Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Recent Progress Toward Imaging Application of Multifunction Sonosensitizers in Sonodynamic Therapy

Abstract Sonodynamic therapy (SDT) is a rapidly developing non-surgical therapy that initiates sensitizers’ catalytic reaction using ultrasound, showing great potential for cancer treatment due to its high safety and non-invasive nature. In addition, recent research has found that using different diagnostic and therapeutic methods in tandem can lead to better anticancer outcomes. Therefore, as essential components of SDT, sonosensitizers have been extensively explored to optimize their functions and integrate multiple medical fields. The review is based on five years of articles evaluating the combined use of SDT and imaging in treating cancer. By developing multifunctional sonosensitive particles that combine imaging and sonodynamic therapy, we have integrated diagnosis into the treatment of precision medicine applications, improving SDT cell uptake and antitumor efficacy utilizing different tumour models. This paper describes the imaging principle and the results of cellular and animal imaging of the multifunctional sonosensitizers. Efforts are made in this paper to provide data and design references for future SDT combined imaging research and clinical application development and to provide offer suggestions.
Development and testing of a hand rehabilitation device for continuous passive motion and active resistance

Supervisory Committee Dr. Nikolai Dechev Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Victoria, BC, Canada Co-Supervisor Dr. Edward J. Park Department of Mechanical Engineering, Simon Fraser University, BC, Canada Co-Supervisor Dr. Daniela Constantinescu Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Victoria, BC, Canada Departmental Member This thesis presents a novel table top hand rehabilitation device. The purpose for creating this device is to assist therapists in treatment of hand after injury. Injuries to the hand are common and can be very debilitating since our hands are our primary means for interacting with our world. The device is capable of independently mobilizing the metacarpophalangeal joint (MCP) and proximal interphalangeal joint (PIP) in the fingers of the hand, and recording their motion. The device is capable of moving either joint through a range of 0° to 90°, and can be used for either the left or right hand. In the Continuous Passive Motion (CPM) mode, the device moves the MCP and PIP joints through a trajectory that approximates healthy hand motion, known as the minimum jerk model. This is done using a Proportional Integral Differential (PID) controller, which compares the actual position of the device to the desired minimum jerk trajectory. The trajectory following of the minimum jerk model was found to be successful with a maximum error of only 1.46° in the MCP joint and 2.10° in the PIP joint across all trials with injured participants with an average error of 0.11° and 0.14° for the MCP and PIP joints respectively. The device also incorporated various user-friendly features such as user-defined maximum permitted torque, range of motion limits, speed control, and visual feedback. A survey of the participant’s perceived comfort, safety, smoothness and passivity produced positive results. The average responses of the injured hand participants to questions of perceived Comfort, safety and Smoothness were above 9 out of 10 for each question. The average increases in ROM for the active extension of the MCP joint and the PIP joint were 3.3° and 3.2° respectively. The average increases in ROM for the flexion of the MCP joint and the PIP joint were 8.9° and 7.2° respectively. This is a sign that the device has an effect on the participant even if this effect can not be shown to last beyond the one hour session. It will require further testing with a long term group of participants and a control group to determine if this is a lasting effect and if the device is ready for clinical use. The active resistance and haptic modes are both operational but require additional work to increase smoothness and stability before testing can begin.
Structural Vetting of Academic Proposals

Increasing postgraduate enrollments gives rise to many proposal documents required for vetting and human supervision. Reading and comprehension of large documents is a boring and somewhat difficult task for humans which can be delegated to machines. One way of assisting supervisors with this routine screening of academic proposals is to provide an artificial intelligent (AI) tool for initial structural vetting— checking if sections of proposals are complete and appear where they are supposed to. Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques in AI for document vetting has been applied in legal and financial domains. However, in academia, available tools only perform tasks such as checking proposals for plagiarism, spellings or grammar, word editing, and not structural vetting of academic proposal. This paper presents a tool named Auto-proofreader that attempts to perform the task of structural document review of proposals on behalf of the human expert using formal techniques and document structure understanding hinged on context free grammar rules (CFGs). The experimental results on a corpus of 20 academic proposals using confusion matrix technique for evaluation gives an overall of 87% accuracy. This tool is expected to be a useful aid in postgraduate supervision for vetting students’ academic proposals.
His, hers, or theirs? Hope as a dyadic resource in early parenthood

ABSTRACT Hope is a mental resource and a robust predictor of well-being, which allows individuals to better cope with hardship. Little is known about dyadic hope – i.e., hope serving as a joint resource within intimate relationships. We examined dyadic hope in a sample of 100 couples in early parenthood, a challenging though common phase in couples’ lives. Three months after becoming parents, both partners completed daily diaries for 3 weeks, reporting their daily hope, stressors, and three types of outcomes: individual, relational, and parental. Using multilevel actor-partner interdependence models, we found that greater hope (both daily and person-level) was positively associated with better actor and partner outcomes of all three kinds. Additionally, hope buffered various daily stressors. Our results show that hope is a personal and shared resource for couples in this pivotal juncture, and thus may constitute a target for future interventions.
Measurement and prediction of the international reputation of Chinese women’s apparel and accessories

Chinese women’s apparel and accessories have been often mentioned by other countries in history and nowadays, and the underlying culture along with these apparel and accessories contributes to this developing world to some extent. The assessment of the international reputation for these kinds of apparel and accessories is important for better understanding the worldwide cultural exchange, globalization, social development and so on; however, it remains unknown. This study presents a work with the overall objective to measure and predict the international reputation of Chinese women’s apparel and accessories. To reach this objective, the study first proposes a data mining procedure to use online query volume data from the Google Ngram corpus to construct a reputation index in order to measure the international reputation of Chinese women’s apparel and accessories. Then, by establishing a series of socio-economic and political determinants associated with the international reputation of Chinese women’s apparel and accessories, several forms of support vector machine based models are developed, aiming to predict their international reputation. There are two contributions out of this work: (1) presenting the first ever large-scale quantitative examination of the trend and measurement of the international reputation of Chinese women's apparel and accessories, which provides a new method to identify the dynamic transition of sociocultural development; (2) constructing a quantitative model to predict the international reputation of Chinese women's apparel and accessories, which generalizes an implication to understand the other sociocultural object and its impact factors.
The Preventive and Therapeutic Effects of Ajwa Date Fruit Extract Against Acute Diclofenac Toxicity-Induced Colopathy: An Experimental Study

Background Studies regarding treatment of acute toxicity with diclofenac (ATD) are quite few. Diclofenac is commonly prescribed in neurology, psychiatry, and general medicine practice. This study investigated possible colon-protective effects exerted by Ajwa date fruit extract (ADFE), a prophetic medicine remedy native to Al-Madinah, Saudi Arabia against ATD. Phytochemicals in ADFE as gallic acid and quercetin have reported protective effects against ATD. Methods Total phenols and flavonoids in ADFE were estimated as equivalents to gallic acid and quercetin. Four experimental groups were allocated each of six rats: control group, ATD group received a single dose of 150 mg diclofenac intraperitoneally, toxicity prevention group received a single dose of ADFE orally followed 4 hours later by diclofenac injection, and toxicity treatment group received a similar diclofenac dose followed 4 hours later by a single dose of ADFE. Four days later, animals were sacrificed. Histological and biochemical examinations were done. Results ADFE has a total phenolic content of 331.7 gallic acid equivalent/gram extract and a total flavonoid content of 70.23 quercetin equivalent/gram. ATD significantly increased oxidative stress markers as serum malondialdehyde (MDA) and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2). Serum MDA and H2O2 were significantly scavenged by ADFE. ATD significantly (p<0.001) decreased antioxidant power as serum total antioxidant capacity and catalase activity. That was reversed by ADFE in both prevention and treatment groups. Histologically, ATD caused complete destruction of colonic crypts architecture, patchy loss of the crypts, loss of the surface epithelium, absent goblet cells and submucosal exudate, heavy infiltration of the lamina propria and submucosa with inflammatory cells, mainly lymphocytes and eosinophils. There were mucosal haemorrhages and submucosal dilated congested blood vessels. All that was prevented and treated using ADFE. Conclusion ADFE is rich in quercetin and gallic acid equivalents that exert potent antitoxic effects. ADFE is strongly recommended for preventive and therapeutic colon effects against ATD.
A Screening System for COVID-19 Severity using Machine Learning

COVID-19 disease can be classified into various stages depending on the severity of the patient. Patients in severe stages of COVID-19 need immediate treatment and should be placed in a medical-ready environment because they are at high risk of death. Thus, hospitals need a fast and efficient method to screen large numbers of patients. The enormous amount of medical data in public repositories allows researchers to gain information and predict possible outcomes. In this study, we use a publicly available dataset from Springer Nature repository to discuss the performance of three machine learning techniques for prediction of severity of COVID-19: Random Forest (RF), Naïve Bayes (NB) and Gradient Boosting (GB). These techniques were selected for their good performance in medical predictive analytics. We measured the performance of the machine learning techniques using six measurements (accuracy, precision, recall, F1-score, sensitivity and specificity) in predicting COVID-19 severity. We found that RF generates the highest performance score, which is 78.4, compared with NB and GB. We also conducted experiments with RF to establish the critical symptoms in predicting COVID-19 severity, and the findings suggested that seven symptoms are substantial. Overall, the performance of various machine learning techniques to predict severity of COVID-19 using electronic health records indicates that machine learning can be successfully applied to determine specific treatment and effective triage. © 2022. International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications. All Rights Reserved.
Infrared Sensation-Based Salient Targets Enhancement Methods in Low-Visibility Scenes

Thermal imaging is an important technology in low-visibility environments, and due to the blurred edges and low contrast of infrared images, enhancement processing is of vital importance. However, to some extent, the existing enhancement algorithms based on pixel-level information ignore the salient feature of targets, the temperature which effectively separates the targets by their color. Therefore, based on the temperature and pixel features of infrared images, first, a threshold denoising model based on wavelet transformation with bilateral filtering (WTBF) was proposed. Second, our group proposed a salient components enhancement method based on a multi-scale retinex algorithm combined with frequency-tuned salient region extraction (MSRFT). Third, the image contrast and noise distribution were improved by using salient features of orientation, color, and illuminance of night or snow targets. Finally, the accuracy of the bounding box of enhanced images was tested by the pre-trained and improved object detector. The results show that the improved method can reach an accuracy of 90% of snow targets, and the average precision of car and people categories improved in four low-visibility scenes, which demonstrates the high accuracy and adaptability of the proposed methods of great significance for target detection, trajectory tracking, and danger warning of automobile driving.
Optimal Control of SIRS Model with Limited Medical Resources and Reinfection Problems

COVID-19 is a global public health problem that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). It is also extremely contagious with rapidly increasing death rates. In this paper, we propose an optimal control model with SIRS (Susceptible–Infected–Recovered- Susceptible) kinetics to examine the effects of several intervention measures (e.g., vaccination and treatment) under the limited medical resources scenarios. This model is also employed to investigate the possibility of reinfection because of the fading of immunity problem. As a case study, the modeling framework is parametrised using COVID-19 daily confirmed and recovered cases in Malaysia. The parameters have been approximated by relying on the model's best fit to actual data published by the Malaysian Ministry of Health (MOH). Our numerical simulation results show that the inclusion of optimal control components with vaccination and treatment strategies would dramatically reduce the number of active cases even in the presence of reinfection forces. Regardless of the relative weightage (or costs) of vaccination and treatment, as well as the possibility of reinfection, it is critical to plan effective COVID-19 control measures by vaccinating as many people as possible (and as early as possible). Overall, these insights help explore the importance of intervention measures and the allocation of medical resources to control the severity of this pandemic.
Middleboxes as a Cloud Service

Today's networks do much more than merely deliver packets. Through the deployment of middleboxes, enterprise networks today provide improved security -- e.g., filtering malicious content -- and performance capabilities -- e.g., caching frequently accessed content. Although middleboxes are deployed widely in enterprises, they bring with them many challenges: they are complicated to manage, expensive, prone to failures, and challenge privacy expectations.In this thesis, we aim to bring the benefits of cloud computing to networking.We argue that middlebox services can be outsourced to cloud providers in asimilar fashion to how mail, compute, and storage are today outsourced. We beginby presenting APLOMB, a system that allows enterprises to outsource middleboxprocessing to a third party cloud or ISP. For enterprise networks, APLOMB canreduce costs, ease management, and provide resources for scalability andfailover. For service providers, APLOMB offers new customers and businessopportunities, but also presents new challenges. Middleboxes have tighterperformance demands than existing cloud services, and hence supporting APLOMBrequires redesigning software at the cloud. We re-consider classical cloudchallenges including fault-tolerance and privacy, showing how to implementmiddlebox software solutions with throughput and latency 2-4 orders of magnitudemore efficient than general-purpose cloud approaches. %Some of the technologies discussed in this thesis are presently being adopted by industrial systems used by cloud providers and ISPs.
“We’ve Always Been Kind of Kicked to the Curb”: A Mixed-Methods Assessment of Discrimination Experiences among College Students

Background: Experiences of discrimination are prevalent among minority populations, although often empirical evidence does not provide depth into the source and types of discrimination, such as racial/ethnic, gender-based, age, etc. The goal of this study was to assess the unique patterns, types, and sources of discrimination experiences that college students face and explore the role these experiences play in their mental health. Methods: An explanatory sequential mixed-methods study was utilized. Quantitative assessment of college students from a Hispanic and minority-serving institution was conducted to evaluate experiences of discrimination and its association to physical health and mental health (including psychological distress), as well as food insecurity, a marker for poverty. Next, qualitative data were thematically analyzed to further provide an in depth understanding on the sources of such experiences, types of discriminations, as well as the impact on mental health. Results: Results of the quantitative assessment highlight that discrimination was prevalent among the population with a higher everyday discrimination score significantly associated with serious psychological distress, low mental health status, low physical health status, and being food insecure. Further, most of the participants reported that they felt discriminated due to their appearance, with race/ethnicity and skin color as next most commonly cited reasons. Qualitative assessment further demonstrates distinct types of discrimination experiences from a variety of sources. Within a family, colorism and having an American accent while speaking a native language was a predominant source, while among peers, having a non-American accent was a primary source of discrimination experiences. Such experiences based on elitism, gender, and age (being younger) from the workplace were prevalent among the target population. Finally, feelings of isolation, not belonging, as well as negative impact on self-efficacy and self-worth were noted. Conclusion: Experiences of discrimination are prevalent among college students, including from within family and peers. To improve mental health outcomes of such a population, campus-based measures are needed to promote resiliency and social support, as well as community-based initiatives to promote workplace training to create inclusive environments for younger generations entering the workforce.
Unprovoked Submassive Saddle Pulmonary Embolism in an Adult Male After Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccination

Pulmonary emboli (PEs) occur when the pulmonary artery is blocked by foreign material. In one such instance, this foreign material can be a blood clot that may occur from patient risk factors inducing a prothrombotic state. The relationship between COVID-19 vaccines and a prothrombotic state is novel and changing as our understanding of the relationship between the two evolves. The patient in this case study presented with unrelenting and progressive dyspnea, tachycardia, and unilateral lower extremity swelling two days after receiving the second dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. After diagnostic testing, the patient was found to have a submassive saddle pulmonary embolism with subsequent right heart strain. This patient was treated with appropriate anticoagulation therapies, including heparin and apixaban, as well as thrombectomy, and made a complete recovery. The possible relationship between COVID-19 vaccines and thrombotic events supports the need for increased awareness of a potential new risk factor behind the development of PE. It is our hope that this case report will help raise awareness of an association despite the lack of incident data at this time.
Integrating effects of neighbor interactions for pollination and abiotic resources on coffee yield in a multi‐strata agroforest

Animal‐pollinated plants interact with neighbors for both abiotic resources and pollination, with consequences for reproduction and yield. Yet few studies have compared the relative magnitude of these effects, particularly in agroecosystems. In vertically stratified communities, such as agroforests, neighbor effects may be stratum‐dependent. Understanding the net effects of neighbors on crop yield is important for managing multifunctional agroecosystems to simultaneously support production and biodiversity. This study evaluated the effects of neighboring plants on pollen deposition, fertilization, and yield in Coffea arabica in a shaded organic coffee farm with high non‐crop plant abundance and diversity in Chiapas, Mexico. We assessed the impact of (1) floral resources at three vertical strata (herbs, coffee bushes, and canopy trees) on stigma pollen load (a measure of interaction for pollination), and (2) floral density and canopy cover (proxies for competition for abiotic resources) on yield (final fruit set and per‐fruit weight), using structural equation modeling to evaluate the relative effect of each interaction type. Coffee competed for pollination with neighbors (conspecifics and heterospecifics) across strata. Pollen load influenced final fruit set, but the effect of neighbor competition for pollination was weaker than effects mediated by interactions for abiotic resources. Effects of interactions for abiotic resources were heterogeneous across strata, with negligible effects of herb‐layer or coffee flower density but net positive effects of canopy trees on final fruit set. Overall effects of neighbors on coffee yield were weak, suggesting that coffee agroecosystems can be managed to maintain high plant density and diversity without sacrificing yield.
The AGEs/RAGE Transduction Signaling Prompts IL-8/CXCR1/2-Mediated Interaction between Cancer-Associated Fibroblasts (CAFs) and Breast Cancer Cells

Advanced glycation end products (AGEs) and the cognate receptor, named RAGE, are involved in metabolic disorders characterized by hyperglycemia, type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and obesity. Moreover, the AGEs/RAGE transduction pathway prompts a dysfunctional interaction between breast cancer cells and tumor stroma toward the acquisition of malignant features. However, the action of the AGEs/RAGE axis in the main players of the tumor microenvironment, named breast cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs), remains to be fully explored. In the present study, by chemokine array, we first assessed that interleukin-8 (IL-8) is the most up-regulated pro-inflammatory chemokine upon AGEs/RAGE activation in primary CAFs, obtained from breast tumors. Thereafter, we ascertained that the AGEs/RAGE signaling promotes a network cascade in CAFs, leading to the c-Fos-dependent regulation of IL-8. Next, using a conditioned medium from AGEs-exposed CAFs, we determined that IL-8/CXCR1/2 paracrine activation induces the acquisition of migratory and invasive features in MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cells. Altogether, our data provide new insights on the involvement of IL-8 in the AGEs/RAGE transduction pathway among the intricate connections linking breast cancer cells to the surrounding stroma. Hence, our findings may pave the way for further investigations to define the role of IL-8 as useful target for the better management of breast cancer patients exhibiting metabolic disorders.