Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Is annual fecal occult blood testing as effective as flexible sigmoidoscopy for colon cancer screening?

A lower incidence of colorectal cancer diagnoses was found when screening with flexible sigmoidoscopy compared with annual or biannual fecal occult blood testing (SOR: B, meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials [RCTs]). Both fecal occult blood testing and flexible sigmoidoscopy screening result in a decrease in colon cancer mortality compared with no screening (SOR: B, one meta-analysis of RCTs and one additional RCT). Copyright © 2019 by Family Physicians Inquiries Network, Inc. DOI 10.1097/EBP.0000000000000547
Investigating Surface Properties and Lithium Diffusion in Brookite-TiO2

Surfaces properties of TiO2 in the brookite phase and the lithium diffusion are studied using density functional theory (DFT) and interatomic potential simulations. Simulations predict that the brookite surfaces have a higher intrinsic Lewis acidity compared to the other polymorphs due to the presence of four coordinated Ti atoms on the surface in contrast to the most stable surfaces of anatase and rutile which have five coordinated Ti surface atoms. The surface reactivity of the brookite is then expected to be higher for catalysis. The (210) surface is the most stable calculated surface and some experimental morphologies have been revisited. Regarding Li intercalation, the migration occurs along the c-direction and open channel surfaces are desired, therefore particles exposing the (001) surface. Those differences on chemical/physical properties highlight the importance to control the nanoparticle shapes for a given application.
Obstructive sleep apnea and cancer- A nationwide epidemiological survey

Background. Several epidemiological studies have reported an increased cancer incidence among subjects with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and in animal models intermittent hypoxia has been related to markers of cancer activity. Aims. To report nationwide data on the prevalence and incidence of cancer among all diagnosed Icelandic OSA patients (total population 320,000) Methods. Altogether 8.833 Icelanders 20 years and older (6311 males and 2522 females) had ever been diagnosed with clinically significant OSA from 1987 until December 2014. All subjects ever diagnosed with cancer in this group until 2014, were identified in the Icelandic cancer register. Standardized incidence ratio (SIR) was estimated. Results. The average age at OSA-diagnosis for males and females was 52.8 and 56.2 years, and for incident cancer 68.1 and. 66.6 years, respectively Among the OSA patients altogether 512 had been diagnosed with cancer when they were diagnosed with OSA. In the 88.542 person years of follow-up after OSA diagnosis there were 869 incident cancer cases (10.4) The most common incident cancer in females was breast cancer (n=68, 28%) and prostate cancer in males (n=200, 32%). OSA patients with cancer had similar body mass index, OSA severity and age at OSA diagnosis as those not diagnosed. In the ongoing age and gender specific risk analysis subjects under 65 years of age were at increased cancer risk (SIR: 1.2(1.1;1.3)), especially melanoma that accounted for 3% of incident cases in females and males (8/19 cases, SIR: 2.2(1.2;4.10) and 3.2(1.5;6.7),respectively) Conclusions. Nationwide Icelandic data show that OSA has a moderate risk association with some cancer types among subjects less than 65 years of age.
Factorial study of the RNA-seq computational workflow identifies biases as technical gene signatures

RNA-seq is a modular experimental and computational approach that aims in identifying and quantifying RNA molecules. The modularity of the RNA-seq technology enables adaptation of the protocol to develop new ways to explore RNA biology, but this modularity also brings forth the importance of methodological thoroughness. Liberty of approach comes with the responsibility of choices, and such choices must be informed. Here, we present an approach that identifies gene group specific quantification biases in currently used RNA-seq software and references by processing sequenced datasets using a wide variety of RNA-seq computational pipelined, and by decomposing these expression datasets using an independent component analysis matrix factorisation method. By exploring the RNA-seq pipeline using a systemic approach, we highlight the yet inadequately characterized central importance of genome annotations in quantification results. We also show that the different choices in RNA-seq methodology are not independent, through interactions between genome annotations and quantification software. Genes were mainly found to be affected by differences in their sequence, by overlapping genes and genes with similar sequence. Our approach offers an explanation for the observed biases by identifying the common features used differently by the software and references, therefore providing leads for the betterment of RNA-seq methodology.
Extended Follow-up of a Randomized Clinical Trial of Open vs Endoscopic Release Surgery for Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

efforts and pay-for-performance initiatives. Considering the burden of revisits to patients and hospitals following ambulatory operations, our study highlights the importance of expanding health policy and clinical interventions to include ambulatory surgery and complications assessed in the ED. Futurework shoulddetermine associated risk factors and which complications are potentially preventable.
Comparison of Diverse Dust Control Products in Wind-Induced Dust Emission from Unpaved Roads

Surfaces of unpaved roads are subjected to dust PM10 (particulate matter < 10 µm) emission by wind process regardless of vehicles (wheels) transport. However, there is little quantitative information on wind-induced dust emission from unpaved roads and the efficiency of diverse dust control products. The study aimed to fill this clear applied scientific gap using wind-tunnel experiments under laboratory and field conditions. The wind-tunnel complies with aerodynamics requirements and is adjusted to dynamic similitude by appropriately scaling all variables that affect dust transport. The results of the control sample (no-treatment) clearly show that dust emission by wind from unpaved road could be a substantial contribution to mass transfer and air pollution, and thus should be considered. Diverse dust control products of synthetic and organic polymers (Lignin, Resin, Bitumen, PVA, Brine) were tested. In the first stage, the products were tested under controlled-laboratory conditions. The results enabled quantitative assessment of the product efficacy in wind erosion without the impact of vehicle transport. In the second stage, the products were tested in field experiment in an active quarry, in which the products were applied on plots along the road. The field experiment was conducted after transportation of the quarry-haul trucks in two time points: several days after the application, and several weeks after the application. The results show that in most of the plots the dust emission increases with the wind velocity. PM10 fluxes from the road surface in each plot were calculated to determine the effectiveness of the dust control products. Some products significantly reduced dust emission from quarry roads, especially when using the Hydrous magnesium chloride (Brine). Additional experiments revealed that such Brine can be applied with reduced amounts and still keeping on low emission.
Assessment of superabsorbent polymer effect on water use efficiency of plant under water deficit conditions

Deficit irrigation is an optimum technique for producing products under drought stress conditions. The superabsorbent hydrogel is a hydrophilic polymer with cross-linked 3-D hydrophilic nets that can absorb and retain effective amounts of water and aquatic liquids. The objective of this study was to assess the superabsorbent polymer effect on water use efficiency (WUE) and grain yield of Vigna unguiculata L. under drought stress conditions. The experimental treatments included: Treatment I 1 S 0 , including 100% ETc demand as irrigation amount and with 0.0 g SAP (I 1 :100%; S 0 : without SAP); treatment I 2 S 1 , including 75% ETc demand as irrigation amount and with 7.0 g Super-AB-A300 polymer for plant (I 2 : 75%; S 1 : 7 g SAP); treatment I 3 S 2 , including 55% ETc demand as irrigation amount and with 14.0 g Super-AB-A300 polymer for plant (I 3 : 55%; S 2 : 14 g SAP). A drip irrigation system performed irrigation. According to the results, the soil treated with superabsorbent polymer, in mild deficit irrigation treatment (I 2 S 1 ), made it possible to obtain the same grain yield as the complete irrigation treatment (I 1 S 0 ) and there was no significant difference between them. Besides, IWUE was conversely depended on the entire water requirement all along the growing cycle, and for higher IWUE, the water would be decreased under the irrigation demand for the maximum grain yield. Thus, the mix of mild deficit irrigation and superabsorbent polymer (I 2 S 1 ), that leads to increase the plant water productivity (AWP), was an acceptable policy to optimize cowpea grain yield and water utilization.
A Robust 8-Bit Non-Volatile Computing-in-Memory Core for Low-Power Parallel MAC Operations

The Artificial Intelligence (AI) in edge computing is requesting new processing units with a much higher computing-power ratio. The emerging resistive Non-Volatile Memory (NVM) with the in-memory computing capability may greatly advance the AI hardware technologies. In this paper, we propose the use of binary resistive memory to form an 8-bit fixed-point data/weight for AI computing. A robust Computing-In-Memory (CIM) core with digital input and analog output Multiplication-and-Accumulation (MAC) circuit is proposed. The corresponding integration scheme and Successive Approximation Register Analog-to-Digital Converter (SAR ADC) based data conversion scheme are also presented. The simulation results show that the proposed CIM core achieves 7.26 bit of Effective Number of Bits (ENOB) with 0.78mW (256*1) power consumption and 1.85M/s computing speed. Compared with previously reported CIM implementations and Deep Learning Accelerators (DLAs) (without CIM ability), our design achieves 2.23– $7.26\times $ better energy efficiency in 8-bit input 8-bit weight pattern, and achieves relatively high accuracy with LeNet and AlexNet.
Conquering the professional learning network labyrinth: what is required from the networked school leader?

ABSTRACT Increasingly, policymakers, school and school system leaders are turning to Professional Learning Networks (PLNs) as a means to achieve bottom-up educational improvement at scale (Brown and Poortman, 2018). Likening the leadership challenges of establishing PLNs to conquering a labyrinth, this paper draws on extant literature to explore one key factor thought vital to the success of PLNs: the role of school leaders in creating a two-way link between PLNs and schools. Drawing on Bauman’s [2012. Liquid Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press] notion of liquid modernity to ground the emergence of education networks within wider trends affecting society, this theoretical paper provides a conceptual exploration of the role of school leaders in maximising the benefits of networked ways of working for their school. Settling on three vital network leadership functions of formalising, prioritising and mobilising PLN engagement, the paper concludes by establishing some of the key areas school leaders need to consider if they are to successfully negotiate the PLN maze. Also detailed are the suggested ‘lessons’ school and system leaders should heed to maximise the impact of PLNs for all schools involved.
Exploring semi-supervised learning for deciding the order of vehicles in rear-end crashes

Knowing the order of vehicles in rear-end crashes is an important step for further analysis to work towards the goal of reducing fatalities and severe injuries in traffic down to zero. For example, by knowing the order of vehicles a more accurate estimation of the driver’s exposure could be done. The main task of this project was to create a system which could decide the order of vehicles involved in each rear-end crash from the text description in a crash database. To try and address this task semi-supervised learning was chosen as the method. The reason for this choice was because all the crash cases were unlabelled from the beginning and to label all the cases manually would be infeasible but to label a few hundred cases was manageable. Two neural networks were built and tested. The text descriptions of the rear-end crashes from the national crash database in Sweden were transformed to vectors and used as input for the neural networks. The performance of each of the networks was measured. The results suggest that further work are needed before the networks could be used for making reliable decisions, however the experiments give some indications on what parameters should be considered carefully while using semisupervised learning and which parameters that need more exploration.
A walk on the wild side: an investigation into the quantity and quality of `predatory' publications in Italian academia

In recent years the academic world has experienced a mushrooming of journals that falsely pretend to provide peer review. We study the quantity and quality of publications in dubious journals using information from the CVs of 46,000 researchers seeking promotion in Italian academia. We find that about 5% of these researchers have published in journals included in the blacklist of `potential, possible, or probable predatory journals' elaborated by the scholarly librarian Jeffrey Beall. To better understand the quality of these publications and the motivations of authors, we collected bibliometric information and we conducted a survey among one thousand researchers (response rate=54%). According to respondents, at least a third of these journals either did not offer regular peer review or engaged in some type of irregular editorial practice. The proportion of journals with reported malpractices is similar among journals from Beall's list that are indexed in Scopus. On the other hand, we also find evidence suggesting that some journals identified by Beall may be legitimate. Overall, our results indicate that the use of white and black lists in research evaluations needs to be complemented with expert evaluations.
A Mutual-Capacitance 3-D Gesture Sensing System Based on 2-D Orthogonal Encoding and an Un-Folding Coordinate Interpolation Schemes

This paper describes the design of a capacitance readout IC for 3-D hover gesture sensing system. The proposed IC adopts a multi-channel driving scheme in both driving and sensing electrodes of a TSP (touch screen panel). The proposed single encoding and summing (ENS) filter in the readout circuit senses all TSP channels at once, thereby reducing the power consumption and chip area. An incorporated correlated double sampler (CDS) performs down-conversion of the capacitance signal and moving average filtering for severe noise interferences with high pass-filtering of the ENS filter. The proposed IC also employs an efficient hovering gesture detection method that is based on an un-folding 1-dimensional coordinate extraction scheme and various triggering events. By employing the cascade driving for hovering detection, the hover frame rate is maintained to be the same as the TSP frame rate while achieving a targeted signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The proposed readout IC was fabricated on a 130-nm CMOS process. The IC achieves 26-dB SNR at 10-mm hover height and 120-Hz frame rate with $16\times16$ TSP. The front end circuit occupies a chip area of 0.0912-mm2 and supports a supply voltage ranging from 2.7 V to 3.3 V.
AVALIAÇÃO DOS ASPECTOS E IMPACTOS AMBIENTAIS DE UM LABORATÓRIO DE ANÁLISES FÍSICO-QUÍMICAS PELO MÉTODO FMEA

A preocupacao com a gestao ambiental e necessaria em organizacoes de diversos porte e setores. Isso tambem atinge as instituicoes de ensino, especificamente os laboratorios fisico-quimicos e suas atividades de ensino, pesquisa e extensao, sendo essas potencialmente poluidoras. Um entendimento dos aspectos e impactos ambientais e estabelecimento de medidas de controle nesses ambientes sao cruciais para o planejamento das acoes de gestao ambiental. Assim, este trabalho tem como objetivo avaliar os aspectos e impactos ambientais de um laboratorio de analises fisico-quimico do Instituto Federal de Educacao, Ciencia e Tecnologia do Rio Grande do Norte (IFRN) e propor medidas para controle dos mesmos. Para a realizacao desta pesquisa, foi desenvolvido um estudo de caso com foco na avaliacao dos aspectos e impactos pelo metodo Failure Mode and Effects Analysis que se baseia na atribuicao de valores para severidade, probabilidade e deteccao. Os aspectos ambientais relevantes identificados eram associados aos outputs das atividades do laboratorio, incluindo residuos solidos perigosos, efluente nao perigosos e efluente perigoso. A vista disso, foram propostas medidas de controle dos aspectos, levando em consideracao as necessidades, a estrutura organizacional e os recursos financeiros. De forma geral, as medidas implementadas tiveram como facilitador o baixo custo, levando a um melhor controle dos aspectos ambientais.
Frugal innovation enablers: a comprehensive framework

This paper aims to propose a framework for the dimensions of frugal innovation enablers in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). ,A mixed research approach has been applied. First, by a comprehensive literature review, the most important factors influencing frugal innovation have been identified. Then, an interview has been conducted with 18 experts who were selected by snowball sampling method. In the next step, all identified variables have been modified in a questionnaire with 48 factors, which were distributed to 200 employees and managers of SMEs in the home appliance manufacturing industry of Isfahan province, who were selected by non-random sampling. Data has been analyzed using SPSS-25 software for exploratory factor analysis. ,Findings indicated that the most important enablers of frugal innovation are world-class design, human aspect, marketing, support, knowledge, social aspect, prototyping, cultural aspect, environmental aspect, distinct brand creation, core functions focus, local R&D, cost-cutting business model and low-cost production. ,The proposed framework provides an effective basis to managers and decision-makers in the field of frugal innovation to evaluate their capabilities in implementing frugal innovation, the results of which are helpful in developing a roadmap for achieving frugal innovation in SMEs and particularly in home appliance manufacturing companies. ,The comprehensive framework of this study has not been applied, developed or studied in the literature. The proposed framework provides new insights for future studies on the subject of frugal innovation, e.g. investigating the influence of frugal innovation on frugal innovation performance.
Motion-Compensated Image Reconstruction for Magnetic Resonance (MR) Imaging and for Simultaneous Positron Emission Tomography/MR Imaging

In this work, novel algorithms for 4D (3D + respiratory) and 5D (3D + respiratory + cardiac) motion-compensated (MoCo) magnetic resonance (MR) and positron emission tomography (PET) image reconstruction were developed. The focus of all methods was set on short MR acquisition times. Therefore, respiratory and cardiac patient motion were estimated on the basis of strongly undersampled radial MR data employing joint motion estimation and MR image reconstruction. In case of simultaneous PET/MR acquisitions, motion information derived from MR was incorporated into the MoCo PET reconstruction. 4D respiratory MoCo MR image reconstructions with acquisition times of 40 s achieved an image quality comparable to standard motion handling approaches, which require one order of magnitude longer MR acquisition times. Respiratory MoCo PET images using 1 min of the MR acquisition time for motion estimation revealed improved PET image quality and quantification accuracy when compared to standard reconstruction methods. Additional compensation of cardiac motion resulted in increased image sharpness of MR and PET images in the heart region and enabled time-resolved 5D imaging allowing for reconstruction of any arbitrary combination of respiratory and cardiac motion phases. The proposed methods for MoCo image reconstruction may be integrated into clinical routine, reducing MR acquisition times for improved patient comfort and increasing the diagnostic value of MR and simultaneous PET/MR examinations of the thorax and abdomen.
Multidisciplinary Characterization of Chlorinated Solvents Contamination and In-Situ Remediation with the Use of the Direct Current Resistivity and Time-Domain Induced Polarization Tomography

Soil contamination is a widespread problem and action needs to be taken in order to prevent damage to the groundwater and the life around the contaminated sites. In Sweden, it is estimated that more than 80,000 sites are potentially contaminated, and therefore, there is a demand for investigations and further treatment of the soil. In this paper, we present the results from a methodology applied in a site contaminated with chlorinated solvents, for characterization of the contamination in order to plan the remediation and to follow-up the initial step of in-situ remediation in an efficient way. We utilized the results from three different methods; membrane interface probe for direct measurement of the contaminant concentrations; seismic refraction tomography for investigating the depth to the bedrock interface; and direct current resistivity and time-domain induced polarization tomography to acquire a high-resolution imaging of the electrical properties of the subsurface. The results indicate that our methodology is very promising in terms of site characterization, and furthermore, has great potential for real-time geophysical monitoring of contaminated sites in the future.
A STUDY ON ROLE OF VARIOUS TYPES OF TOPICAL OINTMENT AND ITS OUTCOME AMONG BURN PATIENTS : AN INTERESTING FOLLOWUP STUDY

Burn injury causes major bulk of the surgical emergencies. Burn infection makes the burn wound complicated causes considerable mortality and morbidity. Timely and effective use of antimicrobial and topical dressings revolutionizes burn care by decreasing invasive wound infection. The administration of broad-spectrum antibiotics on routine basis is likely to encourage. The emergence of resistant organism therefore, timely and judicial use of antibiotics is essential for better result. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The present study was carried out in 160 burns and scald admitted in surgical wards in Department of General Surgery, SGMH and S.S. Medical College, Rewa (M. P.) during period of one year. The cases are fully recorded and thoroughly studied with the aim of establishing the incidence, mode of burn and causes of burn, source of burn, clothing at timed incidence, time and place of incidence and detail clinical assessment. On admission resuscitation started with intravenous fluid, calculated according to the Parkland formula and prophylactic antibiotic given in all the patients after sampling for culture and sensitivity. Symptomatic and supportive treatment added as per need. RESULTS: Out of 160 patients, majority of the patient belong to 21 – 40 year 48.1%. Majority of patient (34.4%) had total body surface burn area burnt between 21-40% and 12.5% patient had burnt area 61-80%. Maximum (50.0%) complain of irritation was reported by the patients to whom Silver sulphadizine was applied while least (10%) by the patients to whom nadoxine was applied. CONCLUSION: The incident of invasive infection and overall mortality was significantly reduced after the introduction into clinical practice of topical burn wound anti-microbial agent, our study shows that the most effective topical antimicrobial agent in burn patient is Nadoxine.