Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Comparative Study on Feature Selection in Relation Extraction from Electronic Health Records

In this paper, we focus on clinical relation extraction; namely, given a medical record with mentions of drugs and their attributes, we identify relations between these entities. We propose a machine learning model with a novel set of knowledge and context embedding features. We systematically investigate the impact of these features with popular distance and word-based features. Experiments are conducted on a benchmark dataset of clinical texts from the MADE 2018 shared task. We compare the developed feature-based model with BERT and several state-of-the-art models. The obtained results show that distance and word features are signi(cid:12)cantly bene(cid:12)cial to the classi(cid:12)er. The knowledge-based features increase classi(cid:12)cation results on particular types of relations only. The context embedding feature gives the highest increase in results among the other explored features. The classi(cid:12)er obtains state-of-the-art performance in clinical relation extraction with 92.6% of F-measure improving F-measure by 3.5% on the MADE corpus.
Prevalence of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus and Associated Risk Factors among Local Government Workers at Bariadi Town Council, Tanzania, A Cross Section Study 2017

Background: Although the government-initiated interventions to address the risk of diet-related non-communicable diseases, the prevalence of T2DM is still high, we conducted this study to determine the magnitude of T2DM and associated risk factors among health workers in Bariadi Town Council Tanzania. Methodology: A cross-sectional study approach was applied for 229 participants. Qualitative variable was measured using proportion and quantitative variable were measured using mean and median. Strength of association was assessed by Odds Ratios with their corresponding 95% confidence interval. Both bivariable and multivariable logistic regression was used. Results: The overall prevalence was found to be 7.9% (95%CI=4.7-12.1). Risk factors for T2DM were found to be sex (OR=4.545, 95%CI: 1.069-19.325), age between 30-41 and 41-50 years (OR=8.08, 95%CI: 1.215-53.741; OR=15.08, 95%CI: 2.315-98.342) and history of raised blood sugar (OR=0.032, 95%CI: 0.006-0.167). Conclusion: Prevalence of T2DM was found to be high, female having higher than male. Sex, age, history of diabetes had significant association with T2DM. Control efforts should be directed on screening and public nutrition programmes.
Long‐term evapotranspiration rates for rainfed corn versus perennial bioenergy crops in a mesic landscape

Perennial cellulosic crops are promoted for their potential contributions to a sustainable energy future. However, a large‐scale perennial bioenergy production requires extensive land use changes through diversion of croplands or conversion of uncultivated lands, with potential implications for local and regional hydrology. To assess the impact of such land use conversions on ecosystem water use, we converted three 22 year‐old Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) grasslands and three 50+ year‐old conventionally tilled corn‐soybean crop fields (AGR) to either no‐till continuous maize (corn) or perennial (switchgrass or restored prairie) bioenergy crops. We also maintained one CRP grassland without conversion. We measured evapotranspiration (ET) rates on all fields for 9 years using eddy covariance methods. Results show that: (a) mean growing‐season ET rates for perennial crops were similar to the ET rate of the corn they replaced at the previously cultivated (AGR) field but ET rates for perennial crops at CRP fields were 5–9% higher than ET rate for corn on former CRP fields; and (b) mean nongrowing season ET rates for perennial fields were 11–15% lower than those for corn fields, regardless of land use history. On an annual basis, mean ET rates for perennial crops tended to be lower (4–7%) than ET rate of the corn that they replaced at AGR fields but ET rates for perennial crops and corn at CRP fields were similar. Over 9 years, mean ET rates for the same crop across land use histories were remarkably similar for corn, whereas for the perennial crops they were 4–10% higher at former CRP than at former AGR fields, mainly due to differences in growing season ET. Over the 9 years and across all fields, ET returned ~60% of the precipitation back to the atmosphere. These findings suggest that large‐scale substitution of perennial bioenergy crops for rainfed corn in mesic landscapes would have little if any (0 to −3%) impact on terrestrial water balances.
Mapping Crowdfunding Research on the Web of Science Database: A Bibliometric Analysis Approach

Crowdfunding research continues to evolve, particularly in entrepreneurship area. Scholars in various disciplines have shown an increased interest in this new financial technology, making crowdfunding a multidisciplinary concern. As crowdfunding research develops, researchers have systemically reviewed this topic. The purpose of this paper is to conduct a bibliometric analysis of the patterns and trends of crowdfunding research. This study examines the pattern of crowdfunding-related publications regarding citations, co-citations, and co-word analysis using sample data of 2956 articles (487 articles were specific to crowdfunding) published between the years 2008 to 2018. The study results suggest that crowdfunding publications are dominantly from the business and management fields. Findings from co-word analysis reveal that crowdfunding research is evolving within its field with little connections to the broader concept of crowdsourcing. The results also support previous claims by scholars that most of the publications on crowdfunding focus on success. Implications and future research directions are posed.
Inviting Applicants, Birth Parents and Young People to Attend Adoption Panel: How it Works in Practice

Based on their experience as advisers to the Isle of Wight Adoption Panel, Sarah Pepys and Jennie Dix examine the practice of inviting adoption applicants, birth parents and young people to attend adoption panel when their plans or assessments are under consideration. They look at the setting up of a pilot scheme in 1994, which focused on preparing panel members, drawing together procedures and addressing practical problems, and describe subsequent developments and reviews. The authors argue that inviting all parties to share their views leads to better informed panel recommendations and enhanced planning for children for whom adoption is being considered. Mindful of the forthcoming implementation of the Human Rights Act, with its emphasis on fairness and the need to consider each individual's rights, it is timely for adoption agencies to consider how they demonstrate the openness of their practice.
Drug utilization studies

INTRODUCTION Drug utilization studies are a prerequisite for the formulation of drug policies. They also offer useful methods for teaching and training in drug therapy. It is well known that indiscriminate use of drugs results in unwanted side effects, drug interactions and ecological disturbances and poses difficulties in diagnosis. Problems such as improper storage, distribution, compliance and selection of drugs constitute a major threat to society. Drug catastrophes and addiction are serious issues of the day. Manufacturers create artificial demands of unwanted drugs and drug combinations through competitive sales promotions. Most of these drugs are accepted by prescribing physicians without full knowledge of their cost, efficacy and safety. This review identifies the problems that arise from drug usage in the health care delivery system and highlights the current approaches to the rational use of drugs. A meeting of the WHO Drug Utilization Research Group (DURG) was held in Cologne, Federal Republic of Germany, in November 1985, to discuss the results of current research and to set priorities for future activities. ' In 1986, the WHO collaborating centre for Drug Statistics Methodology, Oslo, Norway, published the Drug Utilization Bibliography? which contains a list of 709 papers published between May 1981 and January 1986. At about the same time, the WHO International Monitoring Centre at Uppsala was entrusted with the task of coordinating the research on drug utilization in various countries. It is worth noting that the Nordic countries pioneered drug utilization studies and have reported interesting facts about the pattern of drug usage.v"
Stiffness modeling of 3RRR parallel spherical manipulator

The paper deals with stiffness modeling of 3RRR parallel spherical manipulator. This manipulator is proposed to be used as a rehabilitation device for wrist trauma. The desired elastostatic model is obtained using a matrix structural analysis approach (MSA) which divides robot representation into two sets of constraints describing elasticity of the links and connection between them. The model operates with matrices of size 84x84 for each leg. As a result, the closed-form solution for the Cartesian stiffness matrix for this type of robot is derived.
Urchin harvesting and kelp regrowth in northern Norway under ocean acidification and warming

Rising carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations in the atmosphere are driving important changes in the oceans. More CO2 is being absorbed by the ocean, causing chemical changes referred to collectively as ‘ocean acidification’ (Feely et al., 2004; IPCC 2014). Through the greenhouse effect, increasing atmospheric CO2 is also causing a rise in global air temperature (often termed ‘global warming’) which in turn leads to warmer oceans. Such changes can affect marine biota and ecosystems, potentially modifying the provision of ecosystem services to human societies such that human welfare is impacted (Doney et al., 2009; Brander et al., 2014; Falkenberg and Tubb, 2017).
Students’ Expectations and Experiences in E-Learning: A case study Among Trainees Servicing the Government Agency in Malaysia

This study seeks to explore respondents’ perception and perceived usefulness of e-Learning systems. The study employed the qualitative approach by using focus group. Data was gathered from two groups of respondents, the officers and other ranks who at present are the trainees for one of the government agencies in Malaysia. The process of data collection was conducted in February 2018 and it involved 32 personnel who were then were grouped into three categories (early adopters, moderate access and heavy access). The respondents are the first group among various intakes that were selected to undergo training and classes in a blended learning environment. The results revealed a positive response and perception of the implementation of an e-Learning system. More than 90% of the respondents agreed that the implementation of eLearning into their training modules had met their expectation. There is also a strong positive effect on the usefulness of e-Learning systems towards the respondent’s daily job routine. With further suggestions and continuous improvement, the present e-Learning system can be more interactive and serve as the point of reference to the trainees.
NBS1 promotes the endonuclease of the MRE11- RAD50 complex by sensing CtIP phosphorylation

Anand, Roopesh; Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB), Faculty of Biomedical Sciences, Università della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland Jasrotia, Arti; Department of Gynecology, University of Zurich, Switzerland Bundschuh, Diana; Department of Gynecology, University of Zurich, Switzerland Howard, Sean Michael; Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB), Faculty of Biomedical Sciences, Università della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland Ranjha, Lepakshi; Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB), Faculty of Biomedical Sciences, Università della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland Stucki, Manuel; Department of Gynecology, University of Zurich, Switzerland Cejka, Petr; Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB), Faculty of Biomedical Sciences, Università della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland Institute of Biochemistry, Department of Biology, ETH Zürich, Switzerland
Correlation of inflammatory cytokines with radicular pain after lumbar intervertebral disc protrusion

Objective: The aim of this study was to examine the correlation of inflammatory cytokines with radicular pain after lumbar intervertebral disc protrusion. The degree of radicular pain was quantified and digitized in order to guide clinical drug dose and treatment, and better evaluate curative effects. Methods: A total of 20 patients with lumbar intervertebral disc protrusion, from October 2016 to October 2017, who met inclusion criteria were selected as the observation group. Observation group was further divided into bulging type (Observation Group A, n=6), protrusion type (Observation Group B, n=9), and sequestration type (Observation Group C, n=5), based on results of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) examinations. A total of 20 normal subjects were collected as the control group. Venous blood was collected after admission, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was used to detect expression levels of inflammatory cytokines [interleukin-1 (IL-1), IL-6, IL-18, and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α)], and visual analogue scale (VAS) scoring was used to evaluate the degree of radicular pain in each group. Analyses were employed to study the correlation of expression levels of IL-1, IL-6, IL-18, and TNF-α with VAS scores. Results: Compared to those in the control group, expression levels of inflammatory cytokines in Group A, Group B, and Group C were significantly increased (P<0.05). Compared to Group A, Group B and Group C had obviously elevated expression levels of inflammatory cytokines (P<0.05). Expression levels of inflammatory cytokines in Group C were significantly higher than those in Group B (P<0.05). Compared to the control group, VAS scores in Group A, Group B, and Group C were significantly increased (P<0.05). Compared to Group A, Group B and Group C were found with obviously elevating VAS scores, while the differences were of statistical significance (P<0.05). VAS scores in Group C were significantly higher than that in Group B (P<0.05). Expression levels of IL-1, IL-6, IL-18, and TNF-α after lumbar intervertebral disc protrusion were positively correlated with radicular pain. Conclusion: Expression levels of inflammatory cytokines (IL-1, IL-6, IL-18, and TNF-α) in the venous blood of patients with lumbar intervertebral disc protrusion are higher than those in normal people, as the lumbar intervertebral disc protrusion aggravated, and positively correlated with radicular pain. These can be used as indexes to reflect the degree of radicular pain. Quantification and digitization of radicular pain are helpful in guiding the clinical drug dose and treatment, as well as better evaluating curative effects.
EEG: identification of concentration level under pair programming

In this paper we present preliminary research outcomes of an experimental investigation identified with the use of electroencephalography (EEG) device in estimation of various well defined programming tasks. We examine current strategies and problems of carrying out this experiment and specifically, we focus on the pair programming activity implied by modern EEG devices with given particular condition and specific calibration.
Search and Observations of Optical Counterparts for Events Registered by LIGO/Virgo Gravitational Wave Detectors

The problem of search for optical counterpart of LIGO/Virgo events are discussing. Multi-messenger astronomy boosts the use a huge amount of astronomical data obtained by virtually all observatories around the world. We are discussing different methods used for observations, problem of search for transients in the extremely large localization error-box of LIGO/Virgo events, and lessons obtained during second observational run of LIGO/Virgo in 2017. In particular we present our experience and results of follow up observations of LIGO/Virgo optical counterpart candidates.
Early Detection of Controversial Urdu Speeches from Social Media

Controversial speech detection on social media is critical for various applications such as content recommendation and controversial event extraction. In this article, a data driven approach is applied for the collection of Urdu tweets and their classification as controversial or noncontroversial tweets. In particular, Support Vector Machine (SVM), Naive Bayes (NB) and Logistic Regression (LR) models have been trained for this task. Furthermore, controversial Urdu tweets have been analyzed using sequential pattern mining and sequential rule mining to find the most frequent words and patterns, and relationships between words in patterns. Results show that NB outperforms SVM and LR for this classification task. Besides, some interesting patterns were discovered, which can be used to automatically identify tweets containing controversial speeches or messages. By applying sequential rule mining, interesting relationships between words in patterns were also found.
Compression-Based Clustering of Chromagram Data: New Method and Representations

We approach the problem of measuring similarity between chromagrams and present two new quantized representations for the task. The first representation is a sequence of optimal transposition index (OTI) values between the global chroma vector and each frame of the chromagram, whereas the second representation uses in similar fashion the global chroma of the query and frames of the target chromagram, thus emphasizing the mutual information of the chromagrams in the representation. The similarity between quantized representations is measured using normalized compression distance (NCD) as the similarity metric, and we experiment with a variant of k-medians algorithm, where the commonly used Euclidean distance has been replaced with NCD, to cluster the chromagrams. The representations and clustering method are evaluated by experimenting how well different cover versions of a composition can be clustered, and based on the experiments, we analyze various parameter settings for the representations. The results are promising and provide possible directions for future work.
Student perspectives on the factors of being a great mathematics teacher regarding teaching methods

Introduction and significance Chinese teaching has been labeled as teacher-led, and the students are considered to learn mainly by listening to teachers (Wong, 2004). Based on this perspective the ability to create a teacher-led learning environment becomes a criterion for a “good” teacher in Chinese society. A crucial factor for creating a teacher-led environment is the ability to explain concepts clearly (Leinhardt, 2004). The findings of Kaur’s studies (2008, 2009) revealed that Singaporean students considered mathematics teachers as satisfactory if they could explain difficult content clearly and render it easily understandable. Kaur’s findings matched the results of studies in Western societies, such as Murray’s study (2011) in Australia, and Lavy and Shriki’s study (2008) in Israel.
The adjuvant therapeutic effect of regularly taking slow walks over the long-term on inflammation in elderly hypertensive patients

Objective: To investigate the adjuvant therapeutic effect of regularly taking slow walks over the long term on inflammation in elderly hypertensive patients. Methods: 83 elderly hypertensive patients were randomly selected and divided into two groups. Patients in the control group were treated with routine drugs, but those in the treatment group took regular, slow walks over the long term as the basis of their routine therapy. The treatment lasted for two years. Changes in blood pressure, blood lipids, and inflammatory factors were analyzed, and the conditions of the cardiac and cranial nerves were also evaluated at 0.5, 1, and 2 years after the initial treatment. Results: Before the treatment, there were no differences in blood pressure, blood lipids, or inflammatory factors between the two groups. After one year’s treatment, the systolic pressure and tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) levels were decreased significantly in the treatment group compared to the control group (P<0.05). After two years’ treatment, blood pressure, blood lipids (TC and TG), and the inflammatory factors in the treatment group were significantly lower than the levels in the control group, but, the high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) levels in the treatment group were significantly higher compared with the control group (P<0.05). The damage rates of the hearts, brains, and kidneys in the treatment group were all significantly lower than the damage rates in the control group (P<0.05). Conclusion: Taking regular, slow walks over the long term has a significant effect on lowering blood pressure, reducing lipids, and reducing inflammation in elderly hypertensive patients.
Generating Images with Neural Networks

Artists often want to edit global properties of an image such as hue and saturation without changing how it appears in small areas. Current tools usually don't attempt to prevent modifications to the perceptual content of an image. We propose a deep learning based method for color transfer problem that modifying the image to change the desired parameter while attempting to keep the detected high-level features as constant as possible and requires no user input besides the input image and the target color.
5-Aza-2’-deoxycytidine inhibits proliferation and induces apoptosis in oral cancer cells by enhancing glutathione peroxidase-3 expression

Background: Oral cancer is one of the most malignant cancers. Recent studies have suggested that glutathione peroxidase (GPX)-3 significantly affects the progression and prognosis of cancers. However, the function and mechanism of GPX3 in oral cancer are still unclear. Purpose: The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of 5-aza-2’-deoxycytidine (5-Aza-Cd) on the proliferation and apoptosis of oral cancer cells and the expression level of GPX-3. Materials and Methods: The methylation status and expression of GPX3 were analyzed using methylationspecific PCR (MSP) and qRT-PCR assays in normal oral epithelium cells (CAL-27) and oral cancer cells (HSC-3). CAL-27 and HSC-3 cells were treated with 20 μmol/L 5-Aza-Cd, and GPX3 expression was measured by qRT-PCR assay. The methylation status of GPX3 was observed by methylation-specific PCR (MSP), and cell proliferation and apoptosis were assessed using the CCK-8 assay and flow cytometry. Results: Our results demonstrated that GPX3 expression was decreased, and methylation of the GPX3 promoter was increased in CAL-27 and HSC-3 cells compared with normal cells. The 5-Aza-Cd treatment upregulated GPX3 expression and downregulated methylation of the GPX3 promoter in CAL-27 and HSC-3 cells. In addition, 5-Aza-Cd inhibited proliferation and promoted apoptosis in oral cancer cells. Conclusions: Our results suggest that 5-Aza-Cd suppressed proliferation and accelerated apoptosis in oral cancer cells by inhibiting demethylation and thereby promoting GPX3 expression.