Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cost-effectiveness of malaria intermittent preventive treatment in infants (IPTi) in Mozambique and the United Republic of Tanzania.

OBJECTIVE To estimate the cost-effectiveness of malaria intermittent preventive treatment in infants (IPTi) using sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine (SP). METHODS In two previous IPTi trials in Ifakara (United Republic of Tanzania) and Manhiça (Mozambique), SP was administered three times to infants before 9 months of age through the Expanded Programme on Immunization. Based on the efficacy results of the intervention and on malaria incidence in the target population, an estimate was made of the number of clinical malaria episodes prevented. This number and an assumed case-fatality rate of 1.57% were used, in turn, to estimate the number of disability-adjusted life years (DALY) averted and the number of deaths averted. The cost of the intervention, including start-up and recurrent costs, was then assessed on the basis of these figures. FINDINGS The cost per clinical episode of malaria averted was US$ 1.57 (range: US$ 0.8-4.0) in Ifakara and US$ 4.73 (range: US$ 1.7-30.3) in Manhiça; the cost per DALY averted was US$ 3.7 (range: US$ 1.6-12.2) in Ifakara and US$ 11.2 (range: US$ 3.6-92.0) in Manhiça; and the cost per death averted was US$ 100.2 (range: US$ 43.0-330.9) in Ifakara and US$ 301.1 (range: US$ 95.6-2498.4) in Manhiça. CONCLUSION From the health system and societal perspectives, IPTi with SP is expected to produce health improvements in a cost-effective way. From an economic perspective, it offers good value for money for public health programmes.
Using Survey Data to Identify Opportunities to Reach Women with An Unmet Need for Family Planning: The Example of Madagascar

In several African countries fertility levels have stagnated or increased slightly. However, many women still report an unmet need for family planning. Therefore achieving further fertility declines requires programs that increase demand for family planning, but that also address the existing unmet need. One way to improve contraceptive access in a cost-effective manner might be to integrate family planning services into other existing health services. This paper analyzes secondary data from the 2012–2013 Millennium Development Goals (MDG) survey in Madagascar to estimate the number of women with an unmet need for family planning that might benefit from integrating family planning services into other health services. In Madagascar, one third of the demand for family planning is not met; an estimated 820,000 women have an unmet need for family planning. A substantial portion of these women can be reached by integrating family planning services into existing maternal and child health services. Health providers are uniquely positioned to help address method-related reasons for non-use of family planning, such as concerns about health problems and side-effects. Given the large unmet need for family planning, programs should not exclusively focus on increasing the demand for family planning, but also seek new ways to address the existing unmet need. Our study illustrates that simple analyses of existing health survey data can be an important tool for informing the design of programs to tackle this unmet need.
Question Answering over Knowledge Base with Neural Attention Combining Global Knowledge Information

With the rapid growth of knowledge bases (KBs) on the web, how to take full advantage of them becomes increasingly important. Knowledge base-based question answering (KB-QA) is one of the most promising approaches to access the substantial knowledge. Meantime, as the neural network-based (NN-based) methods develop, NN-based KB-QA has already achieved impressive results. However, previous work did not put emphasis on question representation, and the question is converted into a fixed vector regardless of its candidate answers. This simple representation strategy is unable to express the proper information of the question. Hence, we present a neural attention-based model to represent the questions dynamically according to the different focuses of various candidate answer aspects. In addition, we leverage the global knowledge inside the underlying KB, aiming at integrating the rich KB information into the representation of the answers. And it also alleviates the out of vocabulary (OOV) problem, which helps the attention model to represent the question more precisely. The experimental results on WEBQUESTIONS demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
Diabetic dyslipidaemia is associated with alterations in eNOS, caveolin‐1, and endothelial dysfunction in streptozotocin treated rats

Diabetes is a complex progressive disease characterized by chronic hyperglycaemia and dyslipidaemia associated with endothelial dysfunction. Oxidized LDL (Ox‐LDL) is elevated in diabetes and may contribute to endothelial dysfunction. The aim of this study was to relate the serum levels of Ox‐LDL with endothelial dysfunction in streptozotocin (STZ)‐diabetic rats and to further explore the changes in endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) and caveolin‐1 (CAV‐1) expression in primary aortic endothelial cells.
Application of Fiber Bragg Grating Sensor in Well Logging

A new type of pressure and temperature fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensor used in oil wells is presented.The FBG sensing principle of detecting pressure and temperature is analyzed.On this basis,a sensor is designed to measure the parameters of pressure and temperature in oil wells.From the temperature and pressure test,the relationship between the pressure/temperature and the central wavelength of FBG is obtained,and the analytic expression of pressure-response sensitivity is found.The sensor can measure pressure and temperature at the same time.The experimental results show that the temperature sensitivity is 1.6357×10~(-5)/℃when the temperature ranges from 10℃to 100℃,and the pressure sensitivity reaches to 1.245×10~(-4)/MPa when the pressure ranges from 0 to 20 MPa.The sensor can meet the application in oil wells.
Norovirus transmission dynamics: a modelling review

SUMMARY Norovirus is one of the leading causes of viral gastroenteritis worldwide and responsible for substantial morbidity, mortality and healthcare costs. To further understanding of the epidemiology and control of norovirus, there has been much recent interest in describing the transmission dynamics of norovirus through mathematical models. In this study, we review the current modelling approaches for norovirus transmission. We examine the data and methods used to estimate these models that vary structurally and parametrically between different epidemiological contexts. Many of the existing studies at population level have focused on the same case notification dataset, whereas models from outbreak settings are highly specific and difficult to generalise. In this review, we explore the consistency in the description of norovirus transmission dynamics and the robustness of parameter estimates between studies. In particular, we find that there is considerable variability in estimates of key parameters such as the basic reproduction number, which may mean that the effort required to control norovirus at the population level may currently be underestimated.
NF-j B pathway inhibitors preferentially inhibit breast cancer stem-like cells

Accumulating evidence indicates that breast cancer is caused by cancer stem cells and cure of breast cancer requires eradication of breast cancer stem cells. Previous studies with leukemia stem cells have shown that NF-jB pathway is important for leukemia stem cell survival. In this study, by using MCF7 sphere cells as model of breast cancer stem-like cells, we evaluated the effect of NF-jB pathway specific inhibitors on human breast cancer MCF7 sphere cells. Three inhibitors including parthenolide (PTL), pyrrolidinedithiocarbamate (PDTC) and its analog diethyldithiocarbamate (DETC) were found to preferentially inhibit MCF7 sphere cell proliferation. These compounds also showed preferential inhibition in term of proliferation and colony formation on MCF7 side population (SP) cells, a small fraction of MCF7 cells known to enrich in breast cancer stem-like cells. The preferential inhibition effect of these compounds was due to inhibition of the NF-jB activity in both MCF7 sphere and MCF7 cells, with higher inhibition effect on MCF7 sphere cells than on MCF7 cells. PDTC was further evaluated in vivo and showed significant tumor growth inhibition alone but had better tumor growth inhibition in combination with paclitaxel in the mouse xenograft model than either PDTC or paclitaxel alone. This study suggests that breast cancer stem-like cells could be selectively inhibited by targeting signaling pathways important for breast cancer stem-like cells.
Robust Tracking and Redetection: Collaboratively Modeling the Target and Its Context

Robust object tracking and redetection require stably predicting the trajectory of the target object and recovering from tracking failure by quickly redetecting it when it is lost during long-term tracking. The locations of the target and the background are calculated relative to the region occupied by the object. The effect of tracking can be enhanced by isolating the target and the background, modeling and tracking them, respectively, and integrating their tracking results. In this study, we propose an approach that builds motion models for the target and its context. Tracking results from a target tracker and a context tracker are integrated through linear fusion to predict the position of the target. A kernelized correlation filter tracker is used to track the target in the predicted position. When the target is lost, it can be quickly recovered by searching in the given field of view using a target model built and updated through observation models that are constructed prior to the loss of the target. Our approach is not sensitive to the segmentation of the target and the context. The motion models and observation models of the target and the context work together in the tracking process, whereas the target model alone is involved in redetection. Experiments to test our proposed approach, which simultaneously models the target and its context, showed that it can effectively enhance the robustness of long-term tracking.
Memory-efficient large-scale linear support vector machine

Stochastic gradient descent has been advanced as a computationally efficient method for large-scale problems. In classification problems, many proposed linear support vector machines are very effective. However, they assume that the data is already in memory which might be not always the case. Recent work suggests a classical method that divides such a problem into smaller blocks then solves the sub-problems iteratively. We show that a simple modification of shrinking the dataset early will produce significant saving in computation and memory. We further find that on problems larger than previously considered, our approach is able to reach solutions on top-end desktop machines while competing methods cannot.
Brain reactivity to alcohol and cannabis marketing during sobriety and intoxication

Drugs of abuse stimulate striatal dopamine release and activate reward pathways. This study examined the impact of alcohol and cannabis marketing on the reward circuit in alcohol and cannabis users while sober and intoxicated. It was predicted that alcohol and cannabis marketing would increase striatal activation when sober and that reward sensitivity would be less during alcohol and cannabis intoxication. Heavy alcohol (n = 20) and regular cannabis users (n = 21) participated in a mixed factorial study involving administration of alcohol and placebo in the alcohol group and cannabis and placebo in the cannabis group. Non‐drug users (n = 20) served as between group reference. Brain activation after exposure to alcohol and cannabis marketing movies was measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging and compared between groups while sober and compared with placebo while intoxicated. Implicit alcohol and cannabis cognitions were assessed by means of a single‐category implicit association test. Alcohol and cannabis marketing significantly increased striatal BOLD activation across all groups while sober. Striatal activation however decreased during intoxication with alcohol and cannabis. Implicit associations with cannabis marketing cues were significantly more positive in alcohol and cannabis users as compared with non‐drug using controls. Public advertising of alcohol or cannabis use elicits striatal activation in the brain's reward circuit. Reduction of marketing would reduce brain exposure to reward cues that motivate substance use. Conversely, elevated dopamine levels protect against the reinforcing potential of marketing.
Identity processes as a predictor of memory beliefs in older adults

ABSTRACT Objectives: The impact of identity processes (identity assimilation, identity accommodation, and identity balance) on memory beliefs was explored. Method: Individually administered questionnaires (e.g. depressive symptoms, subjective health, identity processes, memory beliefs) and a brief neuropsychological assessment of cognitive abilities were completed during a one-time interview with 82 participants aged 58–92 years-old (M = 74.68, SD = 10.95). Forty (49.4%) identified their race as White/Caucasian, 38 (46.9%) identified their race as Black/African American, and 3 (3.7%) indicated no primary racial/ethnic group. Results: Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that identity processes account for differences in memory beliefs beyond established predictors. Specifically, identity accommodation and identity balance predicted memory self-efficacy beyond depression and subjective health. These findings are congruent with identity process theory; however, the impact of identity assimilation in this population was unremarkable. Exploratory analyses also indicated that the identity processes have a stronger relationship to some domains of memory self-efficacy (i.e. anxiety, capacity) than others (i.e. perceived change, locus of control). Conclusion: Beliefs about memory and their integration into an adaptable, yet consistent self-concept are an important element of identity for aging individuals. Additional research is needed to determine the unique role of identity accommodation and identity balance in understanding cognitive functioning and ultimately the impact on potential clinical applications, such as related health-seeking behavior among older adults. Tailored interventions could be developed to facilitate optimal utilization of health care services at a time when early diagnosis of memory-related disorders is critical for future planning and care decisions.
Effects of 17β-Estradiol on Activity, Gene and Protein Expression of Superoxide Dismutases in Primary Cultured Human Lens Epithelial Cells

ABSTRACT Purpose: Protective effects of estradiol against H2O2-induced oxidative stress have been demonstrated in lens epithelial cells. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of 17β-estradiol (E2) on the different superoxide dismutase (SOD) isoenzymes, SOD-1, SOD-2, and SOD-3, as well as estrogen receptors (ERs), ERα and ERβ, in primary cultured human lens epithelial cells (HLECs). Materials and methods: HLECs were exposed to 0.1 µM or 1 µM E2 for 1.5 h and 24 h after which the effects were studied. Protein expression and immunolocalization of SOD-1, SOD-2, ERα, and ERβ were studied with Western blot and immunocytochemistry. Total SOD activity was measured, and gene expression analyses were performed for SOD1, SOD2, and SOD3. Results: Increased SOD activity was seen after 1.5 h exposure to both 0.1 µM and 1 µM E2. There were no significant changes in protein or gene expression of the different SODs. Immunolabeling of SOD-1 was evident in the cytosol and nucleus; whereas, SOD-2 was localized in the mitochondria. Both ERα and ERβ were immunolocalized to the nucleus, and mitochondrial localization of ERβ was evident by colocalization with MitoTracker. Both ERα and ERβ showed altered protein expression levels after exposure to E2. Conclusions: The observed increase in SOD activity after exposure to E2 without accompanying increase in gene or protein expression supports a role for E2 in protection against oxidative stress mediated through non-genomic mechanisms.
Pre-Clinical Evaluation of a Replication-Competent Recombinant Adenovirus Serotype 4 Vaccine Expressing Influenza H5 Hemagglutinin

Background Influenza virus remains a significant health and social concern in part because of newly emerging strains, such as avian H5N1 virus. We have developed a prototype H5N1 vaccine using a recombinant, replication-competent Adenovirus serotype 4 (Ad4) vector, derived from the U.S. military Ad4 vaccine strain, to express the hemagglutinin (HA) gene from A/Vietnam/1194/2004 influenza virus (Ad4-H5-Vtn). Our hypothesis is that a mucosally-delivered replicating Ad4-H5-Vtn recombinant vector will be safe and induce protective immunity against H5N1 influenza virus infection and disease pathogenesis. Methodology/Principal Findings The Ad4-H5-Vtn vaccine was designed with a partial deletion of the E3 region of Ad4 to accommodate the influenza HA gene. Replication and growth kinetics of the vaccine virus in multiple human cell lines indicated that the vaccine virus is attenuated relative to the wild type virus. Expression of the HA transgene in infected cells was documented by flow cytometry, western blot analysis and induction of HA-specific antibody and cellular immune responses in mice. Of particular note, mice immunized intranasally with the Ad4-H5-Vtn vaccine were protected against lethal H5N1 reassortant viral challenge even in the presence of pre-existing immunity to the Ad4 wild type virus. Conclusions/Significance Several non-clinical attributes of this vaccine including safety, induction of HA-specific humoral and cellular immunity, and efficacy were demonstrated using an animal model to support Phase 1 clinical trial evaluation of this new vaccine.
In vivo evaluation of the combination effect of near-infrared laser and 5-fluorouracil-loaded PLGA-coated magnetite nanographene oxide

Abstract Magnetite nanographene oxide has exhibited great potential in drug delivery and photothermal therapy (PTT) for cancer treatment. Here we developed 5-fluorouracil-loaded poly (lactic-co-glycolic acid)-coated magnetite nanographene oxide (NGO-SPION-PLGA-5-Fu) to simplify combined PTT and chemotherapy in one complex. The nanocarrier was synthesized using a modified O1/W1/O2/W2 multiple emulsion solvent evaporation method and was characterized for size, zeta potential, drug loading, in vitro and in vivo release. In this paper, in vivo suppression effect of PTT and chemotherapy using this synthesized magnetite nanographene oxide was studied. The in vitro release of 5-Fu from nanoparticles showed that 41.36% of the drug was released within 24 h. In vivo release showed that 5-Fu has a sustained release profile and prolonged lifetime in the rabbit plasma. Remarkably, a single injection of NGO-SPION-PLGA-5-Fu and 808 nm near-infrared laser (NIR) irradiation for 3 min effectively suppressed the growth of tumours compared with 5-Fu alone (p < .01). Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) confirmed that the magnetic nanographene oxide was effectively targeted to the tumour site. Therefore, NGO-SPION-PLGA-5-Fu showed excellent PTT efficacy, magnetic targeting property, and MRI ability, indicating that there is a great potential of NGO-SPION-PLGA-5-Fu for cancer theranostic applications.
Complementary and Alternative Medicine Use in Individuals Presenting for Care at a Comprehensive Cancer Center

Purpose: To define the use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in individuals presenting for care at a comprehensive cancer center. Patients and Methods: A total of 17 639 individuals presenting to an NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center (and consortium sites) completed a questionnaire regarding CAM use. Data were analyzed using the univariate χ2 test to assess CAM use associated with a number of variables, including cancer status, age, gender, marital status, ethnicity, race, employment, and education level. Results: Eighty-seven percent of individuals who completed the CAM survey acknowledged CAM therapy use within the previous 12 months. Of the 5 broad categories of CAM, the most commonly used were biologically based approaches (14 759/17 639 [83.67%]), mind-body interventions (4624/17 485 [26.45%]), manipulative and body-based therapies (3957/17 537 [22.56%]), alternative medical systems (429/15 952 [2.69%]), and energy therapies (270/15 872 [1.7%]). CAM use was more prevalent among women, non-Hispanics, Caucasians, patients 60 to 69 years of age, and those who are married, have a higher level of education, and are employed (P < .005). Conclusions: This is the largest report of CAM use in individuals presenting for care at a comprehensive cancer center. Our analysis revealed that a very high percentage of patients utilize CAM. Because many of these CAM interventions are not studied in oncology patients, additional research on safety, efficacy, and mechanisms of action are essential. Furthermore, it is important that oncologists understand CAM modalities and counsel their patients about their use.
Repeatability of grasp recognition for robotic hand prosthesis control based on sEMG data

Control methods based on sEMG obtained promising results for hand prosthetics. Control system robustness is still often inadequate and does not allow the amputees to perform a large number of movements useful for everyday life. Only few studies analyzed the repeatability of sEMG classification of hand grasps. The main goals of this paper are to explore repeatability in sEMG data and to release a repeatability database with the recorded experiments. The data are recorded from 10 intact subjects repeating 7 grasps 12 times, twice a day for 5 days. The data are publicly available on the Ninapro web page. The analysis for the repeatability is based on the comparison of movement classification accuracy in several data acquisitions and for different subjects. The analysis is performed using mean absolute value and waveform length features and a Random Forest classifier. The accuracy obtained by training and testing on acquisitions at different times is on average 27.03% lower than training and testing on the same acquisition. The results obtained by training and testing on different acquisitions suggest that previous acquisitions can be used to train the classification algorithms. The inter-subject variability is remarkable, suggesting that specific characteristics of the subjects can affect repeatibility and sEMG classification accuracy. In conclusion, the results of this paper can contribute to develop more robust control systems for hand prostheses, while the presented data allows researchers to test repeatability in further analyses.
Design and analysis of high gain 2×2 and 2×4 circular patch antenna arrays with and without air-gap for WLAN applications

In this paper, high gain 2×2 and 2×4 circular patch antenna arrays are designed on FR4 substrate of standard thickness 1.5mm. The proposed antenna arrays are designed using probe feeding technique. The antenna arrays are designed for 2.4GHz resonant frequency suitable for WLAN applications. Gain is further enhanced by introducing an air-gap layer of heights 1mm to 6mm between the substrate and ground plane for each of the antenna arrays. The designed antenna arrays are simulated in High Frequency Structure Simulator (HFSS) software version v17.2. Results are evaluated in terms of return loss, VSWR, gain and radiation pattern. The designed 2×2 and 2×4 antenna arrays with air-gap layer results into a maximum gain of 13.59dB and 16.07dB respectively.