Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Microbially influenced corrosion of carbon steel in the presence of anaerobic sulphate-reducing bacteria

Carbon steel is currently being considered as a candidate canister material for use in a deep geological repository of radioactive waste. Assessment of canister material corrosion through microbial activity is an important part of the safety assessment for the final repository. The aim of study was to compare and characterise the corrosion behaviour of carbon steel under sterile and non-sterile anaerobic conditions in natural groundwater containing sulphate-reducing bacteria (SRB). A molecular-biological approach was used to determine the presence and abundance changes of relevant bacterial groups. Carbon steel corrosion rates were higher in the presence of SRB compared with sterile control. EIS described the evolution of three time-constants under non-sterile conditions, while scanning electron microscopy confirmed that the carbon steel surface was covered with a two-layer biofilm. Molecular-biological analysis of the water and biofilm indicated the dominance of SRB, with Desulfomicrobium and Desulfovibrio species prevalent.
Neural Communication Systems with Bandwidth-limited Channel

Reliably transmitting messages despite information loss due to a noisy channel is a core problem of information theory. One of the most important aspects of real world communication, e.g. via wifi, is that it may happen at varying levels of information transfer. The bandwidth-limited channel models this phenomenon. In this study we consider learning coding with the bandwidth-limited channel (BWLC). Recently, neural communication models such as variational autoencoders have been studied for the task of source compression. We build upon this work by studying neural communication systems with the BWLC. Specifically,we find three modelling choices that are relevant under expected information loss. First, instead of separating the sub-tasks of compression (source coding) and error correction (channel coding), we propose to model both jointly. Framing the problem as a variational learning problem, we conclude that joint systems outperform their separate counterparts when coding is performed by flexible learnable function approximators such as neural networks. To facilitate learning, we introduce a differentiable and computationally efficient version of the bandwidth-limited channel. Second, we propose a design to model missing information with a prior, and incorporate this into the channel model. Finally, sampling from the joint model is improved by introducing auxiliary latent variables in the decoder. Experimental results justify the validity of our design decisions through improved distortion and FID scores.
Incidence and Outcomes of Significant Weight Changes After Pancreas Transplant Alone

Background. Weight change, primarily weight gain, is a common problem among solid organ transplant recipients. The incidence of weight gain or loss after successful pancreas transplant alone (PTA) and the effect on graft survival is unknown. Methods. This was a single-center observational study among PTA recipients, transplanted at our center between January 1, 2005, and July 31, 2017, who had a functional pancreas graft for at least 1 year and documented weight change at the 1-year clinic visit. Results. In this cohort study of 105 PTA recipients, 28 had significant weight gain, 27 had significant weight loss, and the remaining 50 did not have significant weight change at 1-year posttransplant. When comparing the weight gain and no weight change groups, the weight gain cohort started to gain weight at 3 months posttransplant to 5 years or last follow up. Similarly, the weight loss group lost weight at 3 months posttransplant up to last follow up. Clinically significant weight gain or weight loss were not associated with uncensored or death censored graft failure in univariate regression and Kaplan-Meier survival analysis. Also, there were no significant differences between the groups in the glycated hemoglobin at last follow up. Conclusions. Approximately 50% of PTA recipients had a significant weight change at 1-year posttransplant, of which 25% gained significant weight and 25% loss. There was no significant difference in graft survival due to the significant weight changes. Further research is needed in this field.
Acute myocardial infarction and stroke registries. The Italian experience

Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are the leading causes of death and hospitalisation in nearly all European countries and accounted for almost 40% of all deaths in 2013. With the exception of few rigorous but limited studies carried out in some geographical areas, data available on CVD incidence and prevalence is generally limited and of poor quality, despite the magnitude of the CVD phenomenon. The EUROCISS Project, supported by the Health Monitoring Programme of the DG SANCO from 2000 to 2007, provided general guidance and updated methods for the surveillance of Acute Myocardial Infarction and Stroke. The Italian population-based registry of major coronary and cerebrovascular events was set up following EUROCISS recommendations; it also took into account the experience acquired by Italy in the MONICA project since the mid-1980s and continued with the coordination of the EUROCISS The project: “A population-based AMI register: assessing the feasibility for a pilot study to implement a surveillance system of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) in Mediterranean countries according to EUROCISS recommendations” in the framework of the EuroMed Programme, followed major practical and operative issues for the implementation of a population-based registry for coronary and cerebrovascular events, which are here described. This paper includes the definition of target population, data sources, events, indicators, quality methods, and the description of a software used to implement the registry.
Churn Analysis in a Romanian Telecommunications Company

Telecommunications is one of the sectors where the customer base plays a significant role in maintaining stable revenues, so special attention is paid to prevent their migration to other providers. Over time, businesses in the telecommunications industry have faced multiple threats of financial loss from migrating customers who want to leave their telecom service provider in exchange for other offers from competing companies. An effective prediction model of this action can not only be viewed as an insurance policy, supporting stable revenue, but also provides suggestions for database management so that potential migrant customers can benefit from personalized offers and services, depending on their profile, thus preventing their loss. The aim of this paper is to predict customers who are going to defect in a Romanian mobile telecommunications company. The churn analysis is developed for post-paid customers. We used logistic regression to predict churn and a solution based on smoothed bootstrap technique to correct for the drawbacks of imbalanced classes. In our study this procedure did not significantly improve the performance of the logistic classifier measured by AUC (Area Under the Receiver Operating Characteristic curve). So even after balancing the sample we still obtain a really reduced value of the AUC, making it difficult to correctly predict churn phenomenon on the available data set.
Atypical Squamous Cells of Undetermined Significance (ASCUS)

When the cervical screening test shows the presence of ASCUS, it means that the cells are somewhat different from normal cells under the microscope but their degree of deterioration is not severe enough for them to be called pre-cancerous cells. ASCUS is the most common abnormal finding in cervical screening tests: Out of every 100 women taking the screening test, about 3 to 5 will have the above manifestation and 50% of whom will have their cells regressed to normal after 4 to 6 months. HPV triage is an additional test that has been performed to assess whether the cervical cells have been infected by high risk Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) or not. This further assesses the risk of cells changing to pre-cancerous or cancerous cells over time because nearly all cases of cervical cancer are caused by infection with high risk HPV. If the cervical cells have not been infected by high risk HPV, the chance of severe cell deterioration is very low. Therefore, women will only be required to repeat the test 3 years later. If the result of the repeat test is normal, then she can continue routine screening like other women. If the result of the repeat test shows persistent abnormal cells, or cells with further deterioration, then she will be referred to specialist clinic for colposcopy. We understand that women may wish to have a repeat test as soon as possible. As the external layer of cervical cells has been scraped off during the previous smear and the cells take time to grow again (at least 4 to 6 weeks), early re-examination cannot reflect the condition of the cervical cells accurately and would not allow the cells sufficient time to regress to normal. Moreover, overly frequent testing could detect changes that may never cause cancer, thereby leading to unnecessary anxiety, investigations and treatment. It is therefore advised that you attend for a repeat test at the scheduled time. If the cervical cells have been infected by high risk Human Papilloma Virus, there is a chance that these cells may have severely deteriorated or have even developed into cancer. Therefore, the women must be referred to specialist clinic for colposcopy. Since the progression from severe deterioration of cervical cells to cancer generally takes 5 to 10 years, the condition does not pose any immediate threat, so please do not worry excessively.
Classification of skin-cancer lesions based on fluorescence lifetime imaging

Every year more than 5.4 million new cases of skin cancer are reported in the US. Melanoma is the most lethal type with only 5% occurrence rate, but accounts for over 75% of all skin cancer deaths. Non-melanoma skin cancer, especially basal cell carcinoma (BCC) is the most commonly occurring and often curable type that affects more than 3 million people and causes about 2000 deaths in the US annually. The current diagnosis involves visual inspection, followed by biopsy of the lesions. The major drawbacks of this practice include difficulty in border detection causing incomplete treatment and, the inability to distinguish between clinically similar lesions. Melanoma is often mistaken for the benign lesion pigmented seborrheic keratosis (pSK), making it extremely important to differentiate benign and malignant lesions. In this work, a novel feature extraction algorithm based on phasors was performed on the Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging (FLIM) images of the skin to reliably distinguish between benign and malignant lesions. This approach, unlike the standard FLIM data processing method that requires time-deconvolution of the instrument response from the measured time-resolved fluorescence signal, is computationally much simpler and provides a unique set of features for classification. Subsequently, FLIM derived features were selected using a double step cross validation approach that assesses the reliability and the performance of the resultant trained classifier. Promising FLIM-based classification performance was attained for detecting benign from malignant pigmented (sensitivity: ~80%, specificity: 79%, overall accuracy: ~79%) and nonpigmented (sensitivity: ~88%, specificity: 83%, overall accuracy: ~87%) lesions.
Deep Radiomics Analytics Pipeline for Prognosis of Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma

Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is one of the most aggressive cancers with extremely poor prognosis. Radiomics has shown prognostic ability in multiple types of cancer including PDAC. However, the prognostic value of traditional radiomics pipelines, which are based on hand-crafted radiomic features alone, is limited due to high correlation among features and the multiple testing problem. Deep learning architectures, such as Convolutional Neural networks (CNNs) have been shown to outperform traditional featurebased approaches in computer vision tasks such as object detection. Nonetheless, they require large sample sizes for training which limits their application in medical imaging. As an alternative solution, CNN-based transfer learning has shown potential for achieving reasonable performance using datasets with small sample sizes. In this work, we developed a CNN-based deep radiomics pipeline based on transfer learning, which outperforms the traditional radiomics model in resectable PDAC prognostication.
Image processing based eye detection methods a theoretical review

Lately, many of the road accidents have been attributed to the driver stupor. Statistics revealed that about 32% of the drivers who met with such accidents demonstrated the symptoms of tiredness before the mishap though at varying levels. The purpose of this research paper is to revisit the various interventions that have been devised to provide for assistance to the vehicle users to avert unwarranted contingencies on the roads. The paper tries to make a sincere attempt to encapsulate the body of work that has been initiated so far in this direction. As is evident, there are numerous ways in which one can identify the fatigue of the driver, namely biotic or physiological gauges, vehicle type and more importantly the analysis of the face in terms of its alignment and other attributes.
Predictors of Spontaneous Bacterial Peritonitis (SBP) in Liver Cirrhosis: Current Knowledge and Future Frontiers

Spontaneous bacterial peritonitis (SBP) in patients with cirrhotic liver disease is a serious complication that contributes to the high morbidity and mortality rate seen in this population. Currently, there is a lack of consensus amongst the research community on the clinical predictors of SBP as well as the risks and benefits of prophylactic antibiotic therapy in these patients. Pharmacological gastric acid suppression (namely with PPIs and H2RAs) are frequently prescribed for these patients, many times without a clear indication, and may contribute to gut bacterial overflow and SBP development. However, this remains controversial as there are conflicting findings in SBP prevalence between PPI/H2RA-users and non-users. In addition, studies show recent antibiotic use, whether for SBP prophylaxis or for another infectious process, appear to be associated with higher rates of SBP and drug-resistant organisms. Other researchers have also explored the link between zinc, platelet indices (MPV), and macrophage inflammatory protein-1 β (MIP-1β) levels in liver cirrhosis, all of which appear to be promising markers for classifying SBP risk and diagnosis. This literature review was limited by the number and quality of studies available as most are retrospective in nature. Thus, more ongoing, prospective studies and trials are needed to judge the true value of the findings in the studies reviewed in hopes that they can guide appropriate prevention, diagnosis, and management of SBP.
Post-traumatic stress disorder among Afghan refugees following war

There was a large influx of Afghan refugees into Pakistan during the 1980s and in particular after the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. That refugees have high rates of mental health problems has been well established (e.g. De Jong et al, 2000) – causes include migration, often with painful transit experiences, difficult camp life and the experience of major trauma, including multiple losses of family members as well as the loss of property and traditional lifestyle. However, the Afghan refugees in Pakistan have been poorly studied. Although the mental health problems of Afghan refugees have been studied in the West, the numbers of participants in such research have been relatively small.
Developmental hourglass and heterochronic shifts in fin and limb development

How genetic changes are linked to morphological novelties and developmental constraints remains elusive. Here we investigate genetic apparatuses that distinguish fish fins from tetrapod limbs by analyzing transcriptomes and open chromatin regions (OCRs). Specifically, we compare mouse forelimb buds with pectoral fin buds of a slowly evolving species, the brown-banded bamboo shark (Chiloscyllium punctatum). A transcriptomic comparison with an accurate orthology map reveals both a mass heterochrony and hourglass-shaped conservation of gene expression between fins and limbs. Furthermore, chromatin-accessibility data indicate that conserved regulatory sequences are most active during mid-stage limb development. During this stage, stage-specific and tissue-specific OCRs are also enriched. Together, early and late stages of fin/limb development are more permissive to mutations, which may have contributed to the major morphological changes during the fin-to-limb evolution. We also hypothesize that the middle stages are constrained by regulatory complexity that results from dynamic and tissue-specific transcriptional controls.
Time as infrastructure

Overlapping and interlinked dimensions of time are shaped by and, in turn, structure contemporary urbanization and everyday life. This Special Feature debates the implications of such temporal dynamics for our cities: It explores the making of temporalities, the power relations in and through which this process is embedded, and the inequalities that its effects entail. Beyond definitions that focus on the material characteristics of infrastructures, the Special Feature understands temporalities themselves as infrastructures: structures that underlie and powerfully shape current forms of social organization and interaction. Considering time through this analytic lens promises to elucidate the ways in which political, social and economic conditions shape and exert authority over the everyday urban, as well as the material and social effects of such dominations. The papers assembled in this Special Feature unite scholars from different disciplines, probing this infrastructural lens to understand the structuring effects of urban temporalities in relation to central issues of contemporary urban development, including urban mobility and transnational migration, the politics of financializing urban infrastructure, urban energy transitions and climate risk. Moreover, thinking through the making of temporal infrastructures—that is, disentangling temporal authorities and their underlying power structures—allows thinking through opportunities for action and political change. In sum, these contributions advance three aims: to strengthen and enrich the analytical notion of infrastructure; to facilitate new knowledge about the construction of present, past and future temporalities; and to unveil potential entry points for social interventions that aim to establish empowering approaches towards urban equality and inclusion.
Effects of Lace up Brace on the Ankle Muscles Activity in Different Foot Position during Drop Landing with and without Fatigue

Background and Purpose: Increasing participation in sports activities has increased the incidence of sports injuries. Considering the short and long term complications of sports injuries, the need to prevent them is one of the most important goals. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of ankle bracing on the ankle plantar flexor muscles activity in different foot position during drop landing with and without fatigue. Method: Fourteen female college athletes participated in this study. Five models of 5 and 10 degrees medial, lateral and normal wedged insoles were used to simulate the position of the feet on the ground at the wrong landing technique. The Medial Gastrocnemius (MG) and Peroneus Longus (PL) muscles activity 100 ms before and 100ms after landing in different foot position before and after muscles fatigue with and without ankle bracing was recorded with surface electromyography. Repeated measures ANOVA was used for statistical analysis (p≤0.05). Results: The results showed that the effect of time on the activity of MG and PL muscles in landing with brace was significant, so that the MG muscle before landing and PL muscle after landing had a higher activity in both times before and after fatigue (p≤0.001). The activity of this muscles was not significant when using the ankle brace during landing in different positions (p˃0.05). Conclusions: According to the results of this study, lace-up brace can help to increase muscles activity when they were fatigue, while the using of brace does not affect muscle activity when landing perform in different positions without fatigue. According to the results, In the case of a suggestion to use brace for athletes, all aspects of using this equipment should be considered.
LECTURERS’ PERCEIVED CHALLENGES OF EFFECTIVE TEACHING OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION IN POLYTECHNICS AND COLLEGES OF EDUCATION IN OSUN AND LAGOS STATES, NIGERIA

This study, adopting descriptive research design, sought lecturers’ perception on the challenges hindering effective delivery and stimulation of entrepreneurship education in Polytechnics and Colleges of Education in Osun and Lagos States. It also investigated the adequacy or otherwise of the contents of the programme in motivating and inculcating entrepreneurship skills to students. The population of this study was all the 14 lecturers in the Departments Management and technology, Federal Polytechnic Ede, 13 from the Osun State Polytechnic, Iree, 47 from Business Education Departments, Federal College of Education Akoka and 17 fromAdeniran Ogunsanya College of Education, Ijanikin, and Lagos State. Four research questions and two hypotheses were formulated to guide the study while instrument was a self-developed 23-item Questionnaire and scored Likert 4 Point rating scale. Two experts validated the instrument while psychometric properties conducted at theFederal Polytechnic, Offa, Kwara State and Adeyemi College of Education, Ondo State revealed reliability Cronbanch’s alpha coefficient of 0.79. Ninety copies of the instrument were distributed and retrieved by the researchers. Mean and standard deviation were used to analyse data while the hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. Finding revealed that effective delivery of Entrepreneurship Education is hampered by lack of collaboration with local business community, inappropriate teaching strategies, lack of or inadequate tools for practicals and students’ poor attitudes towards the programme. The paper recommended that the lecturers should be adequately trained to meet up with the challenging needs of the learners; lecturers should be more creative and competent in the use of technology and adopt innovative approaches to the teaching of entrepreneurship education.There should be a strong link between the school and the industry for the understanding of what is obtainable and required in the open market. Keywords: Entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship education, tertiary institutions