Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Asthma in Latin America: a public heath challenge and research opportunity

Asthma has emerged as an important public health problem in many Latin American countries over the past decade. In Brazil and Costa Rica, the prevalence of asthma and associated morbidity is as great or greater as reported in traditional high prevalence countries such as the US, but remains neglected as a public health priority. Asthma in Latin America is associated particularly with underprivileged populations living in cities but remains relatively rare in many rural populations. The causes of asthma in Latin America are likely to be associated with urbanization, migration, and the adoption of a modern ‘Westernized’ lifestyle and environmental changes that follow these processes that include changes in diet, physical activity, hygiene, and exposures to allergens, irritants, and outdoor and indoor pollutants. Because of the enormous social, genetic, and environmental contrasts within and between Latin American countries, and the large differences in prevalence associated with these differences, the investigation of asthma in Latin America provides important research opportunities to identify the social and biological mechanisms that underlie asthma development. Asthma in Latin America poses enormous challenges for health policy makers, health services, and researchers to respond to and alleviate the growing burden of asthma disability, particularly among marginalized urban populations.
Detection of minimal residual disease in acute leukemia.

Compana and Pui' have failed to mention in their well-balanced and lucid review article on minimal residual disease (MRD) in leukemia two important practical aspects of quantitating MRD by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). First, the quantitation of MRD by PCR is not precise, and the method based on Poisson statistics used by Brisco et aI2 is no exception. If MRD quantitation were to be performed on the same sample on different days, up to twofold difference in the amount of MRD may be observed. This poor reproducibility should be kept in mind before changing treatment based on the detection of MRD. Second, the method of preparation of the remission bone marrow for DNA extraction may also influence the amount of MRD detected. For example, the PCR method is likely to amplify target genes from DNA released from dead cells (not clonogenic). The time taken for the bone marrow to remove the dead leukemic cells may be variable depending on the initial leukemic load and the ability of the reticuloendothelial system to remove the debris. DNA prepared from a buffy coat preparation or a whole bone marrow suspension is more likely to contain DNA from dead cells as opposed to DNA prepared from, eg, Hypaque-Ficoll-separated bone marrow cells. These two practical issues may explain the wide variations in the reported percentage of patients with MRD at the time of initial remission (around 6 weeks from diagnosis) and might partly explain the observation that the percentage of patients with detectable MRD is lower in studies reporting MRD after several months from diagnosis. ' These practical issues must be addressed in prospective studies designed to validate the prognostic importance of MRD in acute leukemia. It is premature to intensify therapy in patients with a high amount of MRD at the time of initial remission and to decrease therapy in patients with no detectable MRD. It must be kept in mind that prognosis in leukemia is relative to the txeatment and that good results obtained in patients with no MRD may be because of the currently available therapy, which is better than the therapy used 2 decades ago. To change the current practice in good prognosis patients may be an invitation for disaster.
Clustering of optimized data for email forensics

Forensics is a study of evidence to help the police solving crimes. If we apply (Forensics) in Computer Sciences domain, crimes are mainly network attacks found more in emails; which become nowadays the most popular way of communication accessible via Internet. We receive in our Inboxes emails gangs without being aware of them. Therefore, it is necessary to build an automatic checking system to filter good emails from bad ones. In this paper, we propose a new emails processing approach using Singular Value Decomposition method (SVD) to optimize emails data before applying Data Mining techniques (Clustering) to extract bad emails located in the mail servers where the user’s inboxes are hosted. Our study is based on filtering Emails (bads and goods) by the clustering of optimized data compared with unoptimized one.
Fluctuation effects in hot quark matter: Precursors of chiral transition at finite temperature.

Fluctuations of the order parameter of chiral transition in a hot and dense quark gas are examined in the random-phase approximation with the use of a QCD-motivated effective Lagrangian. We show that there arise soft modes having a large strength and a narrow width above the critical temperature, which are analogous to the fluctuations of the order parameter in a superconductor above the critical point. It is argued that the modes contribute to the cooling of the quark-gluon plasma.
3D Time‐resolved contrast‐enhanced MR DSA: Advantages and tradeoffs

The 3D TRICKS method for contrast‐enhanced, time‐resolved MR DSA has been recently described. In this paper, computer simulations are used to investigate the relative frame rate, temporal window, artery‐vein temporal separation, contrast‐to‐noise ratio, and spatial resolution of TRICKS and conventional scans for breath‐hold and non‐breath‐hold applications. For non‐breath‐hold applications, TRICKS can be coofigured to provide increased CNR or spatial resolution at an increased frame rate, but with a longer temporal window when compared with a series of conventional scans in which the central portion of k‐space is sampled at the same rate as for the TRICKS scans. For breath‐hold applications, TRICKS typically provides three images with 75% of the conventional single acquisition spatial resolution and is more tolerant of variations in contrast curve shape within the field of view.
Federated filter based multi-sensor fault-tolerant altitude determination system for UAV

An altitude determination system for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is presented in this paper, in which a multi-sensor measurement system is designed by using barometric altitude sensor, GPS, and accelerometer, and the UAV altitude is determined by the federated filter based fusion estimation method. The measurement information fusion problem of the sensors with different output frequency is resolved by designing the subsystems respectively. Calculation method for initial value is presented based on the information fusion theory. The re-initialization time after fault isolation of the system is reduced greatly. The simulation results show that the altitude determination system is characterized by high precision, good reliability, and fast fault restoration.
Measuring success in a pesticide risk reduction program among migrant farmworkers in Colorado.

BACKGROUND Farmworkers in the US largely consist of young undocumented Hispanics with a median education of 6 years and limited English skills. The High Plains Intermountain Center for Agricultural Health and Safety bilingual pesticide risk reduction program, which complied with the Worker Protection Standard for migrant farmworkers was evaluated. METHODS A pretest/posttest comparison of farmworkers (n = 152) assigned to either the experimental or control group was used. Independent variables included demographics, agricultural experience, and health locus of control. Dependent variables were pesticide knowledge, safety risk perception (SRP), and safety-behavior outcomes. RESULTS The bilingual pesticide program effectively increased farmworker's pesticide knowledge (P = 0.0001), SRP (P = 0.0001), and two (out of four) behavior outcomes. Workers with external health locus of control were less likely to adopt safety behaviors (P = 0.0001). CONCLUSIONS The cognitive decision-making process whereby farmworkers' readiness to change and permanently adopt safety behaviors was supported by the pesticide program. Our results support the need for long-term sustained bilingual, intervention programs that demonstrated effectiveness using integrative methodology.
The Bethesda System for Reporting Thyroid Cytopathology: A Meta-Analysis

results in Table 5 of the paper. All the calculations are accurate and are according to their definitions for a “screening test” except for the false-positive rate, which they calculated as being 0.5%. It is however clear that if they had used their defined groups of false positive and true negative numbers, the false-positive rate would have been a significantly different value of 49.3%! The rate of 0.5% as shown in Table 5 is derived from considering as false positive only those cases in category VI that were proven benign after surgical excision, which is in obvious contradiction to the stated definitions and calculation methods. This very low number is also in sharp contrast to the other indicators, such as specificity, positive predictive value, and diagnostic accuracy, and is a source of confusion to the reader. It may be true that the real false-positive rate as classically used in cytopathology considers only cases interpreted as definitely malignant that turn out to be benign. However, the method of calculation as defined by the authors should be adhered to throughout, unless otherwise specified.
Achyranthes Aspera L. Ameliorates Aflatoxin B1- Induced Peroxidative Hepatic Damage in Rats

Aflatoxins are potent hepatotoxic and hepatocarcinogenic agents. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) formation and consequent peroxidative damage caused by aflatoxin are considered to be the main mechanisms leading to hepatotoxicity. The present investigation aims at assessing the hepatoprotective effect of methanolic root extract of Acyranthes aspera L. on aflatoxin B1 (AFB1)-induced hepatotoxicity in a rat model. The hepatoprotection of A. aspera is compared with silymarin, a well known standard hepatoprotectant. Lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), alkaline phosphatase (ALKP), alanine and aspartate aminotransferases (ALT, AST) were found to be significantly increased in the serum and decreased in the liver of AFB1 administered (1 mg/kg body mass, orally) rats, suggesting hepatic damage. Marked increase in the lipid peroxide levels (LPO) and a concomitant decrease in the enzymic superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT), glutathione peroxidase (GPX), glutathione reductase (GR), glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) and glutathione-S-transferase (GST)) and nonenzymic reduced glutathione (GSH), vitamin C and vitamin E (antioxidants) in the hepatic tissue were observed in AFB1 administered rats. Pretreatment with A. aspera (100 mg/kg body mass, orally) and silymarin (25 mg/kg body mass, orally) for 7 days reverted the condition to near normal. The results of this study indicated that A. aspera is a potent hepatoprotectant as silymarin.
Stability guaranteed teleoperation: an adaptive motion/force control approach

An adaptive motion/force controller is developed for unilateral or bilateral teleoperation systems. The method can be applied in both position and rate control modes, with arbitrary motion or force scaling. No acceleration measurements are required. Nonlinear rigid-body dynamics of the master and the slave robots are considered. A model of the flexible or rigid environment is incorporated into the dynamics of the slave, while a model of the human operator is incorporated into the dynamics of the master. The master and the slave are subject to independent adaptive motion/force controllers that assume parameter uncertainty bounds. Each parameter is independently updated within its known lower and upper bounds. The states of the master (slave) are sent to the slave (master) as motion/force tracking commands instead of control actions (efforts and/or flows). Under the modeling assumptions for the human operator and the environment, the proposed teleoperation control scheme is L/sub 2/ and L/sub /spl infin// stable in both free motion and flexible or rigid contact motion and is robust against time delays. The controlled master-slave system behaves essentially as a linearly damped free-floating mass. If the parameter estimates converge, the environment impedance and the impedance transmitted to the master differ only by a control-parameter dependent mass/damper term. Asymptotic motion (velocity/position) tracking and force tracking with zero steady-state error are achieved. Experimental results are presented in support of the analysis.
Macrophone: an American English telephone speech corpus for the Polyphone project

Macrophone is a corpus of approximately 200000 utterances, recorded over the telephone from a broad sample of about 5000 American speakers. Sponsored by the Linguistic Data Consortium (LDC), it is the first of a series of similar data sets that will be collected for major languages of the world in a cooperative project called Polyphone. It is designed to provide telephone speech suitable for the development of automatic voice-interactive telephone services. In particular, Macrophone contains training material for applications in transportation, scheduling, ticketing, database access, shopping, and other automated telephone interactions. In addition to being phonetically balanced, the spoken material refers to times, locations, monetary amounts, and interactive operations. The utterances are spoken by respondents into telephone handsets and recorded directly in 8-bit mu-law digital form through a T1 connection to the usual switched telephone network. The paper describes the design of the linguistic materials in the corpus, and the process of solicitation, collection, transcription, and file preparation for the Macrophone corpus. <<ETX>>
Optimizing human resources allocation on aircraft maintenance with predefined sequence

In this paper, a new model for optimizing the allocation of human resources with the constraint of predefined sequence is presented, which is under the restrictions of human resources and faces the different capabilities of men on different items. The Genetic Algorithm is employed to find the optimal solution that holds the shortest total time span of maintenance and we find that it is much good at solving such kinds of complex problem. The designs of algorithm and the calculating steps are all detailed in this paper, and an example is also demonstrated to show the process of optimizing.
Interactive Appearance Manipulation of Fiber-based Materials

Achieving a visually appealing experience for the user interaction with photo-realistic digitized micro-fiber materials is a challenging task. While state-of-the-art high-quality fabric modeling techniques rely on complex micro-geometry representations that are computationally expensive and not well-suited for interactive rendering, previous interactive reflectance models reach a speed-up at the cost of discarding many of the effects of light exchange that significantly contribute to the appearance of fabric materials. In this paper, we present a novel, example-based technique for the interactive manipulation of micro-fiber materials based on bidirectional texture functions (BTFs) that allow considering fine details in the surface reflectance behavior. BTFs of the respective material sample are acquired for varying fiber orientations and combined to a single texture representation that encodes material appearance depending on the view and light conditions as well as the orientations of the fibers. This model can be efficiently evaluated depending on the user input which, as demonstrated by our results, allows a realistic simulation of the interaction with micro-fiber materials in
Instantaneous Oscillating Phasor Estimates With Taylor$^K$-Kalman Filters

The state-transition matrix of the Kth order Taylor approximation to the dynamic phasor and its first derivatives leads to a plurality of state-space representations to approach the bandpass signal model of a power oscillation. With these truncated signal models, the Kalman filter algorithm can be applied to their state vectors in order to find observers able to estimate the dynamic phasor and its first derivatives. The estimates obtained through this technique, from oscillatory signals, are not only instantaneous (no delay) but also synchronous, an important attribute for control applications. They also provide frequency estimates. The new filters reduce the total vector error achieved with the traditional Kalman filter; are much more stable, with settling times five times lower; and improve the phasor estimates of oscillations with frequency offset.
The experimental transmission of Parafilaria bovicola to cattle in South Africa using Musca species (subgenus Eumusca) as intermediate hosts.

In controlled experiments in an insect-free stable, cattle became infected with Parafilaria bovicola when Musca lusoria, infected with the larvae of this worm, were allowed to feed on a fresh skin incision, and when infective larvae were placed on fresh skin incisions, injected subcutaneously or into the jugular vein, or instilled into the eyes. The sites of blood spots caused by ovipositing P. bovicola females and the sites of carcass lesions were seldom close to the site of infection, an indication that the worms had migrated. The prepatent period of P. bovicola in 4 cattle which developed blood spots ranged from 242--319 days. Neither of the infected cattle that were kept continuously in a shady stable showed blood spots, but 4 out of 7 infected cattle which spent some time in the sun bled. However, carcass lesions on shaded cattle were similar in appearance to those on cattle kept outdoors. Infective larvae were stimulated to escape from the mouth-parts of infected M. lusoria and Musca xanthomelas s.s. when these were fed citrated ox blood warmed to 38--40 degrees C. No escape took place when the flies were fed warmed saline or warmed 15% sucrose solution.
Salmonella SsrB activates a global regulon of horizontally acquired genes

Salmonella enterica is a bacterial pathogen of humans that can proliferate within epithelial cells as well as professional phagocytes of the immune system. This ability requires an S. enterica specific locus termed Salmonella pathogenicity island 2 (SPI‐2). SPI‐2 encodes a type III secretion system that injects effectors encoded within the island into host cell cytosol to promote virulence. SsrAB is a two‐component regulator encoded within SPI‐2 that was assumed to activate SPI‐2 genes exclusively. Here, it is shown that SsrB in fact activates a global regulon. At least 10 genes outside SPI‐2 are SsrB regulated within epithelial and macrophage cells. Nine of these 10 SsrB‐regulated genes outside SPI‐2 reside within previously undescribed regions of the Salmonella genome. Most share no sequence homology with current database entries. However, one is remarkably homologous to human glucosyl ceramidase, an enzyme involved in the ceramide signalling pathway. The SsrB regulon is modulated by the two‐component regulatory systems PhoP/PhoQ and OmpR/EnvZ, and is upregulated in the intracellular microenvironment.
Three-dimensional computed tomographic angiography of cerebral aneurysms.

We describe our technique and results of dynamic, reconstructed, three-dimensional (3-D) computed tomographic (CT) angiography in our first 18 patients with either complex aneurysms, producing subarachnoid hemorrhage or the compression of neighboring structures, or small asymptomatic aneurysms, and assess the role of this technique in treatment planning. A dynamic, infused CT scan producing 1.5-mm cuts of the area of interest was performed, and the two-dimensional images were reconstructed in three dimensions with the ISG Allegro system (ISG Technologies, Toronto, Ontario, Canada). Results were compared with intra-arterial digital subtraction angiography and magnetic resonance angiography. All aneurysms over 3 mm and half of the aneurysms less than or equal to 3 mm were demonstrated by 3-D CT angiography. The neck of the aneurysm, its relationship to the parent artery and associated branches, and its relationship to surrounding bony structures, such as the anterior clinoid, were also demonstrated. This was especially useful for ophthalmic aneurysms. The 3-D image could be rotated on the screen to mimic the operative approach. The active, filling portion and the thrombosed part of partially thrombosed, giant aneurysms could be seen on the same image, and the active, filling portion could be better appreciated with 3-D CT angiography than with magnetic resonance angiography. A partially treated, acrylic-coated aneurysm that could not be completely assessed otherwise has been demonstrated by this technique. 3-D CT angiography is useful in the evaluation of aneurysms, especially when the local anatomy is obscured or distorted by its mass or by the anterior clinoid. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Contribution of Current Harmonics to Average Torque and Torque Ripple in Switched Reluctance Machines

This paper investigates the contribution of current harmonics to average torque and torque ripple in switched reluctance machines. In order to account for the magnetic saturation under different current amplitudes and waveforms, the self-inductances are obtained by finite element calculation using frozen permeability method and subsequently used in the analytical derivation of an instantaneous torque equation based on the Fourier series analyses. Five different current waveforms are also considered in order to identify the contribution of current harmonics. It is found that the average torque is mainly contributed by the dc, first, and second current harmonics. Meanwhile, the fourth and fifth current harmonics have high influence on the torque ripple but much lower contribution to the average torque. In addition, the optimization of current waveforms in terms of the maximum average torque under a given RMS current is also discussed. All analytical analyses are validated by direct nonlinear finite element and experimental results.
Interferon-alpha as a treatment modality for colchicine- resistant familial Mediterranean fever.

OBJECTIVE Previous reports on interferon-alpha (IFN-alpha) were conflicting with respect to its efficacy in familial Mediterranean fever (FMF) refractory to colchicine treatment. We investigated the effect of IFN-alpha in patients with colchicine-resistant FMF. METHODS In a prospective, patient self-controlled, open-label study evaluating the safety and efficacy of IFN-alpha in patients with FMF with a severe phenotype, refractory to intensified (oral plus intravenous) colchicine therapy, we advised patients to subcutaneously inject IFN-alpha, 3 million international units, at the onset of the FMF attack. Attacks not treated with IFN-alpha of the same patients and in the same sites served as control attacks. Features of each attack were recorded in a questionnaire, eventually used to compare between IFN-alpha-treated and non-treated attacks. RESULTS Ten patients with a total of 80 attacks were recruited. Compared to 22 untreated attacks, a > 20% and > 50% reduction in the duration of the attacks was noted in 100% and 90% of the 58 IFN-alpha-treated attacks, respectively (p < 0.001 for both). The severity (degree of pain) of the IFN-alpha-treated attacks was attenuated by > 20% and > 50% in 88% and 49% of these attacks, respectively (p < 0.001 for both). The most common drug-related adverse events were chills and fatigue. CONCLUSION Early intervention with IFN-alpha injections was associated with reduced attack length and/or severity in a substantial number of bouts, with an acceptable cost of adverse events.