Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Role of bambuterol in the management of bronchial asthma

Background: Asthma is a long-term inflammatory disorder of the airways characterized by wheezing, dyspnea, and cough. For the last few decades, inhalational devices have been used in the management of the disease, but compliance remains the problem. Higher doses of oral medications used with prominent side effects precluded the use of oral beta-agonist bronchodilators, and the search for an ideal beta-adrenergic bronchodilator continues. This study was conducted for evaluation of the role of oral bambuterol in the management of bronchial asthma. Aims and Objectives: Our study aimed to evaluate the potency and effectiveness of oral bambuterol in the management of the disease in fifty patients followed up over 2 weeks with objective assessment of symptom scores and changes in the frequency of rescue bronchodilator after 2 weeks of treatment. Side effects, if any, were documented for all patients. Methods: The study was conducted on fifty patients with chronic bronchial asthma. They were given 10 mg of bambuterol once daily orally for 14 days. Pulmonary function tests were performed at days 1, 7, and 14. Forced vital capacity (FVC), forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV1), and peak expiratory flow rate (PEFR) were measured. Patients were assessed for symptom score and side effects at days 1, 7, and 14. Results: After completion of the study, significant improvement in the symptom score, FVC, FEV1, and PEFR was obtained with minimal side effects. Conclusion: Bambuterol 10 mg oral tablet once a day provides significant improvement in pulmonary function tests and effectively reduces asthmatic symptoms with minimal side effects.
Physical activity, eating habits and tobacco and alcohol use in students of a Catalan university

Introduction: University populations are considered as vulnerable groups when it comes to acquiring health habits.Objective: The aim of this study is to know the levels of physical activity and health habits of the students of the University of Lleida.Methods: Healthy habits and the practice of physical activity in university students were evaluated through the Global Physical Activity Questionnaire (GPAQ). Results: 600 students from the University of Lleida participated during the period 2014-2015. 30.7% of them smoked, while 96.7% reported alcohol consupmtion, and 75.5% practiced physical activity. More than 62% of male students practiced physical activity between 3 and 7 days a week compared to 33.5% of women (p=0.000). More than 30% of the students ingested fruit every day and 65% did so at least 4 days a week. 19.4% of women and 7.9% of men consumed fruit daily, finding significant differences (p=0.001). Conclusions: 30% of the participant did not meet the minimum recommendations of physical activity. A high percentage of participants have a low fruits and vegetables consumption and a high prevalence of risk of alcohol consumption. An educational intervention by universities is suggested to encourage the practice of healthy habits in students.
Engagement during Interaction with Assistive Robots

Background: Among various solutions to aid the aging population, the research community is focusing on assistive robotics that may help to delay admission to care facilities by fostering independence of older people in their homes. This paper presents the Robot-Era project and experimentation aimed at investigating 1) the psychological attitude of users toward robotic platforms as assistive companions, by assessing their level of engagement and 2) how the robot’s technological performance could affect the users’ level of engagement during their interaction with it. Method: Twenty-six older adults (M=13, F=13) were invited to interact with the robot during the experimental session. Data collection was based on observational methods; video recording of users’ interactions with assistive robots were evaluated and coded to retrieve both behavioral data on users’ engagement, and dialogue quality and efficiency metrics on robot performance. Results: Behavioral data revealed an overall positive attitude toward the robot, with facial expressions and gestures serving also to increase the communicative strength of messages to the robot, suggesting a good degree of engagement during the interaction. Moreover, a lower frequency of robot utterances was found to be related to higher degrees of engagement, enjoyment, instrumental use, and exploration behavior. Conclusion: Results from our investigation show that a robotic platform’s technical features and performance significantly influence the user’s engagement level during interaction with the robot.
Maternal Perceptions of Self-Weight and Child Weight May Influence Milk Choice of Participants in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC)

Objective To examine the association between maternal perceptions of self-weight and child weight status and milk consumption behavior of Hispanic WIC participants. Methods Mixed methods design with phone survey (n=529) and one-on-one interviews (n=35). Demographic characteristics, Chi-square, and thematic analyses were conducted. Results More than half of overweight mothers misperceived their own weight status as well as those of their children. Mothers who perceived their child to be overweight were more likely to make a healthier food choice for their family, namely, choosing reduced-fat milk instead of whole milk. Qualitative interviews revealed a cultural preference for larger size children, and mothers defined healthy weight for their child as a function of (1) the child's ability to be as active as other children their age, regardless of child's BMI, and (2) the pediatrician's opinion of the child's weight status. Conclusions Maternal perception of self-weight and child weight status seems to guide milk choices. Mothers may have some level of recognition of overweight in themselves and their child, thus adopting healthier milk choices. Culturally related perceptions should be considered when designing obesity prevention strategies, and the role of a pediatrician cannot be understated when developing obesity prevention programs for Hispanic families.
Intrapartum antibiotics for prolonged rupture of membranes at term to prevent Group B Streptococcal sepsis

Abstract The timely administration of intrapartum antibiotic prophylaxis (IAP) to eligible pregnant mothers reduces the risk of early onset Group B Streptococcus (GBS) neonatal sepsis. The incidence of neonatal GBS sepsis is increasing, in spite of national guidelines for its prevention. This retrospective cohort study was undertaken to assess the incidence of culture-proven GBS sepsis before and after a change of practice on intrapartum management of GBS sepsis in babies born at Sunderland Royal Hospital between January 1 2008 and December 31 2017. The data regarding the risk factors, the intrapartum antibiotic prophylaxis and the outcomes of the babies were collected. Twenty-nine cases were identified and presented in two epochs—before and after changing guidelines for intrapartum management. There was a statistically significant reduction in early onset sepsis rates and no difference in late-onset sepsis rates. The prolonged rupture of membranes is a significant risk factor at any gestation. Impact statement What is already known on this subject? Appropriate intrapartum administration of antibiotics in mothers reduces 80% of early-onset GBS infections. In the United Kingdom, IAP is given based on risk factors, which fail to accurately identify and treat the woman who harbours GBS in the birth canal in labour and the incidence of GBS neonatal sepsis is increasing. The national guideline on the prevention of GBS sepsis is not consistent and is open to interpretation. What do the results of this study add? This study highlights prolonged rupture of membranes as a significant risk factor at any gestation and there were missed opportunities to prevent GBS sepsis in term babies with the prolonged rupture of membranes. This study also highlights that it is possible to reduce the neonatal GBS sepsis burden by adhering to guidelines and administering timely intrapartum antibiotics. What are the implications of these findings for clinical practice and/or further research? The timely administration of IAP to all eligible women is possible if the national guidelines are consistent and interpreted correctly. Our national guideline on the prolonged rupture of membranes at term is not clear and is interpreted differently. If IAP is provided in all those with risk factors irrespective of gestation, this would involve additional costs to the NHS; but in the long term, it will benefit as it reduces morbidity.
Angiogenesis Research to Improve Therapies for Vascular Leak Syndromes, Intra-Abdominal Adhesions, and Arterial Injuries

Abstract : The three goals of this project are: (i) to discover and develop novel drugs which could prevent or reverse the vascular leak syndrome; (ii) to develop angiogenesis inhibitors which would inhibit post-operative abdominal adhesions; and, (iii) to isolate endothelial progenitor cells from blood, capable of being expanded in vitro and applied to vascular grafts. Progress has been made in each category: we have made considerable progress in determining the efficacy of three anti-angiogenic agents in preventing vascular permeability in experimental model systems; we have developed a new blood cleansing platform that may have great value for treatment of infected patients with sepsis; we established that sunitinib prevents and reduces postoperative intra-abdominal adhesions in rabbits at a dose of 10 mg/kd/day; we determined that sunitinib reduces bowel anastomotic bursting pressure when used at the current dose and duration of treatment; we have shown that the human EPC/MPC system for building vascular networks is versatile in that it occurs in a variety of 3-dimensional environments, and that a transient influx of murine neutrophils 1-2 days after implantation of EPCs/MPCs/Matrigel is an important contributor to vasculogenesis.
An Empirical Study on Vocabulary Memorizing Method based on the Processing Level Theory in College English Vocabulary Teaching

This study took 62 students majoring in new energy scientific engineering and 57 students in applied physics as the subjects, and they are two non-foreign language majors of grade 2016 students. The subjects in the experiment have received college English courses with the same teaching time and curriculum. In this paper, the vocabulary memory method based on the level of processing theory was used to carry out the teaching experiments, and these experimental subjects were respectively tested in the pre-experiment stage and experimental research stage within two months. By quantitative research methods, subjects’ vocabulary memory in these two classes was tested after half a semester of teaching experiments again, and the data is analyzed by statistical software. The experimental results demonstrate that the students who use vocabulary memorizing method based on the processing level theory have better performance in vocabulary spelling and memorizing than that of the control group.
System reliability and component importance when components can be swapped upon failure

Resilience of systems to failures during functioning is of great practical importance. One of the strategies that might be considered to enhance reliability and resilience of a system is swapping components when a component fails, thus replacing it by another component from the system that is still functioning. This paper studies this scenario, particularly with the use of the survival signature to quantify system reliability, where it is assumed that such a swap of components requires these components to be of the same type. We examine the effect of swapping components on a reliability importance measure for the specific components, and we also consider the joint reliability importance of two components. Such swapping of components may be an attractive means toward more resilient systems and could be an alternative to adding more components to achieve redundancy of repair and replacement activities.
A rare complication of percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy; Buried Bumper syndrome. Review of literature

Percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy procedure has been described for the first time by Gauderer et al. in1980 and it is performed commonly in patients having neurological disorders with comorbid chronic conditions for improving patient’s nutritional status. Complication rate of this procedure is low and while skin infections are the most commonly observed complication of this procedure; necrotizing fasciitis, colocutaneous fistula and perforation are rarely seen severe complications. In this paper, we presented “Buried bumper syndrome”, rarely seen complication after percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy with the review literature knowledge. OZET Perkutan endoskopik gastrostomi proseduru ilk kez 1980 yilinda tanimlanmistir. Komorbid, kronik hastaliklari olan ve norolojik rahatsizliklari olan hastalarda beslenme durumunu iyilestirmek icin yaygin olarak gerceklestirilmektedir. Bu islemin komplikasyon orani dusuktur, cilt enfeksiyonlari en sik gozlenen komplikasyonu iken; nekrotizan fasiit, deride fistul ve perforasyon nadiren gozlenen ciddi komplikasyonlardir. Bu yazida, literatur bilgileri esliginde perkutan endoskopik gastrostomi sonrasi nadir gorulen komplikasyon olan “Buried bumper sendromunu” sunduk.
Perception and correlates of excessive vaginal discharge in rural women

Reproductive tract infections (RTIs) including sexually transmitted infections (STIs) present a huge burden of disease and adversely impact reproductive health. They cause suffering for both men and women around the world, but their consequences are far more devastating and widespread among women. These infections often go undiagnosed and untreated, and lead to complications such as infertility, ectopic pregnancy and cervical cancer. Pelvic inflammatory disease arising from STIs poses a major public health problem and adversely affects the reproductive health of poor and untreated women.
Flexure-Based Magnetically Levitated Dual-Stage System for High-Bandwidth Positioning

Bandwidth is a critical specification for motion positioning systems because fast response to reference and broad-band disturbance rejection is highly desirable in industrial applications, e.g., two-dimensional (2-D)/3-D scanning. This paper presents a parallel-actuation, dual-stage concept to enhance the bandwidth of magnetically levitated (maglev) positioning system, which is realized by utilizing compliant joints to construct a monolithic-cut flexure-based fine positioning stage within the primary maglev stage, hence turning such a dual-stage system into a fully cable-less maglev system. An integrated design approach is employed to design the flexure-based secondary stage by optimizing both the mechanical parameters and the controller parameters, where various specifications, e.g., stability, performance, and saturation, are considered under the proposed framework. Experimental results have shown that the prototype can achieve a root-mean-square error of 43 nm in the principal axis even though the accuracy of the primary maglev stage is limited in micron-level because of the noise of capacitive sensors. Results also show that the developed prototype can significantly improve the closed-loop bandwidth of the maglev system from 20 to around 200 Hz.
PENGEMBANGAN e-MODUL BERBASIS KETERAMPILAN PROSES SAINS PADA MATERI KESETIMBANGAN KIMIA UNTUK TINGKAT SMA

Dalam era digital dewasa ini menuntut ketersediaan sumber belajar dengan cara paling sederhana penggunaan dan aksesnya sehingga para pengguna dengan mudah mempelajari dan memahami materi tersebut. Penelitian ini mengembangkan e-modul berbasis keterampilan proses sains dengan menggunakan program flipbook pada materi kesetimbangan kimia. Tujuannya adalah untuk membuat modul digital yang memenuhi kelayakan sebagai bahan ajar kimia untuk jenjang SMA. Metode penelitian dilakukan melalui langkah-langkah model penelitian pengembangan 4-D, yaitu define, design, development, dan disseminate. Penelitian ini masih terus dikembangkan dan baru sampai pada tahap pengembangan (develop). Hasil validasi oleh ahli dalam bidang multimedia dan ahli dalam bidang kesetimbangan kimia dinyatakan e-modul ini sudah baik dan layak digunakan sebagai bahan ajar kimia untuk jenjang SMA. Selanjutnya berdasarkan hasil uji coba awal kepada sepuluh orang siswa kelas XI IPA 1 di SMAN 6 Kota Jambi memperlihatkan bahwa modul ini memiliki tampilan yang menarik, mudah dipahami dan mudah digunakan. Kata kunci: e-Modul, Keterampilan Proses Sains, Flipbook, Kesetimbangan Kimia
Two randomized, placebo-controlled phase 3 studies of ruxolitinib (Rux) + capecitabine (C) in patients (pts) with advanced/metastatic pancreatic cancer (mPC) after failure/intolerance of first-line chemotherapy: JANUS 1 (J1) and JANUS 2 (J2).

343Background: The JAK-STAT pathway plays a role in the pathogenesis of PC. In a phase 2 study, the JAK1/2 inhibitor Rux + C improved OS vs C alone in mPC pts with evidence of systemic inflammation. Methods: In two phase 3 studies, advanced/mPC pts with only 1 prior chemotherapy regimen and C-reactive protein > 10mg/L were randomized to 21-day cycles of Rux 15 mg BID + C 2000 mg/m2/d (day 1-14) vs placebo (Pb) BID + C 2000 mg/m2/d (day 1-14). The primary endpoint was OS. The studies were terminated early based on efficacy findings of a planned interim analysis for J1, with J2 enrollment incomplete. Results: 321 pts were randomized in J1 and 86 in J2. The median age was similar between groups (Rux + C vs Pb + C): J1, 68 vs 67 yrs; J2, 68 vs 69 yrs. The most common prior chemotherapy regimens were gemcitabine (gem) + nab-paclitaxel (J1: 50% vs 51%, J2: 42% vs 37%), gem alone (J1: 24% vs 21%, J2: 28% vs 33%). Median study treatment durations were 42 d for both Rux and Pb in J1; 40 d for Rux and 43 d for Pb i.
Using Twitter for Public Health Surveillance from Monitoring and Prediction to Public Response

Twitter is a social media platform where over 500 million people worldwide publish their ideas and discuss diverse topics, including their health conditions and public health events. Twitter has proved to be an important source of health-related information on the Internet, given the amount of information that is shared by both citizens and official sources. Twitter provides researchers with a real-time source of public health information on a global scale, and can be very important in public health research. Classifying Twitter data into topics or categories is helpful to better understand how users react and communicate. A literature review is presented on the use of mining Twitter data or similar short-text datasets for public health applications. Each method is analyzed for ways to use Twitter data in public health surveillance. Papers in which Twitter content was classified according to users or tweets for better surveillance of public health were selected for review. Only papers published between 2010–2017 were considered. The reviewed publications are distinguished by the methods that were used to categorize the Twitter content in different ways. While comparing studies is difficult due to the number of different methods that have been used for applying Twitter and interpreting data, this state-of-the-art review demonstrates the vast potential of utilizing Twitter for public health surveillance purposes.
Angry and Fearful Face Conflict Effects in Post-traumatic Stress Disorder

In the presence of threatening stimuli, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can manifest as hypervigilance for threat and disrupted attentional control. PTSD patients have shown exaggerated interference effects on tasks using trauma-related or threat stimuli. In studies of PTSD, faces with negative expressions are often used as threat stimuli, yet angry and fearful facial expressions may elicit different responses. The modified Eriksen flanker task, or the emotional face flanker, has been used to examine response interference. We compared 23 PTSD patients and 23 military controls on an emotional face flanker task using angry, fearful and neutral expressions. Participants identified the emotion of a central target face flanked by faces with either congruent or incongruent emotions. As expected, both groups showed slower reaction times (RTs) and decreased accuracy on emotional target faces, relative to neutral. Unexpectedly, both groups showed nearly identical interference effects on fearful and neutral target trials. However, post hoc testing suggested that PTSD patients showed faster RTs than controls on congruent angry faces (target and flanker faces both angry) relative to incongruent, although this finding should be interpreted with caution. This possible RT facilitation effect with angry, but not fearful faces, also correlated positively with self-report measures of PTSD symptoms. These results suggest that PTSD patients may be more vigilant for, or primed to respond to, the appearance of angry faces, relative to fearful, but further study is needed.
Deconstructing Word Embeddings

A review of Word Embedding Models through a deconstructive approach reveals their several shortcomings and inconsistencies. These include instability of the vector representations, a distorted analogical reasoning, geometric incompatibility with linguistic features, and the inconsistencies in the corpus data. A new theoretical embedding model, Derridian Embedding, is proposed in this paper. Contemporary embedding models are evaluated qualitatively in terms of how adequate they are in relation to the capabilities of a Derridian Embedding.
Multiuser Video Streaming Rate Adaptation: A Physical Layer Resource-Aware Deep Reinforcement Learning Approach

In this paper, we propose a cross-layer decision framework for multiuser adaptive video delivery over time-varying and mutually interfering wireless cellular network. The key idea is to synthetically design the physical-layer optimization-based beamforming scheme (performed at the base stations) and the application-layer deep reinforcement learning (DRL)-based rate adaptation scheme (performed at the user terminals), so that a very complex multi-user overall fair long-term quality of experience (QoE) maximization problem can be decomposed to two layers and solved effectively. Extensive simulations show that the proposed cross-layer design is effective and promising.
Paracosm: A Language and Tool for Testing Autonomous Driving Systems

Systematic testing of autonomous vehicles operating in complex real-world scenarios is a difficult and expensive problem. We present Paracosm, a reactive language for writing test scenarios for autonomous driving systems. Paracosm allows users to programmatically describe complex driving situations with specific visual features, e.g., road layout in an urban environment, as well as reactive temporal behaviors of cars and pedestrians. Paracosm programs are executed on top of a game engine that provides realistic physics simulation and visual rendering. The infrastructure allows systematic exploration of the state space, both for visual features (lighting, shadows, fog) and for reactive interactions with the environment (pedestrians, other traffic). We define a notion of test coverage for Paracosm configurations based on combinatorial testing and low dispersion sequences. Paracosm comes with an automatic test case generator that uses random sampling for discrete parameters and deterministic quasi-Monte Carlo generation for continuous parameters. Through an empirical evaluation, we demonstrate the modeling and testing capabilities of Paracosm on a suite of autonomous driving systems implemented using deep neural networks developed in research and education. We show how Paracosm can expose incorrect behaviors or degraded performance.