Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
LENGTH–WEIGHT AND LENGTH–LENGTH RELATIONSHIPS OF SIX PONYFISH SPECIES FROM THE PERSIAN GULF

Length–weight relationship (LWR) and length–length relationship (LLR) were estimated for six species of ponyfishes captured in the Persian Gulf, Iran. The LWRs indicated isometric growth in ornate ponyfish (Equulites lineolatus), common ponyfish (Leiognathus equulus) and deep pugnose ponyfish (Secutor ruconius) species, positive allometric growth in striped ponyfish (Aurigequula fasciata) and negative allometric growth in decorated ponyfish (Nuchequula gerreoides) and orangefin ponyfish (Photopectoralis bindus). LWR and LLR parameters for one of the species (E. lineolatus) are given for the first time. The relationships between TL, FL and SL were all linear and highly correlated (for all cases: r > 0.97).
Assessment of nutritional status of the geriatric patients attending the outpatient department of an urban health training centre: a cross-sectional study

Both the number and the proportion of older persons defined as aged 65 and above are growing in virtually all countries, and worldwide trends are likely to continue unabated. In 2002 there were an estimated 605 million older persons in the world, nearly 400 million of whom were living in low-income countries. Greece and Italy had the highest proportion of elderly expected to reach more than 1.2 billion, with about 840 million of these in lowincome countries. In India, geriatric age group (aged 65 years and above) constitute 8.6% of the total population as per 2011 census.
MicroRNA-663b enhances migration and invasion by targeting adenomatous polyposis coli 2 in colorectal carcinoma cells

Colorectal carcinoma (CRC) is one of the leading causes of cancer-associated mortality worldwide. Dysregulation of microRNA (miR)-663b has been reported in a variety of diseases. However, the specific biological function of miR-663b in CRC requires further investigation. The aim of the present study was to elucidate the role and underlying molecular mechanism of action of miR-663b in CRC. Reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) analysis and western blot analysis were employed to measure the expression of miR-663b at the RNA and protein level, respectively. Flow cytometry was used to detect cell apoptosis. Cell proliferation, migration and invasion were evaluated by the Cell Counting Kit-8, wound healing and Transwell assays, respectively. A dual-luciferase reporter assay was used to validate the potential target gene of miR-663b. The expression of miR-663b was identified to be markedly upregulated in CRC cells. Ectopic miR-663b expression promoted CRC cell proliferation, migration and invasion, and inhibited apoptosis. The dual-luciferase reporter assay identified adenomatous polyposis coli 2 (APC2) as a direct target of miR-663b in CRC cells. Further investigation indicated that miR-663b was involved in CRC cell invasion through the Wnt/β-catenin pathway. Therefore, overexpression of miR-663b was able to promote CRC cell proliferation, migration and invasion by regulating the Wnt/β-catenin pathway through targeting APC2, suggesting that miR-663b may be a useful target for the diagnosis and treatment of CRC.
DETERMINATION OF PARASITE SPECIES OF CUTANEOUS LEISHMANIASIS USING NESTED PCR IN DAMGHAN - IRAN, DURING 2008

Mohammadi Azni S (MSc), Rassi Y (PhD)*, Oshaghi MA (PhD) Yaghoobi Ershdi MR (PhD), Mohebali M (PhD), Abai MR (MSc) Mohtarami F (MSc), Nokandeh Z (BSc), Rafizadeh S (BSc), Khojami GhM MSc of Medical Entomology and Vector Control, Semnan University of Medical Sciences, Damghan, Iran. Professor, Department of Medical Entomology and Vector Control, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. Associtae Professor, Department of Medical Entomology and Vector Control, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. Professor, Department of Medical Parasitology, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. Academic Instructor, Depatment of Medical Entomology and Vector Control, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. BSc of Microbiology, Damghan Health Center, Semnan University of Medical Sciences, Damghan, Iran. Emegency Center of Medicine, Ministry of Health and Medical Education, Terhan, Iran. Technician of Laboratory Sciences, Damghan Health Center, Semnan University of Medical Sciences, Damghan, Iran. ___________________________________________________________________________ Abstract
Potential of new innovative confinement for square reinforced concrete columns

The most popular shape of column section used in reinforced concrete buildings is square or rectangle. Besides longitudinal bars, it is normally reinforced with traditional rectilinear or square shape of transverse steel (stirrups) or confinement. It is well known that circular spiral of reinforcing bars used in circular columns serve better ductility or performance compared to rectilinear stirrups in rectangular columns. Up to present, the use of spiral is limited only to circular columns. This is because for rectangular or square columns, it is not easy to shape the spiral on site during construction. The study focuses on the potential application of new innovative rectilinear or square spiral when used for rectangular or square concrete columns. The result of the study is that the proposed new innovative confinement which introduces the use of rectilinear or square spiral without any discontinuity or seismic hooks like those in the stirrups, as well as the introduction of interlocking system has successfully improved the ductility and performance of the columns. With this new innovative confinement, the confined core area is increased, the congestion can be avoided (no seismic hooks), and effectiveness of confining influence is improved (overlapped confining area through interlocking system).
Evaluation of Pre-Service Education Programme in Terms of Educational Assessment

This study evaluated the training of pre-service teachers in the various tertiary institutions in Ghana to find out whether professionally trained teachers are given adequate training in assessment. The methodology employed for this study was a qualitative case study. The study focused on two universities and the colleges of education in Ghana. Unstructured interviews were also conducted using an interview guide. The purposive sampling procedure was used to sample three teaching practice supervisors who are college professors, five preservice teachers, and two teaching practice coordinators. A total of ten respondents were interviewed. Through purposive sampling technique, five different sets of documents were sampled and critically analysed. Qualitative content analysis revealed that the training of pre-service teachers in tertiary institutions in Ghana placed less emphasis on how to assess students. The major emphasis of the training of pre-service teachers was on lesson planning, delivery, and demonstration of pedagogical skills with the aim of imparting knowledge. Based on the findings, it was commended that the management of educational institutions should factor the educational assessment a core element in the training of pre-service teachers.
A climatology of surface–air temperature difference over the Tibetan Plateau: Results from multi‐source reanalyses

The Tibetan Plateau (TP), known as earth's “Third Pole,” influences regional and even global weather and climate systems through its mechanical and thermal‐dynamical forcing. Near‐surface (2 m) air temperature (Ta) and surface (skin) temperature (Ts) are two crucial parameters of land–atmosphere interactions and climate change. Their difference (ΔT = Ts − Ta) determines the heating source over the TP that drives the Asian summer monsoon. This study focuses on climatology, inter‐annual variability, and long‐term trend of ΔT over the TP in the last four decades (1979–2018), based on four latest reanalysis datasets including ERA‐Interim, ERA5, MERRA2, and JRA55, along with observational data. We show that ΔT‐based different datasets display fairly different climatology in terms of seasonality, spatial distribution, and long‐term trend. ΔT exhibits a clear seasonality with negative value in winter and positive ones in summer despite different strengths and timings presented by the reanalyses. Along with global warming, all reanalyses except JRA55 exhibit obvious downwards trends of ΔT in a spatially non‐uniform way. The median ΔT among the four reanalyses features uniform decreases in all seasons, with the most distinct area on the northern TP, as well as the largest and least decreases in autumn and spring, respectively. Further analysis shows that the differences in ΔT are most likely associated with discrepancies in radiation forcing, snow cover, wind speed, and boundary layer height within the reanalyses. The present findings highlight the difficulty for the state‐of‐the‐art reanalyses to represent the climate change over the TP and point to possible factors behind the deficiencies identified.
Joint Enhancement And Denoising of Low Light Images Via JND Transform

Low light images suffer from low dynamic range and severe noise due to low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). In this paper, we propose joint enhancement and denoising of low light images via just-noticeable-difference (JND) transform. We achieve contrast enhancement and noise reduction simultaneously based on human visual perception. First, we perform contrast enhancement based on perceptual histogram to effectively allocate a dynamic range while preventing over-enhancement. Second, we generate JND map based on an HVS response model from foreground and background luminance, called JND transform. Then, we refine JND map using Weber’s law and visual masking. Weber’s law enhances the JND map based on the luminance variation after enhancement, while visual masking provides noise suppression for smooth regions and detail enhancement for texture regions. Finally, we conduct chroma denoising that transfers texture information of the denoised luma channel to the chroma channels by guided image filtering. Experimental results show that the proposed method achieves good performance in contrast enhancement and noise reduction while successfully preserving details.
Comparison of two plain radiographic and 3D-based measurement methods for posterior malleolar fragment size in trimalleol ankle fractures

Aim: The aim of this study is, to compare the posterior malleolar fragment (PMF) sizing between lateral ankle radiography measurement and computer assistted 3D modelling (CA3DM) methods Methods: Fifty-one patients between january 2015 and november 2018 with posterior malleolar fractured were included in this study. The rate of PMF to the articular surface at the distal end of the tibia was calculated by two different imaging methods by two surgeons. According to posterior fragment size, patients were separated into two groups. Group 1 was consisted of posterior fragment size smaller than 15% and group 2 was bigger than 15% due to CA3DM. Results: The interobserver correlation (IOC) between two observers and CA3DM was 44.3%. Also the IOC between first observer and CA3DM was 35.7% (p 0.05), second observer and CA3DM was 51.6% (p 0.05), first and CA3DM was 18.6% (p>0.05), second observer and CA3DM was 7.1% (p>0.05) and two observers was 49% (p<0.05). Conclusion: Our study shows that posterior malleolar fragment size measuring on plain radiography is not a safe method for bigger fragments and CA3DM method may be a more reliable to assess correct fragment size and also to analyze fracture morphology. But for fragments ≤15% CA3DM and plain radiographic measures are not statistically different.
Cartridge based nucleic acid amplification test: a sensitive diagnostic tool for tuberculosis on fine needle aspirates samples

Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the world’s deadliest communicable diseases and worldwide around 10 million people fall ill with TB each year according to global tuberculosis report 2019 of World Health Organisation. The causative agent is Mycobacterium tuberculosis. India stands first with the highest burden of TB. Inspite of common involvement of lungs, TB can affect any organ or system of the body. Extra pulmonary tuberculosis according to WHO classification criteria is an infection by M. tuberculosis affecting tissues and organs outside the pulmonary parenchyma. In India, 10 to 15% of total TB cases are of extra pulmonary tuberculosis which commonly involves the pleura, lymph nodes, gastrointestinal tract and other organs with a significant mortality rate (25 to 50%). Cytology and conventional smear microscopy have been used as the initial diagnostic tools for tuberculous lymphadenitis in resource poor settings. Fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) is a ABSTRACT
A Dynamic Stream Weight Backprop Kalman Filter for Audiovisual Speaker Tracking

Audiovisual speaker tracking is an application that has been tackled by a wide range of classical approaches based on Gaussian filters, most notably the well-known Kalman filter. Recently, a specific Kalman filter implementation was proposed for this task, which incorporated dynamic stream weights to explicitly control the influence of acoustic and visual observations during estimation. Inspired by recent progress in the context of integrating uncertainty estimates into modern deep learning frameworks, this paper proposes a deep neural-network-based implementation of the Kalman filter with dynamic stream weights, whose parameters can be learned via standard backpropagation. This allows for jointly optimizing the parameters of the model and the dynamic stream weight estimator in a unified framework. An experimental study on audiovisual speaker tracking shows that the proposed model shows comparable performance to state-of-the-art recurrent neural networks with the additional advantage of requiring a smaller number of parameters and providing explicit uncertainty information.
SIGNIFICANCE OF RED CELL DISTRIBUTION WIDTH AS A PREDICTOR IN NEONATAL SEPSIS

Introduction: Neonatal sepsis is characterized by presence of bacteremia and clinical manifestations caused by microorganisms and their toxic products, when neonatal sepsis identified early and accurately, the degree of severity can be easily determined which help proper management. Therefore, recognizing a single marker or set of markers for diagnosis of such problem may help decrease the global impact of sepsis. Aim of the Work: Evaluation the role of RDW as a marker for diagnosis of neonatal sepsis and a marker for predicting the clinical outcome of the neonatal sepsis. Patients and methods: The study was a prospective study of 100 neonates (75 cases & 25 controls) who were admitted into the neonatal intensive care unit of Al-Hussein University Hospital during the period from June 2018 to April 2019. A Written consentwas obtained from the parents of patients. Results: mean RDW was significantly higher in cases compared to controls (16.55 ± 2.56 & 14.96 ± 1.63 respectively) (P < 0.006). Significant difference regarding RDW value that increased in parallel with the severity of mild sepsis to severe sepsis and septic shock (14.80%, 16.50% and 19.25% respectively; p < 0.0001). HB was nearly equal in cases and the controls, the difference was not statistically significant (p=0.799), CRP level was normal in 80% of controls, and was elevated in all cases with statistically significant difference (P < 0.001). CRP showed a statistically significant relationship (P < 0.001) with the severity of the disease, higher in septic shock than sever cases than in mild ones (83.03 ± 34.41 & 33.68 ± 9.47 & 20.39 ± 10.40femtoliter respectively). Platelets were lower among septic shock than severe neonatal sepsis and mild forms of sepsis (120.7 ± 41.28 & 172.1 ± 48.88 & 241.4 ±94.95 respectively) it shows statistically significant relation to the severity of the disease (P =<0.001).
The housing risk premium in a production economy

ABSTRACT This article studies how the housing risk premium is determined in a simple real business cycle model. We present a consumption-based asset pricing model for the housing risk premium and evaluate whether the model is able to explain the observed housing risk premium. Our findings show that a real business cycle model with generalized recursive preferences is able to match the observed housing risk premium. We also find that the volatility of the housing demand shock plays a crucial role in determining the risk–return relationship for housing.
Linear and third-order nonlinear optical properties of self-assembled plasmonic gold metasurfaces

Abstract The emergence of metamaterials (MMs) has led to groundbreaking photo-physical phenomena, which arise from their novel structure-dependent properties. Consisting of “meta-atom” building blocks, MMs can be organized into subwavelength metal/dielectric structures using bottom-up or top-down nanofabrication techniques. Optical metal metasurfaces are a class of MMs with macroscopic lateral dimensions but composed of one to few subwavelength layers of precisely oriented metal-based elements over a large surface area. In this review, we focus on gold metasurfaces, highlighting their fabrication methods, morphological characterization, as well as linear and nonlinear optical properties. We then review our recent work on fabricating and characterizing self-assembled gold metasurface. An interesting characteristics of the gold metasurfaces is their wide range of linear refractive indices, varying from n0 ~ 0.5 in the visible to n0 ~ 4 in the short wavelength infrared spectral region. Third-order nonlinearities are characterized by the Z-scan technique at wavelengths on- and off-plasmonic resonance of the gold metasurface. Experimental results on the relationship between the third-order nonlinearity of the self-assembled gold metasurface as a function of the linear response are presented for the first time. We conclude by discussing the potential applications and future outlook of self-assembled plasmonic metasurfaces.
MViD: Sparse Matrix-Vector Multiplication in Mobile DRAM for Accelerating Recurrent Neural Networks

Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) spend most of their execution time performing matrix-vector multiplication (MV-mul). Because the matrices in RNNs have poor reusability and the ever-increasing size of the matrices becomes too large to fit in the on-chip storage of mobile/IoT devices, the performance and energy efficiency of MV-mul is determined by those of main-memory DRAM. Therefore, computing MV-mul within DRAM draws much attention. However, previous studies lacked consideration for the matrix sparsity, the power constraints of DRAM devices, and concurrency in accessing DRAM from processors while performing MV-mul. We propose a main-memory architecture called MViD, which performs MV-mul by placing MAC units inside DRAM banks. For higher computational efficiency, we use a sparse matrix format and exploit quantization. Because of the limited power budget for DRAM devices, we implement the MAC units only on a portion of the DRAM banks. We architect MViD to slow down or pause MV-mul for concurrently processing memory requests from processors while satisfying the limited power budget. Our results show that MViD provides 7.2× higher throughput compared to the baseline system with four DRAM ranks (performing MV-mul in a chip-multiprocessor) while running inference of Deep Speech 2 with a memory-intensive workload.
Is the Social Safety Net a Long-Term Investment? Large-Scale Evidence from the Food Stamps Program

We use novel, large-scale data on 17.5 million Americans to study how a policy-driven increase in economic resources affects children's long-term outcomes. Using the 2000 Census and 2001–13 American Community Survey linked to the Social Security Administration's NUMIDENT, we leverage the county-level rollout of the Food Stamps program between 1961 and 1975. We find that children with access to greater economic resources before age five have better outcomes as adults. The treatment-on-the-treated effects show a 6% of a standard deviation improvement in human capital, 3% of a standard deviation increase in economic self-sufficiency, 8% of a standard deviation increase in the quality of neighbourhood of residence, a 1.2-year increase in life expectancy, and a 0.5 percentage-point decrease in likelihood of being incarcerated. These estimates suggest that Food Stamps’ transfer of resources to families is a highly cost-effective investment in young children, yielding a marginal value of public funds of approximately sixty-two.
Colistin Susceptibility in Carbapenem Resistant Klebsiella Pneumoniae and their Ability of Biofilm Formation

A total of 157 clinical samples were collected from different clinical specimens (urine, sputum, blood, swabs, and cannula) from several hospitals in Iraq. Among the samples, 51 isolates (32.48%) of Klebsiella pneumoniae were identified according to morphologicaland cultural characteristics as well as the Enterosystem 18R test. Higher numbers of K. pneumoniae isolates were observed in urine samples (26, 52%) than the other samples, and in females (70.6%) than males (29.4%) (female: male ratio of about 2.4:1). Antibiotic susceptibility of K. pneumoniae against 12 commonly used antibiotics was determined through the disc-diffusion method. The results revealed a higher resistance rate in 51 isolates (100%) against Cephalexin, followed by Ceftazidime (50, 98%), while the lowest resistance rate (24, 47%) was against each of Imipenem and Meropenem. Also, the investigation of the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of Colistin using E-test (strips) demonstrated that 33 isolates were resistance, as compared to 31 using the disk diffusion assay. DNA was extracted from K. pneumoniae isolates and molecularly tested using polymerase chain technique (PCR) with a specific primer and 108 bp product to detect the rpoB gene that represents this bacteria . Also, all of the 51 isolates of K. pneumoniae identified by the rpoB gene were detected for the expression of the Colistin drug resistance gene mgr-B , which was amplified (347 bp) using a specific primer. Colistin resistance gene mgr-B was amplified and sequenced from the twenty isolates. Only 6 isolates appeared with a single nucleotide substitution; G instead A, A instead G, C instead G and G instead C. Also, this study tested biofilm formation from K. pneumoniae isolates , using the microtiter plate method, in association with Colistin and Carbapenem resistant. The Colistin and Carbapenem resistance pattern was compared to the ability of biofilmformation as weak formation versus strong and also, Multi-drug resistant isolates were more common among weak versus strong biofilm formers.
Challenges to a Rights-Based Approach in Sexual Health Policy: A Comparative Study of Turkey and England

Politics around sexual health have been polarised in recent years, but the policy implications of this polarisation have not yet been examined in depth. Therefore, this article explores political challenges to a rights-based approach in sexual health policies in Turkey and England. Its focus is on two domains: The prevention and treatment of sexually transmitted infections (STI), and sexual health education. Drawing on an interpretive documentary analysis, this article reveals that although social attitudes to sexuality and the levels of overall alignment with a rights-based framework within the selected countries do differ, both face significant political challenges in putting a rights-based approach to sexual health into practice. While common political challenges include heightened domestic controversy regarding sexual health, the specific challenges take the forms of a broader conservative turn that undermines the autonomy of sexual health policy in Turkey (similar to the cases of Hungary and Poland), and neoliberal policy preferences coupled with local discretion and service fragmentation that create access inequities in England (similar to the case of Germany). This study concludes that implementing a rights-based approach is a complex political task requiring a nuanced approach that incorporates the political dimension.