Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
PWE-084 Is tipss a safe bridge to liver transplantation?

Introduction Transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunts (TIPSS) play an important role in the management of refractory ascites, particularly in patients considered unsuitable for transplantation or in whom a low UKELD score precludes an early transplant. TIPSS carries the risk of precipitating decompensation of underlying liver disease and patients may undergo a prior liver transplant assessment in case they require salvage post-TIPSS. We present a large single centre experience of patients undergoing TIPSS for all indications at a tertiary hepatology transplant centre. The aim was to examine the outcomes of patients receiving a TIPSS and to assess the impact on subsequent liver transplantation. Method All patients receiving a TIPSS for all indications between January 2010 and December 2015 at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust were included. Demographics, indication for TIPSS, aetiology of underlying liver disease, MELD score, UKELD score, and outcome of a previous liver transplant assessment were retrieved from electronic patient records. Post-TIPSS survival was recorded, along with details of subsequent liver transplantation or transplant assessment. Results 130 patients underwent TIPSS during the study period. 67 had a pre-TIPSS transplant assessment and 42 (32%) were assessed as being suitable for a salvage transplant post-TIPSS. Of these 42 patients, alcohol was the aetiology in 29 patients (69%) and the median UKELD score was 52. Among these patients, the median survival was 37.3 months and 8 patients (19%) died within a year of the procedure; 2 died of decompensated liver disease while awaiting a suitable donor liver, 3 were too unwell for transplant due to decompensated liver disease, one patient died of an intracerebral haemorrhage, one patient died of multi-organ failure during transplant re-assessment and one patient was ineligible for transplant due to recalcitrance to alcohol after receiving a TIPSS. Within the group assessed as unsuitable for salvage transplant, the median survival was 11.3 months and the 1 year mortality was 47%. In total, 8 patients were successfully transplanted post-TIPSS; this included 4 patients who were transplant assessed post-TIPSS. Conclusion TIPSS is a less invasive intervention to relieve refractory ascites than liver transplantation in patients who may be precluded from an early transplant due to a low UKELD score. In patients with more advanced alcohol-related liver disease, TIPSS may provide time for further improvement in synthetic function with ongoing abstinence from alcohol. Despite being assessed as suitable for salvage transplant, 19% of patients died within a year of the TIPSS procedure. This highlights the risk of decompensation post-TIPSS which may preclude subsequent liver transplant, as well as the risk of awaiting a suitable donor liver. Disclosure of Interest None Declared
Have we reached the turning point? Looking for evidence of SOC increase under conservation agriculture and cover crop practices

Increasing soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks in agricultural soils is currently of special interest because it can help mitigate global warming through atmospheric carbon (C) sequestration. Recommended management practices, such as conservation agriculture (CA) and conventional tillage with cover crops (CC), could have significant implications for C sequestration potential. A field experiment was carried out in northeast Italy to compare the implementation of CA and CC with conventional agriculture (CV). The experiment began in 2010 on three farms to evaluate SOC stock variation over a 6‐year period. Two extensive soil sampling operations were conducted in 2011 and 2017 in 240 locations, for a total of 1,440 analysed soil samples, considering the SOC stratification within a 0–50‐cm profile. The results suggested that CA changed the SOC distribution rather than the total amount of SOC. Compared to CV, after the introduction of CA, a general increase in SOC (0.25 Mg C ha−1 y−1) was observed in the 0–30‐cm layer, whereas no stock variation was observed in the 0–50‐cm layer. In contrast, compared to CV, the use of CC decreased the SOC stocks by 0.74 Mg C ha−1 y−1 in the 0–50‐cm layer. Over a 6‐year period, no benefit in SOC sequestration was observed with CA and CC. However, we hypothesize that these findings could still be affected by transitory dynamics, highlighting the low soil reactivity to soil‐improving agricultural systems. A longer study period would be required to better understand the potential benefits of CA and CC on SOC sequestration.
Biomedical science students’ intended graduate destinations

Undergraduate students enrolled in generalist degrees, such as biomedical science, have diverse potential graduate pathways that they may choose to pursue. The aims of this study were to evaluate the intended graduate destinations of students, the reasons they chose to study science and the perceived value of the skills they are acquiring for their intended profession. The participants were second year biomedical science students at the University of Queensland. Their responses to open-ended questions regarding their intentions, choices and perceptions were subjected to thematic analysis. Three-quarters of students mentioned one intended profession, with the remainder mentioning two or more. Overall, they identified 53 different intended graduate destinations in the fields of medicine (69%), research (34%), the science industry (14%) and allied health (8%). As reasons for studying science, students commonly reported their interest in science, the influence of role models and enjoyment or academic success in prior study. Many students, particularly those intent on pursuing medicine, said they planned to use science as a pathway to a postgraduate degree. Importantly, all students perceived that the skills they were acquiring in their degree were highly applicable to their future intended professions.
Numerical Analysis of GBS Float-Over Deck Installation at Docking and Undocking Stages Based on a Coupled Heave-Roll-Pitch Impact Model

This paper aims to compare the impact responses in float-over installation for a gravity-based platform under two different simplifications of shock absorbers. A coupled heave-roll-pitch impact model based on the Cummins equation has been established to analyze the dynamic behaviors of installation system, in which the time-consuming convolution integral is replaced by a state-space model, resulting in a constant parameter time-domain model. In present dynamic model, the Leg Mating Units (LMUs) and the Deck Support Units (DSUs), known as shock absorbers, are simplified as vertical gap springs (compression only) with appropriate damping properties since the heave motion of the float-over installation system is the main contribution to the impact loads. Linear and nonlinear springs are assumed to evaluate how the properties of LMUs/DSUs will affect the heave impact response at docking stage and undocking stage. The influence of characteristics of LMU and DSU on the dynamic responses at docking stage is also addressed through the Poincare map and phase portraits.
LANDSCAPE AND RECREATIONAL ANALYSIS OF YERTIS RIVER UPPER PART ON THE BASIS OF BASIN APPROACH (KAZAKHSTAN)

Structural-functional relationships of geosystems in geosystem classification in the river basin are relied on through systematicity concept. As single geosystem, river basin is supercomplex, exo-regulated, impulsively-dynamic geosystem, limited by two special types of surface: threshold vertical (for example, glacial area) and contact horizontal (floodplain). In our opinion, in studies of geosystems of seepage flow it is needed to considerate elements of macro and micro substrate levels of geosystems, not traditional component blocks because surface flow is differentiative factor besides of lithogeneus base. Elements of macro and micro substrate levels of geosystems are parameters of water and heat balance, productivity and yield capacity of phytomass. The purpose of the present article is to study geosystems of the basin of the Yertis river upper part. We regard the geosystems of the unified inter-continental rivers formed by water discharge as paragenetic and paradynamic complexes in the context of the increasing lack of moistening due to natural and anthropogenic factors. These natural complexes develop under the influence of two mutually conditioned leading differentiation factors – a lithogenic base and a river flow. These and other physical-geographical conditions forming the * Corresponding author Landscape and Recreational Analysis of Yertis River Upper Part on the Basis of Basin Approach (Kazakhstan) 1393 river basin enable to define the region as a unified mega-system. The article identifies basic regularities of the transformation of the natural environment of the Yertis river upper part basin. The methodological approach accepted by the authors to the study of modified systems is the theoretical concept of geosystem-basin approach to the study of anthropogenically-transformed systems. Either the following research methods were used: geosystem-basinal, statistical analysis, landscape-structural analysis and maps were compiled with the use of GIS on the ArcGis software.
What is driving the increased demand for red panda pelts?

ABSTRACT Recent seizures of red panda pelts suggest an increasing illegal trade. Our study documents the socio-cultural perspectives affecting red panda conservation in Nepal in an attempt to determine what might be driving this increased trade. To do this, we interviewed local people; reviewed published and unpublished works, websites, and newspapers; and consulted experts. The majority of people living in red panda habitat seem familiar with this species, but it rarely has any medicinal, cultural, or religious significance. Currently, what is driving the demand for pelts is a mystery and cannot be explained by inherent negative perceptions about the animal’s value to society or positive perceptions about its economic value within Nepal. Nonetheless, we suggest that insufficient knowledge about red panda-related crime, miscommunication during awareness-building campaigns, investigators’ influence indicating a demand for pelts with a high price, and poverty-induced, easy money-making motives could be possible drivers for increasing the supply of pelts.
Cold Gas Spraying of a High-Entropy CrFeNiMn Equiatomic Alloy

Cold gas spraying was used to make a coating from an equiatomic CrFeNiMn high-entropy alloy. This four-component alloy was chosen because it is Co-free, thus allowing application in nuclear industries as a possible replacement of currently used stainless steel coatings. The feedstock material was gas atomized powder with a particle size distribution from 20 to 45 µm. A number of parameters were tested, such as the powder feed rate and gas feed pressure, in order to obtain as dense a coating as possible with nitrogen as the process gas. Spraying was performed using a gas preheating temperature of 1000 °C, gas feed pressure ranging from 50 to 60 bar, and two powder feeding rates. The coating thicknesses ranging from 230 to 490 µm and porosities ranging from 3% to 10% were obtained depending on the powder feed rate and gas feed pressure. The hardness of the cross-section of the coating was usually lower than that of the surface. The highest coating hardness obtained was above 300 HV0.3 for both the surface and the cross-section. The as-atomized powder consisted of a face-centered cubic (FCC) phase with a minute amount of body-centered cubic (BCC) phase, which was no longer detectable in the coatings. The microstructure of the coating was highly stressed due to the high degree of deformation occurring in cold gas spraying. The deformation leads to strain hardening and induces a pronounced texture in the coating. The {111} planes tend to align along the coating surface, with deformation and texturing concentrating mainly on particle boundaries. A high-entropy alloy (HEA) coating was successfully sprayed for the first time using nitrogen as a process gas. The coating has the potential to replace stainless steel coatings in nuclear industry applications.
Erectile dysfunction in testicular cancer survivors: a meta-analysis of case-control studies

Testicular cancer (TC) is the most frequent cancer among men aged 14–44 years. The risk of erectile dysfunction (ED) in TC patients varied within a wide range across different studies. This study aims to estimate the risk of ED in TC patients by conducting a meta-analysis of case-control studies.Relevant studies were searched using PubMed, EMBASE, Scopus, and the Cochrane Library up to June 2019. Case-control studies that reported the incidence of ED in TC patients were included.A total of 8 studies involving 2060 TC patients and 2651 healthy men were included. All the TC patients underwent unilateral orchiectomy; other treatment modalities were also conducted if necessary. ED occurred in 16.9% (348/2060) of TC patients and 9.4% (251/2651) of healthy men. Compared with healthy men, TC patients experienced a significantly increased risk of ED (OR = 2.39, 95% CI: 1.56–3.67). Substantial heterogeneity was observed. In addition, subgroup analysis revealed that the risk (OR = 3.76, 95% CI: 2.45–5.78) for ED in TC patients with follow-up < 5 years was significantly higher than that (OR = 1.61, 95% CI: 1.10–3.67) with follow-up ≥ 5 years. Heterogeneity was improved after subgroup analysis.TC patients experienced an increased risk for ED compared with healthy men. The long-term risk for ED in TC patients was lower than the short-term risk.
Coopetition between French healthcare providers: an analysis in terms of proximity

ABSTRACT Despite an ever-increasing literature on coopetition, it does not address the question of the territory and its impact on coopetitive relations between the actors who live there. Our work focuses on French healthcare providers in the cancer treatment field on a local area. To qualify the territory, we use the five dimensions of Boschma’s proximity – cognitive, organisational, social, institutional and geographical – to analyse the coopetition at work in the studied health area. Our work shows that the territory acts as a catalyst for coopetition, and that, in reverse, the coopetitive relationships developed between the actors activate the different dimensions of proximity and thus make the territory exists.
Crowding prediction on mass rapid transit systems using a weighted bidirectional recurrent neural network

Crowding on Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) Systems has been the subject of intense scrutiny from a multitude of academic fields. Crowding prediction can assist system managers in finding effective ways to ease traffic pressure. Forecasting crowding levels is a challenging task due to a series of complex factors. Deep learning models are a common approach often applied to traffic prediction, but due to the imbalance within available data, these models that are based on historical data cannot forecast crowding in Rapid Transit Systems effectively. To solve this problem, this study proposes a model named the weighted resample bidirectional recurrent neural network (WRBRNN). First, the training data were split into different sub-datasets according to certain predetermined labels. During this training time, every mini-batch size sequence was weighed and resampled from different sub-datasets. In this study, the authors carefully arranged the traffic data attributes into several time series, allowing the bidirectional time series information and the model to make reliable predictions. This work performed a case study of the Bay Area Rapid Transit, US system with a year's worth of historical data from 2017. Their results reveal that the model WRBRNN performed well when predicting crowding in an MRT system.
A Framework for Robotic Grasping and Handover With an Underactuated Three-Fingered Hand

Implementing robotic grasp on the Baxter robot without using the default parallel gripper but instead a three fingered underactuated hand. The problem has been solved by using a parallel gripper planner instead of reinventing the wheel for the end-effector in use. This choice allowed to obtain satisfactory results with less design effort and a faster implementation, since it is easier to take advantage of previous works. On the other hand, this approach sacrifice optimality of the grasp, but since the hand is underactuated is not suitable to emulate the human behavior. Moreover, also the handover problem was tackled. We not only wanted to achieve a smooth handover but also pay care to object's safety during the task. In this case we used an optical sensor from a mouse to monitor the object acceleration during the handover. The acceleration feedback is used to re-establish the grasp in those cases where the object was falling too fast.
Existence and Regularity Results of a Ferroelectric Phase-Field Model

In this thesis, we investigate the existence and regularity results of a ferroelectric phasefield model, which is a state-of-the-art model arising in recent years from the engineering area for the ferroelectric study. The ferroelectric phase-field model describes the relationship between the mechanical displacement u, the electric field φ and the spontaneous polarization P . Mathematically, the model is given by a coupled differential system, by the means that the mechanical displacement u and the electric field φ are given as the unique solution of a second order elliptic system, whose coefficients will also depend on the spontaneous polarization P ; The dynamics of P will be given by the nonlinear evolutionary law −DPH(t,u, φ,P ) ∈ ∂Ψ(P ′), (LAW) where Ψ(P ) is a convex and weakly lower semicontinuous dissipation functional, and H is an entropy functional which contains a nonlinearity that is given as a quadratic function of the gradient of (u, φ). We discuss two different cases by imposing different dissipation functionals for the model. We first consider the case that the dissipation functional Ψ(P ) is given as the sum Ψ(P ) = Ψ1(P ) + β‖P ‖L2 , where β is some given fixed positive constant and Ψ1 is a convex, weakly lower semicontinuous and positively 1-homogenous functional. In this case, we will discretize the time interval [0, T ] into subintervals with step size τ > 0 and construct certain time discrete interpolant solutions corresponding to the discretization, which will satisfy a discrete version of (LAW). We then use several variational identities and inequalities to show that by pushing τ to zero, one obtains a weak limit of the time discrete interpolant solutions, which turns out to be the actual solution (the so called viscous solution) of (LAW). Finally, by using certain Γ-convergence theory, we are able to push β to zero to obtain a weak limit of the (parameterized) viscous solutions, the so called vanishing viscosity solution, that will also satisfy a parameterized evolutionary law derived from (LAW). On the other hand, we will also consider the case
HPLC-UV Determination of Dextromethorphan in Syrup Method validation

A HPLC-UV method, for determination of dextromethorphan hydrobromide in syrup, was validated. The chromatographic analysis was performed using an RP-18, Nucleodur chromatographic column (250 mm � 4 mm, 5 �m) at constant temperature (50oC) with a mobile phase consisting of a mixture of acetonitrile/methanol (70:30 v/v) with sodium docusate (as ion pair agent) and ammonium nitrate, pH = 3.4. The flow rate of the mobile phase was 1 mL/min and the detection was carried out at 280 nm. System suitability, specificity, linearity, precision, accuracy, limit of detection and limit of quantification agreed with current pharmacopeial requests. The method is suitable for routine analysis of dextromethorphan hydrobromide in syrup.
Essays on Financial Risk Management

This thesis comprises three essays on systemic risk using a computational approach for the first two chapters and statistical analysis for the third. Chapter 1 uses an agent-based model to determine whether the stability of a financial system can be improved by incorporating BCVA into the pricing of OTC derivative contracts. The results illustrate that the adjustments of financial institutions credit can not only improve the stability of financial counter-parties in credit events but can also reduce systemic risk in the entire network. The scale of the benefit is dependent upon the leverage of institutions and is significantly affected by connectivity and the premium of derivative contracts. Chapter 2 investigates systemic risk in an agent-based model with collateral commitments. Market prices of collateral are calculated by optimisation functions of financial institutions' efficiency. The experiments indicate that the value adjustments (xVA) is more effective at eliminating financial systemic risk than by incorporating only BCVA. However, this effect is unclear in systems of weak infrastructure. The benefit of xVA is also reduced by large exogenous shocks. Similarly, the market prices of collateral decline under high leverage or large premiums because there serves for value adjustments limit financial funding of counter-parties. Asset traders can only offer lower bid-ask prices. Chapter 3 tests the effectiveness of Basel III liquidity standards to enhance the stability of the banking sector. The analyses provide significant evidence that the long-term liquidity regulation of NSFR exacerbates bank profitability and fragility, especially for large banks. Short-term liquidity standard, also known as LCR, has a positive influence on ROAA but a negative impact on bank risk-taking. Nonetheless, these effects are economically insignificant. The Basel III regulations are therefore ineffective at improving bank strength; indeed they reduce bank performance.
Family community ethnic identity and the use of formal health care services in Guatemala.

In this paper we investigate family choices about type of prenatal care and assistance at delivery (childbirth) and the use of childhood immunizations in Guatemala during the early and mid-1980s. Our objective is to investigate the reasons underlying relatively low use of formal health care services in Guatemala particularly among the large indigenous population. (EXCERPT)
Coriolis effects within and trailing a large finite wind farm

Earth’s rotation influences the interaction between large wind farms and the atmospheric boundary layer through wake deflection and the redistribution of turbulence kinetic energy. Wind turbine wake effects and transient, spatially inhomogeneous gravity waves result in the reduction of wind farm power production. Further, individual turbine wakes merge into a collective wind farm wake which may extend for tens of kilometers downstream of a large wind farm. As a result of the horizontal component of Earth’s rotation, wind farm dynamics, including the magnitude of vertical transport of kinetic energy, will be sensitive to changes in the direction of the geostrophic wind. The influences of Earth’s rotation and the direction of the geostrophic wind are characterized in a large, finite wind farm operating in conventionally neutral atmospheric stratification. The Coriolis force induced far wind farm wake deflection is altered by O(100 m) as a function of the geostrophic wind direction.