Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Prevalence and Pattern of Hypertension in Ikom, an Urban Community in Cross River State, South-Southern Nigeria

Background: Hypertension, a prominent cause of morbidity and mortality in Africa, and to a great extent, Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country. Hypertension constitutes a major public health challenge; it is the most important risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Objectives: This study aimed to estimate and determine the prevalence, pattern and some risk factors for hypertension among the populace living in Ikom an Urban community of Cross River State, South-Southern Nigeria hence ensuring its effective awareness and control. This was done based on the normal cut off of 140/90mmHg. Method: A descriptive cross sectional community-based survey was used, involving 113 male and female adult respondents aged 18-79 years selected by random sampling method. Behavioral data was measured using World Health Organization (WHO) Stepwise approach to chronic disease risk factor surveillance (STEPS 1&2). Hypertension was defined as Systolic Blood Pressure (SBP) ≥ 140mmHg and/or Diastolic Blood Pressure (DBP) ≥ 90mmHg or being on a regular/current anti-hypertensive drug therapy. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics Results: A total of 113 adults of Ikom local government area, cross river state participated in the study [26 (23%) men and 87 (77%) women]X 2 (47, 133) = 43.943, p=0.60. The age range was 18 to 76 years. The mean age 50.35 ± 13.76 and the mean Body Mass Index (BMI) was recorded as 25.59 ± 4.96. The mean blood pressure of all the participants are 138.50 ± 29.05 for SBP and 77.78 ± 15.06 for DBP respectively. A moderate correlation was observed between age and blood pressure indices r=0.489 and 0.390, p<0.001 for SBP and DBP respectively. The prevalence of hypertension among the study population was 37.17%. The prevalence of obesity was 16.8%. Conclusion: The prevalence of hypertension among the dwellers of Ikom, Cross River State Nigeria was relatively high. Also, the prevalence of obesity a risk factor for developing hypertension and other cardiovascular diseases was high. Urgent intervention by the government and other health organizations will go a long way in curbing this trend.
Cloning , expression and characterization of a glucose dehydrogenase from Bacillus sp . G 3 in Escherichia coli

The glucose dehydrogenase gene (gdh), cloned from Bacillus sp. G3, was composed of 786 bp nucleotide and the deduced protein molecular mass of one subunit was 28.1 kDa. The recombinant glucose dehydrogenase (rGDH-G3) was functionally expressed in Escherichia coli. The results revealed that expressed rGDH-G3 had a high specific activity of 371.9 U/mg at 25°C and pH 8.0, with oxidized nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD + ) as the cofactor. The enzyme was optimally active at 40°C and pH 9.0. The enzyme displayed broad specificity for other sugars such as D-galactose or maltose. The catalytic efficiency of the rGDH-G3 would be improved 4 times when oxidized nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADP + ) was used as cofactor instead of NAD + .
Heavy Metals Tolerance and Antibiotics Susceptibilty Profiles of Staphylococcus aureus Strains Isolated from Clinical Sources in Baquba city

Twentyone Staphylococcus aureus isolated from various clinical samples (wound , ear , pus , urin and burn ) collected from Baquba General Hospital over a period ( April 2015 to June 2015 ). Out of 21 Staphylococcus aureus isolates , 17 (80.95%) were resistant to methicillin , while 4 (19.04%) were methicillin susceptible. Results of antimicrobial susceptibility showed high resistance to amoxicillin , amoxicillin/clavulanic acid , trimethoprime and cefotaxime with ratio 100% , 76.1% , 76.1% and 71.4% respectively, while isolates resistant oflaxacin with 4.7%. The results showed that 15 isolates of the total (21) of Staphylococcus aureus could produce βlactamase with percentage (71.4%) , 5 isolates produce of Metalloβ-lactamase with (23.80% ) , and 4 isolates (19.04%) produce ESβLs. Staphylococcus aureus isolates have ability to tolerant the highest concentration of heavy metals like (Cobalt , Copper , iron , Mercury , Zinc) with ratio (57.1% , 52.3% , 66.6% , 33.3% , 61.9%) respectively. Additionally result of plasmid profile presented that all isolates of Staphylococcus aureus contained two band s of plasmid vary in size . Plasmid curing was carried out by acridin orang (256μg/ml) , cobalt and zinc resistance character was found to be present on the chromosomal DNA rather than the plasmid DNA whereas iron , copper and mercury resistance characters were found to be present on the plasmid . Curing result showed the loss of antibiotic and heavy metal resistance property for Heavy Metals Tolerance and Antibiotics Susceptibilty Profiles of Staphylococcus aureus Strains Isolated From Clinical Sources in Baquba city Lina Abdulameer Salman Alsaadi 124 Vol: 13 No:1 , January 2017 DOI : http://dx.doi. org/10.24237/djps.1301. 136A P-ISSN: 2222-8373 E-ISSN: 2518-9255 (cefotaxim , amoxicillin , erythromycin , ciprofloxacin , iron , copper and mercury ) from the isolates and confirms a relationship between antibiotic and heavy metal resistance with plasmid.
Estimation of zeolite application effect on solute transport parameters at different soils using HYDRUS-1D model

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT-Application of models for simulation of solute and pollutants transport in soil can reduce time and costs for remediation process. HYDRUS-1D model was developed to simulate the one–dimensional flow of soil water, heat, solute and viruses in variably saturated–unsaturated porous media. The objective of this investigation is to determine the solute transport parameters in disturbed soil columns with different textures at different rates of zeolite application using HYDRUS-1D model. For this study, the loam soil, the sandy loam soil and the clay loam soil with zeolite application rates of 0 (control) and 8 g kg were used. The approximate concentration of effluents measured by other investigators (0-2.26 mg cm) is used to determine the transport parameters. The value of immobile water content (θim) decreased and the value of hydrodynamic dispersion coefficient increased in lighter soil texture. According to hydraulic parameters considered and regression equation proposed by other researchers, the decreasing trend of θim is valid with increasing saturated hydraulic conductivity. The predicted dispersivity (λ) in control treatment was in the range of value of λ for disturbed soil reported by other researchers. The trend of solute transport parameters calculated by breakthrough curve using the analytical method by other researchers is similar to the estimated values by the HYDRUS-1D model. The values of Willmott’s agreement index are more than 90% for all soil treatments and normalized root mean square error is about 20% for most treatments that indicated the good accuracy of model for predicting solute transport coefficients. Article history: Received 7 May 2016 Accepted 16 October 2016 Available online 8 July 2017
Blaming the exogenous environment? Conditional efficiency estimation with continuous and discrete exogenous variables

This paper proposes a fully nonparametric framework to estimate relative e¢ciency of entities while accounting for a mixed set of continuous and discrete (both ordered and unordered) exogenous variables. Using robust partial frontier techniques, the probabilistic and conditional characterization of the production process, as well as insights from the recent developments in nonparametric econometrics, we present a generalized approach for conditional e¢ciency measurement. To do so, we utilize a tailored mixed kernel function with a data-driven bandwidth selection. So far only descriptive analysis for studying the e¤ect of heterogeneity in conditional e¢ciency estimation has been suggested. We show how to use and interpret nonparametric bootstrap-based signi cance tests in a generalized conditional e¢ciency framework. This allows us to study statistical signi cance of continuous and discrete exogenous variables on production process. The proposed approach is illustrated using simulated examples as well as a sample of British pupils from the OECD Pisa data set. The results of the empirical application show that several exogenous discrete factors have a statistically signi cant e¤ect on the educational process. Keywords: Nonparametric estimation, Conditional e¢ciency measures, Exogenous factors, Generalized kernel function, Education JEL-classi cation: C14, C25, I21 We would like to thank Laurens Cherchye and the participants of the Seminar on E¢ciency and Productivity Analysis at Aston University for valuable comments. Corresponding author. Tel. +447796102570.
An Adaptive Mesh Method for Electromagnetic Inverse Problems

Electromagnetic data can be used to recover the electrical conductivity of the subsurface of the earth. In order to extract quantitative value from an exploration survey, the data must be inverted. When working with traditional 3D regular rectangular meshes, the number of cells required to accurately discretize the earth can be prohibitively large. This is especially true for large irregularly shaped surveys or regions of severe topography. Using an adaptive mesh structure, such as an OcTree, high model resolution can be given where it is needed, while cells can be made coarse where possible. We develop an electromagnetic inverse algorithm on a semi-structured OcTree mesh. The algorithm is applied to a synthetic example of controlled source frequency domain and to a field ZTEM data example.
Modelling of the thermal conductivity in polymer nanocomposites and the impact of the interface between filler and matrix

In this paper the thermal conductivity of epoxy-based composite materials is analysed. Two- and three-phase Lewis–Nielsen models are proposed for fitting the experimental values of the thermal conductivity of epoxy-based polymer composites. Various inorganic nano- and micro- particles were used, namely aluminium oxide, aluminium nitride, magnesium oxide and silicon dioxide with average particle size between 20 nm and 20 µm. It is shown that the filler–matrix interface plays a dominant role in the thermal conduction process of the nanocomposites. The two-phase model was proposed as an initial step for describing systems containing 2 constituents, i.e. an epoxy matrix and an inorganic filler. The three-phase model was introduced to specifically address the properties of the interfacial zone between the host polymer and the surface modified nanoparticles.
A hybrid semantic similarity feature-based to support multiple ontologies

Semantic similarity between concepts, words, and terms is of great importance in many applications dealing with textual data, such as Natural Language Processing (NLP). Semantic similarity is defined as the closeness of two concepts, based on the likeliness of their meaning. It is also more ontology-based, due to their efficiency, scalability, lack of constraints and the availability of large ontologies. However, ontology-based semantic similarity is hampered by the fact that it depends on the overall scope and detail of the background ontology. Coupled with the fact that only one ontology is exploited, this leads to insufficient knowledge, missing terms and inaccuracy. This limitation can be overcome by exploiting multiple ontologies. Semantic similarity with multiple ontologies potentially leads to better accuracy because it is able to calculate the similarity of these missing terms from the combination of multiple knowledge sources. This research was conducted for developing the taxonomy of semantic similarity that contributes to understanding the current approaches, issues and data involved. This research aims to propose and evaluate ontological features for semantic similarity with multiple ontologies. Additionally, this research aims to develop and evaluate a feature-based mechanism (Hyb-TvX) to measure semantic similarity with multiple ontologies which can improve the accuracy of the similarity. This research used two benchmark datasets of biomedical concepts from Perdesen and Hliaoutakis. Similarity value, correlation and p-value were also used in the evaluation of the relationship between the concept pair of multiple ontologies. The findings indicate that the use of a semantic relationship of concepts (hypernym, hyponym, sister term and meronym) can improve the baseline method up to 75%. Besides that, the Hyb-TvX mechanism produces the highest correlation value compared to the other two methods, that is 0.759 and the result correlation is significant. Finally, the ability to discover similarity concepts with multiple ontologies could be also exploited in other domains besides biomedicine as future research.
RULES AND VIOLATIONS IN BUYING AND SELLING:: RETHINKING BENEFITS MANAGEMENT AND CONTROL PRACTICES

Companies tend invest a lot of funds in strategic change yearly with the hope of realising benefits that includes continuous improvement and heightened stakeholders’ satisfaction. As the rate of change accelerates, these companies tend to gain competitive advantage by way of effectively adapting and managing change that breeds biased routines in processes. In so doing, benefits management has arguably become a trigger for understanding the rules and violations of buying and selling in the Management of Project (MOP). This research effort was aimed to understand the strength and weakness of formal and informal ties using a dramaturgical approach. Preliminary findings from mapping up and down the supply chain of a single case study revealed evidences of confirmatory bias and over reliance on established and widely accepted change control tools like earned value management (EVM). The full implication of this on-going PhD study points at serious tension at change control interfaces that require the rethinking of benefits realisation.
Moving beyond the 'beads-on-a-string' model of speech

The notion that a word is composed of a sequence of phone segments, sometimes referred to as ‘beads on a string’, has formed the basis of most speech recognition work for over 15 years. However, as more researchers tackle spontaneous speech recognition tasks, that view is being called into question. This paper raises problems with the phoneme as the basic subword unit in speech recognition, suggesting that finer-grained control is needed to capture the sort of pronunciation variability observed in spontaneous speech. We offer two different alternatives – automatically derived subword units and linguistically motivated distinctive feature systems – and discuss current work in these directions. In addition, we look at problems that arise in acoustic modeling when trying to incorporate higher-level structure with these two strategies.
THE ESTATE OF DRAWING—A PROVISIONAL DOMAIN OR A DOMAIN OF THE PROVISIONAL?

The Provisional Drawing School was established in Oslo (Norway) in 1818. In 2018 the establishment of the school will be commemorated—at the occasion of the bicentennial—at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts. In the historical development that led to the present entity the position of drawing, as an historical estate, has been makeshift and unstable. However, from the 1990s onwards, the development and ubiquity of CAD in Norway arguably shifted the operations of manual drawing to a style of «hand- thinking» in the direction discussed by Petherbridge [1]: “…sociologist Kathryn Henderson claims the importance of sketches for sharing information, in an age of CAD. ‘Sketches are at the heart of design work. They serve as thinking tools to capture ideas on paper where they can be better understood, further analysed and refined and negotiated… Once on paper, sketches serve as talking sketches, collaborative tools for working out ideas with other designers as well as with those in production’. ” By extension, the present paper features drawing as mode of inquiry into design—comparing four different approaches of using design to reveal design. By focusing on drawing the paper aims at doing two jobs: a) to compare practices related specifically to identifiable layers (of drawing as a legacy); b) to manifest the broader tendencies of how research is querying the relations between theory and practice, both in our educational- and third cycle- programs.
Cardiovascular Function, Body Composition, hs-CRP, and Physical Fitness in Older Adults: Effects of Two Training

In this study we aimed to verify the effects of training on cardiovascular function, body composition, high-sensitive C - reactive protein (hs-CRP), and physical fitness of older adults. Fifty-four subjects were randomly allocated into Aerobic Training (AT), Strength Training (ST), or Waiting List (WL). Heart Rate Variability (HRV), Blood Pressure (BP), body composition (DXA), hs-CRP, and fitness (6MWT) were assessed at baseline and after a four-month intervention. To detect changes within groups (before vs. after) the paired t-test was employed. General linear models were used with time (before and after interventions/observation) as a within-subject factor, Group (ST, AT and WL) as a between-subjects factor, and gender as a covariate (P<0.05). After intervention, AT and ST demonstrated a better performance in 6MWT (+43.3m; +31.5m) and lower body fat (-1.5%; -1.2%), trunk fat (-0.9kg; -0.8kg), and systolic BP (-13.1mmHg; -8.7mmHg), additionally, AT lowered diastolic BP (-3.7mmHg). Excluding systolic and diastolic BP (-6.4mmHg; -3.1mmHg), no differences were observed in WL. These data suggest that four months of AT or ST can reduce total and trunk fat content and improve aerobic fitness in older adults. However, training has no effect on HRrest, HRV, and hs-CRP.
A numerical approach for stress distribution during creep of the rock around horizontal tunnel

Study of stress distribution during creep of the rock surround- ing a circular horizontal tunnel is a very important problem, mainly for mining engineering. At big depths, an opening excavated in rock can close completely after time intervals which are of the order of several tens of years. A non-associated elasto/viscoplastic constitutive equation is used to describe both compressibility and/or dilatancy during transient and steady- state creep, as well as evolutive damage possibly leading to failure. The variation of stress during creep convergence of a deep borehole excavated in rock salt is examined. An in-house FEM numerical method is used for this purpose.
Early detection and early intervention in prison : improving outcomes and reducing prison returns Running title : Early detection in prison

Our aim was to investigate whether early detection was feasible in prison and whether it could improve mental health outcomes in young prisoners. A secondary aim was to explore whether it can reduce returns to prison. Between 2011-2014 a total of 2,115 young prisoners were screened, 94 (4.4 %) met criteria for ultra-high risk for psychosis and were offered an intervention, 52 opted to receive it. Return to prison data was sought on the 52 participants, receiving a formal intervention. Of the 52 prisoners who received an intervention, 30.8% returned to custody compared to national average reconviction rates of between 45.4 66.5%. Our results suggest that early detection is a feasible option in a prison setting, improving mental health outcomes and reducing returns to prison. Mental health outcomes were recorded for a sub-sample of those receiving the intervention. The results indicated statistically significant improvements on measures of depression, anxiety and psychological distress.
Experimental evidence for melt partitioning between olivine and orthopyroxene in partially molten harzburgite

Observations of dunite channels in ophiolites and uranium series disequilibria in mid‐ocean ridge basalt suggest that melt transport in the upper mantle beneath mid‐ocean ridges is strongly channelized. We present experimental evidence that spatial variations in mineralogy can also focus melt on the grain scale. This lithologic melt partitioning, which results from differences in the interfacial energies associated with olivine‐melt and orthopyroxene‐melt boundaries, may complement other melt focusing mechanisms in the upper mantle such as mechanical shear and pyroxene dissolution. We document here lithologic melt partitioning in olivine‐/orthopyroxene‐basaltic melt samples containing nominal olivine to orthopyroxene ratio of 3 to 2 and melt fractions of 0.02 to 0.20. Experimental samples were imaged using synchrotron‐based X‐ray microcomputed tomography at a resolution of 700 nm per voxel. By analyzing the local melt fraction distributions associated with olivine and orthopyroxene grains in each sample, we found that the melt partitioning coefficient, i.e., the ratio of melt fraction around olivine to that around orthopyroxene grains, varies between 1.1 and 1.6. The permeability and electrical conductivity of our digital samples were estimated using numerical models and compared to those of samples containing only olivine and basaltic melt. Our results suggest that lithologic melt partitioning and preferential localization of melt around olivine grains might play a role in melt focusing, potentially enhancing average melt ascent velocities.
Image Scrambling using R-Prime Shuffle

The recent growth of networked multimedia systems has increased the need for the protection of digital media. Digital media includes text, digital audio, images, video and software. Image Scrambling techniques are designed to make the image content unintelligible. In this paper, we have introduced a Novel approach for securing image data. The method proposed is a simple but powerful technique. The method uses R-Prime Shuffle to encrypt the image. It makes use of two different R-Prime numbers for rows and columns which make it more robust to decryption.
Power Management of Server Farms

The power management of server farms (Sf) is becoming a relevant problem in economical terms. Server farms totalize millions of servers all over the world that need to be electrically powered. Research is thus expected to investigate into methods to reduce Sf power consumption. However, saving power may turn into waste of performance (high response_times), in other words, into waste of Sf Quality of Service (QoS). By use of a Sfmodel, this paper investigates Sf power management strategies that look at compromises between power-saving and QoS. Various optimizing Sf power management policies are studied combined with the effects of job queueing disciplines. The (policy, discipline) pairs, or strategies, that optimize the Sf power consumption (minimum absorbed Watts), the Sf performance (minimum response_time), and the Sf performance-per-Watt (minimum response_time-per-Watt) are identified.By use of the model, the work the server-manager has to do to direct hisSf is greatly simplified, since the universe of all possible (strategies he needs to choose from is drastically reduced to a very small set of most significant strategies.