Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Development of Energy-Based Endpoints for diagnosis of Pulmonary Valve Insufficiency

Introduction. Pulmonary insufficiency (PI) causes myocardial dysfunction and hypertrophy in the right ventricle; with fatal consequences in some cases. The only remedy is pulmonary valve (PV) replacement surgery, the timing of which is critical. Surgery performed earlier than necessary leads to a re-emergence of PI, whereas a delayed intervention can potentially render the replacement futile. There are no physiological markers to determine the correct window for this surgery. Clinicians currently rely on subjective assessment of cardiac MRI scans and evaluation of a few ad-hoc measures, such as end-diastolic pressure, cardiac volume and regurgitant fraction. The use of these different measures often results in conflicting conclusions and error-prone decisions. Thus, a quantitative index is required to unambiguously assess the progression of PI to determine the correct window for the PV replacement surgery. In this research, a set of energy-based endpoint were investigated that combined the pressure and volumetric measures. Right ventricular (RV) stroke work, energy loss in the branch pulmonary artery (PA) and a new endpoint, energy transfer ratio defined as the ratio of the total blood energy at the main PA and stroke work were developed and tested as a proof-of-concept. Methods. The energy based endpoints were obtained for a normal and a diseased subject. Pressure measurements obtained invasively from cardiac catheterization, and flow rate and ventricular volume obtained non-invasively from MRI scans were utilized for the calculation. Subsequently, methodologies to obtain these endpoints in a completely non-invasive approach, using patient-specific image-based hemodynamic models were developed to eliminate the requirement of invasive catheterization. Angiographic MRI was used for geometry reconstruction for image-based models. Actual timeand spatiallyvarying velocity profiles, directly obtained from phase-contrast MRI were used for patient-specific velocity boundary conditions.
Flow Pattern and Frictional Losses in Pulsating Pipe Flow : Part l, Effect of Pulsating Frequency on the Turbulent Flow Pattern

Pulsating turbulent pipe flow was measured at the time - averaged Reynolds number of about 5.7×1-4 and over wide ranges of both frequency and velocity amplitude ratio. The flow pattern in an incompressible turbulent pipe flow was found to be described by four characteristic parameters and not to be affected so much by four characteristic parameters and not to be affected so much by velocity amplitude ratio. Further, the flow patterns were classified into three types, i.e., quasi-steady, intermediate, and inertia dominant ones with respect to the dimensionless frequency ω'. The values of ω' representing the limits between three regions were proposed.
Surviving and thriving: an integrated critical theory of chronic pain from stories of urban American Indians living with chronic pain

Purpose: This study seeks to inform better care practices and policies for American Indians living off-reservation by discerning relationships between chronic pain and colonization and developing an integrated critical theory of chronic pain. Methods: This study uses a concurrent transformative mixed methods design with in-depth interviews and a survey (n=40) from selfidentified American Indian adults in Indiana, Chicago, and Tulsa who report pain for greater than 3 months. The in-depth interview elicits participants’ stories of their pain, including pain characteristics, origin, treatment, and daily life experience. The survey battery consists of a demographics questionnaire, McGill Pain Questionnaire (Melzack, 1975), Historical Loss Scale (Whitbeck, Adams, Hoyt, & Chen, 2004), Texas Revised Inventory of Grief (Faschingbauer, 1981), Resilience Scale (Wagnild & Young, 1987), Stressful Life Events Screening Questionnaire (Goodman, Corcoran, Turner, Yuan, & Green, 1998), and questions regarding use of traditional and biomedical healing practices. Interviews were iteratively coded with a grounded theory approach. Statistical analyses include correlation, Chi-Square, and binary logistic regression. Results: A number of dichotomies arose from the data: good and bad days with pain, things that help pain and things that make pain worse, and pain with a physical etiology and with an emotional etiology. This fragmented conceptualization of pain provides participants with sought-after legitimacy to guard against the many places of tension and conflict in their lived experience of chronic pain. Connections between chronic pain and colonization occur at the level of abuse, poverty, and sorrow. Despite the fragmentation of pain conceptualization and the tensions and conflicts that being in chronic pain causes, participants manage their pain with very integrated care. On average, participants utilize almost 7 different healing practices, demonstrating the active role they take in caring for their chronic pain. Participants call upon strength from understanding that
Cellular and molecular basis of wound healing : effects of growth arrest induced by antimetabolites on ocular fibroblast behaviour.

The wound healing response, in which the fibroblast is a key player, is a major cause of clinical morbidity throughout the human body. This response is of particular importance in the eye, as it plays a role in the pathogenesis or failure of treatment of many visually disabling or blinding conditions in the world today. An example of this is the failure of the surgical treatment of glaucoma due to excessive scarring. Previous studies have shown that single exposures to antimetabolites result in the long term growth arrest of ocular fibroblasts in vitro, and reduced scarring in vivo following glaucoma surgery. The overall effects of these treatments on fibroblast wound healing behaviour are not known. Additionally, growth arrested fibroblast feeder layers have been routinely used to serially cultivate kératinocytes for over twenty years, the mechanisms underlying this support of keratinocyte growth being unclear. This thesis investigated the effects of single exposures to antimetabolites on molecular and cellular aspects of ocular fibroblast wound healing behaviour. Growth arrested ocular fibroblasts were found to produce a number of regulatory molecules both at the message and protein levels using a quantitative reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction technique and enzyme linked immunosorbent assays. The molecules produced included: growth factors (transforming growth factor beta-1 and basic fibroblast growth factor); growth factor receptors (transforming growth factor beta type II receptor, fibroblast growth factor receptor and epidermal growth factor receptor) ; and extracellular matrix molecules (collagen type I, collagen type III and fibronectin) up to 48 days post-growth arrest. Fibroblasts were also found to migrate and contract collagen following growth arrest. Additionally, matrix metalloproteinases were identified as a novel, essential and possibly ubiquitous component of fibroblast-mediated collagen contraction. The experiments in this thesis have led to an increased understanding of the biology of growth arrest in vitro, and may explain how growth arrested fibroblasts support keratinocyte growth in vitro. Additionally, these findings may have clinical implications with respect to the modulation of scarring in vivo. Finally, the identification of a novel and potentially ubiquitous mechanism of collagen contraction may lead to the development of new anti-scarring strategies. Table of contents Page
Personal and Social Development practice at the University of Malta: its presence and positive contribution: a reality or a mirage?

Personal and Social Development (PSD) is a statutory subject in Maltese schools. Whilst PSD does not exist as a subject in Maltese higher education, PSD practice is present within the academic content as well as the co-curricular and extra-curricular activities. Its’ claimed purpose is to support the students’ personal and social development. This study explores stakeholder perceptions of PSD practice in Malta, the way in which it is included within the University of Malta (UoM) undergraduate experience and its contribution to the holistic development of undergraduates. Findings indicate that a number of factors impact upon the need, and resulting provision of PSD practice in Malta. These include: smallness of the Maltese Islands; their lack of natural resources and Malta’s reliance on human capabilities. While these factors may generate the need for PSD practice in Malta, other factors, like the traditional academic oriented system and the sense of fear for change, tend to hinder its provision. On the other hand, PSD practice in Malta is facilitated through policies which promote it; the compulsory PSD subject in schools and the different opportunities for PSD practice. In general, UoM students from the Science and Social Sciences faculty clusters, those attending the Degree Plus programme and those participating in extra-curricular groups, ranked highly the provision of generic competences training, the emphasis on their active role and the holistic aims. The thesis suggests that PSD practice at the UoM is not consistent across faculties, but whenever there was PSD practice, students appeared to value it and recognise its contribution to their holistic development. Such link is hindered by factors like the traditional pre-tertiary education, the influence of the European Union with the economic agenda and a neo-liberal, globalized and capitalist society that glorifies competition, performativity and market demands. In conclusion, it is recommended that there is genuine movement towards PSD practice for holistic aims.
Hedging costs and joint determinants of premiums and spreads in structured financial products

This paper is the first to analyze the joint determinants of premiums and spreads in structured financial products, while also focusing on issuers' hedging costs. We evaluate more than 396,000 single stock discount certificates on an intraday basis in the German secondary market. We find that premiums and spreads are endogenous and negatively related to each other, and depend on different key determinants. The economically significant determinants of the premiums are mainly profit-related, i.e. dividends of the underlying, issuers' credit risk, lifecycle effect and competition, whereas hedging costs and risks are economically less important. However, initial hedging costs are also priced into the premium in the case of large inventory changes. The spread is mostly determined by hedging costs and risk components, such as initial hedging costs, rebalancing costs, volatility, scalper risk, and overnight gap risk, but also depends on dividends. Initial hedging costs appear to be more relevant than rebalancing costs.
Modeling treatment of cancer using oncolytic virotherapy with saturated incidence

Abstract Oncolytic virotherapy is emerging as a promising new method for cancer treatment. In the present study, we propose and analyze a mathematical model for treatment of cancer by using oncolytic virotherapy. Here, it is assumed that the growth of tumor cells follows logistic growth and the interaction between tumor cells and viruses is of saturation type. Additionally, the removal rates of uninfected and virus-infected tumor cells due to CTL’s are also of saturation type. The basic reproduction numbers and different equilibria of the model are computed. The local stability of the equilibria is also discussed. Numerical simulation is also performed and it is found that for some set of parameters model system exhibits periodic oscillations. In this case it is not easy to predict the success of virotherapy. Finally, the model is extended to stochastic model and numerical simulation is performed to compare the results of deterministic and stochastic model.
Differential gene expression profile of Shigella dysenteriae causing bacteremia in an immunocompromised individual

Aim: Shigella species has varying levels of virulence gene expression with respect to different sites of infection. In this study, the differential gene expression of S. dysenteriae in response to its site of infection was analyzed by transcriptomics. Methods: This study includes four clinical Shigella isolates. Transcriptomics was done for the stool and blood samples of a single patient. Isolates were screened for the presence of antimicrobial resistance genes. Results: The majority of genes involved in invasion were highly expressed in the strain isolated from the primary site of infection. Additionally, antimicrobial resistance (dhfr1A, sulII, blaOXA. blaCTX-M-1 and qnrS) genes were identified. Conclusion: This study provides a concise view of the transcriptional expression of clinical strains and provides a basis for future functional studies on Shigella spp.
Determinants of Service Quality and Customer Satisfaction of Retail Clothing Company

The study aims to investigate the relationship between service quality and customer satisfaction in a retail clothing company. The study utilized the SERVQUAL model to guide the study. Purposive sampling was applied in the study where quantitative (survey) method was employed with generating 140 valid responses. The data were then analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling through Smart-PLS 3.0. The results revealed that three (3) dimension of SERVQUAL (tangibles, empathy, and responsiveness) has a positive and significant relationship with customers. However, reliability and assurance yielded negative with customer satisfaction. In addition, out of the five determinants of SERVQUAL, assurance was found not significant to customer satisfaction. Conclusion, implications, and suggestions for future study are also discussed.
Partitioning the colonization and extinction components of beta diversity: Spatiotemporal species turnover across disturbance gradients

Changes in species diversity often result from species losses and gains. The dynamic nature of beta diversity (i.e., spatial variation in species composition) that derives from such temporal species turnover, however, has been largely overlooked. Here, we disentangled extinction and colonization components of beta diversity by using the sets of species that went locally extinct and that newly colonized the given sites. We applied this concept of extinction and colonization beta diversity to plant communities that have been repeatedly measured in experimentally disturbed forests. We first found no difference in beta diversity across disturbance gradients when it was analyzed for communities at a single point in time. From this result, we might conclude that disturbance caused no impact on how species assemble across space. However, when we analyzed the extinction and colonization beta diversity, both measures were found to be significantly lower in disturbed sites compared to undisturbed sites. These results indicate that disturbance removed similar subsets of species across space, making communities differentiate, but at the same time induced spatially uniform colonization of new species, causing communities to homogenize. Consequently, the effects of these two processes canceled each other out. The relative importance of extinction and colonization components per se also changed temporally after disturbance. Analyses using extinction and colonization beta diversity allowed us to detect nonrandom dis- and re-assembly dynamics in plant communities. Our results suggest that common practices of analyzing beta diversity at one point in time can mask significant variation driven by disturbance. Acknowledging the extinction–colonization dynamics behind beta diversity is essential for understanding the spatiotemporal organization of biodiversity.
رابطه اختلال استرس پس آسیبی با مشکلات رفتاری کودکان کار قربانی آزارجنسی و مقایسه با کودکان بی سرپرست

1 Student of Clinical Psychology, Islamic Azad University Najafabad Branch, Isfahan, Iran 2 Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, Islamic Azad University, Naein Branch, Isfahan, Iran 3 Professor, Department of Psychology, Isfahan University, Isfahan, Iran * Corresponding author: Shahnaz Khaleghipour, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, Islamic Azad University, Naein Branch, Isfahan, Iran. E-mail: khaleghipour@naeiniau.ac. ir Received: 04 Nov 2015 Accepted: 26 Jun 2016
Change Detection in Multisource VHR Images via Deep Siamese Convolutional Multiple-Layers Recurrent Neural Network

With the rapid development of Earth observation technology, very-high-resolution (VHR) images from various satellite sensors are more available, which greatly enrich the data source of change detection (CD). Multisource multitemporal images can provide abundant information on observed landscapes with various physical and material views, and it is exigent to develop efficient techniques to utilize these multisource data for CD. In this article, we propose a novel and general deep siamese convolutional multiple-layers recurrent neural network (RNN) (SiamCRNN) for CD in multitemporal VHR images. Superior to most VHR image CD methods, SiamCRNN can be used for both homogeneous and heterogeneous images. Integrating the merits of both convolutional neural network (CNN) and RNN, SiamCRNN consists of three subnetworks: deep siamese convolutional neural network (DSCNN), multiple-layers RNN (MRNN), and fully connected (FC) layers. The DSCNN has a flexible structure for multisource image and is able to extract spatial–spectral features from homogeneous or heterogeneous VHR image patches. The MRNN stacked by long-short term memory (LSTM) units is responsible for mapping the spatial–spectral features extracted by DSCNN into a new latent feature space and mining the change information between them. In addition, FC, the last part of SiamCRNN, is adopted to predict change probability. The experimental results in two homogeneous data sets and one challenging heterogeneous VHR images data set demonstrate that the promising performances of the proposed network outperform several state-of-the-art approaches.
In Vitro Characteristics of a Combination of Thymoquinone-Resveratrol Loaded and Targeted Nanodrug Delivery System

هدف البحث هو دراسة الخصائص المختبرية لمزيج من الأدوية المضادة للسرطان والمكونة من الثيموكينون والريسفيراترول (TQ-RES) عندما تم تحميلهم في نظام موجه لنقل الدواء الذي يعتمد على الجسيمات النانونية (nanoparticles) والذي أعددناه مسبقا. اعتمد نظامنا هذا على استخدام جسيمات السيليكا (silica nanoparticles) المرتبطة ببوليمر و كاربوكسي ميثل β سيكلودكسترين (CM-β-CD) و حمض الفوليك (FA) على التوالي. تم حساب سعة التحميل (Encapsulation Efficiency) ومعدل الإطلاق (Release Rate) باستخدام مقياس الطيف بالأشعة فوق البنفسجية كما تم قياس كفاءة تغليف الدواء (Loading Capacity) باستخدام صيغة معينة بالاضافة الى جهاز التحليل الحراري (Thermal Gravimetric Analysis) . تم قياس سمية الخلايا واستحثاث موت الخلايا المبرمج باستخدام اختبار MTT (3 - (4،5 - ثنائي ميثيل ثيازول - 2 - ييل) -2،5 ثنائي فينيل تيرازرازول) ومن خلال تحديد نشاط Caspase-3، على التوالي. كانت قيم كل من سعة التحميل والتغليف عالية (88٪ وأكثر من 2٪ على التوالي). كان معدل إطلاق ال (TQ-RES) من الجسيمات النانونية المستهدفة أبطأ من الأدوية غير المحملة خلال الخمس ساعات الأولى ولكن أصبح متشابها بعد مرور 24 ساعة. كانت نسب سمية الخلايا ايضا متشابهة لهاتين العينتين ولكن بالمقابل كانت هذه النسب أعلى مقارنة بكل من الجسيمات النانوية المحملة ولكن غير المستهدفة والجسيمات غير المحملة والمستهدفة. وقد تم ملاحظة نفس العلاقة عند دراسة نسبة استحثاث موت الخلايا المبرمج . سيؤدي الحصول على فوائد هذا النظام إلى فتح الباب للمزيد من التجارب داخل الجسم الحي وبالتالي استخدام هذا النظام كعلاج موجه للسرطان.
Free Space Optical Communication: A review of Challenges and Mitigation Techniques

Since a last few years, Free Space Optical Communication (FSO) has been used over Radio Frequency technologies for transmission of voice and data. There are many advantages of FSO. It is a technology free of license having an ease of deployment, a high bandwidth and a quite high data rate too. However, it could not attract much attention commercially for it is a technology that is based on light. The performance of a FSOC system is not only affected by atmospheric conditions of haze, fog, rains etc. which can induce fading but also by Angle of Arrival and Pointing error if transmitter and receiver are not aligned precisely. In this paper, we analyze the different challenges faced by FSO system together with the solutions proposed and the way ahead to bring about a further increase in its performance. IndexTerms -Free Space Optical Communication, MIMO, OFDM, OSSK, Visible light communication, RF/FSO.
PLOP: Probabilistic poLynomial Objects trajectory Planning for autonomous driving

To navigate safely in urban environments, an autonomous vehicle (ego vehicle) must understand and anticipate its surroundings, in particular the behavior and intents of other road users (neighbors). Most of the times, multiple decision choices are acceptable for all road users (e.g., turn right or left, or different ways of avoiding an obstacle), leading to a highly uncertain and multi-modal decision space. We focus here on predicting multiple feasible future trajectories for both ego vehicle and neighbors through a probabilistic framework. We rely on a conditional imitation learning algorithm, conditioned by a navigation command for the ego vehicle (e.g., "turn right"). Our model processes ego vehicle front-facing camera images and bird-eye view grid, computed from Lidar point clouds, with detections of past and present objects, in order to generate multiple trajectories for both ego vehicle and its neighbors. Our approach is computationally efficient and relies only on on-board sensors. We evaluate our method offline on the publicly available dataset nuScenes, achieving state-of-the-art performance, investigate the impact of our architecture choices on online simulated experiments and show preliminary insights for real vehicle control
A Corpus of Adpositional Supersenses for Mandarin Chinese

Adpositions are frequent markers of semantic relations, but they are highly ambiguous and vary significantly from language to language. Moreover, there is a dearth of annotated corpora for investigating the cross-linguistic variation of adposition semantics, or for building multilingual disambiguation systems. This paper presents a corpus in which all adpositions have been semantically annotated in Mandarin Chinese; to the best of our knowledge, this is the first Chinese corpus to be broadly annotated with adposition semantics. Our approach adapts a framework that defined a general set of supersenses according to ostensibly language-independent semantic criteria, though its development focused primarily on English prepositions (Schneider et al., 2018). We find that the supersense categories are well-suited to Chinese adpositions despite syntactic differences from English. On a Mandarin translation of The Little Prince, we achieve high inter-annotator agreement and analyze semantic correspondences of adposition tokens in bitext.