Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Recent Advances and Perspectives on the Health Benefits of Urolithin B, A Bioactive Natural Product Derived From Ellagitannins

Urolithin (Uro) B is a natural compound produced by gut bacteria from ingested ellagitannins (ETs) and ellagic acid (EA), complex polyphenols abundant in foods such as pomegranates, raspberries, blueberries and chestnuts. Uro B has recently garnered considerable attention owing to its wide range of nutraceutical effects and relatively high potency. According to several studies, Uro B prevents the development of hyperlipidemia, cardiovascular disease (CVD) and tumors due to its strong antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. Many reviews have systematically summarized the health benefits and pharmacological activities of ETs, EA and urolithins (especially Uro A) while available reviews or detailed summaries on the positive impact of Uro B are rarer. Here, we sought to review the pharmacological activity, mechanism of action, regulation of immune function and its associated diseases and preventive potential of Uro B to elucidate its function as a nutritional agent in humans.
Indonesian Automatic Speech Recognition with XLSR-53

This study focuses on the development of Indonesian Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) using the XLSR-53 pre-trained model, the XLSR stands for cross-lingual speech representations. The use of this XLSR-53 pre-trained model is to significantly reduce the amount of training data in non-English languages required to achieve a competitive Word Error Rate (WER). The total amount of data used in this study is 24 hours, 18 minutes, and 1 second: (1) TITML-IDN 14 hours and 31 minutes; (2) Magic Data 3 hours and 33 minutes; and (3) Common Voice 6 hours, 14 minutes, and 1 second. With a WER of 20%, the model built in this study can compete with similar models using the Common Voice dataset split test. WER can be decreased by around 8% using a language model, resulting in a WER of 12%. Thus, the results of this study have succeeded in perfecting previous research in contributing to the creation of a better Indonesian ASR with a smaller amount of data.
Logogenic Primary Progressive Aphasia or Alzheimer Disease: Contribution of Acoustic Markers in Early Differential Diagnosis

The logopenic variant of Primary Progressive Aphasia (lvPPA), a syndromic disorder centered on language impairment, often presents variable underlying neurodegenerative pathologies such as Alzheimer Disease (AD). Actual language assessment tests and lumbar puncture, focused on AD diagnosis, cannot precisely distinguish the symptoms, or predict their progression at onset time. We analyzed acoustic markers, aiming to discriminate lvPPA and AD as well as the influence of AD biomarkers on acoustic profiles at the beginning of the disease. We recruited people with AD (n = 8) and with lvPPA (n = 8), with cerebrospinal fluid biomarker profiles determined by lumbar puncture. The participants performed a sentence repetition task that allows assessing potential lvPPA phonological loop deficits. We found that temporal and prosodic markers significantly differentiate the lvPPA and AD group at an early stage of the disease. Biomarker and acoustic profile comparisons discriminated the two lvPPA subgroups according to their biomarkers. For lvPPA with AD biomarkers, acoustic profile equivalent to an atypical AD form with a specific alteration of the phonological loop is shown. However, lvPPA without AD biomarkers has an acoustic profile approximating the one for DLFT. Therefore, these results allow us to classify lvPPA differentially from AD based on acoustic markers from a sentence repetition task. Furthermore, our results suggest that acoustic analysis would constitute a clinically efficient alternative to refused lumbar punctures. It offers the possibility to facilitate early, specific, and accessible neurodegenerative diagnosis and may ease early care with speech therapy, preventing the progression of symptoms.
Randomized double blind comparison of ketamine – propofol and fentanyl – propofol for the insertion of laryngeal mask airway in children

The ideal combination that provides smooth insertion conditions with minimal side effects has not been identified, particularly in children. In this study, 70 children of age 3-12 years are divided randomly into 2 groups: Group 1-Group-F-Fentanyl (n=35) received Fentanyl 2μg/kg and Group 2-Group –K- Ketamine (n=35) received Ketamine 0.5mg/kg before induction of anaesthesia. Baseline heart rate and arterial blood pressure were measured. Vital parameters (Heart rate and Arterial Blood Pressure) were measured before induction, before LMA insertion and thereafter at 1, 3 and 5 minutes after LMA insertion. Ideal LMA insertion conditions were evaluated with six variables by blinded observer: mouth opening, gagging, head and limb movements, laryngospasm and resistance to insertion. Also the apnoea time was noted. The incidence of head/limb movements was statistically significant and Group Propofol – Ketamine showed 22% compared to Fentanyl-Propofol group (2.8%) Coughing/gagging was seen in 2.86% of both the groups. Resistance to insertion was statistically significant with p value of 0.0268 showing more in Propofol + Ketamine. There was no statistical significance in the occurrence of restricted mouth opening, restriction to LMA insertion and occurrence of swallowing between the two groups.
Some Current Directions in the Theory and Application of Statistical Process Monitoring

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview and our perspective of recent research and applications of statistical process monitoring. The focus is on work done over the past decade or so. We review briefly a number of important areas, including health-related monitoring, spatiotemporal surveillance, profile monitoring, use of autocorrelated data, the effect of estimation error, and high-dimensional monitoring, among others. We briefly discuss the choice of performance metrics. We provide references and offer some directions for further research.
Effects of LiDAR Point Density on Extraction of Traffic Signs: A Sensitivity Study

Datasets collected using light detection and ranging (LiDAR) technology often consist of dense point clouds. However, the density of the point cloud could vary depending on several different factors including the capabilities of the data collection equipment, the conditions in which data are collected, and other features such as range and angle of incidence. Although variation in point density is expected to influence the quality of the information extracted from LiDAR, the extent to which changes in density could affect the extraction is unknown. Understanding such impacts is essential for agencies looking to adopt LiDAR technology and researchers looking to develop algorithms to extract information from LiDAR. This paper focuses specifically on understanding the impacts of point density on extracting traffic signs from LiDAR datasets. The densities of point clouds are first reduced using stratified random sampling; traffic signs are then extracted from those datasets at different levels of point density. The precision and accuracy of the detection process was assessed at the different levels of point cloud density and on four different highway segments. In general, it was found that for signs with large panels along the approach on which LiDAR data were collected, reducing the point cloud density by up to 70% of the original point cloud had minimal impacts on the sign detection rates. Results of this study provide practical guidance to transportation agencies interested in understanding the tradeoff in price, quality, and coverage, when acquiring LiDAR equipment for the inventory of traffic signs on their transportation networks.
Survey on Anxiety and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Intensive Care Personnel during the COVID-19 Pandemic in a Medically Under-Resourced Country

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the need for intensive care personnel. Romania has a low number of physicians per inhabitant. The stress of pandemics upon an already weak medical health system triggered some psychological effects upon burnt-out personnel. The main objective is to provide an insight into the psychological status of Romanian ICU personnel by evaluating their level of anxiety. The secondary objectives aim to identify the level of post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety in different groups and to identify the personnel most affected psychologically. This study enrolled adult responders from the ICU of Târgu Mureș Emergency Clinical County Hospital, Romania, participating voluntarily. The evaluation tests were the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory and Post-Traumatic Stress Test. Out of the 126 eligible participants, 87 adult employees were enrolled—with a 69% response rate. The study comprised three groups: doctors, nurses, and auxiliary personnel. All three groups scored for moderate anxiety symptoms. COVID-19-related anxiety was strongly correlated with age and number of working years in all groups. Increased PTSD scores were observed in doctors and nurses. All ICU personnel who dealt with COVID-19 patients presented with moderate anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms. The years of ICU experience had a positive impact on anxiety symptoms.
Materials use in language classrooms: A research agenda

Abstract How language learners and teachers actually use pedagogical materials in classrooms is a ‘groundbreaking’ subject of applied linguistics inquiry (Tarone, 2014, p. 653), referred to in this research agenda article as materials use. We begin with a theoretically-oriented overview of language education scholarship on pedagogical materials (henceforth materials). Then, we focus on seven qualitative research tasks across three thematic areas, namely materials use and: (A) language pedagogy, (B) classroom interaction, and (C) language diversity, culture, and power. The first section on pedagogy outlines research tasks on: (1) the roles of materials in classrooms, (2) the influences of materials on practicing educators’ expertise, and (3) how language teacher education programmes address materials use. The second section on classroom interaction proposes inquiry into: (4) polysemiotic patterns of materials-in-interaction, and (5) the expected and unexpected outcomes of materials regarding students’ target language use. The third section focuses on: (6) teachers’ and learners’ responses to diverse linguistic varieties and cultures represented in materials, and (7) instructional materials used in language policy and planning endeavours. Throughout this article we reference interdisciplinary connections to curriculum studies, cultural studies, sociology, and materials scholarship in general education. The seven research tasks are critical next steps for understanding materials use – a vast new field that promises to advance language education practice and theory.
Prevention of Anthracycline-Induced Cardiotoxicity: The Good and Bad of Current and Alternative Therapies

Doxorubicin (Dox)-induced cardiotoxicity (DIC) remains a serious health burden, especially in developing countries. Unfortunately, the high cost of current preventative strategies has marginalized numerous cancer patients because of socio-economic factors. In addition, the efficacy of these strategies, without reducing the chemotherapeutic properties of Dox, is frequently questioned. These limitations have widened the gap and necessity for alternative medicines, like flavonoids, to be investigated. However, new therapeutics may also present their own shortcomings, ruling out the idea of “natural is safe”. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has stipulated that the concept of drug-safety be considered in all pre-clinical and clinical studies, to explore the pharmacokinetics and potential interactions of the drugs being investigated. As such our studies on flavonoids, as cardio-protectants against DIC, have been centered around cardiac and cancer models, to ensure that the efficacy of Dox is preserved. Our findings thus far suggest that flavonoids of Galenia africana could be suitable candidates for the prevention of DIC. However, this still requires further investigation, which would focus on drug-interactions as well as in vivo experimental models to determine the extent of cardioprotection.
Influence of Hydrology and Sanitation on Groundwater Coliform Contamination in Some Parts of Western Bengal Basin: Implication to Safe Drinking Water

Access to clean water has been identified as one of the primary Sustainable Development Goals. Rapid urbanization is going on in developing nations creating additional pressure on water resources in most of these places which in turn also affects individuals which is largely reliant on proper sanitation and drinking water quality. In addition, open sanitation practice is becoming major public health problem in rural and in some urban areas in India. Groundwater contamination by pathogenic bacteria sourced from both sanitation system and surface water is becoming one of the major concerns now-a-days. The residents of the Ganges river basin in India are already stressed with natural arsenic pollution as well as other various types of water pollution, and microbial pollution from sanitation is a new addition to it. A field-based hydrogeological investigation with the identification of sanitation sites (surface and subsurface) was conducted in some parts of the Ganges basin, in and around a lower order distributary river, River Churni in West Bengal state, to identify the natural and human influences on sanitation drinking water pollution in a highly populated part of South Asia. Groundwater was found to be contaminated severely with total (TC) and fecal (FC) coliform bacteria. The abundance of TC was found to be the highest in monsoon season (78%) than in pre-monsoon (48%) and post-monsoon (29%) seasons. The results revealed that the groundwater samples from shallow depths and close to sanitation sites were highly contaminated with coliform bacteria than the deeper and higher distant (>30 m distance) ones. Shallow groundwater samples near to surface water (River Churni) source, other than sanitation sites, showed elevated TC levels. The occurrence of coliform bacteria in studied groundwater samples was observed to be positively correlated with conductivity, TDS, TOC, chloride, and sulfate, while the abundance was restricted by pH and temperature of groundwater. Thus, improper sanitation systems and contaminated surface water were identified as one of the major sources of pathogenic contamination of groundwater-sourced drinking water in the studied area, whereas improper human practices further complicate the scenario which needs to be managed properly. Graphical Abstract
Perceived stigma and quality of life in Parkinson’s disease with additional health conditions

Background Parkinson’s disease (PD) is associated with perceived stigma and affects quality of life (QoL). Additional health conditions may influence these consequences of PD. Aims This study assessed the impact of health conditions on perceived stigma and QoL in persons with PD. We hypothesised that individuals with more health conditions would report more stigma and poorer QoL. We also examined the contributions of demographic and clinical characteristics to the correlations between health conditions and perceived stigma/QoL. Methods We identified 196 eligible participants from the Boston University Online Survey Study of Parkinson’s Disease and examined their health history, performance on multiple stigma measures, and scores on the 39-item Parkinson’s Disease Questionnaire assessing QoL. Results At least one health condition was reported by 79% of the sample, with a median of 2 and a range of 0–7 health conditions. More perceived stigma and poorer QoL were associated with thyroid disease, depression, anxiety, and the total number of health conditions. These correlations were related to younger age, less education, and earlier disease onset. Other health conditions (high blood pressure, back/leg surgery, headache, cancer/tumours, and heart disease) were not significantly correlated with stigma or QoL. Conclusions Having more health conditions, or thyroid disease, depression, or anxiety, was associated with more perceived stigma and poorer QoL, with younger age, less education, and earlier disease onset affecting the associations. It is important to consider the burden of health conditions and how they affect persons with PD with specific clinical characteristics.
A comparative analysis between different resource allocation and operating strategy implementation mechanisms using a system dynamics approach

Because of the rapid changes in the market environment and the increasing complexity of companies’ organisational and operational structures, managers should rethink their company’s driving and operations strategies while considering the causal relationships between variables in the feedback loop, resource accumulation, and information delay. This study used a system dynamic approach to examine and compare four different business models to discover how variations in resource accumulation (i.e. market-oriented versus service target–oriented) and operating strategy implementation (i.e. independent versus coordinated operations) affect a firm’s long-term performance. We used managers’ behaviour and policy factors to optimise the system dynamic models. In addition, we used theoretical system dynamics models and the simulation to examine the system profitability, stability, and sensitivity of each model. This study reveals the dynamic influence of managers’ decisions on system performance and provides a roadmap for managers to adjust resource allocation and their corresponding decisions to optimise the system dynamically.
Pre-Trained Word Embedding and Language Model Improve Multimodal Machine Translation: A Case Study in Multi30K

Multimodal machine translation (MMT) is an attractive application of neural machine translation (NMT) that is commonly incorporated with image information. However, the MMT models proposed thus far have only comparable or slightly better performance than their text-only counterparts. One potential cause of this infeasibility is a lack of large-scale data. Most previous studies mitigate this limitation by employing large-scale textual parallel corpora, which are more accessible than multimodal parallel corpora, in various ways. However, these corpora are still available on only a limited scale in low-resource language pairs or domains. In this study, we leveraged monolingual (or multimodal monolingual) corpora, which are available at scale in most languages and domains, to improve MMT models. Our approach follows that of previous unimodal works that use monolingual corpora to train the word embedding or language model and incorporate them into NMT systems. While these methods demonstrated the advantage of using pre-trained representations, there is still room for MMT models to improve. To this end, our system employs debiasing procedures for the word embedding and multimodal extension of the language model (visual-language model, VLM) to make better use of the pre-trained knowledge in the MMT task. The results of evaluations conducted on the de facto MMT dataset for the English–German translation indicate that the improvement obtained using well-tailored word embedding and VLM is approximately +1.84 BLEU and +1.63 BLEU, respectively. The evaluation on multiple language pairs reveals their adoptability across the languages. Beyond the success of our system, we also conducted an extensive analysis on VLM manipulation and showed promising areas for developing better MMT models by exploiting VLM; some benefits brought by either modality are missing, and MMT with VLM generates less fluent translations. Our code is available at https://github.com/toshohirasawa/mmt-with-monolingual-data.
University of Birmingham NK cell function is markedly impaired in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukaemia but is preserved in patients with small lymphocytic lymphoma

cell function is markedly impaired in patients with chronic lymphocytic but is preserved patients with small ABSTRACT Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (B-CLL) and small lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL) are part of the same disease classification but are defined by differential distribution of tumor cells. B-CLL is characterized by significant immune suppression and dysregulation but this is not typical of patients with SLL. Natural killer cells (NK) are important mediators of immune function but have been poorly studied in patients with B-CLL/SLL. Here we report for the first time the NK cell phenotype and function in patients with B-CLL and SLL alongside their transcriptional profile. We show for the first time impaired B-CLL NK cell function in a xenograft model with reduced activating receptor expression including NKG2D, DNAM-1 and NCRs in-vitro. Importantly, we show these functional differences are associated with transcriptional downregulation of cytotoxic pathway genes, including activating receptors, adhesion molecules, cytotoxic molecules and intracellular signalling molecules, which remain intact in patients with SLL. In conclusion, NK cell function is markedly influenced by the anatomical site of the tumor in patients with B-CLL/SLL and lymphocytosis leads to marked impairment of NK cell activity. These observations have implications for treatment protocols which seek to preserve immune function by limiting the exposure of NK cells to tumor cells within the peripheral circulation.
Design and analysis of electrohydraulic pressure systems for variable recruitment in fluidic artificial muscles

This paper investigates the energetics and performance of an electrohydraulic power system with variable recruitment fluidic artificial muscle (FAM) actuators. A coupled dynamic model of the system is developed and applied to study the implications of hydraulic power system architecture for both variable recruitment actuator bundles and equivalent single-muscle actuators. This analysis extends previous FAM literature by considering both actuator recruitment methodology as well as the complete electromechanical circuit and the interactions of these two subsystems. Specifically, for both single-muscle actuators and variable recruitment muscle bundles, hydraulic architectures with a continuously-operating motor and pump are compared with a system in which the motor is intermittently shut down and restarted based on accumulator pressure. The results reveal that variable recruitment offers bandwidth advantages over the single equivalent actuator regardless of the hydraulic power architecture that is selected. However, use of the intermittently-operating motor and pump system allowed the variable recruitment system to achieve efficiency advantages over the other configurations considered. A steady-state analytic solution for the operating envelopes of the variable recruitment and single-muscle systems, including force limits and flow rate limits, was also developed and used to investigate effects of pump displacement on system bandwidth and stroke. The results of these analyses provide tools for the selection of actuator configuration, system architecture, and component design in FAM-actuated electrohydraulic robots.
Exact analytic solutions describing unsteady plane gas flows with shocks of arbitrary strength

Several classes of exact analytic solutions for one-dimensional plane gasdynamic equations describing piston-driven shocks propagating into inhomogeneous media are presented. These solutions are obtained by writing the conservation forms of the basic equations, and hence using their equivalent differential forms. These forms enable introduction of special coordinate systems which make it possible to exactly satisfy boundary conditions at the shock and at the piston. Previous results of Sachdev and Reddy [1] and Ustinov [2, 3] are recovered as special cases. Several representative solutions are shown graphically. Strong shocks as well as shocks of arbitrary strength and characteristic fronts are considered.