Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparison of elastographic strain index and thyroid fine-needle aspiration cytology in 631 thyroid nodules.

CONTEXT Ultrasound (US) elastography (USE) was recently been reported as a sensitive, noninvasive tool for identifying thyroid cancer. However, the accuracy of this technique is hampered by the intra- and interoperator variability, some US features of the nodule, and the coexistence of autoimmune thyroid disease (ATD). OBJECTIVES The purpose of this article was to assess the accuracy of USE findings in the differential diagnosis of thyroid nodules compared with other US features to evaluate its feasibility in the presence of ATDs and identify the strain index (SI) cutoff with the highest diagnostic performance. DESIGN We evaluated 528 consecutive patients for a total of 661 thyroid nodules. All nodules underwent fine-needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) and USE evaluation. The SI was calculated as a ratio of the nodule strain divided by the strain of the softest part of the surrounding normal tissue. RESULTS The median SI value was significantly higher in THY4 and THY5 than in THY2 nodules in ATD-positive, ATD-negative, and ATD-unknown patients. The cutoff of SI for malignancy was estimated to be 2.905 by receiver operating characteristic curve analysis in a screening set (379 FNAC results), and then tested in a replication set (252 FNAC results). In all cases, a SI value of ≥ 2.905 conferred to the nodule a significantly greater probability of being malignant. This SI cutoff had the greatest area under the curve, sensitivity, and negative predictive value, compared with the conventional US features of malignancy. CONCLUSION The elastographic SI has a high sensitivity, specificity, and negative predictive value for the diagnosis of thyroid malignancy both in the presence and in the absence of ATD. If our data on USE are also confirmed in THY3 nodules, FNAC could be avoided in a number of thyroid nodules with certain features.
Coreference for Learning to Extract Relations: Yes Virginia, Coreference Matters

As an alternative to requiring substantial supervised relation training data, many have explored bootstrapping relation extraction from a few seed examples. Most techniques assume that the examples are based on easily spotted anchors, e.g., names or dates. Sentences in a corpus which contain the anchors are then used to induce alternative ways of expressing the relation. We explore whether coreference can improve the learning process. That is, if the algorithm considered examples such as his sister, would accuracy be improved? With coreference, we see on average a 2-fold increase in F-Score. Despite using potentially errorful machine coreference, we see significant increase in recall on all relations. Precision increases in four cases and decreases in six.
‘ Why Are There So Many Drums Playing until Dawn?’ Exploring the Role of Gamba Spirits and Healers in the Post-War Recovery Period in Gorongosa, Central Mozambique

In the wake of a civil war, local resources can play a potential role in shaping the recovery process by providing both old and new exegeses for the disturbing effects of the past. Using the case of Gorongosa, this article aims to explore the ways in which the war has impacted upon traditional medicine by creating Gamba spirits that cause havoc but can also transform the psychosocial hurts of war survivors. Historically, traditional healing practice was under the sole responsibility of the Dzoca, an ancestral spirit that for generations was embodied in living people through lineage descent to exercise its healing powers. There is consensus among healers that the Gamba spirit and healers emerged after the war and are rapidly spreading throughout Gorongosa. I explore the emic theories to explain the Gamba’s puzzling origins and the role they are currently playing in Gorongosa.
Prediction of Arctic plant phenological sensitivity to climate change from historical records

Abstract The pace of climate change in the Arctic is dramatic, with temperatures rising at a rate double the global average. The timing of flowering and fruiting (phenology) is often temperature dependent and tends to advance as the climate warms. Herbarium specimens, photographs, and field observations can provide historical phenology records and have been used, on a localised scale, to predict species’ phenological sensitivity to climate change. Conducting similar localised studies in the Canadian Arctic, however, poses a challenge where the collection of herbarium specimens, photographs, and field observations have been temporally and spatially sporadic. We used flowering and seed dispersal times of 23 Arctic species from herbarium specimens, photographs, and field observations collected from across the 2.1 million km2 area of Nunavut, Canada, to determine (1) which monthly temperatures influence flowering and seed dispersal times; (2) species’ phenological sensitivity to temperature; and (3) whether flowering or seed dispersal times have advanced over the past 120 years. We tested this at different spatial scales and compared the sensitivity in different regions of Nunavut. Broadly speaking, this research serves as a proof of concept to assess whether phenology–climate change studies using historic data can be conducted at large spatial scales. Flowering times and seed dispersal time were most strongly correlated with June and July temperatures, respectively. Seed dispersal times have advanced at double the rate of flowering times over the past 120 years, reflecting greater late‐summer temperature rises in Nunavut. There is great diversity in the flowering time sensitivity to temperature of Arctic plant species, suggesting climate change implications for Arctic ecological communities, including altered community composition, competition, and pollinator interactions. Intraspecific temperature sensitivity and warming trends varied markedly across Nunavut and could result in greater changes in some parts of Nunavut than in others.
Diversity in ABC transporters: Type I, II and III importers

Abstract ATP-binding cassette transporters are multi-subunit membrane pumps that transport substrates across membranes. While significant in the transport process, transporter architecture exhibits a range of diversity that we are only beginning to recognize. This divergence may provide insight into the mechanisms of substrate transport and homeostasis. Until recently, ABC importers have been classified into two types, but with the emergence of energy-coupling factor (ECF) transporters there are potentially three types of ABC importers. In this review, we summarize an expansive body of research on the three types of importers with an emphasis on the basics that underlie ABC importers, such as structure, subunit composition and mechanism.
Localisation of vascular endothelial growth factor and its receptors to cells of vascular and avascular epiretinal membranes

AIMS/BACKGROUND Epiretinal membranes (ERMs) arise from a variety of causes or, in some cases, for unknown reasons. Once established, ERMs tend to progress, becoming more extensive and exerting increasing traction along the inner surface of the retina. One possible cause for their progression is the production of growth factors by cells within ERMs that may provide autocrine or paracrine stimulation. Platelet derived growth factor (PDGF) and its receptors have been localised to cells of ERMs and may play such a role. In this study, comparative data were sought for several other growth factors that have been implicated in ERM formation. METHODS Immunohistochemical staining of ERMs was done for PDGF-A, PDGF-B, basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF), three isoforms of transforming growth factor β (TGF-β), and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and its receptors, flt-1 and flk-1/KDR. Expression of flt-1 and flk-1/KDR was examined in cultured retinal pigmented epithelial (RPE) cells and retinal glia from postmortem eyes by immunohistochemistry and by reverse transcription coupled to polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). RESULTS Staining was most intense and most frequently observed for VEGF and PDGF-A, both in vascular and avascular ERMs. The majority of cells stained for VEGF in nine of 11 (81.8%) diabetic ERMs and in 14 of 24 (58.3%) proliferative vitreoretinopathy ERMs. The receptors for VEGF, flt-1, and flk-1/KDR were also identified on cells in ERMs and on cultured RPE cells. By RT-PCR, mRNA for flt-1 was identified in RPE cells and retinal glia, and mRNA for flk-1/KDR was identified in RPE cells. CONCLUSIONS These data show that VEGF and its receptors are localised to both vascular and avascular ERMs and suggest that VEGF, like PDGF-A, may be an autocrine and paracrine stimulator that may contribute to progression of vascular and avascular ERMs.
Term Premia and Inflation Uncertainty: Empirical Evidence from an International Panel Dataset

This paper provides cross-country empirical evidence on term premia. I construct a panel of zero-coupon nominal government bond yields spanning ten industrialized countries and nearly two decades. I hence compute forward rates and use two different methods to decompose these forward rates into expected future short-term interest rates and term premiums. The first method uses an affine term structure model with macroeconomic variables as unspanned risk factors; the second method uses surveys. I find that term premiums declined internationally over the sample period, especially in countries that apparently reduced inflation uncertainty by making substantial changes in their monetary policy frameworks. (JEL E13, E43, E52, G12, H63)
Two Host Clades, Two Bacterial Arsenals: Evolution through Gene Losses in Facultative Endosymbionts

Bacterial endosymbiosis is an important evolutionary process in insects, which can harbor both obligate and facultative symbionts. The evolution of these symbionts is driven by evolutionary convergence, and they exhibit among the tiniest genomes in prokaryotes. The large host spectrum of facultative symbionts and the high diversity of strategies they use to infect new hosts probably impact the evolution of their genome and explain why they undergo less severe genomic erosion than obligate symbionts. Candidatus Hamiltonella defensa is suitable for the investigation of the genomic evolution of facultative symbionts because the bacteria are engaged in specific relationships in two clades of insects. In aphids, H. defensa is found in several species with an intermediate prevalence and confers protection against parasitoids. In whiteflies, H. defensa is almost fixed in some species of Bemisia tabaci, which suggests an important role of and a transition toward obligate symbiosis. In this study, comparisons of the genome of H. defensa present in two B. tabaci species (Middle East Asia Minor 1 and Mediterranean) and in the aphid Acyrthosiphon pisum revealed that they belong to two distinct clades and underwent specific gene losses. In aphids, it contains highly virulent factors that could allow protection and horizontal transfers. In whiteflies, the genome lost these factors and seems to have a limited ability to acquire genes. However it contains genes that could be involved in the production of essential nutrients, which is consistent with a primordial role for this symbiont. In conclusion, although both lineages of H. defensa have mutualistic interactions with their hosts, their genomes follow distinct evolutionary trajectories that reflect their phenotype and could have important consequences on their evolvability.
Replacing Community: Establishing Linkages for Women Living with HIV/AIDS–A Group Work Approach

ABSTRACT This paper focuses on the rationale and the implementation of a group work approach in working with HIV positive mothers. As the course of HIV/AIDS is changing, a new perspective towards the future is emerging. A group was shown to be an effective modality for combatting a sense of isolation and for building a renewed sense of community. Establishing surrogate family ties was also found to be an outgrowth of the group process. Themes explored included disclosure, transmission, parenting dilemmas and support for the multiple health and medication issues related to being HIV positive women and mothers.
Should Ribavirin Be Used to Treat Hepatitis C in Dialysis Patients?

Hepatitis C virus infection adversely affects outcomes in patients with chronic kidney disease undergoing maintenance dialysis. Pegylated interferon and ribavirin, the standard‐of‐care treatment in patients with intact renal function, is associated with severe side effects, toxicity, and high dropout rates in this population. Ribavirin has an important role in maintaining antiviral response following completion of therapy and increases sustained viral response (SVR) rates. However, the use of ribavirin in dialysis patients has been limited by the high frequency of severe hemolytic anemia and is currently reserved for study protocols and highly selected candidates treated at experienced centers. Encouraging data from small trials have shown a significant increase in SVR rates with the use of different dosing regimens of ribavirin in addition to interferon‐based therapy and aggressive erythroid‐stimulating agent support in dialysis patients. Use of ribavirin in selected dialysis patients, particularly renal transplant candidates, by experienced clinicians is appropriate.
Street hawking and socio‐economic dynamics of nomadic girls of northern Nigeria

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to provide a qualitative explanation, understanding, and policy suggestions on the socio-economic causes, effects, and challenges facing nomadic rural girls' street hawking in cities of Northern Nigeria. The aim is to present the paper as a source of literature that will serve as a future document in formulating inclusive policies for the girls as explained in the section on educational policy options. Design/methodology/approach - Research orientation and design involved qualitative phenomenology that explored girls' street hawking experiences. Study sites included three major Nigerian cities and three villages of the girls. Purposeful sampling was used to select 20 girls between ages eight and 15 and female parents as primary participants, while two traditional and religious leaders from each of the villages, and one administrator of the local state nomadic education commission served as secondary participants. Snowball samples of three male parents of the girls in each village were used as part of data validity. Data collection technique involved unstructured focus group interviews, participant observations, and video recording of the girls at home, at markets, and at streets in the cities. Ethical issues were addressed by obtaining oral and written consent of participants orally and in writing using the native language for clarity and understanding of their role. Data analysis of interview involved transcription and the repeated reading of the transcripts that identified major themes. Observational data were converted to field notes and analyzed for patterns of ideas that support major themes of the analyzed interview data for validity. Triangulation process of checking validity was used with sample of snowball participants as state educational administrators of nomadic education, religious leaders, amongst others. Findings - Major findings are presented as themes on major economic causes of the girls' street hawking of dairy products as a part of family gender division of labor, poverty level of most families, preparing girls for self-reliance and economic independence, and to augment family income. Social causes include Islamic religious pressure of teaching youth self-reliance in preparation for early marriage, to finance wedding expenses, to acquire material possessions as child brides, for family honor, to accrue income to maintain their bodily aesthetic needs, group street hawking as a means to girls socialization, and exposing girls to suitors as future husbands, amongst others. Challenges facing the girls include lack of safety, exposure to forms of abuse, and being left behind in basic literacy, amongst others. Originality/value - This paper is of significant value due to its novelty. It will serve as primary literature on minority West African pastoral girls' impact on rural-urban migration, their challenges, and their position in the current world social policy of the Department for International Development and UNICEF Girls Education Project.
Virtual framework for testing the reliability of system software on embedded systems

System software development and testing on embedded systems can be quite difficult and time consuming. In this paper, we propose a cost effective method, namely virtual testing framework that can be used easily to test the reliability of system software. The framework consists of three layers; virtual platform layer, system software layer, and test environment layer. The virtual platform layer emulates a variety of embedded hardware on which any system software can be run and is used to verify its capability in handling faults injected by the test environment layer. We use the framework to verify the reliability of the file system and FTL (flash translation layer) by injecting faults that may be found in Flash memory. We discuss experimental results that we gained using this framework to gather post-fault behavior of the system software of interest.
MIRACLE Team Report for ImageCLEF IR in CLEF 2006

The hypothesis which this paper tries to validate is that text based image retrieval could be improved by the use of semantic information, by means of an expansion algorithm and a module specifically designed to exclude common words and negated words from queries. The expansion algorithm applies specification marks to disambiguate words making use of WordNet [13]. An implementation of this algorithm has been developed for these experiments. On the other hand, the module in charge of removing common words and detecting negated words has also been specifically developed for this work. However, after an initial evaluation, none of these modules led to an improvement in the retrieval quality compared to the baseline experiment, which consists on the indexing of nouns present in image captions, without no further preprocessing.
The application of change management theory to HR portal implementation in subsidiaries of multinational corporations

HR portals are complex information technology (IT) applications that can be accessed by all employees of a given organization. By placing more applications and information online, HR portals reduce the reliance employees have on HR personnel. Given this relational change, from human to computer, the HR portal implementation process must take into account the challenges of both change management and technology acceptance. By integrating change management theories with IT user acceptance models, this article adds to HR's collective knowledge of ways to effectively implement HR portals. In addition, this article describes the cross-national challenges that exist when a global firm attempts to implement an HR portal around the world. Thus, this article will present a model that (1) integrates change management theories and IT user acceptance models and (2) illustrates the ways in which change management plans may need to be adapted to be effective in various subsidiaries. A case study of Hewlett-Packard's (HP's) worldwide implementation of their @HP Employee Portal in the Italian subsidiary of HP illustrates the key issues of these theories. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Computational Cost Reduction in Learned Transform Classifications

We present a theoretical analysis and empirical evaluations of a novel set of techniques for computational cost reduction of classifiers that are based on learned transform and soft-threshold. By modifying optimization procedures for dictionary and classifier training, as well as the resulting dictionary entries, our techniques allow to reduce the bit precision and to replace each floating-point multiplication by a single integer bit shift. We also show how the optimization algorithms in some dictionary training methods can be modified to penalize higher-energy dictionaries. We applied our techniques with the classifier Learning Algorithm for Soft-Thresholding, testing on the datasets used in its original paper. Our results indicate it is feasible to use solely sums and bit shifts of integers to classify at test time with a limited reduction of the classification accuracy. These low power operations are a valuable trade off in FPGA implementations as they increase the classification throughput while decrease both energy consumption and manufacturing cost.
Cogging Force Reduction of Double-Sided Linear Flux-Switching Permanent Magnet Machine for Direct Drives

This study proposes a double-sided linear flux-switching permanent magnet machine for direct drives in precision servo applications. The method of asymmetry distribution of stator teeth (ADST) is introduced to reduce the cogging force. Moreover, cogging force, back-EMFs, and thrust force are calculated by using finite element analysis. In addition, the performance comparison is carried out to verify the accuracy and effectiveness of the method of cogging force reduction. Finally, the experiment confirms the reasonability and feasibility of the ADST method.
The Distributed Virtual Network for High Fidelity , Large Scale Peer to Peer Network Simulation

The ability to analyze the behavior of large distributed systems can be limited by the modeling tools used. The Distributed Virtual Network (DVN) is a discrete event network simulator providing a platform for realistic, high fidelity, scalable and repeatable simulations of large distributed systems. With a global view of the network, it provides the ability to quantify the behavior of the system under stress and attack conditions. We present the architecture of the simulator along with the simulation results from a real world P2P protocol implementation ported to DVN. We also compare DVN with another similar tool, outlining the benefits of our contribution.
Distributed cube materialization on holistic measures

Cube computation over massive datasets is critical for many important analyses done in the real world. Unlike commonly studied algebraic measures such as SUM that are amenable to parallel computation, efficient cube computation of holistic measures such as TOP-K is non-trivial and often impossible with current methods. In this paper we detail real-world challenges in cube materialization tasks on Web-scale datasets. Specifically, we identify an important subset of holistic measures and introduce MR-Cube, a MapReduce based framework for efficient cube computation on these measures. We provide extensive experimental analyses over both real and synthetic data. We demonstrate that, unlike existing techniques which cannot scale to the 100 million tuple mark for our datasets, MR-Cube successfully and efficiently computes cubes with holistic measures over billion-tuple datasets.