Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Biventricular Myocardial Strain Analysis in Patients with Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension Using Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Tissue-Tracking Technology

Abstract: Objectives To evaluate both left and right ventricular (LV and RV) function in patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) using cardiac magnetic resonance tissue-tracking (CMR-TT) technology and explore its clinical value. Methods: A total of 79 participants (including 47 patients with PAH and 32 healthy controls) underwent cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (CMRI) with a short-axis balanced steady-state free precession (SSFP) sequence. The biventricular cardiac function parameters and strain parameters were obtained by postprocessing with CVI42 software. A comparative analysis was performed between the LV and RV strain parameters in all PAH patients and in PAH patients with reduced or preserved cardiac function. Results: The results showed preferable repeatability of CMR-TT in analyzing the global radial strain (GRS), circumferential strain (GCS), and longitudinal strain (GLS) of the left and right ventricles in the PAH group. The GRS, GCS, and GLS of the left and right ventricles except for LV GRS (LVGRS) of PAH patients were significantly lower than those of healthy controls (p < 0.05 for all). The GRS and GCS of the left and right ventricles showed a moderate correlation in the PAH group (r = 0.323, p = 0.02; r = 0.301, p = 0.04, respectively). PAH patients with preserved RV function (n = 9) showed significantly decreased global and segmental RS, CS, and LS of the right ventricles than healthy controls (p < 0.05 for all), except for basal RVGCS (RVGCS-b, p = 0.996). Only the LVGLS was significantly different between the PAH patients with preserved LV function (n = 32) and the healthy controls (−14.23 ± 3.01% vs. −16.79 ± 2.86%, p < 0.01). Conclusions: As a nonradioactive and noninvasive technique, CMR-TT has preferable feasibility and repeatability in quantitatively evaluating LV and RV strain parameters in PAH patients and can be used to effectively detect early biventricular myocardial damage in patients with PAH.
Visible-Light-Driven Photocatalytic Degradation of Rhodamine B over Bimetallic Cu/Ti-MOFs

The first copper-doped titanium-based amine-dicarboxylate metal-organic framework was synthesized by the solvothermal approach in this article, with a Cu2+/Ti4+ ratio of 0.15 (15% Cu/Ti-MOFs). X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), Raman spectra, N2 adsorption-desorption studies, and UV-Vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (UV-Vis DRS) were all used to identify the crystalline and properties of the semiconductors. The rate constants of 15% Cu/Ti-MOFs to degrade Rhodamine B (RhB) were roughly two times higher than NH2-Ti-MOFs. Furthermore, 15% Cu/Ti-MOFs photocatalysts remained stable after three cycles. The trapping test revealed that the principal active species in the degradation performance were hydroxyl radicals and holes.
Evaluation of Posaconazole for Primary Prophylaxis of IFI in Acute Myeloid Leukemia under Intensive Induction Chemotherapy. Comparative Real Life Study with Fluconazole in two Hematological Centers in Algeri

Introduction: Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a hematological malignancy with a poor prognosis. The early consequences of induction chemotherapy are represented by pancytopenia with severe immunosuppression, which favors the emergence of so-called “opportunistic” infections and in particular invasive fungal infections (IFI) such as invasive aspergillosis (IA). This justifies the implementation of early, empirical, pre-emptive or prophylactic antifungal treatment. The objective of this study is the evaluation of a comparative study before and after the use of primary prevention with posaconazole versus fluconazole, in terms of incidence and mortality of invasive fungal infections (IFIs) during AML inductions, in real life in Algeria. Patients and methods: This study was performed in two periods in the 2 centers concerning the same AML patients receiving the same induction chemotherapy (daunorubicin 60 mg/m2 for 3 days and cytarabine 100 mg/m2 for 7 days) but with a different type of hospitalization with common rooms for Tlemcen and protected single rooms for Oran. Period 1: The retrospective study was performed from 2014 to 2016 and involved 188 patients. 70 patients were hospitalized in a common room (Tlemcen) and 118 patients in a protected single room (Oran). All patients received as primary IFI prophylaxis fluconazole 400 mg/day. Period 2: The prospective study was conducted from April 2017 to September 2018 and involved 55 patients. Fourteen patients were hospitalized in Tlemcen and 41 patients in an Oran. These patients received posaconazole prophylaxis at a dose of 200 mgx3/day. The evaluation and comparison of descriptive and incidence data was performed using Chi2 statistical tests using SPSS version 19 software. Overall survival (OS) were calculated using the Kaplan-Meier estimate and were compared using the log-rank test with a significance level α of 0.05. Results: Period 1: The incidence rate of IFI: 34% at the Oran hospital versus 49% at the Tlemcen hospital (p=0.049). Among the 74 patients who presented with IFI, 39 (53%) died from IFI as the main cause of death, among these deaths, 16 (40%) were recorded at Oran and 23 (68%) at Tlemcen (p=0.011). Period 2: The IFI rate with fluconazole was 39% and that observed with posaconazole 22% (p=0.001) and the cumulative incidence was 39% at 21 days versus 10% at 15 days (p=0.046) with a highly significant decrease in IFI-related deaths: 53% versus 25% (p=0.004). Conclusion: This work has demonstrated the interest in terms of IFI incidence (17% versus 33%, p=0.04) and IFI-related mortality of posaconazole prophylaxis (25% versus 53%, p=0.004) used during AML in the context of hospitalization in common rooms. Furthermore, this work highlights that the combination of posaconazole prophylaxis and hospitalization in a protected single room allows an optimization of the management of this type of patients.
Routine ambulatory heart rhythm monitoring for detection of atrial arrhythmias in transthyretin cardiac amyloidosis.

BACKGROUND Atrial fibrillation and flutter (AF/AFL) are common in transthyretin cardiac amyloidosis (ATTR-CM) which in turn is associated with higher risk of thromboembolism. Detecting AF/AFL may be especially important, but the role of routine ambulatory monitoring in ATTR-CM patients is unclear. OBJECTIVE The objective is therefore to determine prevalence and outcomes of subclinical AF/AFL on routine ambulatory rhythm monitoring. METHODS We report outcomes of an observational study of patients at our Amyloidosis Center with wild-type or variant ATTR-CM diagnosed between 2005 and 2019. Patients without known AF/AFL at baseline had ambulatory ECG monitoring (duration 2-30 days) every 6 months while those with cardiovascular implantable electronic devices (CIEDs) had device interrogations instead. RESULTS Eighty-four patients with ATTR-CM (mean age 73.5 ± 9.7 years, 94% male) had mean follow-up 2.3 ± 1.9 years. Forty patients (48%) had AF/AFL before ATTR-CM diagnosis. In the remainder, 21 (48%) were subsequently diagnosed with AF/AFL: 10 (48%) based on symptoms, and 11 (52%) by monitoring. Anticoagulation (AC) was started in 9/11 (82%) patients with incidental AF/AFL. Among the entire cohort, stroke occurred in 9 patients (11%): 1 hemorrhagic and 8 ischemic (7 in patients with AF/AFL). No strokes occurred in patients on AC. CONCLUSION Almost half of patients in our cohort had AF/AFL diagnosed prior to their ATTR-CM diagnosis. In the remainder, approximately half of AF/AFL diagnoses were established incidentally by routine monitoring, most of whom were promptly anticoagulated. Incidence of stroke was high overall, but no strokes occurred in anticoagulated patients. Optimal frequency and duration of monitoring needs further investigation.
COVID-19 Pandemic-Related Impacts on Newborn Screening Public Health Surveillance

Newborn screening (NBS) is an essential public health service that performs screening to identify those newborns at increased risk for a panel of disorders, most of which are genetic. The goal of screening is to link those newborns at the highest risk to timely intervention and potentially life-saving treatment. The global COVID-19 pandemic led to disruptions within the United States public health system, revealing implications for the continuity of newborn screening laboratories and follow-up operations. The impacts of COVID-19 across different states at various time points meant that NBS programs impacted by the pandemic later could benefit from the immediate experiences of the earlier impacted programs. This article will review the collection, analysis, and dissemination of information during the COVID-19 pandemic facilitated by a national, centralized technical assistance and resource center for NBS programs.
Against sedentary school environment: Rethinking the aims of education through physical education

Abstract Physical activity is essential for children’s current and future health, but most do not get their recommended daily 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity. Schools are an ideal environment for physical activity since students spend most of their waking hours at school. In this paper, we inquire into a sedentary school environment and its collateral impact on student learning in light of the school experience of Hannah. Grounded in Merleau-Ponty’s theory of body and embodiment and Dewey’s theory of experience in education, the purpose of this narrative inquiry is to challenge an increasingly sedentary environment that undermines the role of body, hence providing a mis-educative experience. In so doing, we intend to raise awareness of the collateral impact of sedentary education on students and rethink the aims of education for the 21st century to foster the child as a whole embodied being. We suggest three aims of education: first, health as the foundation to develop the whole child; second, adding the fifth R, Rhythm, to Doll’s four R’s of richness, recursion, relation, and rigor; and finally, understanding what it means to be physically literate.
The Role of On-site Coulumb Interaction on Electronic Structure of FeO

: We report our density functional theory (DFT) calculation on FeO in order to describe its electronic properties. FeO exhibits an antiferromagnetic at the ground state with cubic structure and N´eel temperature T N = 198 K. The DFT calculation is as powerful tool to describe electronic properties but known to be failed to describe the electronic properties of system with strong on-site Coulomb interaction such as FeO. Here, we introduce the Hubbard correction, U , in order to take into account the on-site Coulomb interaction of d -electron at Fe ion. Hybridization of 3 d -electron of Fe and 2 p -electron of O splits the energy level to become upper Hubbard band (UHB) and low Hubbard band (LHB). Based on the DFT+U calculation, the band structure of FeO shows an insulator feature with the band gap of 1.65 eV, and its density of state (DOS) implies that this gap arise from splitting 3 d -electron of Fe.
Does the Foot and Ankle Alignment Impact the Patellofemoral Pain Syndrome? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Background: A convincing association between the foot and ankle alignment (FAA) and patellofemoral pain syndrome (PFPS) remains debatable in the literature. Therefore, all studies investigating the role of FAA in patients with PFPS were systematically reviewed. Methods: A systematic literature search was performed on the databases PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, and Web of Science. Inclusion criteria were all studies investigating static and/or dynamic FAA factors and PFPS. Studies with less than 20 patients or with patellofemoral osteoarthritis were excluded. The quality assessment was based on Cochrane study criteria, and the maximum score was set at eight. Results: Of 2246 articles, only 13 case-control studies were eligible. Considering static FAA factors, two studies found an association with rearfoot eversion and one with rearfoot inversion. While examining dynamic FAA characteristics, one study found an association with rearfoot eversion range of motion and three with gait kinematics. No further associations were reported. The quality assessment mean score was 5.5 (SD = 0.97) corresponding to moderate quality. Conclusions: In contrast to our expectations, a limited number of studies were founded supporting an association between FAA and PFPS. At present, the quality of the literature is still poor and conflicting, thus the need for further studies to determine any association between FAA and PFPS.
Engineered Neutral Phosphorous Dendrimers Protect Mouse Cortical Neurons and Brain Organoids from Excitotoxic Death

Nanoparticles are playing an increasing role in biomedical applications. Excitotoxicity plays a significant role in the pathophysiology of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease. Glutamate ionotropic receptors, mainly those activated by N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA), play a key role in excitotoxic death by increasing intraneuronal calcium levels; triggering mitochondrial potential collapse; increasing free radicals; activating caspases 3, 9, and 12; and inducing endoplasmic reticulum stress. Neutral phosphorous dendrimers, acting intracellularly, have neuroprotective actions by interfering with NMDA-mediated excitotoxic mechanisms in rat cortical neurons. In addition, phosphorous dendrimers can access neurons inside human brain organoids, complex tridimensional structures that replicate a significant number of properties of the human brain, to interfere with NMDA-induced mechanisms of neuronal death. Phosphorous dendrimers are one of the few nanoparticles able to gain access to the inside of neurons, both in primary cultures and in brain organoids, and to exert pharmacological actions by themselves.
Automated Test Case Generation Based on Competitive Swarm Optimizer with Schema and Node Branch Archive

: Software testing plays an important role in the software development life cycle, among which automated test case generation (ATCG) technology is widely concerned because of its low cost and high degree of automation. In the process of using search-based algorithms to solve the automated test case generation for path coverage (ATCG-PC), how to minimize the generation of redundant test cases under the premise of 100% path coverage has always been a challenge. Inspired by improving the search ability of the search-based algorithm itself and the prior knowledge in the field of ATCG-PC, we propose a competitive swarm optimizer with schema and node branch archive (SNBAr-CSO) algorithm to solve the problem of complex test case generation with multiple variables in nodes. On the basis of competitive swarm optimizer, this algorithm uses the prior knowledge of schema to find all variables that affect the direction of a node branch quickly, and uses node branch archive to record the relationship between node branch direction and variable value. The experimental results of 12 practical programs on iFogSim and CoreNLP show that compared with other newly proposed algorithms, SNBAr-CSO can greatly reduce the number of redundant test cases under the premise of 100% path coverage.
Shallow And Deep Learning In Footstep Recognition: A Survey

Analyzing gait data is a branch of biomechanics that offers a degree of privacy, low-cost, and effortless objective identification for individuals. Consequently, gait recognition can be used as a replacement for passwords, or as an extra security measure with existing passwords. This paper focuses on surveying footstep recognition, comparing deep learning and shallow learning, and providing an overview of the current state of footstep recognition. It might be useful to both professionals and beginners in this field of research.
End-fire Hybrid Metasurface Antenna for mm- Wave Application

This article introduces a hybrid metasurface antenna with high gain fed by low loss substrate integrated waveguide. The pure metasurface antenna consists of only 3 x 3 rectangular patches. The hybrid metasurface antenna is composed of rectangular patches and parallel wires. The inversion results of the eigen-parameters of the parallel line unit show that the equivalent refractive index in the 33–37 GHz frequency band is greater than 1.5. The endfire gain of the hybrid metasurface antenna ranges from 8 to 12.1 dBi in the 33–37 GHz frequency range. Compared with metasurface antenna with only the rectangular patch, the gain is improved by more than 3.6 dB. Therefore, the hybrid metasurface antenna is an excellent candidate for future millimeter wave applications due to its wide bandwidth and high gain.
A New Model Calculating Economic Insulation Thickness of Buried Oil Transportation Pipelines

Using the sum of the end value expense which contains thermal insulation project investment, electric power and heat power consumption as object functions,a new mathematic model for calculating economy insulation thickness of buried heated oil transportation pipelines is set up. In the model, oil properties, pipeline laying depth,oil inlet temperature and the time value of expense are considered. Calculation case shows that pipeline laying depth obviously influences the economic insulation thickness and the influence must be considered in insulation design of buried oil pipeline. For the pipeline of small-diameter, longdistance or great flow-rate, the effect of electric power consumption on economic insulation thickness should be considered in the pipeline design.
Compensating Differentials for Occupational Health and Safety Risks: Implications of Recent Evidence

The most enduring measure of how individuals make personal decisions affecting their health and safety is the compensating wage differential for job safety risk revealed in the labor market via hedonic equilibrium outcomes. The decisions in turn reveal the value of a statistical life (VSL), the value of a statistical injury (VSI), and the value of a statistical life year (VSLY), which have both mortality and morbidity aspects that we describe and apply here. All such tradeoff rates play important roles in policy decisions concerning improving individual welfare. Specifically, we explicate the recent empirical research on VSL and its related concepts and link the empirical results to the ongoing examinations of many government policies intended to improve individuals' health and longevity. We pay special attention to recent issues such as the COVID pandemic and newly emerging foci on distributional consequences concerning which demographic groups may benefit most from certain regulations. © 2023 by Emerald Publishing Limited.
An efficient compilation of coarse-grained reconfigurable architectures utilizing pre-optimized sub-graph mappings

In recent years, IoT devices have become widespread, and energy-efficient coarse-grained reconfigurable architectures (CGRAs) have attracted attention. CGRAs comprise several processing units called processing elements (PEs) arranged in a two-dimensional array. The operations of PEs and the interconnections between them are adaptively changed depending on a target application, and this contributes to a higher energy efficiency compared to general-purpose processors. The application kernel executed on CGRAs is represented as a data flow graph (DFG), and CGRA compilers are responsible for mapping the DFG onto the PE array. Thus, mapping algorithms significantly influence the performance and power efficiency of CGRAs as well as the compile time. This paper proposes POCOCO, a compiler framework for CGRAs that can use pre-optimized subgraph mappings. This contributes to reducing the compiler optimization task. To leverage the subgraph mappings, we extend an existing mapping method based on a genetic algorithm. Experiments on three architectures demonstrated that the proposed method reduces the optimization time by 48%, on an average, for the best case of the three architectures.
Optimal Reconstruction of Human Motion From Scarce Multimodal Data

Wearable sensing has emerged as a promising solution for enabling unobtrusive and ergonomic measurements of the human motion. However, the reconstruction performance of these devices strongly depends on the quality and the number of sensors, which are typically limited by wearability and economic constraints. A promising approach to minimize the number of sensors is to exploit dimensionality reduction approaches that fuse <italic>prior</italic> information with insufficient sensing signals, through minimum variance estimation. These methods were successfully used for static hand pose reconstruction, but their translation to motion reconstruction has not been attempted yet. In this work, we propose the usage of functional principal component analysis to decompose multimodal, time-varying motion profiles in terms of linear combinations of basis functions. Functional decomposition enables the estimation of the <italic>a priori</italic> covariance matrix, and hence the fusion of scarce and noisy measured data with <italic>a priori</italic> information. We also consider the problem of identifying which elemental variables to measure as the most informative for a given class of tasks. We applied our method to two different datasets of upper limb motion D1 (joint trajectories) and D2 (joint trajectories + EMG data) considering an optimal set of measures (four joints for D1 out of seven, three joints, and eight EMGs for D2 out of seven and twelve, respectively). We found that our approach enables the reconstruction of upper limb motion with a median error of <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$0.013 \pm 0.006$</tex-math></inline-formula> rad for D1 (relative median error 0.9%), and <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$0.038 \pm 0.023$</tex-math></inline-formula> rad and <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$0.003 \pm 0.002$</tex-math></inline-formula> mV for D2 (relative median error 2.9% and 5.1%, respectively).
Do soil density and humidity affect nest‐founding in leaf‐cutting ant queens?

The habitat choice of nest sites by founding queens of leaf‐cutting ants varies with abiotic factors such as temperature, soil density, and soil humidity. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that soil density and moisture affect excavation effort (i.e., excavation period, excavated soil amount, initial nest depth, initial chamber volume, and mortality) in queens of the leaf‐cutting ant Atta sexdens (L.) (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Queens were placed in experimental areas in three natural soils in Brazil with varying density and moisture content. The excavated soil was collected, dried, and weighed, and digging period, nest depth, chamber volume, and queen mortality were evaluated after nest establishment. In artificially shaded habitats (less dense and more humid soil), the establishment of queens was greater, the period of nest foundation was shorter, and excavated soil amount, nest depth, and volume of the initial chamber were greater than in forest and pasture habitats (denser and drier soils). Also, queen mortality was lower in less dense, more humid soil. This indicates a trade‐off between maximizing the depth of the nest, to increase protection against inadequate environmental conditions, and minimizing energy expenditure during excavation, affecting their survival.