Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Parallel Lives: A Local-Realistic Interpretation of “Nonlocal” Boxes

We carry out a thought experiment in an imaginary world. Our world is both local and realistic, yet it violates a Bell inequality more than does quantum theory. This serves to debunk the myth that equates local realism with local hidden variables in the simplest possible manner. Along the way, we reinterpret the celebrated 1935 argument of Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen, and come to the conclusion that they were right in their questioning the completeness of the Copenhagen version of quantum theory, provided one believes in a local-realistic universe. Throughout our journey, we strive to explain our views from first principles, without expecting mathematical sophistication nor specialized prior knowledge from the reader.
Associations between perceived social support, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and complex PTSD (CPTSD): implications for treatment

ABSTRACT Background: Perceived social support (PSS) is one of the most important risk factors for the onset and maintenance of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, however the relationship between PSS and Complex PTSD (CPTSD) is unknown. The evidence-base for CPTSD treatment is currently lacking, though increasingly important given the recent publication of the ICD-11, which now allows for a formal diagnosis of CPTSD. Objective: This research aims to develop understanding of the relationship between PSS and CPTSD with a view to informing the development of new and existing treatments. Method: A cross-sectional study was undertaken with 246 individuals recruited to the National Centre for Mental Health (NCMH) cohort. Measures of PSS and PTSD/CPTSD were undertaken with this clinical sample and linear and logistic regression were conducted to assess for associations between PSS and the PTSD symptom clusters of DSM-5 and ICD-11, and to explore the predictive utility of any PSS association on the likelihood of a CPTSD presentation. Results: It was found that individuals with a presentation of CPTSD tend to exhibit lower levels of PSS, compared with individuals not presenting with CPTSD, and lower PSS had a statistically significant unique association with the likelihood of presenting with CPTSD. Conclusions: Intervention aiming to improve PSS could be particularly helpful for some individuals with CPTSD, especially those with disturbances in relationships, and there is opportunity to develop skills training within a phase-based approach to treatment that targets factors related to PSS. HIGHLIGHTS • Individuals with a presentation of Complex Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD) tend to exhibit particularly low levels of perceived social support (PSS), compared with individuals not presenting with CPTSD. • Lower PSS was found to have a statistically significant unique association with the likelihood of presenting with CPTSD. • Intervention aiming to improve PSS could be particularly helpful for some individuals with CPTSD, especially those with disturbances in relationships.
Cognitive function and its association with level of education and work status in adults in Saudi Arabia: a cross-sectional study -

Background: Cognitive decline is not inevitable with age; studies have shown that it can be affected by a number of education and work related factors. We explored this association by carrying out a cross-sectional study in King Khalid University Hospital and King Abdulaziz University Hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Methods: We enrolled 202 adults, whose ages ranged between 40 and 85 years. Data was collected using a validated Arabic translation of a standardized test assessing cognitive function, known as the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE). Subjects were also inquired about their level of education and work status. Results: The results showed that in our subjects of adults above the age of 40, the mean MMSE score was 23.45 (SD=4.203). Females (n=94) had lower scores than their male counterparts (n=108) (mean difference: 3.11, 95% CI 2 to 4.22; p<0.001). There was a strong negative correlation between Age and MMSE scores (r=-0.308; p<0.001). Higher levels of education were associated with higher MMSE scores (p<0.001). Having no education was associated with a major decline in scores compared to a college education (mean difference: 8.16, 95% CI 6.76 to 9.56; p<0.001). Being employed was associated with higher scores (p<0.001). This was irrespective of gender, although females were more likely to have had no education or work (p<0.001). Conclusions: Higher levels of education and employment both seem to be associated with higher cognitive function scores in the studied demographic. Further research is required for population generalization and to establish a causal relationship.
Engineering extracellular vesicles as novel treatment options: exploiting herpesviral immunity in CLL

ABSTRACT Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are important mediators of cell–cell communication. Intriguingly, EVs can be engineered and thus exploited for the targeted transfer of functional proteins of interest. Thus, engineered EVs may constitute attractive tools for the development of novel therapeutic interventions, like cancer immunotherapies, vaccinations or targeted drug delivery. Here, we describe a novel experimental immunotherapeutic approach for the adjuvant treatment of chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL) based on engineered EVs carrying gp350, the major glycoprotein of Epstein–Barr virus (EBV), CD40L, a central immune accessory molecule and pp65, an immunodominant antigen of the human cytomegalovirus (CMV). We show that these engineered EVs specifically interact with malignant B cells from CLL patients and render these cells immunogenic to allogeneic and autologous EBV- and CMV-specific CD4+ and CD8+ T cells. Collectively, co-opting engineered EVs to re-target the strong herpesviral immunity in CLL patients to malignant cells constitutes an attractive strategy for the adjuvant treatment of a still incurable disease. Abbreviations: CLL: chronic lymphocytic leukaemia; EBV: Epstein-Barr virus; CMV: cytomegalovirus
Delivering Pulmonary Rehabilitation for Patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease at Home Using Telehealth: A Review of the Literature

Pulmonary rehabilitation is recommended to restore chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients' abilities to the highest level of independency and functionality. Telehealth has the potential to improve rehabilitation programs and to enhance patients' participation. However, little is known about the potential benefits of using telehealth in providing rehabilitation for COPD patients at home. The purpose of this review was to provide a narrative synthesis of literature of studies, which use telehealth with video components to provide real-time pulmonary rehabilitation for COPD patients. An electronic database search was performed in the Ovid Medline, CINAHL, and PubMed databases. Seven eligible studies were included based on the inclusion criteria. Based on the included studies, using telehealth to provide real-time interactive pulmonary rehabilitation for COPD patients at home is feasible and acceptable, and can provide clinical and social positive benefits. A knowledge gap regarding feasibility, acceptance, and benefits of using telehealth to provide real-time pulmonary rehabilitation services still exists.
Exploring the relationships between plant chemical composition and nitrogen partitioning in lactating dairy cows fed ryegrass-based diets

Data from experiments in which cows consumed ryegrass-based diets were used to evaluate the effects of plant constituent concentrations and nutrient ratios on the partitioning of nitrogen (N) secreted into milk and excreted as waste products (urine + faeces). The data set used from 32 publications with 170 treatment means, was derived from studies where freshly-cut or grazed pasture comprised more than 70 % of the total diet on a dry matter basis. The objectives were to identify suitable predictors of N partitioning, both across and within studies, and to examine the relative weight these predictors have on the partitioning of dietary N. Total excretion of N (g/d) and urinary N (g/d) were best predicted by the single predictor crude protein concentration, but better relationships were obtained by adding water soluble carbohydrate (WSC) and neutral detergent fibre concentrations to the models. Although significant across studies, no single plant constituent variable was selected using the meta-analytical approach. The most reliable predictions of N in waste products and urine required measures of N intake for urinary N excretion, or in combination with total OM intake for total N excretion.
Reciprocity and Reputation: A Review of Direct and Indirect Social Information Gathering

Direct reciprocity, indirect reciprocity, and reputation are important interrelated topics in the evolution of sociality. This non-mathematical review is a summary of each. Direct reciprocity (the positive kind) has a straightforward structure (e.g., “A rewards B, then B rewards A”) but the allocation might differ from the process that enabled it (e.g., whether it is true reciprocity or some form of mutualism). Indirect reciprocity (the positive kind) occurs when person (B) is rewarded by a third party (A) after doing a good deed towards somebody else (C) — with the structure “A observes B help C, therefore A helps B. ” Here too, the allocation differs from the process: if there is underlying cognition, then indirect reciprocity is based on some ability to keep track of the reputations of others (to remember that “B helped C”). Reputation is a kind of social impression based on typicality, derived from three channels of experience (direct encounters, bystander observation, and gossip). Although non-human animals cannot gossip verbally, they can eavesdrop on third parties and learn vicariously. This paper ends with a proposal to investigate the topic of social expertise as a model for understanding how animals understand and utilise observed information within their social groups.
Noise Reduction Method of Underwater Acoustic Signals Based on CEEMDAN, Effort-To-Compress Complexity, Refined Composite Multiscale Dispersion Entropy and Wavelet Threshold Denoising

Owing to the problems that imperfect decomposition process of empirical mode decomposition (EMD) denoising algorithm and poor self-adaptability, it will be extremely difficult to reduce the noise of signal. In this paper, a noise reduction method of underwater acoustic signal denoising based on complete ensemble empirical mode decomposition with adaptive noise (CEEMDAN), effort-to-compress complexity (ETC), refined composite multiscale dispersion entropy (RCMDE) and wavelet threshold denoising is proposed. Firstly, the original signal is decomposed into several IMFs by CEEMDAN and noise IMFs can be identified according to the ETC of IMFs. Then, calculating the RCMDE of remaining IMFs, these IMFs are divided into three kinds of IMFs by RCMDE, namely noise-dominant IMFs, real signal-dominant IMFs, real IMFs. Finally, noise IMFs are removed, wavelet soft threshold denoising is applied to noise-dominant IMFs and real signal-dominant IMFs. The denoised signal can be obtained by combining the real IMFs with the denoised IMFs after wavelet soft threshold denoising. Chaotic signals with different signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) are used for denoising experiments by comparing with EMD_MSE_WSTD and EEMD_DE_WSTD, it shows that the proposed algorithm has higher SNR and smaller root mean square error (RMSE). In order to further verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, which is applied to noise reduction of real underwater acoustic signals. The results show that the denoised underwater acoustic signals not only eliminate noise interference also restore the topological structure of the chaotic attractors more clearly, which lays a foundation for the further processing of underwater acoustic signals.
Epidemiological Profile of Obesity among Health Staff at the Yaoundé Central Hospital and at the Yaoundé University Teaching Hospital

Background: Obesity is a real pandemic and with ever increasing prevalence. Health professionals play a vital role in the fight against this condition. They are also affected by obesity and could be even more affected than the general population. These health workers sometimes have a wrong perception of their own weight which interferes with their ability to counsel their patients. The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence and factors associated with obesity among health care workers and increase their awareness of the problem. Methodology: This was a cross-sectional study conducted at the Yaounde Central Hospital (YCH) and the Yaounde University Teaching Hospital (YUTH) during a 6 months period. The data were collected through a questionnaire structured according to WHO STEP wise approach to chronic disease risk factor surveillance (STEPS). We measured weight, height, waist circumference, and blood pressure according to the WHO STEPS procedure. The Chi square test and logistic regression were used to measure the association between the qualitative variables. A p value 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: A total of 350 health personnel participated in this study. The prevalence of obesity was 30.3%. That of abdominal obesity was 46.9%. The factors independently associated to overall obesity were age > 40 years [OR = 2.22 95% CI (1.28 - 3.87)], nursing assistant profession [OR = 2.31 95% IC (1.21 - 4.41)] and high blood pressure [OR = 3.38 95% CI (1.16 - 9.84)] and to abdominal obesity, age > 40 years [OR = 3.35 95% CI (1.96 - 5.71)], female gender [OR = 5.47 95% CI (2.95 - 10.14)], marriage [OR = 1.84 95% CI (1.08 - 3.14)], and High blood pressure [OR = 3.76 95% CI (1.01 - 13.94)]. Conclusion: Obesity is very common among YCH and YUTH staff. Staff awareness and the introduction of proper lifestyle promotion programs are more than ever needed to win the fight against obesity.
BusyHands: A Hand-Tool Interaction Database for Assembly Tasks Semantic Segmentation

Visual segmentation has seen tremendous advancement recently with ready solutions for a wide variety of scene types, including human hands and other body parts. However, focus on segmentation of human hands while performing complex tasks, such as manual assembly, is still severely lacking. Segmenting hands from tools, work pieces, background and other body parts is extremely difficult because of self-occlusions and intricate hand grips and poses. In this paper we introduce BusyHands, a large open dataset of pixel-level annotated images of hands performing 13 different tool-based assembly tasks, from both real-world captures and virtual-world renderings. A total of 7906 samples are included in our first-in-kind dataset, with both RGB and depth images as obtained from a Kinect V2 camera and Blender. We evaluate several state-of-the-art semantic segmentation methods on our dataset as a proposed performance benchmark.
Supply chains performance with undesirable factors and reverse flows: A DEA-based approach

Abstract Supply chain performance evaluation is an essential aspect for decision-makers in order to make better and profitable decisions and survive in the competitive environment. Furthermore, considering desirable and undesirable outputs that are usually produced in supply chain processes simultaneously is significant and effective for obtaining rational results. This study proposes an approach based on data envelopment analysis (DEA) to evaluate the relative efficiency of supply chains with reverse flows in the presence of undesirable factors. The weak disposability assumption is used to handle undesirable factors. To illustrate, a radial DEA model is introduced to determine the efficiency of reverse supply chains while undesirable outputs are present as external factors and reverse flows. The proposed approach herein is illustrated using a data-set.
Adjuvant Whole-Brain Radiation Therapy Compared With Observation After Local Treatment of Melanoma Brain Metastases: A Multicenter, Randomized Phase III Trial.

PURPOSE The brain is a common site of metastasis for patients with high-risk melanoma. Although surgery or stereotactic radiosurgery are highly effective local treatments for a small number of metastases, there is a high risk of developing additional brain metastases. The role of adjuvant whole-brain radiotherapy (WBRT) in reducing new metastases is controversial, with a lack of high-level evidence specifically for melanoma. METHODS In this randomized phase III trial, patients who had local treatment of one to three melanoma brain metastases were randomly assigned to WBRT or observation. The primary end point was distant intracranial failure within 12 months, and secondary end points included time to intracranial failure, survival, and time to deterioration in performance status. RESULTS Between April 2009 and September 2017, 215 patients were randomly assigned from 24 centers. Median follow-up was 48.1 months (range, 39.6 to 68 months). Forty-two percent of patients in the WBRT group and 50.5% of those in the observation developed distant intracranial failure within 12 months (odds ratio, 0.71; 95% CI, 0.41 to 1.23; P = .22) and the rates over the entire follow-up period were 52.0% and 57.9%, respectively (odds ratio, 0.79; 95% CI, 0.45 to 1.36; P = .39). Local failure rate was lower after WBRT (20.0% v 33.6%; P = .03). At 12 months, 41.5% of patients in the WBRT group and 51.4% of patients in the observation group had died (P = .28), with no difference in the rate of neurologic death. Median time to deterioration in performance status was 3.8 months after WBRT and 4.4 months with observation (P = .32). WBRT was associated with more grade 1 to 2 acute toxicity. CONCLUSION After local treatment of one to three melanoma brain metastases, adjuvant WBRT does not provide clinical benefit in terms of distant intracranial control, survival, or preservation of performance status.
In silico design of a triple-negative breast cancer vaccine by targeting cancer testis antigens

Introduction: Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is an important subtype of breast cancer, which occurs in the absence of estrogen, progesterone and HER-2 receptors. According to the recent studies, TNBC may be a cancer testis antigen (CTA)-positive tumor, indicating that the CTA-based cancer vaccine can be a treatment option for the patients bearing such tumors. Of these antigens (Ags), the MAGE-A family and NY-ESO-1 as the most immunogenic CTAs are the potentially relevant targets for the development of an immunotherapeutic way of the breast cancer treatment. Methods: In the present study, immunoinformatics approach was used to design a multi-epitope peptide vaccine to combat the TNBC. The vaccine peptide was constructed by the fusion of three crucial components, including the CD8+ cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) epitopes, helper epitopes and adjuvant. The epitopes were predicted from the MAGE-A and NY-ESO-1 Ags. In addition, the granulocyte-macrophage-colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) was used as an adjuvant to promote the CD4+ T cells towards the T-helper for more strong induction of CTL responses. The components were conjugated by proper linkers. Results: The vaccine peptide was examined for different physiochemical characteristics to confirm the safety and immunogenic behavior. Furthermore, the 3D-structure of the vaccine peptide was predicted based on the homology modeling approach using the MODELLER v9.17 program. The vaccine structure was also subjected to the molecular dynamics simulation study for structure refinement. The results verified the immunogenicity and safety profile of the constructed vaccine as well as its capability for stimulating both the cellular and humoral immune responses. Conclusion: Based on our in-silico analyses, the proposed vaccine may be considered for the immunotherapy of TNBC.
Design of a Tunable Snapshot Multispectral Imaging System through Ray Tracing Simulation

Research on snapshot multispectral imaging has been popular in the remote sensing community due to the high demands of video-rate remote sensing system for various applications. Existing snapshot multispectral imaging techniques are mainly of a fixed wavelength type, which limits their practical usefulness. This paper describes a tunable multispectral snapshot system by using a dual prism assembly as the dispersion element of the coded aperture snapshot spectral imagers (CASSI). Spectral tuning is achieved by adjusting the air gap displacement of the dual prism assembly. Typical spectral shifts of about 1 nm at 400 nm and 12 nm at 700 nm wavelength have been achieved in the present design when the air-gap of the dual prism is changed from 4.24 mm to 5.04 mm. The paper outlines the optical designs, the performance, and the pros and cons of the dual-prism CASSI (DP-CASSI) system. The performance of the system is illustrated by TraceProTM ray tracing, to allow researchers in the field to repeat or to validate the results presented in this paper.
Micro- and Nanotopography Sensitive Bacterial Attachment Mechanisms: A Review

Bacterial attachment to material surfaces can lead to the development of biofilms that cause severe economic and health problems. The outcome of bacterial attachment is determined by a combination of bacterial sensing of material surfaces by the cell and the physicochemical factors in the near-surface environment. This paper offers a systematic review of the effects of surface topography on a range of antifouling mechanisms, with a focus on how topographical scale, from micro- to nanoscale, may influence bacterial sensing of and attachment to material surfaces. A good understanding of these mechanisms can facilitate the development of antifouling surfaces based on surface topography, with applications in various sectors of human life and activity including healthcare, food, and water treatment.