Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Recent advances in third space or intramural endoscopy

Third space endoscopy or intramural endoscopy is based on the principle that the deeper layers of the gastrointestinal tract can be accessed by tunneling in the submucosal space and maintaining the integrity of the overlying mucosa. The era of third space endoscopy started with peroral endoscopic myotomy (POEM) for treatment of achalasia and has expanded to treat various other gastrointestinal disorders. The technique is also currently used for treatment of refractory gastroparesis, Zenker’s diverticulum (ZD), resection of subepithelial tumors and early cancers of the gastrointestinal tract and Hirschsprung’s disease (HD). These procedures are rapidly emerging as minimally invasive alternatives to conventional surgery. They are safe and effective with excellent outcomes. This review focuses on the evolution and current applications of third space endoscopy in various gastrointestinal disorders. Key points: (1) Third space or intramural endoscopy initially started with the POEM procedure for treatment of achalasia; (2) Advancements in procedural techniques have expanded its application to treat other gastrointestinal disorders such as refractory gastroparesis, ZD, HD, resection of subepithelial tumors and early gastrointestinal cancers; (3) These procedures are highly effective with excellent outcomes and low complication rates; and (4) Third space endoscopic procedures are rapidly emerging as minimally invasive alternatives to conventional surgery.
Comparison results of visual and machine strength grading of Scots pine
sawn timber from the Silesian Forestry Region in Poland

Comparison results of visual and machine strength grading of Scots pine sawn timber from the Silesian Forestry Region in Poland. The paper presents an analysis of the strength grading results performed by two methods – visual (appearance) and machine, carried out for sawn timber obtained from the Silesian Forestry Region in Poland. Visual strength grading was performed in accordance with PN-D-94021:2013, while the machine strength grading with the use of MTG device from Brookhuis Electronics BV. As a result of the tests, it was confirmed that the machine grading results in a very small share of sawn timber classified as rejects. At the same time, during machine strength grading there were some sawn timber pieces that were not classified for any class or a reject. Based on its visual appearance, such timber elements should be graded as rejects.
Mri Brain White Matter Change: Spectrum of Change – how Can We Grade?

Magnetic resonance imaging has become a widely used clinical tool for the assessment of neurologic symptoms, as well as being increasingly used in neuroscience research. White matter hyperintensities are common findings on brain imaging and their discovery leads to questions about best management, especially when findings are incidental or not considered relevant to the patient's presentation. This review will discuss the varied causes of white matter hyperintensities, consider how best to distinguish between them radiologically, and when they might have potential clinical relevance.
Perceived Factors Of A Quality Student Teaching Experience

The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions of student teachers and university supervisors regarding four factors that contribute to a quality student teaching experience: mentor teacher, university supervisor, clinical environment, and student teacher. Data in this concurrent mixed method study were collected from student teachers and university supervisor using surveys and focus groups. Data were collected from surveys and focus groups concurrently, analyzed separately, and merged for interpretation. Of all four factors, the mentor teacher was identified as the most important factor in a quality student teaching experience. Four other primary conclusions relate to the most important attributes of each factor that contribute to a quality student teaching experience. The implications of this study confirm the need for appropriate selection and preparation of mentor teachers, faculty in clinical environments, and university supervisors in order to offer the highest quality student teaching experience.
The Politics of Transgender Asylum and Detention

Immigration procedures related to asylum and detention are based on sex/gender binaries. Such binaries frame the bodies of undocumented transgender asylum seekers as unintelligible to immigration law and subject them to intense trauma. The experiences of trauma and death of transgender detainees within detention centers is a spatialized experience. The assignment of detention cells based on birth gender, denial of hormones and live saving treatments constitute a racialized and gendered torture upon the body of the transgender detainee. The article attends to the narratives of transgender detainees within detention cell by analyzing the script of “Tara's Crossing,” a play based on the narratives of transgender detainees and asylum seekers. The play was produced by LGBTQ immigrant right activists soon after the attacks on 9/11 and the intensification of detention and deportation as a part of national security procedures. Drawing upon the script of Tara's Crossing, along with activist archives such as flyers, newsletter articles, and radio interviews of Balmitra Vimal Prasad, the protagonist of the play, the article analyzes the ways in which the sex/gender binary is reiterated within the detention cell, as well as asylum procedures. I turn to the activism around Tara's Crossing and the present-day activism of transgender immigrants in order to show how trauma experienced by transgender detainees holds potential for creating coalitional oppositional politics.
Irritable Bowel Syndrome among Medical Students and Interns in King Faisal University

Background: One of the most highly prevalent costly gastrointestinal disorders is IBS. It is a consequence of emotional conflicts and stress. So people who are in medical education, they have highest percentage of IBS. Objective: To estimate the prevalence of IBS and its effects on the academic achievement among medical students of KFU, Al-Hasa, Saudi Arabia. Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out among medical students and interns from August 2015 to September 2016 at (KFU) in Al-Hasa, Saudi Arabia. All participants were asked to complete a confidential self-administered questionnaire. Diagnosis of IBS was according to Rome III criteria. Results: 173 medical students completed the survey. The prevalence of IBS was 44.5%, with a high prevalence in females (31.8%). IBS was present significantly higher among students who experience emotional stress in the past 6-month (25.4%) and higher among students with a positive family history of IBS. Moreover, IBS was associated with a decrease in the academic performance among medical students (p < 0.05). Conclusion: The study revealed a high percentage of IBS among medical students and interns in KFU. Female gender, having emotional stress in the past 6 months and family history of IBS were the main predictors of IBS. However, the main predictor of IBS was in family history.
The effect of risk disclosure on analyst following

ABSTRACT Prior research shows that financial analysts play an important information intermediary role in France. This study extends earlier research to examine the effect of risk disclosure on the number of analysts following listed firms. Using a unique dataset of French firms on the 120 SBF index over 2007−2015, the results show a positive and significant relation between risk disclosure and analyst following, suggesting that firms having greater risk disclosure attract more financial analysts. These findings provide empirical support to the argument that analysts incur lower costs of information gathering in firms with greater risk disclosure. The demand for analyst services is also more valuable in these firms, given their potentially high exposure to risks, implying greater analyst following. Overall, our results are in line with prior literature highlighting that analysts’ activities complement annual report disclosures and, generally, corporate disclosures.
Measuring the Dynamic Predictive Relationship of Social Media Metrics with Firm Equity Value: A Time Series Analysis

In the online environment, social media metrics offer a credible basis of customer feedback in anticipating the firm performance. This study verifies the association of social media metrics of Face-book and Twitter to financial market performance. Data were collected from official Facebook pages and Twitter accounts of 3 fast-food companies over the time period of 6 months. Then established multiple metrics for respective social media platforms and develop outcomes using Vector Autoregressive time series models to evaluate the instantaneous and continuing relationship between social media metrics and financial market performance of the firms in terms of unusual returns and idiosyncratic risk. Results indicated that FB metrics are significant leading indicators of firm equity value. However, Twitter metrics, have a weaker relationship with firm value as compared to FB metrics. Collectively, current research extends new visions for organizational top executives and investors concerning organizational equity valuation and the social media power transformation.
Toxoplasma gondii Infection and Related Risk Factors among Blood Donors in Northwest Iran

Background: Toxoplasmosis, a worldwide parasitic infection, is considered as a transfusion-transmitted disease. Objectives: Due to ignorance about Toxoplasma infection in blood donors monitoring and its important role in provision of safe blood and blood products and also poor information about the seroprevalence of T. gondii infection in blood donors, this study was conducted to assess anti-Toxoplasma gondii antibodies and associated risk factors among blood donors in northwest of Iran. Methods: In this cross- sectional study, 194 serum samples were collected from healthy blood donors who referred to Tabriz Blood transfusion organization (East Azerbaijan, Iran) during April and June 2014 and tested for anti-T. gondii IgM and IgG antibodies using chemiluminescence immunoassay. The questionnaire consisting of demographic and risk factors were filled for all the participants. Results: From 194 donors, 75 (38.66%) and 2 (1.03%) individuals were seropositive for anti-T. gondii IgG and IgM antibodies, respectively. In the present study, anti-T. gondii antibodies in first-time donors was significantly higher than those in regular blood donors (P < 0.05). A significant correlation was observed between T. gondii infection and age (P < 0.05); however, there were no relationship between Toxoplasma infection and other factors. Conclusions: Considering the medical importance of blood transfusion and high rate of anti- T. gondii antibodies in healthy blood donors, it seems that effective monitoring of infection is required to prevent transfusion- transmitted toxoplasmosis.
TEACHERS’ PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS IN ASSESSING STUDENTS’ WRITING IN SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL LEVEL: AUTHENTIC ASSESSMENT OR TRADITIONAL ASSESSMENT

English is one of the core subjects at junior and senior high school in Indonesia. Writing as the productive skill of learning English claims that the teachers have to involve in designing the writing task or assignment and designing or adapting the scoring rubric. Assessing students’ writing is nota simple task. The following research studies about the teachers’ problems in assessing students’ writing at the senior high school level. The research was conducted for the reason to investigate a further information about teachers’ problemsand explore the solutions in assessing the students’ writing. The research was undertaken at a well-known public senior high school in West Java, Indonesia. This research employs a qualitative research. A semi structured interview was used to collect the data by interviewing the English teachers in the school. The data in the form of extended text were analyzed and interpreted to get the final results. Assessing writing is a complex task for teachers. It was found that there are some problems faced by the teachers in assessing students’ writing. One of which is that teachers doesn’t have sufficient time to correct the students’ writing. Therefore, the authentic assessment is difficult to be implemented. It is recommended that teachers have to be aware of these problems because teachers’ judgement on students’ writing can become a crucial feedback for students to know how well they can do on writing.
The Role of Transbronchial Lung Biopsy in Diagnosing Pulmonary Mucormycosis in a Critical Care Unit

Background Pulmonary mucormycosis (PM) is an emerging infectious disease and a life-threatening infection with high mortality. The clinical outcomes of PM have not improved significantly over the last decade because early diagnosis of PM is difficult and antifungal agents show limited activity. We evaluated the clinical manifestations of PM in a Korean tertiary hospital and identified the role of transbronchial lung biopsy (TBLB) in diagnosing PM in patients admitted to an intensive care unit. Methods The medical records of adult patients (aged 16 years and older) who met the criteria for proven or probable PM in a Korean tertiary hospital were retrospectively reviewed from January 2003 to December 2013. The clinical features, computed tomographic findings, diagnostic methods, treatment, and outcomes in patients with PM were evaluated. Results Of the nine patients, four were male. The median age was 64 years (range, 12 to 73 years). PM was proven and probable in seven and two cases, respectively. Computed tomography findings of PM were unilateral involvement in eight cases (89%), consolidation in eight (89%), ground glass opacity in four (44%), and reverse halo sign in one (11%). Six of nine cases (67%) were diagnosed as PM from TBLB via portable bronchoscopy. There were no complications after TBLB. Mortality rate was 56% (five of nine cases). Conclusions TBLB can be an easy and useful technique for diagnosing PM in the intensive care unit.
A 350 °C piezoresistive n-type 4H-SiC pressure sensor for hydraulic and pneumatic pressure tests

It has been a challenge to develop pressure sensors that can work in harsh environments. In this work, a piezoresistive n-type 4H-SiC pressure sensor is demonstrated, capable of working at 350 °C under hydraulic and pneumatic pressure. The pressure measuring range of this sensor is 7 MPa and the chip dimension is 2.5 mm × 2.5 mm × 0.23 mm. A reliable Ti/TaSi2/Pt metal ohmic contact is used in the sensor and experimental results show that the metal combination can withstand a wide temperature range of 30 °C–350 °C. In order to avoid thermal stress induced by the mismatch of thermal expansion coefficients of different packaging materials when increasing temperature, a double-layer bonding scheme of cement glue and epoxy is proposed. The inner layer of the chip and the kovar alloy base are directly bonded with the epoxy, while the outer layer is wrapped with the high-temperature cement glue. Experiments confirm that this method can achieve reliable packaging with temperatures up to 350 °C for 5 h. Based on the above key technologies, the sensitivity of this sensor can reach 13.2 mV V−1 kPa−1 and the test data exhibit high linearity and repeatability. Static tests prove that the sensor has good media compatibility which can operate under a hydraulic pressure load at 220 °C and a barometric pressure load under 350 °C. The sensor in this work can provide a reference for pressure measurements at high temperature and in complex media environments.
ROBUST ESTIMATION FOR NOISY DATA

When a data set is corrupted by noise, the model for the data generating process is misspecified and can cause parameter estimation problems. In the case of a Gaussian autoregressive (AR) process corrupted by noise, the data is more accurately modeled as an autoregressive moving average (ARMA) process rather than an AR process. This misspecification leads to bias, and hence, low resolution in AR spectral estimation. However, a new parametric estimator, the realizable information theoretic-estimator (RITE) based on a non-homogeneous Poisson spectral representation, is shown by simulation to be more robust to noise than the asymptotic maximum likelihood estimator (MLE). We therefore conducted an in-depth investigation and analyzed the statistics of RITE and the asymptotic MLE for the misspecified model. For large data records, RITE and the asymptotic MLE are both asymptotically normally distributed. The asymptotic MLE has a slightly lower variance, but RITE exhibits much less bias. Simulation examples of a noise corrupted AR process are provided to support the theoretical properties. This advantage of RITE increases as the SNR decreases. Another topic of interest is Data fusion for estimation. It is a problem that utilizes information from multiple data sets to estimate an unknown parameter or vector. These data sets are usually from multiple sources, for example, multiple sensors. In this case, this problem is called distributed estimation. It uses data from multiple sensors and a fusion center (FC), or central processor, to achieve a more accurate estimation than using a single sensor observation. In this paper, we propose two estimators for data fusion estimation problem. The Fisher information and the observed Fisher information are used to reduce the negative effects of poor estimations and therefore improve the new estimators’ performance in terms of mean square error. At the same time, we found that there is a relationship between our new estimators and the second order Taylor expansion of l, which is the log likelihood function of data from all sensors. The solution of the maximum of the second order Taylor expansion of l, turns out to be our new estimator that uses the observed Fisher information. Our simulation results showed that the proposed estimators have obvious advantages in both low and intermediate SNR regions, especially when one or many sensors have much lower SNRs than the others.
Ensuring Green Environment through Sustainable Development Goals in Thailand: Mediating Role of Supply Chain Integration

Increased global warming and industrial pollution have forced manufacturing organizations in Thailand to focus on sustainable practices. Such practices can come from Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which can contribute towards green environment either directly or indirectly. Supply chain integration can also play its role to bring all stakeholders at same page for ensuring green environment production. This study has investigated the impact of internal, customer and supplier sustainable development goals on environmental performance of manufacturing firms in Thailand. Furthermore, intervening role of supply chain integration has also been analyzed in relationship between SDGs and environmental performance. Data has been collected through questionnaire from middle level management of almost 49 manufacturing firms of Thailand which was subsequently analyzed on SPSS and AMOS for screening and path analysis. Results have confirmed the hypothesis that SGDs have significant impact on environmental performance and also flagged significant mediating role of supply chain integration in respective relationship. This research is original due to having a unique variable like supply chain integration and a completely different context of Thailandâ€™s manufacturing sector which was not explored previously. This study will have its contribution in theory, practice and policy along with future research indications.
Improved Online Localization of CANDU Fuel Defects Using Ancillary Data Sources and Neural Networks

Abstract This paper summarizes a novel approach to improved localization of fuel defects by fusing existing data sources and methods within a neural network model to make accurate and quantifiable identification earlier than existing processes. The approach is demonstrated through application to a CANDU reactor and utilizes a small, manually labeled set of delayed neutron data augmented with neutronic power data to train a neural network to estimate the probability of a fuel channel containing a defect. Results demonstrate that the model is often capable of identifying likely defects earlier than existing methods and could support earlier decision making to enable a reduction in cost and time required to localize defects. The approach described has broader application to other reactor types given the general difficulty of detecting fuel defects via fission product measurement and the large quantities of ancillary parameters normally already recorded that can be leveraged using machine learning techniques.
Insights into translational regulation from ribosome profiling data

Ribosomes carry out protein synthesis from mRNA templates by a highly regulated process called translation. Within the four phases of translation initiation, elongation, termination and recycling the focus of translation regulation studies has traditionally fallen on the initiation as the rate-limiting step in protein production. Recent evidence, however, points to the profound importance of regulatory control of elongation during development, neurologic disease, cell stress and even cancer. Ribosome profiling provides an unprecedented means of studying translational regulation on a global level. It is based on deep sequencing of ribosome-protected mRNA fragments, capturing snapshots of genome-wide translation. However, as with any new experimental technique, biases inherent in the ribosome profiling method are gradually being explored and understood, and serve to inform further refinement of the technique. In the first part of this thesis I provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of knowledge on translation and its regulation, particularly at the elongation phase. I describe the ribosome profiling technique, data processing and applications to studying translational regulation. Afterwards, I go on to present the results in the form of two scientific papers. First paper tackles the challenge of ribosome profiling data processing, setting the ground work for second paper. The second paper uses improved processing to explore ribosome stalling and its potential regulatory functions. The first paper presents Shoelaces, a tool for processing and visualization of ribosome profiling data. Here, I demonstrate how streamlining and standardizing processing steps can contribute to better quality and comparability of data for downstream analyses. At the core of this are (1) filtering genuine translating footprints from noise based on periodicity and (2) determining a specific codon being translated by the ribosome thanks to length-dependent offset calculation. Shoelaces automatically selects footprint lengths and offsets, offering a user-friendly graphical interface as well as command line interface for batch processing. By reanalyzing 79 human libraries, I show that Shoelaces retains more quality data than the original manual analyses. In the second paper, I investigate regulation of translation elongation by ribosome stalling. Utilizing the robust processing technique developed in the first paper, I apply it to process 20 ribosome datasets form yeast, fruit fly, zebrafish, mouse and human. Hypothesising that deep conservation of translation machinery would exist also for biologically significant stall sites, I detect 3293 of these conserved in at least two organisms. I find that proline and negatively charged amino acids are the main contributors to stalling. Furthermore, many of the stall sites are found in RNA processing genes,