Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Diagnostic tools and risk identification in management of hyperparathyroidism

Overactieve bijschildklieren produceren teveel parathyreoid hormoon (PTH). Voor of tijdens een operatie is het belangrijk om vast te stellen of een of meer bijschildklieren te hard werken. UMCG-promovendus Ciska Jorna onderzocht de meerwaarde van verschillende technieken om de bijschildklieren af te beelden om de operatie te verbeteren. De meeste mensen hebben vier bijschildklieren die in de hals achter de schildklier liggen. Soms zijn het er meer, of liggen de klieren meer verspreid. Tijdens een operatie kan het lastig zijn ze te vinden of herkennen. In verreweg de meeste gevallen is een te hard werkende bijschildklier een goedaardige aandoening met verschillende oorzaken, waaronder een langdurig verstoorde nierfunctie zoals bij nierdialyse. Jorna deed onderzoek naar het gebruik van scintigrafie, een techniek om bijschildklieren af te beelden na het inspuiten van een radioactieve stof die zich in de bijschildklier ophoopt. Dit bleek goed bleek te werken bij de ene vorm van te snel werkende bijschildklieren, maar niet bij een andere. Dezelfde techniek kan tijdens de operatie worden gebruikt waarbij straling vanuit de bijschildklier met een klein instrument wordt gemeten. Deze methode bleek niet veel nut te hebben tijdens de operatie bij het vinden van de bijschildklieren in het geval van verstoorde nierfunctie, maar wel in de bevestiging dat het weggehaalde weefsel een overactieve bijschildklier is. Het meten van het hormoon PTH om vast te stellen of alle te hard werkende bijschildklieren zijn verwijderd, bleek bij patienten met een verstoorde nierfunctie niet doelmatig. Tenslotte bracht Jorna risicofactoren voor twee specifieke vormen van overactieve bijschildklieren in kaart, namelijk die waarbij verstoorde nierfunctie een rol speelt en bijschildklierkanker. Kennis over deze factoren kan bijdragen aan betere diagnostiek.
Homogenization of Nonlinear Stochastic Partial Differential Equations in a General Ergodic Environment

In this article, we show that the concept of sigma-convergence associated to stochastic processes can tackle the homogenization of stochastic partial differential equations. In this regard, the homogenization of a stochastic nonlinear partial differential equation is addressed. Using some deep compactness results such as the Prokhorov and Skorokhod theorems, we prove that the sequence of solutions of this problem converges in probability towards the solution of an equation of the same type. To proceed with, we use the concept of sigma-convergence for stochastic processes, which takes into account both the deterministic and random behaviours of the solutions of the problem.
Three-dimensional finite element analysis of composite/metal clamped joint

Three-dimensional finite element models have been created to study the effect of layer orientation on the strength and stiffness of carbon fibre reinforced epoxy laminate tube clamped in metal tube. The model of the laminate tube was validated by comparison of deflection and natural frequencies with experimental results. Furthermore, the failure of clamped laminate tube was investigated experimentally and compared with results of numerical model using failure criterion LaRC04. The optimization of the layer fibre orientation was performed in case of purely clamped tube and then in case of simultaneous clamping, bending and torsional loading.
Technetium reduction and reoxidation behaviour in Dounreay soils

Abstract Technetium is a radioactive contaminant found in groundwaters at sites where nuclear wastes have been processed or stored. The redox chemistry of technetium is a major control on its environmental mobility. Under oxic conditions, technetium exists as the pertechnetate ion, Tc(VII)O4−, which is poorly sorbed by minerals across a wide range of environmentally relevant pH values. Under reducing conditions pertechnetate is converted to lower valency species, of which Tc(IV) tends to predominate. Typically, the Tc(IV) oxidation state readily precipitates as insoluble hydrous Tc(IV) oxides or, at low concentrations, is removed from solution by association with mineral surfaces. Here, we present novel X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) data examining Tc associations with reduced Dounreay soils. In reduced unamended microcosms and in microcosms where we added the co-contaminants ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) or bicarbonate to investigate their effect on Tc biogeochemistry, Tc was removed from solution on exposure to the reduced sediments and was present on solids as hydrous Tc(IV)O2-like phases. Furthermore, to investigate the long term stability and remobilization of solid phase associated Tc in reduced soils, we reoxidized reduced, Tc(IV)-labeled soils, in the presence of air and nitrate. The extent of remobilization of Tc to solution was dependent on the oxidant used. After reoxidation with air for 60 d, (42±6)% of the initial soil bound Tc was resolubilized. In the presence of 25 or 100 mmol L−1 nitrate as an oxidant, negligible microcosm reoxidation or remobilization of Tc to solution occurred. XAS analysis of soils treated with the two oxidants showed that in both systems, the remaining soil associated Tc was present as hydrous TcO2-like phases. The recalcitrance of Tc remobilization under reoxidizing conditions has implications for the fate of Tc in contaminated environments.
Morphological and developmental plasticity in larvae of Physalaemus santafecinus (Anura: Leiuperidae) in response to chemical cues of different predators

Morphological and developmental plasticity in larvae of Physalaemus santafecinus (Anura: Leiuperidae) in response to chemical cues of different predators. Many antipredator responses are mediated or induced by the ability of the prey to identify chemical cues of predators. The presence of chemicals produced by predators may alert tadpoles to the presence of the predators, and a heightened response to alarm cues or predator presence may increase the possibility of prey survival. We examined changes in morphology, and growth and development rates of Physalaemus santafecinus tadpoles reared in the presence of chemical cues of water beetles (Hydrophilidae) and a fish (Characidae). We recorded the time to metamorphosis, as well as weights of metamorphic individuals to determine if the larval stage is accelerated. The experiments were performed under microcosm conditions, with three treatments—chemical cues from fish, water beetles, and a control group. Each treatment was replicated 30 times. To obtain independent data from different variables, treatments were conducted on individual larvae in separate containers. The principal results were, as follow. (1) Larval morphology was significantly affected by the presence of a predator. (2) Control tadpoles were significantly larger than those subjected to the other two treatments (cues of water beetles and fish). (3) Growth and development rates did not differ significantly among any treatments. (4) Neither time to metamorphosis nor weights of metamorphs varied significantly among treatments. Our results suggest that tadpoles are able to perceive predators by chemical cues released in the water, and P. santafecinus tadpoles alter their morphology to chemical cues that indicate predation. However, chemical cues of predators had no detectable effect on growth rate and developmental rates of these tadpoles.
Formulation and quality evaluation of agathi (Sesbania grandiflora (L.) Poir) leaves enriched pizza base a healthier substitute for the regular pizza base

One of the best selling items in today’s food world for immediate gratification of hunger and taste is pizza. Pizza typically contains high levels of calories, sodium and fat. Excessive consumption of caloriedense, sodium and fat-laden foods is associated with higher risks for some chronic diseases. The incidence of obesity related health issues in adolescents and early adults is of great concern. Altering the amounts of ingredients used can significantly improve the nutrient composition of these foods. Vitamins, minerals, dietary fiber, and phytochemicals present in plants contribute to the functionality of foods enriched with them. Sesbania grandiflora L.Poir commonly reffered to as Agathi or Agasthya is medicinally valued. The purpose of this study was to formulate pizza base enriched with shade dried agathi leaves and subject it to acceptability in comparision to plain pizza base. In the present study the addition of agathi leaves at differnt levels of 10, 15 and 20gm/100gm of refined wheat flour have been investigated. Results show that addition of agathi leaves bettered the crumb moisture content with only a little increase in crumb firmness. A substantial improvement in sensory characteristics was observed upon addition of agathi leaves. Acceptable sensory scores, which were comparable to refined wheat flour based pizza were observed at 10gm level of addition of shade dried agathi leaves for 100gm of refined wheat flour.
CPW-Fed Phi-Shaped Monopole Antenna for Super-Wideband Applications

A compact Phi-shaped monopole antenna for super wideband applications is proposed. It consists of a Phi-shaped radiator derived from a conventional elliptical monopole and quarter elliptical CPW ground plane. An impedance bandwidth from 3.5 to 37.2 GHz is achieved with a ratio bandwidth of 10 : 1. It provides an average peak realized gain of 3.5 dB with a group delay of less than 0.5 ns. The proposed antenna structure provides large bandwidth with the advantage of miniaturized dimensions compared to other SWB antenna structures.
Quantitative Comparison of Myocardial Perfusion Defects using Different Reconstruction Algorithms

Objective: To investigate the impact of a reconstruction method incorporating corrections for scatter, attenuation, and distance dependent detector response on cardiac single emission computed tomography (SPECT) perfusion studies compared with filtered back projection (FBP). Materials and methods: A total of 20 patients underwent same-day, rest-stress SPECT/CT myocardial perfusion imaging. Images were reconstructed using iterative 3D ordered-subsets expectation-maximization (OSEM 3D) and FBP algorithms. Stress and rest myocardial perfusion defects were quantified using polar maps and normal database comparisons. The Bland-Altman plots were used to assess their degree of agreement. Results were confirmed by coronary angiography. The contrast, contrast to noise ratio and signal to noise ratio were used for the quantitative evaluation of the reconstruction quality. Results: Perfusion defect extent quantification on OSEM 3D reconstructed images agreed and correlated well with defect extent quantification on FBP reconstructed images (bias ± standard deviation, -15% ± 20; r = 0.63) during stress and at rest (-10% ±15; r=0.70). Agreement and correlation were similar for severity scores during stress (-1.02 ± 1.77 SD’s; r=0.62), and at rest (-1.10 ± 1.49 SD’s; r=0.61). There were no statistically significant differences between the methods regarding perfusion defect extent or severity. The overall agreement rate with coronary angiography was similar. OSEM 3D reconstruction algorithm significantly increases the image contrast by 31% (P<0.05). Conclusions: Compensation for detector response, attenuation and scatter improves image contrast compared with FBP. Applying quantitative analysis, OSEM 3D reconstruction produced increased image contrast compared to FBP, but similar results regarding the size and severity of left ventricular perfusion defects.
Modeling the CCD Undersampling Effect in the BATC Photometric System

In certain CCD imaging systems, “intrapixel effects” introduce nonnegligible errors into the photometric accuracy of these systems. This effect is presumably caused by undersampling of the point source image by individual CCD pixels. This undersampling effect shows that the exact location of the source image on a pixel determines the flux detected by that pixel. Thus, as the image center drifts, for various reasons, across a pixel in a series of exposures, a difference in the response from the center to the edge of a pixel results in a variation of flux readout by that pixel. This effect could be important under superb seeing conditions, mimicking microvariability in stellar photometry for imaging systems having certain plate scales. To study this effect in detail, we carried out a full‐night monitoring of bright stars in a 14′ × 14′ field using the Beijing‐Arizona‐Taipei‐Connecticut (BATC) observing system. This 10 hr monitoring program shows that all the stars in the field vary periodically with almost the same amplitude and frequency, but that the variations were out of phase among the stars in the field. Furthermore, the variation of all the stars diminished toward the end of the night, as the seeing became worse. Since the flux variation correlates well with the precise location of the image center on a pixel, we attribute these phenomena to the “intrapixel effect” of our CCD imaging system. In this study, we describe the nature of this undersampling effect and its influence on the photometric accuracy. We found that this effect can be modeled and removed if the seeing conditions and the intrapixel positions and motions of stars on the CCD chip are known.
Theory, Operation, and Application of Neural Networks

This paper examines the history and current state of machine learning. It examines neural networks, theory behind neural networks, how they are implemented, and how they are used. The systems and networks examined have up to three modes of learning. Theory behind machine learning is broken up into three approaches; rule-based, Bayesian, and neural networks. Operation of machine learning algorithms has been enabled by several prevalent libraries in the open source community, as well as various hardware technologies. Due to this surge in resources application, developers have been able to apply machine learning in novel ways. An application of machine learning to evaluate the security practices of open source software was undertaken as the culmination of this thesis.
Farm-Level Adaptive Capacity to Climate Variability in Rice Production, Northern Uganda

Rice is Uganda’s second major cereal crop however; its productivity has been considerably low and stagnant between 1.3 to 2.4 tons per hectare over the last 15 years. One of the underlying factors of low productivity is the current growing conditions which are not optimal for production due to climate variability. Adaptation is therefore pivotal in countering climatic challenges in production. Empirical evidence however, point to limited adaptive ability of farmers. This paper assessed farm-level adaptive capacity and its contribution to rice yield enhancement in Northern Uganda. The study was conducted on a sample of 240 rice producers in northern Uganda during 2010 - 2014 growing seasons. Adaptation capacity was measured quantitatively using indicator of access, use, knowledge and consultation levels. The study results revealed that the average farm-level adaptive capacity was 0.64 which falls in the range of moderate adapters. The study drew the following conclusions: adaptive capacity regarding use of local coping strategies was high contrary to the conventional strategies such as improved variety and herbicide. The moderate to high adaptive capacity was due farmer’s ability to access and use coping strategies than knowledge and consultation on the strategies. There was a considerable difference in yield between the low and high adapters. In order to improved farmer adaptive capacity, there is need for: early weather information sharing on specific crops and locality, research on rice production technologies, validating, strengthening and out-scaling of relevant local coping strategies, improving adoption of conventional coping strategies and access to quality seeds. Keywords: Coping strategies, Adaptive capacity, Climate variability, Rice.
Measuring Welfare An Alternative to GDP

GDP per capita is generally used to compare welfare across countries and time. However, it faces significant limitations in serving as an appropriate welfare measure. Amongst others, GDP does not account for the distribution of wealth and omits important well-being determinants such as quantity and quality of life. In previous literature a consumption-equivalent model has been developed as an alternative welfare measure containing the factors life expectancy, consumption, leisure and inequality. The model is enhanced in this paper by incorporating the additional factors health and corruption. With this approach, living standards are compared across a broad set of countries both in levels and across time. The results show that for a significant proportion of countries this alternative welfare measurement differs substantially from the traditional GDP evaluation. For instance, life expectancy raises well-being in certain regions such as Western Europe, but considerably reduces welfare in Eastern Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa. In Latin America, inequality within countries is a crucial factor, whereas corruption is most detrimental in Africa. Welfare growth tends to be higher than income growth in the sample due to improvements in longevity, corruption and leisure time.
Novel Green-Chemistry Micro-Fluidic Synthesis of Anthracene-Based Microporous for H2 Storage by Capillary-Furnace LED Based Reactor

Microfluidic controlled multistep thermal-polymerization by Capillary-Furnace under LED irradiation (TPCFL) synthesis procedures used as a novel way for synthesis of series of anthracene-based microporous polymers (AMPs) in terms of improved product control, reproducibility and automation. The majority of microfluidic research to date has involved single-phase flow reactors, in which miscible reagent streams are continuously injected into channels where they react to form the final product. Droplet-based flow reactors have proven to be of particular value for the controlled synthesis of functional materials whose properties are strongly influenced by the reaction conditions. Microparticles materials were prepared through thermal-polymerization by capillary-furnace LED polymerization (TPCFL) method. Two-phase flow reactors that generation of the fluid segments and PTFE mixers (200 cm length, 1 mm I.D.) was used in continuousmicroflow systems to control adding micro amounts of reagent to a flowing stream of droplets. By using a gas phase to maintain an even droplet spacing, simple Tjunctions was used to repeatedly inject new reagent into the droplets at up to double the volume of the existing droplets. The outlined procedure therefore provides a simple means of implementing multistep chemical reactions in droplets, on which the size range of few microns to hundreds of micrometers with an extremely narrow size distribution.
Malware detection based on evolving clustering method for classification

Malware is a computer program that can replicate itself and cause potential damage in data files. The high speed of the computers and networks increased the virus spread. To avoid the virus infection and the data loss, it is important to use an efficient and effective method for virus detection. This paper proposes an approach for malware detection based on the evolving clustering method. The proposed approach effectively combined the information gain method as a feature selector with the evolving clustering method as evolving learning classifier. Based on the experimental results, the proposed malware detection approach proved its capability to detect the malware by decreasing the false positive rate to 1% while increasing the level of accuracy to 99%.
Enhancing a Computer-Based Testing Environment with Optimum Item Response Time

Background:As technology has become more advanced and accessible in teaching and learning settings, there has been an upward trend in computer-based testing in the last decades.Materials and methods:The present experimental study examines students’ behaviors during computer-based testing in two different conditions and explores to what extent the test results were affected by those conditions.Results:Study results indicate that some of the psychometric features of a test (reliability and validity) could be enriched on computer-based testing when students are provided optimum item response time. In addition, it was found that providing optimum response time for each item influenced the students in the experimental group to not engage in rapid guess behaviors. Thereby, students spent a reasonable amount of time answering the questions, which resulted in more reliable and valid scores, aforementioned. Lastly, there was no statistically significant difference in two groups in terms of student performance.Conclusions:Psychometric features of a test could be enriched when students are provided additional features on a computer-based testing environment.
Soil erosion in an avalanche release site (Valle d'Aosta: Italy): towards a winter factor for RUSLE in the Alps

Abstract. Soil erosion in Alpine areas is mainly related to extreme topographic and weather conditions. Although different methods of assessing soil erosion exist, the knowledge of erosive forces of the snow cover needs more investigation in order to allow soil erosion modeling in areas where the snow lays on the ground for several months. This study aims to assess whether the RUSLE (Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation) empirical prediction model, which gives an estimation of water erosion in t ha yr−1 obtained from a combination of five factors (rainfall erosivity, soil erodibility, topography, soil cover, protection practices) can be applied to mountain areas by introducing a winter factor (W), which should account for the soil erosion occurring in winter time by the snow cover. The W factor is calculated from the ratio of Ceasium-137 (137Cs) to RUSLE erosion rates. Ceasium-137 is another possible way of assessing soil erosion rates in the field. In contrast to RUSLE, it not only provides water-induced erosion but integrates all erosion agents involved. Thus, we hypothesize that in mountain areas the difference between the two approaches is related to the soil erosion by snow. In this study we compared 137Cs-based measurement of soil redistribution and soil loss estimated with RUSLE in a mountain slope affected by avalanches, in order to assess the relative importance of winter erosion processes such as snow gliding and full-depth avalanches. Three subareas were considered: DS, avalanche defense structures, RA, release area, and TA, track area, characterized by different prevalent winter processes. The RUSLE estimates and the 137Cs redistribution gave significantly different results. The resulting ranges of W evidenced relevant differences in the role of winter erosion in the considered subareas, and the application of an avalanche simulation model corroborated these findings. Thus, the higher rates obtained with the 137Cs method confirmed the relevant role of winter soil erosion. Despite the limited sample size (11 points), the inclusion of a W factor in RUSLE seems promising for the improvement of soil erosion estimates in Alpine environments affected by snow movements.