
Involving radiographers in mammography image interpretation and reporting in symptomatic breast clinics: a realist evaluation.

Breast cancer is most often diagnosed using x-ray imaging (mammography). Images are traditionally interpreted and reported by medically qualified practitioners, 'radiologists'; due to radiologist workforce shortages in recent years, the non-medical practitioners producing the images, radiographers, have become involved in their interpretation. This study used realist evaluation (RE) methodology and qualitative research methods to explore the change. The aims of the study were to explain how and why mammography image interpretation and reporting (MIIR) could be transferred from radiologists to radiographers and identify what the consequences of this might be for patients, practitioners and service providers. In Stage 1 of the study literature was reviewed to generate a series of ‘programme theories’ that hypothesised how responsibility for MIIR might be transferred from radiologists to radiographers, how radiographers could acquire the necessary knowledge and skills and how real-life situated factors might influence their practice. Stage 2 of the study field-tested these theories and demonstrated that: • involving radiographers in double reporting roles could improve diagnostic accuracy but required additional resource, did not always streamline the diagnostic journey and did not address local radiologist shortages; • task substitution of trained and experienced radiographers could release radiologists for other duties in symptomatic clinics; • role substitution of radiographers for radiologists might enable services to maintain and / or increase symptomatic service provision. Stage 3 of the study re-tested and refined programme theories about ‘role substitution’. In addition to confirming that radiographers could achieve the expertise necessary to replace radiologists in diagnostic breast clinics, Stage 3 identified that: • developing expertise required both the development of competence across a wide range of cases and the development of confident decision making; • the multidisciplinary team operated as a ‘community of practice’ and provided radiographers with a social learning environment within which they improved their MIIR performance and gained acceptance as radiologist substitutes.
Web usability test in 60 seconds: a theoretical foundation and empirical test

The aim of this research is to explore the possibility of web usability test in 60 seconds rather than unlimited time by customers. Usability was tested by two major testing methods: system usability scale (SUS) and NetQu@l. 60 customers as two groups were involved in the experimental design procedure. The assessment included an online shopping website where one group tested in 60 seconds and other group had 3 days to test. Result shows that there are significance differences in SUS based testing and no significant differences in NetQu@l based testing. Altogether, these results provide further support that SUS based usability testing can be implemented in 60 seconds time frame without imposing additional cognitive load on customers.
Development of Arabic evaluations in information retrieval

The field of information retrieval has observed noticeable growth over the past decades in reaction to the prolonged practice of the internet and the dreadful requirement of users to hunt for huge amounts of digital information. Assuming the stable intensification of Arabic e-content, brilliant information retrieval systems must be planned to uniform the nature and needs of the Arabic language. This paper shelters graceful on the present development in the field of Arabic information retrieval finds the trials that delay the development of this learning and proposes recommendations for additional research. This paper practices the imaginative analytical technique to scrutinize the genuineness of Arabic educations in the field of information retrieval and to learn the difficulties that are being confronted in this area. Especially, the earlier literature on information retrieval is reviewed by searching the connected databases and websites.
Community-acquired methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus infections of the hand

BackgroundThe purpose of this study was to determine the incidence and patterns of community-acquired methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) hand infections in patients that required hospital admission and surgical drainage at a large urban, county hospital. MethodsA retrospective chart review of 247 patients treated with surgical debridement of hand infections from January 2003 to December 2006 was done. Nosocomial infections were excluded, leaving 192 patients with community-acquired infections. Each surgical specimen was cultured and tested for antibiotic susceptibility. A database was created to track each culture along with each patient's demographics. Particular attention was paid to infections with Staphylococcus aureus. Patient demographics were analyzed using Chi-square and Student t-test when appropriate. ResultsOf 192 patients, 94 had MRSA (48.9%), 30 had methicillin sensitive Staphylococcus aureus MSSA (15.6%) and 68 (35.4%) had other organisms. Over 4 years, both the total number of hand infections and the number of MRSA infections increased. Incarceration and history of mental illness were the most significant predictors for community-acquired MRSA with an odds ratio of 3.85 (95% CI of 1.22-12.11) and 3.42 (95% CI of 1.04-11.23), respectively. Smokers and spider bite injuries were more likely associated with community-acquired MRSA than other organisms (P-values=0.027 and 0.018, respectively). Although not statistically significant, the mean length of stay for community-acquired MRSA patients was 6.82 days compared with 5.17 days for MSSA patients (P=0.07). ConclusionsThe number of community-acquired MRSA hand infections is on the rise in our community and orthopaedic population. Risk factors associated with community-acquired MRSA infections include a history of incarceration, mental illness, smoking and spider bites.
Real-Time Person Re-Identification for Mobile Robots to Improve Human-Robot Interaction

Mobile robots operating in seniors’ homes can serve as social companions and assist with daily tasks, thus enhancing the seniors’ quality of life [104]. In order for robots to assist seniors, it is crucial that they are equipped with sets of social and interactive skills to enable them to have natural and personalized interactions. Personalized interactions, such as using patients’ proper names or remembering personal preferences, is necessary to establish strong social relationships [4, 45], and is a key factor to improve trust in human-robot interaction [37]. A prerequisite for robots to achieve personalized interactions, however, is the ability to automatically recognize and re-identify people around them [4]. Existing person re-identification systems for mobile robots are highly restricted in terms of where robots can operate, and do not stimulate natural and personalized interactions because they need preliminary knowledge about the robot’s users [12, 18], rely on facial cues [113, 115], or use data collected from external sensors [45]. This thesis introduces two lightweight Siamese convolutional neural networks, LuNet Light and LuNet Lightest, designed for the problem of person re-identification in a robotic setting without relying on the aforementioned restrictions. Despite being significantly more lightweight than other person re-identification systems [3, 120], LuNet Lightest achieves near state-ofthe-art results on the MARS dataset evaluation protocols [135]. This thesis additionally presents a set of evaluation measures tailored to evaluate reidentification systems for robots operating in various environments. When simulating crowded environments, LuNet Lightest reaches 92.4% balanced accuracy on the proposed evaluation protocol. As a result of the lightweight architecture, LuNet Lightest achieves real-time frame-rates of 71.6 frames per second when using a GPU, 33.9 frames per second when using a CPU without GPU, and 15.7 frames per second when using only one core of the same CPU, rendering the proposed system highly suitable for low-cost, hardware-constrained robots. The proposed person re-identification system will enable assistive mobile robots to robustly and accurately identify their users, and is a preliminary step to improve trust and attain natural and personalized interaction between robots and patients.
The Nitty–GRITties of Success: Computational Analysis of Grit From Language

Grit is a prominent personality trait that measures an individuals passion and perseverance for long-term goals. Grit entails that zeal and persistence of motive play a key role in determining an individuals success in the long run, as opposed to natural talent. But how does one identify and distinguish between gritty and non-gritty individuals? Do they use language differently? In this paper, we seek to answer these questions using a social media setting. We build a new crowd-sourced Twitter corpus that contains the posts of 464 users along with their grit scores, and explore how grit correlates with other major behavioural and personality traits. We then train machine learning classification models to predict the grit level of an individual using his/her Twitter posts, and show that language can be effectively used to infer this personality trait.