Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Improving women’s diet quality preconceptionally and during gestation: effects on birth weight and prevalence of low birth weight—a randomized controlled efﬁcacy trial in India (Mumbai Maternal Nutrition Project) 1–5

Background: Low birth weight (LBW) is an important public health problem in undernourished populations. Objective: We tested whether improving women’s dietary micronutrient quality before conception and throughout pregnancy increases birth weight in a high-risk Indian population. Design: The study was a nonblinded, individually randomized controlled trial. The intervention was a daily snack made from green leafy vegetables, fruit, and milk (treatment group) or low-micronutrient vegetables (potato and onion) (control group) from $ 90 d before pregnancy until delivery in addition to the usual diet. Treatment snacks contained 0.69 MJ of energy (controls: 0.37 MJ) and 10–23% of WHO Reference Nutrient Intakes of b -carotene, riboﬂavin, folate, vitamin B-12, calcium, and iron (controls: 0–7%). The primary outcome was birth weight. Results: Of 6513 women randomly assigned, 2291 women became pregnant, 1962 women delivered live singleton newborns, and 1360 newborns were measured. In an intention-to-treat analysis, there was no overall increase in birth weight in the treatment group (+26 g; 95% CI: 2 15, 68 g; P = 0.22). There was an interaction ( P , 0.001) between the allocation group and maternal prepregnant body mass index (BMI; in kg/m 2 ) [birth-weight effect: 2 23, +34, and +96 g in lowest ( , 18.6), middle (18.6–21.8), and highest ( . 21.8) thirds of BMI, respectively]. In 1094 newborns whose mothers started supplementation $ 90 d before pregnancy (per-protocol analysis), birth weight was higher in the treatment group (+48 g; 95% CI: 1, 96 g; P = 0.046). Again, the effect increased with maternal BMI ( 2 8, +79, and +113 g; P -interaction = 0.001). There were similar results for LBW (intention-to-treat OR: 0.83; 95% CI: 0.66, 1.05; P = 0.10; per-protocol OR = 0.76; 95% CI: 0.59, 0.98; P = 0.03) but no effect on gestational age in either analysis. Conclusions: A daily snack providing additional green leafy vegetables, fruit, and milk before conception and throughout pregnancy had no overall effect on birth weight. Per-protocol and subgroup analyses indicated a possible increase in birth weight if the mother was supplemented $ 3 mo before conception and was not underweight. This trial was at
Selective Activation of PPAR α and PPAR γ Induces Neoangiogenesis through a VEGF-dependent Mechanism

Objective: Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors (PPARs) are therapeutic targets for fibrates and thiazolidinediones, which are commonly used to ameliorate hyperlipidemia and hyperglycemia in type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). In this study, we evaluated whether activation of PPAR α and PPAR γ stimulates neoangiogenesis. Research design and Methods: We used selective synthetic PPAR α and PPAR γ agonists and investigated their angiogenic potentials in vitro and in vivo . Results: Activation of PPAR α and PPAR γ leads to endothelial tube formation in an endothelial/interstitial cell co-culture assay. This effect is associated with increased production of the angiogenic cytokine Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor (VEGF). Neovascularization also occurs in vivo , when PPAR α and PPAR γ agonists are used in the murine corneal angiogenic model. No vascular growth is detectable when PPAR α and PPAR γ agonists are respectively used in PPAR α knock-out mice and mice treated with a specific PPAR γ inhibitor, demonstrating that this angiogenic response is PPAR-mediated. PPAR α - and PPAR γ -induced angiogenesis is associated with local VEGF production and does not differ in extent and morphology from that induced by VEGF. In addition, PPAR α - and PPAR γ -induced in vitro and in vivo angiogenesis may be significantly decreased by inhibiting VEGF activity. Finally, in corneas treated with PPAR α and PPAR γ agonists, there is increased phosphorylation of eNOS and Akt. Conclusions: These findings demonstrate that PPAR α and PPAR γ activation stimulates neoangiogenesis through a VEGF-dependent mechanism. Neoangiogenesis is a crucial pathologic event in T2DM. The ability of PPAR α and PPAR γ agonists to induce neoangiogenesis might have important implications for the clinical and therapeutic management of T2DM.
Electronic Bank Fraud in Nigeria: The Need to Enhance Customers’ Trust

This study examined the impact of electronic bank fraud on customers’ trust in Nigeria with the aim of finding ways to enhance customers trust in the banking sector. Primary data was used for the study through structured questionnaire. The study employed logit regression as method to analyse the data. The result revealed that ATMF is significant and positively related to CT, MOBF and WEBF were insignificant and negatively related to CT while POSF exerted a positive and insignificant relationship with CT. Findings from the study further revealed that mobile fraud and website fraud posed more threat to customers’ trust in electronic payment channels than ATM and POS. The study concluded that electronic fraud has significant relationship with customers’ trust in Nigeria. The study therefore recommended that Banks should increase their security layers and ensure continuous enlightenment of customers on the need to safeguard their PINs. Bank customers should avoid replying unsolicited text messages and mails while the CBN should provide adequate security measures for various electronic payment channels so as to enhance customers’ trust.
Smart Wire Placement to Facilitate Large-Scale Wind Energy Integration: An Adaptive Robust Approach

Enhanced utilization of the existing transmission grid is a cheaper and paramount way to have a high penetration of large-scale wind energy resources. Smart wire devices (SWDs) are a new technology to enhance the transfer capability through power flow control. The SWDs are distributed, cheap, self-governing smart assets of FACTS technologies, which can adjust the power flow in an interconnected transmission network. Accordingly, this paper presents a comprehensive three-stage robust SWD placement model, which minimizes the generation and investment costs while guaranteeing that the adaptive and secure robust solution is accustomed to cover the wind uncertainty interval. Since the proposed robust model is not solvable via an off-the-shelf optimization package and to reduce the computation burden of the solution process, an effective solution strategy is proposed to solve it. Detailed simulation results on the IEEE 24-bus system verify the effectiveness of the proposed robust SWD placement model.
Fluorescence-QuenchingStudiesof the Bindingof Bilirubinto Albumin

I used a fluorescence-quenching method to study the binding of bilirubin to purified albumin and to neonatal serum.This technique allows determination of both the binding affinity (1(a) and capacity with a 25-tl serum sample. For crystalline human albumin the capacity of the first site was 1.0 mol of bilirubin per mole of albumin, and the Ka was 1.0 X 108 liter/mol. The second molecule of bilirubin to bind had a Ka of 3.0 X 106 liter/mol. These values did not change within the pH range 7.3-7.5. The fluorescence-quench technique is useful in studying the effect of drugs on the binding of bilirubin to albumin. The method was first used to determine the Ka for the binding of furosemide to albumin. At pH 7.4 the K5 was 1.3 X iO liter/mol, considerably higher than previously reported. Binding of furosemide to albumin decreased the apparent capacity of the albumin to bind bilirubin: in the presence cf furosemide, a solution of albumin (1 mol/liter) bound 0.7 mol of bilirubin per mole of albumin; in its absence the binding was 1.0. The fluorescence-quench technique can distinguish drugs that affect the capacity of bilirubin binding from those that affect the affinity of binding. At low concentrations of albumin, the concentration of unbound bilirubin may exceed its solubility, with colloid formation resulting. This leads to a dramatic increase in light-scattering and a distortion in the fluorescence-quench curve. This phenomenon may be useful in screening for drugs that displace bilirubin from albumin.
Equilibrium Strategies for Interference Free Channel Access in Cognitive Radio based WRANs

—In this paper, we study how cognitive radio based wireless regional area networks (e.g., IEEE 802.22 networks) can adapt themselves so that they can co-exist with each other. These networks opportunistically accesses and uses under– utilized bands and relinquishes them when the primary user of that band initiates transmission. Such networks, deployed and operated by competing wireless service providers have to self-coexist among themselves by accessing different parts of the available spectrum. Since there is no coordination among the networks in accessing the spectrum bands, they have to adapt such that interference from neighboring networks is minimum. When interfered, a network can adopt either one of two choices– switch to a new band hoping to ﬁnd a non-interfering band, or stay with its current band hoping that the interfering network(s) will move away to a new band. Using game theory, we model the spectrum band switching process as an ‘inﬁnitely repeating’ game where the aim of each network (player) is to minimize its cost of ﬁnding a clear channel. We ﬁrst explore the pure strategy solution space for the game and show that a pure strategy equilibrium, though possible, is infeasible to implement in reality. Thus, we further explore the mixed strategy space and propose a mixed strategy Nash equilibrium among the networks. We analyze the game for the 2-player case, where a network is in interference with only one other network. We also provide hints on how to obtain the equilibrium for the n -player game.
Benefits of Maintaining Audits after the Abolishment

Purpose: The purpose of this research is to explore the reasons behind the abolishment of statutory audit in small limited firms in Sweden and to discuss whether it would be beneficial for these firms to still maintain an audit of their business after the abolishment. Method: As a major part of this research study, qualitative interviews with auditors have been conducted to obtain professional opinion in the subject of interest. Previous research are presented to provide a broader perspective of the debate. are a of whether is beneficial to an audit of small limited firms.
Evaluating Random Forest and a Long Short-Term Memory in Classifying a Given Sentence as a Question or Non-Question

—Natural language processing and text classiﬁcation are topics of much discussion among researchers of machine learning. Contributions in the form of new methods and models are presented on a yearly basis. However, less focus is aimed at comparing models, especially comparing models that are less complex to state-of-the-art models. This paper compares a Random Forest with a Long-Short Term Memory neural network for the task of classifying sentences as questions or non-questions, without considering punctuation. The models were trained and optimized on chat data from a Swedish insurance company, as well as user comments data on articles from a newspaper. The results showed that the LSTM model performed better than the Random Forest. However, the difference was small and therefore Random Forest could still be a preferable alternative in some use cases due to its simplicity and its ability to handle noisy data. The models’ performances were not dramatically improved after hyper parameter optimization. A literature study was also conducted aimed at exploring how customer service can be automated using a chatbot and what features and functionality should be prioritized by management during such an implementation. The ﬁndings of the study showed that a data driven design should be used, where features are derived based on the speciﬁc needs and customers of the organization. However, three features were general enough to be presented - the personality of the bot, its trustworthiness and in what stage of the value chain the chatbot is implemented.
AKT2 : First Evidence of Genetic Association with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome

Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism, Department of Medicine (M.O.G., M.R.J.), Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology (M.O.G., Y-D.I.C., R.A.), and Medical Genetics Institute (M.O.G., Y-D.I.C.), Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, California 90048; and Departments of Medicine (M.O.G., Y-D.I.C., R.A.) and Obstetrics and Gynecology (R.A.), the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, California 90095.
Residual Dense Generative Adversarial Network for Single Image Super-Resolution

—Model-based very deep Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) have achieved great success in Single Image Super-Resolution (SISR) work. However, most of the super-resolution models based on deep convolution networks can not fully utilize the hierarchical features of the original low-resolution images. In order to improve the quality of the high-frequency details of the reconstructed super-resolution image, we proposes a super-resolution method for Residual Dense Generative Adversarial Networks (RDGAN). We use the Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN) as our main model structure and the residual-dense block as the basic building blocks of the generator, which makes the network pay more attention to the extraction of low-resolution image hierarchical features. Then, we fully exploit the hierarchical features from all the convolutional layers. Finally, we use perceptual loss as our loss function to get ﬁner texture details and more realistic photo effects. Experiments show that our method can achieve signiﬁcant improvement in the quality of high-frequency detail reconstruction at high magniﬁcation.
Introductory Chapter: The Role of Assistive Technologies in Smart Cities

There is not (yet) a generally accepted definition of the term ‘smart city’. However, ‘smart’ systems are often considered to have the following three characteristics [1]: (i) the provision of technological assistance, including through the use of a combination of a physical infrastructure and information and communication technologies (ICT); for carrying out activities; (ii) information sharing and networking between different applications, systems, services and/or appliances and (iii) the application of the combination of ICT and other technologies, information sharing and networking with the aim of improving the quantity or quality of systems, services or applications provided.
Machine Learning For Detection and Classification of Alzheimer’s: An Analysis of Current Trends and Future Possibilities

: Early diagnosis is a major aspect for treating any disease and Machine Learning (ML) plays a vital role in speeding up the diagnosis process and increase the efficiency of existing treatment strategies. A short yet effective review of the current trends in diagnosing Alzheimer’s with the help of Machine Learning has been done in this paper. This This review will help in our future work or other contributors working on Drug Repurposing Techniques. In this review, we have found that the Models used in various studies such as ANN, SVM, DNN, CNN etc have achieved accuracy greater than 90% which is a good sign for future work. Upon analysis we have found that various studies have used MRI images for classifying Alzheimer’s. With advancements in computer aided systems, production of quality information from the image processing techniques has introduced various challenges and these challenges are tried to resolve through ML. As the number of studies focusing on the use of ML has increased, the efficiency of the diagnostic systems has also increased and are helping the medical community.
Polytopes Arising from Binary Multi-way Contingency Tables and Characteristic Imsets for Bayesian Networks

OF DISSERTATION Polytopes Arising from Binary Multi-way Contingency Tables and Characteristic Imsets for Bayesian Networks The main theme of this dissertation is the study of polytopes arising from binary multi-way contingency tables and characteristic imsets for Bayesian networks. Firstly, we study on three-way tables whose entries are independent Bernoulli random variables with canonical parameters under no three-way interaction generalized linear models. Here, we use the sequential importance sampling (SIS) method with the conditional Poisson (CP) distribution to sample binary three-way tables with the sufficient statistics, i.e., all two-way marginal sums, fixed. Compared with Monte Carlo Markov Chain (MCMC) approach with a Markov basis (MB), SIS procedure has the advantage that it does not require expensive or prohibitive pre-computations. Note that this problem can also be considered as estimating the number of lattice points inside the polytope defined by the zero-one and two-way marginal constraints. The theorems in Chapter 2 give the parameters for the CP distribution on each column when it is sampled. In this chapter, we also present the algorithms, the simulation results, and the results for Samson’s monks data. Bayesian networks, a part of the family of probabilistic graphical models, are widely applied in many areas and much work has been done in model selections for Bayesian networks. The second part of this dissertation investigates the problem of finding the optimal graph by using characteristic imsets, where characteristic imsets are defined as 0-1 vector representations of Bayesian networks which are unique up to Markov equivalence. Characteristic imset polytopes are defined as the convex hull of all characteristic imsets we consider. It was proven that the problem of finding optimal Bayesian network for a specific dataset can be converted to a linear programming problem over the characteristic imset polytope [51]. In Chapter 3, we first consider characteristic imset polytopes for all diagnosis models and show that these polytopes are direct product of simplices. Then we give the combinatorial description of all edges and all facets of these polytopes. At the end of this chapter, we generalize these results to the characteristic imset polytopes for all Bayesian networks with a fixed underlying ordering of nodes. Chapter 4 includes discussion and future work on these two topics.
Personalized Trajectory Reconstruction Problem with Low-Sampling Data

—A huge amount of trajectory data can be derived from GPS equipped devices and location based services. However, the trajectory data are low-sampled (i.e., have a low and irregular sampling rate). In this paper, the problem of Personalized Route/Trajectory Reconstruction is reviewed when low-sampling data are considered or user criteria are incorporated in the reconstruction. Research work in route planning systems and the most used routing algorithms are also analyzed in order to suggest research directions that include the level of personalization or uncertainty management as a way to predict/complete a low-sampling trajectory.
EVALUATION OF PHYTOCHEMICAL AND ANTIOXIDANT ACTIVITIES OF ORIGANUM, CISTUS AND THYMUS SPECIES

evaluate the total compare ABSTRACT The aim of this study was to evaluate antioxidant properties of four plants from North of Morocco then to quantify phenolic compounds and flavonoids in each plant extracts. The air-dried leaves of Origanum elongatum, Cistus salvifolius, Thymus willdenowii, Boiss and Cistus laurifolius were extracted with methanol and ethyl acetate by ultrasonic apparatus. The antioxidant effect of plant extracts was assessed using a modified 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) free radical scavenging assay and the quantification of phenolic compounds and flavonoids was performed by Folin Ciocalteu and alumunium trichloride reagents, respectively. The antioxidant effect of all samples, measured by calculating IC 50 for the DDPH method, ranged from 0.27 μg/ml to 1.7 μg/ml whereas IC50 of the reference BHT was 0.67 mg/ml. The total phenolic content, analyzed using Folin–Ciocalteu’s reagent, of the samples varied from 46.6 µg/100 mg to 153 µg/100 mg dry weight, expressed as gallic acid equivalents (GAE). The total flavonoid concentrations, detected using 2% aluminum chloride, varied from 3.63 to 5.54 µg equivalents (RE)/mg dry weight. The results obtained showed that the antioxidant activity of plant extracts could be correlated to the total phenolic content and the total flavonoids. In addition, Origanum elongatum that showed highest antioxidant activity had the highest phenolic and flavonoids contents. The evaluation of the antioxidant by the DPPH test revealed that all tested extracts have antioxidant properties and that methanol extracts are the most active. Origanum elongatum methanolic extract showed the best scavenging activity (IC50 = 0.267 ± 0.06 μg / ml).
Theoretical Analisis of the Effects of Fiscal Policy in Montenegro

: The introduction of dollarization (euroization) in Montenegro has had its consequences for the subsequent economic policy, whose main pillar has become the fiscal policy. Given that fiscal policy must be directed towards the achievement of a number of fiscal and non-fiscal objectives, the importance of the careful and adequate management by its holders gains special importance. In the context of the euroized Montenegrin economy, fiscal policy is the most important, and practically the only relevant instrument of macroeconomic management in Montenegro, especially in terms of the realization of the effects of stimulus, stabilization and redistribution.
RENAL FUNCTION OUTCOME IN ISOPRENALINE INDUCED MYOCARDIAL INFARCTION IN ALBINO RATS AND PROTECTIVE EFFECT OF METHANOL LEAVES EXTRACT OF JATROPHA TANJORENSIS

Chronic kidney disease is prevalent among patients with myocardial infarction. There is positive correlation between renal dysfunction and myocardial infarction which could result to increase mortality in acute myocardial infarction patients. This present study evaluated the renoprotective effect of methanol leaves extract of Jatropha tanjorensis in isoprenaline induced myocardial infarction in albino rats. Seventy two male albino rats were used for the in vivo study and randomly divided into six groups of twelve rats per group. Group 1 served as the normal control, group 2 was the negative control (administered 85 mg/kg of isoprenaline only), group 3 served as the positive control (pretreated with 2 mg/kg carvedilol for 28 days, group 4 through 6 were pretreated with 200, 400 and 600 mg/kg of the extract respectively for 28 days. Myocardial infarction was induced in the rats using subcutaneous injection of 85 mg/kg isoprenaline (ISO) for two consecutive days (26 th and 27 th ) at 24 hours interval. The result of the in vivo study showed that isoprenaline significantly (p<0.05) produced alteration in the renal function integrity because there was significant (p<0.05) increase in urea, creatinine and altered kidney morphology of the negative control group compared to the 400 mg/kg extract treated groups. The extract at the dose of 400 mg/kg significantly (p<0.05) decreased the urea and creatinine level and maintained the kidney morphology. This study suggested that the extract at moderate dose could serve as an agent for the prevention of isoprenaline induced renotoxicity followed myocardial infarction.