Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparison of different approaches for removal of baseline wander from ECG signal

Baseline wandering can mask some important features of the Electrocardiogram (ECG) signal hence it is desirable to remove this noise for proper analysis and display of the ECG signal. This paper presents the implementation and evaluation of different methods to remove this noise. The parameters i. e. Power Spectral density (PSD), average Power & Signal to noise ratio (SNR) are calculated of signals to compare the performance of different filtering methods. IIR zero phase filtering has been proved efficient method for the removal of Baseline wander from ECG signal. The results have been concluded using Matlab software and MIT-BIH arrhythmia database.
Economic evaluations of pharmacogenetic and genomic screening programs: update of the literature

Pharmacogenetics and pharmacogenomics show great potential for developing individual treatment modalities to achieve optimal therapy effectiveness. Economic analyses are performed to determine whether pharmacogenetic screening strategies provide good value for money. The current review provides an update of published economic studies. Economic analyses of pharmacogenetic screening programs published between 2000 and July 2010 were included in the review. Information was extracted on research area, genetic information, type of economic analysis, key aspects of adherence to economic guidelines, costs and commercial availability of genetic tests, and the role of the funding party. A total of 42 economic studies on pharmacogenetic screening strategies were included. Over time, more cost‐utility analyses were performed, longer time windows were employed, and more extensive sensitivity analyses were conducted. Considerable differences in costs of screening tests for the same polymorphism were found, which often, but not always, had a large influence on the costs of screening strategies. Most studies were conducted from an academic or hospital perspective without direct links to pharmaceutical or diagnostic manufacturers. The quality of economic analyses of pharmacogenetic screening programs has improved over time. However, input variables are not always clearly described. In particular, substantial variation exists in the reported costs of the pharmacogenetic tests. Often these test costs are considered a major cost driver and could therefore be of particular importance for the interpretation of cost‐effectiveness results. Furthermore, the economic studies seem to be conducted to increase awareness of possibilities and perspectives of genetic testing rather than to influence policy decisions on reimbursement. Drug Dev Res 71: 492–501, 2010. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Classifying microarray data with association rules

In this paper we investigate a method for classifying microarray data using association rules. Associative classifiers, classification systems based on association rules, show good performance level while being easy to read and understand. This feature is especially attractive for biological data where experts can read and validate the association rules. Relevant features are selected using Support Vector Machines with Recursive Feature Elimination. These features are discretized according to their relative expression levels (upregulated, downregulated or no change) and then they are used to build an associative classifier. The proposed combination proves highly accurate for the studied microarray data collection. In addition the classification rules discovered and employed in the classification process prove to be biologically relevant.
Bridging socially-enhanced virtual communities

Interactions spanning multiple organizations have become an important aspect in today's collaboration landscape. Organizations create alliances to fulfill strategic objectives. The dynamic nature of collaborations increasingly demands for automated techniques and algorithms to support the creation of such alliances. Our approach bases on the recommendation of potential alliances by discovery of currently relevant competence sources and the support of semi-automatic formation. The environment is service-oriented comprising humans and software services with distinct capabilities. To mediate between previously separated groups and organizations, we introduce the broker concept that bridges disconnected networks. We present a dynamic broker discovery approach based on interaction mining techniques and trust metrics. We evaluate our approach by using simulations in real Web services' testbeds.
Quality of Life and Related Factors in the Older Rural and Urban Chinese Populations in Zhejiang Province

The aim of this study was to evaluate the quality of life (QoL) in the older rural and urban Chinese populations in Zhejiang province. An analysis of the association between potential factors and QoL for these two groups was conducted. A cross-sectional study was conducted from October to December 2007. The total sample consisted of 2,441 rural and 2,554 urban participants. A Chinese version of the 36-item Short Form Health Survey (SF-36) was used to quantify the QoL of participants. A comparison between the QoL of rural and urban participants was made. The association between potential factors and QoL was performed using a multiple linear regression model. The study revealed all scale scores of SF-36 in the rural population were significantly lower than those in the urban population except general health (GH; p < .001). The common factors associated with high QoL in both older rural and urban populations were gender (male), tea consumption, income, and consumption of alcohol. Age and the number of chronic diseases an individual suffered from were negatively associated with QoL. In addition, the study revealed the perception that giving up smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol were negatively associated with QoL for participants living in rural areas, whereas educational level and regular exercise were positively associated with QoL for participants living in urban areas. Intervention programs for decreasing chronic diseases, establishing security mechanisms of the pension, and spreading the knowledge of healthy lifestyles may improve QoL for the older populations in Zhejiang province, especially in rural areas.
Page segmentation by web content clustering

Web page segmentation is an important task with benefits for a variety of applications, reaching from data extraction to accessibility improvement. Focusing on the smallest content units of a web page, page segmentation can be reduced to a clustering of web contents to structural and semantical cohesive groups. To investigate the web page segmentation task from the clustering point of view, we define three possible distance measures for content units based on their DOM, geometric and semantic properties. We combine these distance measures with common clustering techniques and evaluate the web page segmentation accuracy on a labelled collection by applying widely used validity measures.
BE-tree: an index structure to efficiently match boolean expressions over high-dimensional discrete space

BE-Tree is a novel dynamic tree data structure designed to efficiently index Boolean expressions over a high-dimensional discrete space. BE-Tree copes with both high-dimensionality and expressiveness of Boolean expressions by introducing a novel two-phase space-cutting technique that specifically utilizes the discrete and finite domain properties of the space. Furthermore, BE-Tree employs self-adjustment policies to dynamically adapt the tree as the workload changes. We conduct a comprehensive evaluation to demonstrate the superiority of BE-Tree in comparison with state-of-the-art index structures designed for matching Boolean expressions.
Nationwide Survey of the Transfer of Adults With Congenital Heart Disease From Pediatric Cardiology Departments to Adult Congenital Heart Disease Centers in Japan.

BACKGROUND Current Japanese transfer practices for adult congenital heart disease (ACHD) patients in pediatric departments are elucidated in this study. The focus was on 149 facilities (from the Japanese Society of Pediatric Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery Subspecialty Board and the Japanese Association of Children's Hospitals and Related Institutions). One hundred and thirteen facilities were surveyed and the response rate was 75.8%. METHODSANDRESULTS Twenty-six facilities (23.0%) treated ≥200 outpatients annually; 48 facilities (42.9%) treated <50 outpatients. Only eight facilities admitted ≥50 inpatients; 61 facilities (54.0%) admitted <10 inpatients. Nine facilities fulfilled international regional ACHD center criteria. The estimated median number of patients receiving outpatient pediatric department follow up was 33,806. Sixty facilities (53.6%) treated patients in pediatric departments after they reached adulthood. Of 49 facilities that transferred patients, the transfer was most commonly to another department in the same facility (20 facilities; 40.8%), typically the adult cardiology department (29 facilities; 59.2%). In future, 55 facilities (48.7%) desired the transfer of patients to regional ACHD centers, while 34 facilities (30.1%) preferred to continue treating patients in the pediatric department. CONCLUSIONS The number of regional ACHD centers offering sufficient outpatient and inpatient care is limited; transfer from pediatric departments is not standard in Japan. Role division clarification between regional ACHD centers and other facilities and cooperative network establishment including transitional care programs is necessary. (Circ J 2016; 80: 1242-1250).
Vascular Function and Myocardial Performance Indices in Children Born Small for Gestational Age.

BACKGROUND Small-for-gestational-age (SGA) children have increased cardiovascular risk, but the mediating factors are poorly understood. We hypothesized that birth size could affect the cardiovascular system since childhood in the absence of other risk factors. We investigated endothelial and myocardial function in SGA children with regular catch-up growth. METHODSANDRESULTS Biochemical markers, blood pressure, flow-mediated vasodilation (FMD), common carotid intima-media thickness (cIMT), anteroposterior diameter of the infrarenal abdominal aorta (APAO) and echocardiographic parameters of left and right ventricular (LV and RV) function were studied in 27 SGA and 25 appropriate-for-gestational-age (AGA) subjects. SGA subjects had a higher homeostasis model assessment index than controls (2.61±1.27 vs. 1.56±0.40, P=0.01), higher cIMT (0.51±0.04 mm vs. 0.45±0.07 mm, P=0.007) and APAO (1.31±1.35 cm vs. 1.30±0.16 cm, P=0.005), and lower FMD (10.11±4.17% vs. 12.34±4.28, P=0.04) than controls. On echocardiography SGA had higher Tei index both at LV and RV than controls (P=0.001). Reduced RV systolic function was also observed in SGA subjects. CONCLUSIONS SGA subjects had vascular morphological and function abnormalities compared with AGA, which increase their cardiovascular risk profile. Furthermore, a subtle cardiac alteration in both RV and LV functions was seen in SGA patients compared with AGA.
AppJoy: personalized mobile application discovery

The explosive growth of the mobile application market has made it a significant challenge for the users to find interesting applications in crowded App Stores. To alleviate this problem, existing industry solutions often use the users' application download history and possibly their ratings to recommend applications that might interest them, much like Amazon's book recommendations. However, the user downloading an application is a weak indicator of whether the user likes that application, particularly if the application is free and the user just wants to try it out. Using application ratings, on the other hand, suffers from tedious manual input and potential data sparsity problems. In this paper, we present the AppJoy system that makes personalized application recommendations by analyzing how the user actually uses her installed applications. Based on all participants' application usage records, AppJoy employs an item-based collaborative filtering algorithm for individualized recommendations. We discuss AppJoy's design and implementation, and the evaluation shows that it consumes little resource on the off-the-shelf Google Android phones. AppJoy has been available in the Android Market and used by more than 4600 users. The AppJoy's prediction algorithm provided reasonably accurate usage estimate of the recommended applications after they were installed. We also found AppJoy to be effective as the users interacted with recommended applications longer than other applications.
Social work practice in the chronic care model: Chronic illness and disability care

Summary Maintaining good quality of life and health in face of living and/or aging with a chronic illness and/or disability can be challenging. The health care and related education and training of these individuals to become proactive partners in their ongoing care is the cornerstone of most chronic care models. Findings Social workers are not specifically mentioned in most chronic care models. However, as the health and social care processes can become complicated if the individual has barriers to partnering roles necessitated by chronic care models, a role for the social worker should be more clearly defined. Examination and application of the ecosystems perspective defines a clear role for social work to work collaboratively with other health professionals within a chronic care model. Application This paper explores how social work’s ecosystems model can interface with Wagner’s Chronic Care Model to fill the void that some individuals may experience in seeking and maintaining care to provide a useful framework to facilitate interventions within that model.
Knowledge and attitude towards the use of emergency contraceptive pills among college students

Background: Emergency contraception is applied to prevent pregnancy after 72-120 hours of unprotected sexual intercourse. Emergency contraceptive (EC) pill is used to reduce unwanted pregnancy and unsafe abortion. EC pill is available as OTC in India since 2005. As EC pill highly used among adolescents we carried out to this study among college students. Methods: The study was conducted among female college students. A pre-validated questionnaire was used as tool for the study. It contains consent form and questions knowledge and attitude regarding EC pill. Results: We divided students into group A (medical, paramedical and pharmacy colleges) and group B (nonmedical colleges like science, arts and engineering). In group A 470 and group B 280 students were participated. Knowledge about appropriate time of taking EC pill (within 72 hours after sexual intercourse) was 44% in group A which is significant than 15% in group B. Knowledge about brand name, availability cost and side effects were more in group A than group B. Electronic media was the most common source of information mentioned by both the groups. Attitude regarding advice to use of EC pill to other was more in group A than group B. Conclusions: Knowledge about use of EC pill was higher in group A than group B. Attitude was not positive regarding availability of EC pill as OTC. So education about EC pill among young population is necessary.
The pharmacodynamic equivalence of Orlistat 60 mg capsule. An open label, balanced, randomized, multiple-dose, cross-over pharmacodynamic end-point bioequivalence study in healthy, adult, human Asian Indian subjects under fed conditions

Abstract Orlistat is a non-systemic treatment for obesity. The drug inhibits lipase in the gastrointestinal track mainly in the lumen of the stomach and small intestine by binding reversibly with the active site of gastric and pancreatic lipases, preventing the absorption of ∼30–35% of dietary fat. The undigested triglycerides are not absorbed, resulting in a caloric deficit and positive effect in weight control. The objective of this study was to assess the bioequivalence of orlistat administered as a generic and reference capsule formulations using a pharmacodynamic end-point. A total of 60 healthy volunteers followed a 5-day run-in diet period to be accustomed to a low fat diet; subjects were then randomized to receive under fed conditions oral doses of orlistat (60 mg) 3-times daily for 10 days as the generic (Ranbaxy Laboratories) or reference (Alli™, GlaxoSmithKline) capsule formulations. Subjects followed a standardized diet (2500 kcal/day, ∼30% as fat) for the entire study. Feces were collected over the last 2 days of the run-in period (baseline) and over the last 5 days of the two treatment periods. The amount of fat in meals and feces were assayed using the validated FTIR method with a limit of detection of 1.00 g%, respectively. Fecal fat excretion over 24 h (FFE24SS, calculated as the amount of fat excreted in feces adjusted by the amount of fat ingested) was used as a pharmacodynamic end-point to assess the bioequivalence between the two orlistat formulations. An analyses of variance (ANOVA) was performed on the log-transformed FFE24SS parameter to establish bioequivalence of the generic product with respect to the innovator formulation. Mean FFE24SS values at baseline and after repeated oral administrations of the generic and innovator formulations of orlistat were 0.88%, 40.55% and 40.54%, respectively. The ratio of least-squares means (LSM) of FFE24SS of the generic to the innovator formulation was 101.90%, with 90% confidence intervals of 97.94–106.01%. Orlistat was well tolerated by subjects in both periods of study and no serious adverse events were observed during the study. In conclusion, mean FFE24SS values were used as pharmacodynamic end-points to assess bioequivalence between two formulations of orlistat. Results from this study suggest that the test formulation of Orlistat capsule is bioequivalent to the reference marketed Alli™ when administered to healthy volunteers as a multiple dose under fed conditions.
Active cytomegalovirus infection in autologous stem cell transplant recipients: Incidence and clinical impact

Cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection in patients after autologous stem cell transplant (ASCT) has become a major medical concern. However, few studies have reported active CMV infection before the transplantation. In this study, we retrospectively analyzed the incidence, clinical impact, risk factors, and outcome of CMV pp65 antigenemia in 44 consecutive patients who underwent ASCT between January 2005 and June 2011. CMV pp65 antigenemia assay was performed weekly, from 7 days before stem cell infusion until the patient was discharged. All patients were CMV seropositive before ASCT. Pre-transplantation antigenemia was detected in 19 patients (43.2%) and post-transplantation antigenemia in 17 patients (38.6%). Multivariate analysis could not identify any pre-transplantation risk factors for CMV antigenemia. When patients with and without pre-transplantation antigenemia were compared, we found that pre-transplantation active CMV infection had significant effects on posttransplantation platelet and neutrophil recovery, although the time of hospitalization and amount of blood transfusion were similar in both groups. CMV antigenemia was asymptomatic in all cases, and cleared spontaneously in 86.7% of patients who did not receive antiviral treatment. In conclusion, CMV reactivation before ASCT might occur frequently and even an asymptomatic infection could significantly delay engraftment. Therefore, ASCT candidates should be routinely evaluated for active CMV infection.
Role of miRNA in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma

Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) is the sixth most common malignancy worldwide. Evidence suggests that miRNAs play an important role in progression, recurrence, metastasis and postoperative survival of HNSCC. Studies have investigated the utility of miRNAs as diagnostic/prognostic tools and as potential therapeutic targets and biomarkers that may improve the management and outcomes of HNSCC. The aim of this article is to review the current literature on aberrant expression profiles of miRNAs in biopsy samples of HNSCC and their role in cancer development, metastasis, prognosis and survival of these patients. This review gives an overview that miRNAs deregulation play major role in the development of HNSCC. They offer the potential to be used as biomarkers or novel therapeutic targets. Future research is required to test their use in both of these fields.
Virtual machine monitor-based lightweight intrusion detection

As virtualization technology gains in popularity, so do attempts to compromise the security and integrity of virtualized computing resources. Anti-virus software and firewall programs are typically deployed in the guest virtual machine to detect malicious software. These security measures are effective in detecting known malware, but do little to protect against new variants of intrusions. Intrusion detection systems (IDSs) can be used to detect malicious behavior. Most intrusion detection systems for virtual execution environments track behavior at the application or operating system level, using virtualization as a means to isolate themselves from a compromised virtual machine. In this paper, we present a novel approach to intrusion detection of virtual server environments which utilizes only information available from the perspective of the virtual machine monitor (VMM). Such an IDS can harness the ability of the VMM to isolate and manage several virtual machines (VMs), making it possible to provide monitoring of intrusions at a common level across VMs. It also offers unique advantages over recent advances in intrusion detection for virtual machine environments. By working purely at the VMM-level, the IDS does not depend on structures or abstractions visible to the OS (e.g., file systems), which are susceptible to attacks and can be modified by malware to contain corrupted information (e.g., the Windows registry). In addition, being situated within the VMM provides ease of deployment as the IDS is not tied to a specific OS and can be deployed transparently below different operating systems. Due to the semantic gap between the information available to the VMM and the actual application behavior, we employ the power of data mining techniques to extract useful nuggets of knowledge from the raw, low-level architectural data. We show in this paper that by working entirely at the VMM-level, we are able to capture enough information to characterize normal executions and identify the presence of abnormal malicious behavior. Our experiments on over 300 real-world malware and exploits illustrate that there is sufficient information embedded within the VMM-level data to allow accurate detection of malicious attacks, with an acceptable false alarm rate.