Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analysis of the Vaginal Microecological Status and Genital Tract Infection Characteristics of 751 Pregnant Women

Background The aim of this study was to analyze the differences in vaginal microecological factors and genital tract infections among pregnant women of different ages. Material/Methods This study included 751 pregnant women from West China Second University Hospital, Sichuan University, China, from January 2015 to April 2017. After gram staining, the vaginal microecological factors of these cases were observed, including vaginal cleanliness, lactobacillus number, bacterial density, flora diversity, dominant bacteria, pH, clue cells, Candida species, and Trichomonas vaginalis. Results There was no significant difference in bacterial density, flora diversity, vaginal cleanliness, or lactobacillus number among pregnant women of different age groups. Of the 32.62% of pregnant women who had genital tract infections, the incidence of bacterial vaginosis, Candida albicans infection, non-albicans Candida infection, and T. vaginalis infection were 20.91%, 14.91%, 4.26%, and 1.73%, respectively. The amalgamative incidence of bacterial vaginosis was 9.19%. The incidence of non-albicans Candida infection in the optimum reproductive age group was higher than in the older age group (P=0.0433). The incidence of T. vaginalis infection in the younger age group was higher than in the optimum reproductive age group and higher than in the older age group (P=0.0010 and P=0.0041). Conclusions The microecological status of pregnant women was basically the same as that of normal women. The most frequent genital tract infection was bacterial vaginosis. While bacterial vaginosis is amalgamative with vulvovaginal candidiasis and T. vaginalis infection, there was no significant difference in vaginal microecological observations among pregnant women in different age groups except that the non-albicans Candida infection incidence in the optimum reproductive age group and the T. vaginalis infection incidence in the younger age group was higher than in the other groups.
Personalised dialogue management for users with speech disorders

Many electronic devices are beginning to include Voice User Interfaces (VUIs) as an alternative to conventional interfaces. VUIs are especially useful for users with restricted upper limb mobility, because they cannot use keyboards and mice. These users, however, often suffer from speech disorders (e.g. dysarthria), making Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) challenging, thus degrading the performance of the VUI. Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP) based Dialogue Management (DM) has been shown to improve the interaction performance in challenging ASR environments, but most of the research in this area has focused on Spoken Dialogue Systems (SDSs) developed to provide information, where the users interact with the system only a few times. In contrast, most VUIs are likely to be used by a single speaker over a long period of time, but very little research has been carried out on adaptation of DM models to specific speakers. This thesis explores methods to adapt DM models (in particular dialogue state tracking models and policy models) to a specific user during a longitudinal interaction. The main differences between personalised VUIs and typical SDSs are identified and studied. Then, state-of-the-art DM models are modified to be used in scenarios which are unique to long-term personalised VUIs, such as personalised models initialised with data from different speakers or scenarios where the dialogue environment (e.g. the ASR) changes over time. In addition, several speaker and environment related features are shown to be useful to improve the interaction performance. This study is done in the context of homeService, a VUI developed to help users with dysarthria to control their home devices. The study shows that personalisation of the POMDP-DM framework can greatly improve the performance of these interfaces.
Comparative Transcriptomic Profiling to Understand Pre- and Post-Ripening Hormonal Regulations and Anthocyanin Biosynthesis in Early Ripening Apple Fruit

The ‘Hongyu’ apple is an early ripening apple cultivar and usually used for fresh marketing. Due to the short ripening period, most of the fruit are harvested at the commercial maturity stage for proper marketing distribution and a longer shelf life. Fruit ripening involves delicate changes to its metabolic and physiological traits through well-organized synchronization of several hormones and regulatory steps. A clear understanding of these hormonal alterations is crucial for extending the period from commercial to physiological ripening. This study was intended to clarify the hormonal alterations and anthocyanin biosynthesis process prior to and immediate after, the harvesting of apple fruit considering the commercial maturity stage. Fruits harvested at 120 Days after flowering (DAF) (HY_4th) was considered as commercially ripened, 110 DAF (HY_3rd) as pre-ripening and 120 DAF followed by five days storage at 20 °C (HY_20 °C_5) as post-ripening samples. Three different stages of fruit were used for transcriptome assembly using RNA-Seq. Results revealed 9187 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in the post-ripening samples, which was comparatively lower (922 DEGs) in the pre-ripening fruits. DEGs were subjected to Gene Ontology analysis and 31 categories were significantly enriched in the groups ‘biological process,’ ‘molecular function’ and ‘cellular component. ’ The DEGs were involved in hormonal signaling pathways like ethylene, abscisic acid (ABA), auxin, gibberellin (GA), brassinosteroid (BR) and anthocyanin biosynthesis pathways such as PAL, 4CL, CHI, DFR, F3H, UFGT. Several transcription factors like the MADS-box gene, MYB, bHLH, NAC, WRKY and HSF were differentially expressed between the pre- and post-ripening fruits. Selected DEGs were subjected to gene expression analysis using quantitative RT-PCR (qRT-PCR) and the results were consistent with those of RNA-Seq. Our data suggested that in addition to ethylene, ABA and other hormones also play key roles in regulating apple fruit ripening and may interact with the ethylene signaling process. Additionally, our data provided an exhibition of the expression pattern of genes in the anthocyanin biosynthesis pathway.
Multimodal Deep Domain Adaptation

Typically a classifier trained on a given dataset (source domain) does not performs well if it is tested on data acquired in a different setting (target domain). This is the problem that domain adaptation (DA) tries to overcome and, while it is a well explored topic in computer vision, it is largely ignored in robotic vision where usually visual classification methods are trained and tested in the same domain. Robots should be able to deal with unknown environments, recognize objects and use them in the correct way, so it is important to explore the domain adaptation scenario also in this context. The goal of the project is to define a benchmark and a protocol for multi-modal domain adaptation that is valuable for the robot vision community. With this purpose some of the state-of-the-art DA methods are selected: Deep Adaptation Network (DAN), Domain Adversarial Training of Neural Network (DANN), Automatic Domain Alignment Layers (AutoDIAL) and Adversarial Discriminative Domain Adaptation (ADDA). Evaluations have been done using different data types: RGB only, depth only and RGB-D over the following datasets, designed for the robotic community: RGB-D Object Dataset (ROD), Web Object Dataset (WOD), Autonomous Robot Indoor Dataset (ARID), Big Berkeley Instance Recognition Dataset (BigBIRD) and Active Vision Dataset. Although progresses have been made on the formulation of effective adaptation algorithms and more realistic object datasets are available, the results obtained show that, training a sufficiently good object classifier, especially in the domain adaptation scenario, is still an unsolved problem. Also the best way to combine depth with RGB informations to improve the performance is a point that needs to be investigated more.
Reactive Oxygen Species‐mediated Degradation of Antidiabetic Compounds: Cytotoxic Implications of Their Photodegradation Products

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) have been described in their double physiological function, helping in the maintenance of health as well as contributing to oxidative stress. Diabetes mellitus is a chronical disease nearly related to oxidative stress, whose treatment (in type II variant) consists in the administration of antidiabetic compounds (Andb) such as Gliclazide (Gli) and Glipizide (Glip). In this context, as Andb may be exposed to high ROS concentrations in diabetic patients, we have studied the potential ROS‐mediated degradation of Gli and Glip through photosensitized processes, in the presence of Riboflavin (Rf) vitamin. We found that singlet oxygen (O2(1∆g)) participated in the Rf‐sensitized photodegradation of both Andb, and also superoxide radical anion in the case of Gli. Two principal products derived from O2(1∆g)‐mediated degradation of Gli were identified and their chemical structures characterized, through HPLC mass spectrometry. O2(1∆g)‐mediated degradation products and their toxicity was assayed on Vero cell line. These studies demonstrated that neither Gli nor its photoproducts caused cytotoxic effect under the experimental conditions assayed. Our results show strong evidences of ROS‐mediated Andb degradation, which may involve the reduction or loss of their therapeutic action, as well as potential cytotoxicity derived from their oxidation products.
Sub-Nyquist Radar Systems: Temporal, Spectral, and Spatial Compression

Radar is an acronym for "radio detection and ranging. " However, the functions of today's radar systems, both in civilian and military applications, go beyond simple target detection and localization; they extend to tracking, imaging, classification, and more and involve different types of radar systems, such as through-the-wall [1], ground-penetration [2], automotive [3], and weather [4]. Although radar technology has been well established for decades, a new line of compressed radars has recently emerged. These aim at reducing the complexity of classic radar systems by exploiting inherent prior information on the structure of the received signal from the targets. The goal of this article is to review these novel sub-Nyquist radars and their potential applications.
Health, Education and Employment Outcomes in Young Refugees in the Nordic Countries: A Systematic Review

Objectives: Since 2000, approximately 500,000 refugees have settled in the Nordic countries, about a third of them being children and young people. To identify general trends, and to detect gaps in the existing knowledge about the socioeconomic and health status of these young refugees, this review discusses the literature regarding three key areas related to welfare policy: health, education and employment. Methods: A systematic search in PubMed, Scopus, SocINDEX, Sociological Abstracts, Embase and Cochrane, and a search for publications from relevant institutions were undertaken. All publications had to be original quantitative studies published since 1980. The total number of studies identified was 1353, 25 publications were included. Results: Young refugees had poorer mental health than ethnic minority and native-born peers. Mental health problems were related to pre-migration experiences but also to post-migration factors, such as discrimination and poor social support. Refugees performed worse in school than native-born and few progressed to higher education. Experiencing less discrimination and having better Nordic language proficiency was associated with higher educational attainment. A higher proportion of refugees were unemployed or outside the labour force compared with other immigrants and native-born. Assessment instruments varied between studies, making comparisons difficult. Conclusions: The study suggests pre-migration factors but also post-migration conditions such as perceived discrimination, social support and Nordic language proficiency as important factors for the mental health, education and employment outcomes of young refugees in the Nordic countries. Further Nordic comparative research and studies focusing on the relationship between health, education and employment outcomes are needed.
Development of an Instrument for Evaluating Nurses' Knowledge and Attitude Toward End-of-Life Care: End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium—Japan Core Quiz

This study aimed to develop a scale focusing on knowledge and attitudes toward palliative care and end-of-life care for nurses and to confirm the scale's validity and reliability. We conducted a self-administered questionnaire survey with 1745 nurses of 10 hospitals all over Japan. We also examined the test-retest reliability of items for 205 of the nurses, 2 weeks after the first survey was completed. We used item-response theory, factor analysis, and intraclass correlation coefficients. The response rate was 44.5% (n = 762). Ninety items in 9 domains about knowledge of palliative care and end-of-life care were selected by using item-response theory. For knowledge items, Kuder-Richardson-20 was 0.85, and intraclass correlation coefficient was 0.84 in all domains. Ten items in 3 domains about attitudes toward palliative care and end-of-life care were selected by using exploratory factor analysis. For attitude items, Cronbach's &agr; coefficient was . 90, and intraclass correlation coefficient was 0.80 in all domains. The developed scale, named the End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium—Japan Core Quiz, has sufficient validity and reliability. This scale may contribute to assessing the effectiveness of the End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium—Japan Core Curriculum Nursing Education Program in Japan.
Markerless Visual Robot Programming by Demonstration

In this paper we present an approach for learning to imitate human behavior on a semantic level by markerless visual observation. We analyze a set of spatial constraints on human pose data extracted using convolutional pose machines and object informations extracted from 2D image sequences. A scene analysis, based on an ontology of objects and affordances, is combined with continuous human pose estimation and spatial object relations. Using a set of constraints we associate the observed human actions with a set of executable robot commands. We demonstrate our approach in a kitchen task, where the robot learns to prepare a meal.
Relationship between cardiovascular risk factors and binge drinking among college students in South Korea

Abstract This study determined cardiovascular risk among Korean college students with a history of binge drinking. Variables included alcohol consumption, cardiovascular risk factors (increased blood pressure, body mass index, lipid values) and markers (high-sensitivity C-reactive protein, fibrinogen), and 10-year Framingham risk scores. Korean college student binge drinkers had higher triglyceride levels and higher ratios of triglyceride to high-density lipoprotein cholesterol than did abstainers. Average number of drinks on one occasion was correlated with higher body mass index, triglyceride level, ratio of triglyceride to high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and 10-year Framingham risk score. The findings indicate that binge drinking may be associated with premature cardiovascular disease risk.
Screening of exosomal miRNAs derived from subcutaneous and visceral adipose tissues: Determination of targets for the treatment of obesity and associated metabolic disorders

Exosomal micro (mi)RNAs have been suggested to have important roles in abdominal obesity, and to be associated with metabolic alterations via posttranscriptional regulation of target genes. However, exosomal miRNA profiles in subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT) and visceral adipose tissue (VAT) have rarely been investigated. In the present study, microarray data were obtained from the Gene Expression Omnibus database with the following accession numbers: GSE68885 (exosomal miRNAs in SAT obtained from seven patients with obesity and five lean patients), GSE50574 (exosomal miRNAs in VAT obtained from seven patients with obesity and five lean patients) and GSE29718 [mRNAs in SAT (obtained from seven patients with obesity and eight lean patients) and VAT (obtained from three patients with obesity and two lean patients)]. Differentially expressed (DE)-miRNAs and differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified using the Linear Models for Microarray Data method, and mRNA targets of DE-miRNAs were predicted using the miRWalk2.0 database. Potential functions of DE-miRNA target genes were determined using the Database for Annotation, Visualization and Integrated Discovery. As a result, 10 exosomal DE-miRNAs were identified in SAT between patients with obesity and lean patients, while 58 DE-miRNAs were identified in VAT between patients with obesity and lean patients. miRNA (miR)-4517 was revealed to be a downregulated exosomal miRNA between SAT and VAT, while the other DE-miRNAs were SAT-(e.g. hsa-miR-3156-5p and hsa-miR-4460) or VAT-(e.g. hsa-miR-582-5p, hsa-miR-566 and miR-548) specific. Following overlapping with the target genes of DE-miRNAs, only one DEG [cluster of differentiation 86 (CD86)] was identified in SAT samples, whereas 25 DEGs (e.g. fibroblast growth factor 2 (FGF2), FOS like 2, AP-1 transcription factor subunit (FOSL2); and adenosine monophosphate deaminase 3 (AMPD3)] were identified in VAT samples. CD86 was revealed to be regulated by hsa-miR-3156-5p; whereas FGF2, FOSL2 and AMPD3 were revealed to be regulated by hsa-miR-582-5p, hsa-miR-566 and miR-548, respectively. Functional enrichment analysis demonstrated that these target genes may be associated with inflammation. In conclusion, exosomal miRNAs may represent underlying therapeutic targets for the treatment of abdominal obesity and metabolic disorders via regulation of inflammatory genes.
Bioinformatics approaches for new drug discovery: a review

ABSTRACT Prolonged antibiotic therapy for the bacterial infections has resulted in high levels of antibiotic resistance. Initially, bacteria are susceptible to the antibiotics, but can gradually develop resistance. Treating such drug-resistant bacteria remains difficult or even impossible. Hence, there is a need to develop effective drugs against bacterial pathogens. The drug discovery process is time-consuming, expensive and laborious. The traditionally available drug discovery process initiates with the identification of target as well as the most promising drug molecule, followed by the optimization of this, in-vitro, in-vivo and in pre-clinical studies to decide whether the compound has the potential to be developed as a drug molecule. Drug discovery, drug development and commercialization are complicated processes. To overcome some of these problems, there are many computational tools available for new drug discovery, which could be cost effective and less time-consuming. In-silico approaches can reduce the number of potential compounds from hundreds of thousands to the tens of thousands which could be studied for drug discovery and this results in savings of time, money and human resources. Our review is on the various computational methods employed in new drug discovery processes.
Pre‐operative carcinoembryonic antigen predicts survival following colorectal cancer surgery with curative intent

Circulating biomarkers may be of value in providing additional prognostic information to the TNM staging system. Previous population‐level studies suggest a prognostic role for pre‐operative carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA). The purpose of this study is to verify the prognostic role of pre‐operative CEA at the individual level, in a New Zealand cohort of colorectal cancer patients.
Use of cyanoacrylate to prevent cerebrospinal fluid fistulas after cranial surgery

Abstract Purpose: Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) fistula is one of the most common complications encountered after cranial surgeries. In cases where CSF fistula frequently appears due to surgical technique, dural sealants are used as auxiliary preparations to prevent CSF fistula and provide convenience to the surgeon. Materials and Methods: Data obtained from 128 number of cases where cyanoacrylate (CA) had been used for dural repair to prevent CSF fistula was evaluated, retrospectively. The cases of skull base and frontal sinus fractures where the primary repair had not been carried out were also included in the study. Results: The mean follow-up of all cases was 9,7 months. CSF fistula was not encountered in 121 of 128 cases. 4 of the cases developed CSF fistula in the early period. 3 of the cases presented with CSF fistula in the late period after discharge. No side effects due to hypersensitivity or preparation were encountered. Conclusion: CA can help dural repair against the development of CSF fistula by taking effect quickly. Also, it is a rapid anti-haemorrhagic agent. It can also be used after posterior fossa surgery, skull base surgery where dural repair is difficult, or during sinus repair.
Approche hybride pour la reconnaissance automatique de la parole en langue arabe. (Hybrid approach for automatic speech recognition for the Arabic language)

Le developpement d'un systeme de reconnaissance de la parole exige la disponibilite d'une grande quantite de ressources a savoir, grands corpus de texte et de parole, un dictionnaire de prononciation. Neanmoins, ces ressources ne sont pas disponibles directement pour des dialectes arabes. De ce fait, le developpement d'un SRAP pour les dialectes arabes se heurte a de multiples difficultes a savoir, l’'abence de grandes quantites de ressources et l'absence d’'une orthographe standard vu que ces dialectes sont parles et non ecrit. Dans cette perspective, les travaux de cette these s’integrent dans le cadre du developpement d’un SRAP pour le dialecte tunisien. Une premiere partie des contributions consiste a developper une variante de CODA (Conventional Orthography for Arabic Dialectal) pour le dialecte tunisien. En fait, cette convention est concue dans le but de fournir une description detaillee des directives appliquees au dialecte tunisien. Compte tenu des lignes directives de CODA, nous avons constitue notre corpus nomme TARIC : Corpus de l’interaction des chemins de fer de l’arabe tunisien dans le domaine de la SNCFT. Outre ces ressources, le dictionnaire de prononciation s’impose d’une maniere indispensable pour le developpement d’un SRAP. A ce propos, dans la deuxieme partie des contributions, nous visons la creation d’un systeme nomme conversion (Grapheme-Phoneme) G2P qui permet de generer automatiquement ce dictionnaire phonetique. Toutes ces ressources decrites avant sont utilisees pour adapter un SRAP pour le MSA du laboratoire LIUM au dialecte tunisien dans le domaine de la SNCFT. L’evaluation de notre systeme donne lieu WER de 22,6% sur l’ensemble de test.
Extensible Grounding of Speech for Robot Instruction

Spoken language is a convenient interface for commanding a mobile robot. Yet for this to work a number of base terms must be grounded in perceptual and motor skills. We detail the language processing used on our robot ELI and explain how this grounding is performed, how it interacts with user gestures, and how it handles phenomena such as anaphora. More importantly, however, there are certain concepts which the robot cannot be preprogrammed with, such as the names of various objects in a household or the nature of specific tasks it may be requested to perform. In these cases it is vital that there exist a method for extending the grounding, essentially "learning by being told". We describe how this was successfully implemented for learning new nouns and verbs in a tabletop setting. Creating this language learning kernel may be the last explicit programming the robot ever needs - the core mechanism could eventually be used for imparting a vast amount of knowledge, much as a child learns from its parents and teachers.