Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Randomization-Based Methods for Treatment Comparisons for Dichotomous Outcomes for Multiple Anatomical Regions

Abstract Some clinical trials in ophthalmology or dermatology randomize patients into two or more treatment groups, and observations are made for one or more anatomical regions (or sites) for each patient. In this case, patients are primary sampling units, and their responses for multiple anatomical sites are usually correlated. Useful randomization-based extensions of the Cochran–Mantel–Haenszel method are discussed here for such studies; and aspects of their application are illustrated with two examples. The first example is a randomized ophthalmology clinical trial with the number of treated eyes as strata and a dichotomous response criterion. The second example is a randomized dermatology clinical trial with three strata for the number of treated anatomical regions among the face, scalp, or chest, one covariable (as disease severity at baseline), and a dichotomous outcome. For these examples, the results are interpretable through the proportions of treated sites with favorable outcome for each treatment and their difference between treatments.
Exploring Bio-Behavioral Signal Trajectories of State Anxiety During Public Speaking

Public speaking anxiety (PSA) is among the top social phobias in the world. Quantifying PSA in a reliable and unobtrusive manner can lay the foundation toward personalized and inexpensive technology-based interventions. Existing work for quantifying PSA often relies on self-reported measures and statistical aggregates of bio-behavioral indices, such as physiology and speech. Such aggregated bio-behavioral indices are not able to capture time-based trajectories of PSA variation, that can be very useful for better understanding and reliably predicting moments of anxiety. We tackle this problem by introducing temporal parametric models to quantify bio-behavioral trajectories of PSA throughout a public speaking encounter. Using data from 55 participants in a real-life public speaking task, the parameters of the proposed models are found to be significantly correlated with individuals’ trait characteristics of general and communication-based anxiety, outperforming aggregate mean bio-behavioral measures.
Mechanisms Responsible for Stratosphere‐to‐Troposphere Transport Around a Mesoscale Convective System Anvil

Recent observational studies have shown that stratospheric air rich in ozone (O3) is capable of being transported into the upper troposphere in association with tropopause‐penetrating convection (anvil wrapping). This finding challenges the current understanding of upper tropospheric sources of O3, which is traditionally thought to come from thunderstorm outflows where lightning‐generated nitrogen oxides facilitate O3 formation. Since tropospheric O3 is an important greenhouse gas and the frequency and strength of tropopause‐penetrating storms may change in a changing climate, it is important to understand the mechanisms driving this transport process so that it can be better represented in chemistry‐climate models. Simulations of a mesoscale convective system (MCS) around which this transport process was observed are performed using the Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with Chemistry. The Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with Chemistry model adequately simulates anvil wrapping of ozone‐rich air. Possible mechanisms that influence the transport, including small‐scale static and dynamic instabilities and MCS‐induced mesoscale circulations, are evaluated. Model results suggest that anvil wrapping is a two‐step transport process (1) compensating subsidence surrounding the MCS, which is driven by mass conservation as the MCS transports tropospheric air into the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere, followed by (2) differential advection beneath the core of the MCS upper‐tropospheric outflow jet which wraps high O3 air around and under the MCS cloud anvil. Static and dynamic instabilities are not a leading contributor to this transport process. Continued fine‐scale modeling of these events is needed to fully represent the stratosphere‐to‐troposphere transport process.
Estudo de anofelinos antropofílicos peridomiciliares da Praia da Saudade na Ilha de Cotijuba: uma área endêmica de malária em Belém, Pará

The island of Cotijuba is located at 29km of Belem, Para, Brazil. This island is of approximately 60 km 2 and belongs to the Marajo archipelago. Cotijuba has reported repeated outbreaks of malaria during past years, especially in the months of April and May. Due to these outbreaks our interest focused on knowing the anopheline vectors in the island. From 2002 to 2004, periodic mosquito collections were made using human bait at landing and manual capture of resting specimens in the indoors and in the peridomicile. Six bi-monthly collections of 6 hours duration revealed only two man-attracted species: Anopheles (Nyssorhynchus) aquasalis and Anopheles (Anopheles) intermedius. Among other factors, climatic conditions, resident’s behavior and lack of resources for control measures contributed to the persistence of malaria in the Island of Cotijuba.
Neurobiology: Structure and Function

Midbrain slices containing the dorsal and medial raphe nuclei were prepared from rat brain, loaded with [3H]serotonin ([3H]5-HT) or [3H]glutamate ([3H]Glu), superfused and the electrically induced efflux of radioactivity was determined. The nonselective 5-HT receptor agonist 5-carboxamidotryptamine (5-CT, 0.001–1 mM) inhibited the electrically stimulated [3H]5-HT overflow (IC50 3.34 nM). The inhibitory effect of 5-CT on [3H]5-HT overflow was antagonized by 10 mM SB258719, a 5-HT7 receptor antagonist (IC50 94.23 nM, pA2 6.43). The 5-HT6 receptor antagonist SB-271046 (10 mM) was without effect (IC50 3.51 nM). The antagonist effect of SB-258719 was potentiated by the 5-HT1B/1D receptor antagonist SB-216641 suggesting an additive interaction between 5-HT7 and 5HT1 receptor subtype-mediated [3H]5-HT release inhibition. The Na channel blocker tetrodotoxin abolished the inhibitory effect of 5-CT on KCl-induced [3H]5-HT overflow. This finding indicates that 5-HT7 receptors are probably not located on serotonergic neurons and thus may serve as heteroreceptors in regulation of 5-HT release in the raphe nuclei. 5-CT also inhibited [3H]Glu release in raphe nuclei slices and SB-258719 suspended this effect. We therefore speculated that the axon terminals of the glutamatergic cortico-raphe neurons possess 5-HT7 receptors which may inhibit glutamate release that leads to decreased activity of serotonergic neurons. The postulated glutamatergic–serotonergic interaction in the raphe nuclei was further evidenced by the finding that NMDA and AMPA enhanced [3H]5-HT release.
Potential of Plant Bioactive Compounds as SARS-CoV-2 Main Protease (Mpro) and Spike (S) Glycoprotein Inhibitors: A Molecular Docking Study

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 19) pandemic, researchers have been trying to investigate several active compounds found in plants that have the potential to inhibit the proliferation of SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2). The present study aimed to evaluate bioactive compounds found in plants using a molecular docking approach to inhibit the main protease (Mpro) and spike (S) glycoprotein of SARS-CoV-2. The evaluation was performed on the docking scores calculated using AutoDock Vina (AV) as a docking engine. A rule of five (Ro5) was calculated to determine whether a compound meets the criteria as an active drug orally in humans. The determination of the docking score was performed by selecting the best conformation of the protein-ligand complex that had the highest affinity (most negative Gibbs' free energy of binding/ΔG). As a comparison, nelfinavir (an antiretroviral drug), chloroquine, and hydroxychloroquine sulfate (antimalarial drugs recommended by the FDA as emergency drugs) were used. The results showed that hesperidin, nabiximols, pectolinarin, epigallocatechin gallate, and rhoifolin had better poses than nelfinavir, chloroquine, and hydroxychloroquine sulfate as spike glycoprotein inhibitors. Hesperidin, rhoifolin, pectolinarin, and nabiximols had about the same pose as nelfinavir but were better than chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine sulfate as Mpro inhibitors. This finding implied that several natural compounds of plants evaluated in this study showed better binding free energy compared to nelfinavir, chloroquine, and hydroxychloroquine sulfate, which so far are recommended in the treatment of COVID-19. From quantum chemical DFT calculations, the ascending order of chemical reactivity of selected compounds was pectolinarin > hesperidin > rhoifolin > morin > epigallocatechin gallate. All isolated compounds' C=O regions are preferable for an electrophilic attack, and O-H regions are suitable for a nucleophilic attack. Furthermore, Homo-Lumo and global descriptor values indicated a satisfactory remarkable profile for the selected compounds. As judged by the RO5 and previous study by others, the compounds kaempferol, herbacetin, eugenol, and 6-shogaol have good oral bioavailability, so they are also seen as promising candidates for the development of drugs to treat infections caused by SARS-CoV-2. The present study identified plant-based compounds that can be further investigated in vitro and in vivo as lead compounds against SARS-CoV-2.
Characterization of the complete chloroplast genome of Viburnum farreri (Adoxaceae)

Abstract The whole chloroplast (cp) genome sequence of Viburnum farreri has been characterized from Illumina pair-end sequencing. The complete cp genome was 158,516 bp in length, containing a large single-copy region (LSC) of 86,990 bp and a small single-copy region (SSC) of 18,502 bp, which were separated by a pair of inverted repeat (IR) regions of 26,512 bp. The genome contained 130 genes, including 85 protein-coding genes, 37 tRNA genes, and 8 ribosomal RNA genes (4 rRNA species). Most genes occur as a single copy, while 17 gene species are duplicated. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that V. farreri is closely related to the species of V. brachybotryum.
Simulation Framework for Misbehavior Detection in Vehicular Networks

Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS) is an ongoing technology that will change our driving experience in the near future. In such systems, vehicles and Road–Side Unit (RSU) cooperate by broadcasting V2X messages over the vehicular network. Safety applications use these data to detect and avoid dangerous situations on time. MisBehavior Detection (MBD) in Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS) is an active research topic which consists of monitoring data semantics of the exchanged Vehicle-to-X communication (V2X) messages to detect and identify potential misbehaving entities. The detection process consists of performing plausibility and consistency checks on the received V2X messages. If an anomaly is detected, the entity may report it by sending a Misbehavior Report (MBR) to the Misbehavior Authority (MA). The MA will then investigate the event and decide to revoke the sender or not. In this paper, we present a MisBehavior Detection (MBD) simulation framework that enables the research community to develop, test, and compare MBD algorithms. We also demonstrate its capabilities by running example scenarios and discuss their results. Framework For Misbehavior Detection (F2MD) is open source and available for free on our github.
Estimation of Hand Motion from Piezoelectric Soft Sensor Using Deep Recurrent Network

Soft sensors are attracting significant attention in human–machine interaction due to their high flexibility and adaptability. However, estimating motion state from these sensors is difficult due to their nonlinearity and noise. In this paper, we propose a deep learning network for a smart glove system to predict the moving state of a piezoelectric soft sensor. We implemented the network using Long-Short Term Memory (LSTM) units and demonstrated its performance in a real-time system based on two experiments. The sensor’s moving state was estimated and the joint angles were calculated. Since we use moving state in the sensor offset calculation and the offset value is used to estimate the angle value, the accurate moving state estimation results in good performance for angle value estimation. The proposed network performed better than the conventional heuristic method in estimating the moving state. It was also confirmed that the calculated values successfully mimic the joint angles measured using a leap motion controller.
CAD-AEC: Context-Aware Deep Acoustic Echo Cancellation

Deep-leaming based acoustic echo cancellation (AEC) methods have been shown to outperform the classical techniques. The main drawback of the learning-based AEC is its dependency on the training set, which limits its practical deployment in mobile devices and unconstrained environments. This paper proposes a context- aware deep AEC (CAD-AEC) by introducing two main components. The first component of the CAD-AEC borrows ideas from the classical AEC and performs frequency domain adaptive filtering of the microphone signal, to provide the deep AEC network with features that have less dependency on the development context. The second component is a deep contextual-attention module (CAM), inserted between the recurrent encoder and decoder architectures. The deep CAM adaptively scales the encoder output during inference with calculated attention weights that depend on the context. Experiments in both matched and mismatched training and testing environments, show that the proposed CAD-AEC can robustly achieve better echo return loss enhancement (ERLE) and perceptual speech quality compared to the previous classical and deep learning techniques.
How many dimensions are needed to accurately assess functional diversity? A pragmatic approach for assessing the quality of functional spaces

Aim Functional diversity is a key facet of biodiversity that is increasingly being measured to quantify its changes following disturbance and to understand its effects on ecosystem functioning. Assessing the functional diversity of assemblages based on species traits requires the building of a functional space (dendrogram or multidimensional space) where indices will be computed. However, there is still no consensus on the best method for measuring the quality of functional spaces. Innovation Here we propose a framework for evaluating the quality of a functional space (i.e. the extent to which it is a faithful representation of the initial functional trait values). Using simulated datasets, we analysed the influence of the number and type of functional traits used and of the number of species studied on the identity and quality of the best functional space. We also tested whether the quality of the functional space affects functional diversity patterns in local assemblages, using simulated datasets and a real study case. Main conclusions The quality of functional space strongly varied between situations. Spaces having at least four dimensions had the highest quality, while functional dendrograms and two-dimensional functional spaces always had a low quality. Importantly, we showed that using a poor-quality functional space could led to a biased assessment of functional diversity and false ecological conclusions. Therefore, we advise a pragmatic approach consisting of computing all the possible functional spaces and selecting the most parsimonious one.
Exploring Gender Differences in Complaint Behavior of Millennial Consumers

Understanding and managing consumer's complaint behavior (CCB) is incredibly essential in the competitive business environment. This paper aims to investigate whether male and female millennial consumers differed in their complaint behavior and its aftermath. The study examines the moderation effect of gender on millennial's complaint behavior. The researchers distributed a total of 430 questionnaires to millennial consumers who have experienced a dissatisfaction episode within 12 months. The results show that gender was significantly associated with millennial's complaint behavior. These findings are generic across sex-type. This paper discusses the theoretical and managerial implications of the findings.Keywords: Millennials; complaint behavior; gender; sex-typeeISSN: 2398-4287 © 2020. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BYNC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia.DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/e-bpj.v5i13. 1952
The Veterans Administration and Department of Defense clinical practice guidelines for the diagnosis and management of sleep disorders: what does this mean for the practice of sleep medicine?

None In 2017 the Veterans Administration (VA) and Department of Defense (DOD) launched development of clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) for the diagnosis and treatment of sleep disorders, with the goal of informing and improving patient care. The guideline development process followed GRADE methodology, considering studies and systematic reviews published over the 10-year period prior to guideline development. A total of 41 recommendations were made,18 related to the diagnosis and treatment of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and 23 regarding chronic insomnia disorder. In contrast to other published guidelines, the VA DoD CPGs provide a comprehensive approach to diagnosis and management of the two most common sleep disorders, including a discussion of the sequencing of diagnostic approaches and treatment options. Regarding OSA, strong recommendations were made for follow-up evaluation after non-diagnostic home sleep apnea tests, positive airway pressure therapy as first-line treatment, and the incorporation of supportive, educational and behavioral interventions for patients at high risk for PAP therapy non-adherence due to comorbid conditions. Strong recommendations were also made for the use of cognitive-behavioral therapy for insomnia and against the use of kava (an herbal supplement) in the treatment of chronic insomnia disorder. These guidelines, while intended to directly inform care within VA and DOD, are broadly relevant to the practice of sleep medicine. The majority of scientific evidence was based on studies of non-military, non-veteran populations. The CPG is a major milestone for the VA and DOD in recognizing the importance of evidence-based treatments for sleep disorders in military personnel and veterans.
Assessing the Impact of Monitoring, Information and Communication on Banks Performance in Ghana

The global financial sector is undergoing structural reforms and system improvement in their internal operations and activities. These global reforms in the financial sectors have been occasioned by globalization and technology revolution around the world. In view of the rapid changes, institutions both public and private institutions have experienced various limitations in their quest to reach their objectives. This study therefore formulates three objectives to investigate the effects of internal control systems on financial performance of listed banks in Ghana. In this quantitative study, 300 representatives from twelve listed banks were engaged. Descriptive and regression analysis was performed on the field Data. The study result shows that Information and communication have a weak significant effect on financial performance. There was no significant effect between Monitoring and financial performance. The study therefore recommends that managers of listed Banks must invest more on information and communication in order to improve performance. Original Research Article Mbilla et al.; AJEBA, 14(3): 58-71, 2020; Article no.AJEBA. 55310 59
Research on Nox Formation and SCR Denitration System Control by Smoke Mixing Under Low Load

With 2 × 330MW subcritical coal-fired boiler as the research object, the influence of two kinds of primary air flue gas recirculation schemes on the combustion of pulverized coal and the formation of NOx were studied by numerical simulation software. The variation law of SCR inlet fume temperature was studied with boiler thermodynamic calculation. The calculation results show that the reasonable smoke mixing method can effectively improve the SCR inlet flue gas temperature and reduce the furnace outlet NOx concentration. The optimal proportion was 20% with the primary air mixing smoke while maintaining constant air mass. The results of numerical simulation and thermodynamic calculation show that SCR inlet flue temperature can be increased by 15°C, the concentration of NOx emission can reduce by 18.29mg/Nm3.
Work, ICT and Travel in Multinational Corporations: The Synthetic Work Mobility Situation

Theorizing the relationships between information communication technology (ICT), travel and work continue to preoccupy researchers interested in multinational corporations (MNCs). One motivation is the desire to understand ways of reducing demand for and the negative consequences of business travel. Existing studies offer, however, little in the way of theoretical explanation of why situations that require travel arise in the first instance and how they might be avoided. To address this shortcoming, this paper analyses two case study engineering consultancy MNCs to develop a novel sociomaterial perspective on the role of travel and ICTs. It introduces the concept of the synthetic work mobility situation which highlights the way ICT and travel exert agency that constitutes ways of working and the organizational form of MNCs. The concept also recasts questions about ways of reducing demand for travel as questions about ways of reconstituting the sociomaterial organization of the MNC.
Fast Lattice-Free Keyword Filtering for Accelerated Spoken Term Detection

We present a novel set of keyword detection techniques to accelerate spoken term detection for known queries with minimal loss in accuracy. Using only ASR frame-level acoustic posteriors we can train multiple models to effectively detect non-target segments for which we need not perform full lattice decoding. We estimate phone n-gram soft counts for each segment in a single pass over the frame-level output. From this we can efficiently detect a fixed set of keywords with both linear and DNN-based classifiers. Furthermore we can train the linear classifiers on a small number of labeled examples. Experiments on the PSC and VAST English subset of NIST’s 2019 OpenSAT evaluation demonstrate we can filter out half of the test audio segments while only increasing the keyword miss rate by under 3%.