Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Risk Factors of Rheumatic Heart Disease in Bangladesh: A Case-Control Study

Not all cases of rheumatic fever (RF) end up as rheumatic heart disease (RHD). The fact raises the possibility of existence of a subgroup with characteristics that prevent RF patients from developing the RHD. The present study aimed at exploring the risk factors among patients with RHD. The study assessed the risk of RHD among people both with and without RF. In total, 103 consecutive RHD patients were recruited as cases who reported to the National Centre for Control of Rheumatic Fever and Heart Disease, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Of 309 controls, 103 were RF patients selected from the same centre, and the remaining 206 controls were selected from Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College Hospital, who got admitted for other non-cardiac ailments. RHD was confirmed by auscultation and colour Doppler echocardiography. RF was diagnosed based on the modified Jones criteria. An unadjusted odds ratio was generated for each variable, with 95% confidence interval (CI), and only significant factors were considered candidate for multivariate analysis. Three separate binary logistic regression models were generated to assess the risk factors of RF, risk factors of RHD compared to non-rheumatic control patients, and risk factors of RHD compared to control with RF. RF and RHD shared almost a similar set of risk factors in the population. In general, age over 19 years was found to be protective of RF; however, age of the majority (62.1%) of the RHD cases was over 19 years. Women [odds ratio (OR)=2.2, 95% CI 1.1-4.3], urban resident (OR=3.1, 95% CI 1.2–8.4), dwellers in brick-built house (OR=3.6, 95% CI 1.6-8.1), having >2 siblings (OR=3.1, 95% CI 1.5- 6.3), offspring of working mothers (OR=7.6, 95% CI 2.0-24.2), illiterate mother (OR=2.6, 95% CI 1.2-5.8), and those who did not brush after taking meals (OR=2.5, 95% CI 1.0-6.3) were more likely to develop RF. However, more than 5 members in a family showed a reduced risk of RF. RHD shared almost a similar set of factors in general. More than three people sharing a room also showed an increased risk of RHD (OR=1.9, 95% CI 1.0-3.4), in addition to the risk factors of RF. Multivariate model also assessed the factors that may perpetuate RHD among RF patients. Overcrowding (OR=2.4, 95% CI 1.2-4.7) and illiteracy (OR=2.4, 95% CI 1.1-5.2) posed the risk of RHD in the RF patients. The study did not find new factors that might pose an increased risk, rather looked for the documented risk factors and how these operate in the population of Bangladesh.
Effect of computer support on younger women with breast cancer

AbstractOBJECTIVE: Assess impact of a computer-based patient support system on quality of life in younger women with breast cancer, with particular emphasis on assisting the underserved. DESIGN: Randomized controlled trial conducted between 1995 and 1998. SETTING: Five sites: two teaching hospitals (Madison, Wis, and Chicago, Ill), two nonteaching hospitals (Chicago, Ill), and a cancer resource center (Indianapolis, Ind). The latter three sites treat many underserved patients. PARTICIPANTS: Newly diagnosed breast cancer patients (N=246) under age 60. INTERVENTIONS: Experimental group received Comprehensive Health Enhancement Support System (CHESS), a home-based computer system providing information, decision-making, and emotional support. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: Pretest and two posttest surveys (at two- and five-month follow-up) measured aspects of participation in care, social/information support, and quality of life. At two-month follow-up, the CHESS group was significantly more competent at seeking information, more comfortable participating in care, and had greater confidence in doctor(s). At five-month follow-up, the CHESS group had significantly better social support and also greater information competence. In addition, experimental assignment interacted with several indicators of medical underservice (race, education, and lack of insurance), such that CHESS benefits were greater for the disadvantaged than the advantaged group. CONCLUSIONS: Computer-based patient support systems such as CHESS may benefit patients by providing information and social support, and increasing their participation in health care. These benefits may be largest for currently underserved populations.
Low‐dose propofol reduces the incidence of moderate to severe local pain induced by the main dose

Background: Local pain on injection of propofol remains a considerable problem in clinical anaesthesiology. As slow infusion of a low dose of propofol induces little or no pain at the site of injection, and as propofol‐induced pain fades during prolonged exposure, this randomized, double‐blind, clinical cross‐over study was designed to test whether pain on injection of propofol is attenuated by initial slow injection of a low dose of propofol by the same intravenous line.
Automatic semantic classification of scientific literature according to the hallmarks of cancer

MOTIVATION The hallmarks of cancer have become highly influential in cancer research. They reduce the complexity of cancer into 10 principles (e.g. resisting cell death and sustaining proliferative signaling) that explain the biological capabilities acquired during the development of human tumors. Since new research depends crucially on existing knowledge, technology for semantic classification of scientific literature according to the hallmarks of cancer could greatly support literature review, knowledge discovery and applications in cancer research. RESULTS We present the first step toward the development of such technology. We introduce a corpus of 1499 PubMed abstracts annotated according to the scientific evidence they provide for the 10 currently known hallmarks of cancer. We use this corpus to train a system that classifies PubMed literature according to the hallmarks. The system uses supervised machine learning and rich features largely based on biomedical text mining. We report good performance in both intrinsic and extrinsic evaluations, demonstrating both the accuracy of the methodology and its potential in supporting practical cancer research. We discuss how this approach could be developed and applied further in the future. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION The corpus of hallmark-annotated PubMed abstracts and the software for classification are available at: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/∼sb895/HoC.html. CONTACT simon.baker@cl.cam.ac.uk.
Degradation of epoxy insulation under combined high humidity and elevated temperature

Aging under high humidity and elevated temperature was carried out on a bisphenol-A epoxy/silica insulating composite, which has been used as electrical insulation for high voltage switchgear. Dielectric measurements as well as DMTA, DSC, FTIR analysis were carried out on the aged samples. It was found that the mass of aged samples decreased with aging. The DMTA and DSC results showed that the cross-linking density and glass transition temperatures of the aged composite were lowered. While the dielectric properties changed significantly due to aging, FTIR results showed changes in the concentration of different function groups. It is believed that these property and structural changes were caused by uncross-linking due to hydrolysis degradation processes. <<ETX>>
Stability of a Truncated Infinite Constrained Receding Horizon Scheme : the General Discrete Nonlinear Case *

-Some results concerning the constrained receding horizon formulation with infinite and truncated prediction horizon are presented. In this formulation a distinction is made between prediction and control horizons. The main result is a generalization of a known fact for linear systems, namely that, under certain technical requirements, the asymptotic stability of the above formulation holds for a sufficiently large finite prediction horizon. Existence results are also provided under stabilizability assumptions.
Effects of Round Window Dexamethasone on Residual Hearing in a Guinea Pig Model of Cochlear Implantation

To study electric acoustic stimulation, we have developed a model of guinea pig cochlear implantation via a cochleostomy. Thirty minutes prior to implantation, a hyaluronic acid/carboxymethylcellulose bead, loaded with either dexamethasone or normal saline, was placed upon the round window membrane. Animals that did not receive beads acted as controls. Pure-tone auditory brainstem response thresholds were estimated before and after electrode insertion, and 1 and 4 weeks later. Selected cochlear histology was performed. Results: Dexamethasone could be detected in the cochlea for 24 h after cochlear implantation. Thresholds were elevated across frequencies in all animals immediately after surgery. These thresholds recovered completely at and below 2 kHz, and partially at higher frequencies by 1 week after implantation. At 32 kHz, but not the lower frequencies, the presence of dexamethasone had a significant protective effect upon hearing, which increased in magnitude over time. The protection was greatest in difficult implantations where an intractable resistance to electrode insertion was met. There was a persistent foreign body reaction at the site of implantation of saline-treated implanted ears but not in the dexamethasone-treated implanted ears. Conclusion: Short-term preoperative delivery of dexamethasone through the round window can protect residual hearing during cochlear implantation, especially during technically difficult surgery.
Model-based motion tracking system using distributed network cameras

For a coexisting and collaborative society that incorporates humans and robots, the detection, tracking, and recognition of human motion are indispensable techniques for a robot to safely and securely interact with humans. The present paper proposes a motion tracking system using distributed network cameras that are placed in a sizeable environment, such as a street or a town. Model-based motion tracking is adopted in this system, and an asynchronous process is invoked for updating motion estimation in each camera individually. A 2D distance map created by the Fast Marching Method is used to estimate human motion in real-time. Experiments demonstrate that human motion while walking among eight distributed cameras is tracked correctly by automatically selecting appropriate cameras.
Modeling Broadcast News Prosody Using Conditional Random Fields for Story Segmentation

This paper proposes to model broadcast news prosody using conditional random fields (CRF) for news story segmentation. Broadcast news has both editorial prosody and speech prosody that convey essential structural information for story segmentation. Hence we extract prosodic features, includ- ing pause duration, pitch, intensity, rapidity, speaker change and music, for a sequence of boundary candidates. A linear- chain CRF is used to label each candidate with boundary/non- boundary tags based on the prosodic features. Important inter- label relations and contextual feature interactions are effectively captured by CRF's sequential learning framework. Experiments show that the CRF approach outperforms decision tree (DT), support vector machines (SVM) and maximum entropy (ME) classifiers in prosody-based story segmentation.
Coating/Substrate Modulus Mismatches and Margin Geometry Effects on Contact Damage in Curved Brittle Coating Systems

The effects of coating/substrate modulus mismatch and margin geometry on contact damage in bi-layer systems were investigated. Following an earlier study, convex specimens having curvature of 12 mm inner coating diameter and 1mm thick brittle layer on a polymeric and dental composite support bases were produced. Sample coating geometry at the margins was varied by grinding the edge of the glass shells in various shapes. The specimens were tested by applying single cycle load at the specimen’s axis of symmetry using flat indenter of low elastic modulus. The effects of margin geometry and support layer modulus on radial crack initiation and damage evolution was examined, with particular attention paid to the relevance of such damage to lifetimelimiting failures of all- ceramic dental crowns. Finite element modeling was used to evaluate stress distribution in the glass coating. Experimental trends interrupted with peak maximum principal stresses at the margins. The results of this study illustrate that the fracture behaviour of brittle layered structures is not dominated by certain variables. It is demonstrated that critical loads for initiation of radial cracks are sensitive to support layer modulus as well as margin geometry. Support layer modulus plays an important role in crack propagation and subsequent damage patterns, especially at specimen side walls.
Star formation in the Vela molecular ridge - Large scale mapping of cloud D in the mm continuum

Context. The Vela molecular ridge is one of the nearest intermediate-mass star forming regions, located within the galactic plane and outside the solar circle. Cloud D, in particular, hosts a number of small embedded young clusters. Aims. We present the results of a large-scale map in the dust continuum at 1.2 mm of a ∼1 ◦ × 1 ◦ area within cloud D. The main aim of the observations was to obtain a complete census of cluster-forming cores and isolated (both high- and low-mass) young stellar objects in early evolutionary phases. Methods. The bolometer array SIMBA at SEST was used to map the dust emission in the region with a typical sensitivity of ∼20 mJy/beam. This allows a mass sensitivity of ∼0.2 M� . The resolution is 24 �� , corresponding to ∼0.08 pc, roughly the radius of a typical young embedded cluster in the region. The continuum map is also compared to a large scale map of CO(1–0) integrated emission. Results. Using the CLUMPFIND algorithm, a robust sample of 29 cores has been obtained, spanning the size range 0.03–0.25 pc and the mass range 0.4–88 M� . The most massive cores are associated both with red IRAS sources and with embedded young clusters, and coincide with CO(1–0) integrated emission peaks. The cores are distributed according to a mass spectrum ∼M −α and a massversus-size relation ∼D x , with α ∼ 1.45–1.9 and x ∼ 1.1–1.7. They appear to originate in the fragmentation of gas filaments seen in CO(1–0) emission and their formation is probably induced by expanding shells of gas. The core mass spectrum is flatter than the Initial Mass Function of the associated clusters in the same mass range, suggesting further fragmentation within the most massive cores. A threshold AV ∼ 12 mag seems to be required for the onset of star formation in the gas.
Coining a new term in epidemiology: concurrency and HIV.

© Rapid Science Publishers ISSN 0269-9370 Early theoretical and empirical studies of the sexual transmission of HIV focused on numbers of sexual partners as a key variable [1,2]. For individuals this dominates the risk of acquiring a sexually transmitted disease (STD) such as HIV, but within a population the incidence and prevalence of an STD is the consequence of the pattern of contacts of the group rather than just individuals. As our understanding has improved as an additional set of characteristics of the network of sexual partnerships has become the subject of both theoretical and empirical study [3–5]. In this issue, Morris and Kretzschmar [6] add to a growing debate about the relative importance of the different network variables. Extending the early insight of Watts and May [7], that the static as well as the dynamic pattern of sexual partnerships influences the early stages of HIV spread, they use a stochastic simulation of HIV spread through a network of sexual partners to explore the importance of ‘concurrency’. They illustrate how their method of increasing concurrency leads to larger groups of people connected at any one time through chains of sexual partnerships, even though the average rate of sexual partner change is held constant. In their results, concurrency correlates with the rate of spread of HIV. Their mechanism to increase concurrency is to increase the probability that someone forms a new partnership if they are in a partnership already. In Fig. 1 we illustrate the kind of change this produces. In the network shown in Fig. 1b there is greater ‘concurrency’ than in the network in Fig. 1a, but also a greater variance in the number of partnerships and more assortative mixing.
CFP scheduling for real-time service and energy efficiency in the industrial applications of IEEE 802.15.4

In industrial applications, sensor networks have to satisfy specified time requirements of exchanged messages. IEEE 802.15. 4 defines the communication protocol of the physical and medium access control layers for wireless sensor networks, which support real-time transmission through guaranteed time slots (GTSs). In order to improve the performance of IEEE 802.15. 4 in industrial applications, this paper proposes a new traffic scheduling algorithm for GTS. This algorithm concentrates on time-critical industrial periodic messages and determines the values of network and node parameters for GTS. It guarantees real-time requirements of periodic messages for industrial automation systems up to the order of tens to hundreds of milliseconds depending on the traffic condition of the network system. A series of simulation results are obtained to examine the validity of the scheduling algorithm proposed in this study. The simulation results show that this scheduling algorithm not only guarantees real-time requirements for periodic message but also improves the scalability, bandwidth utilization, and energy efficiency of the network with a slight modification of the existing IEEE 802.15. 4 protocol.
A Model for Time-Efficient HSDPA Simulations

Models for the downlink capacity of WCDMA systems with dedicated channels as specified in the UMTS Release '99 rely on the orthogonality factor for approximating the intra-cell interference due to multi-path propagation. This model is no longer applicable for the HSDPA as the performance of fast scheduling and adaptive modulation and coding depends on the small-scale fading effects. This leads to the problem on how to produce reliable statistics for the long-term system-level behavior when small-scale fading effects are not negligible. In this paper we introduce a general framework on how to perform time-efficient simulations that capture the effects of small-scale fading.
An ultra-low-cost RFID tag with 1.67 Gbps data rate by ink-jet printing on paper substrate

A fully metallic ink-jet printed passive chipless RFID tag on paper substrate is presented. The tag consists of an ultra-wide-band antenna, a microstrip transmission line with distributed shunt capacitors as information coding element which is reconfigurable by ink-jet printing process. Tapered microstrip line is employed to overcome the limitations of low conductivity and thin film thickness of ink-jet printed metal tracks. Measurement results show that the tag features a robust readability over 80 cm reading distance and a high data rate of 1.67 Gb/s.
Practical management of nocturia in urology

Until last decades, nocturia has been considered as an irritative symptom of benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), but the nocturia is unresponsive symptoms to various modalities of BPH treatment. More recently, it has been recognized that the prostate is not so quite important as previously believed, as nocturia is equally common in women. The understanding of nocturia has been much changed in last decade; it is a highly prevalent condition, and symptoms in men and women are really no different either quantitatively or qualitatively. The successful introduction of desmopressin (l-deamino-8-D-arginine vasopressin, DDAVP) to decrease nocturnal urine output in severe nocturia which resistant to conventional BPH treatment and in women demonstrated new perspectives in management of nocturia. We reviewed the definition and etiologies of nocturia, offering the current diagnostic procedures and standards of care.
A Fast and Accurate Corner Detector Based on Harris Algorithm

Harris is one of the most widely used corner detection algorithms which is based on intensity. Because of the practice of Gaussian smoothing link, Harris algorithm has a good performance on its stability and robustness, but it is also the direct reason of the limitation of its computing speed. Furthermore, its positioning accuracy of T-type, L-type and Arrow-type corners is low. In this paper, an improved algorithm is presented to solve the efficiency and accuracy problem of Harris algorithm. Firstly, we integrated the corner response function of MIC algorithm into the Harris algorithm to reduce the calculation amount of Gaussian smoothing link, so that the computing speed is obviously increased. Then we investigate a 3×3 mask to calculate the number of the pixels which their gray values are similar to the central point of the mask. We found that for real corner, the number of its similar points is the minimum among its 8 neighborhoods. In view of this, we added a comparison function before the No Max Suppression step to exclude some disturbance points nearby the real corners. Hence the positioning accuracy is increased significantly. In order to compare the accuracy of the improved algorithm and Harris algorithm, an evaluation standard is also proposed. The experimental results show that the detection time of the improved algorithm is only 31.2% that of the original Harris algorithm, and also, the improvement on positioning accuracy of L-type, T-type and Arrow-type corners are realized.
Cell surface expression of FcγRI (CD64) on neutrophils and monocytes in patients with influenza A, with and without complications

The expression of the Fcγ-receptor I (FcγRI), CD64 on normal neutrophils is up-regulated during bacterial infections. CD64 is a promising diagnostic tool in the diagnosis of acute infections. The aim was to study surface expressions of CD64 on neutrophils and monocytes in patients with influenza A with and without complications and evaluate these as diagnostic tools in comparison with serum levels of HNL (human neutrophil lipocalin). CD64 expression on neutrophils and monocytes was evaluated by flow cytometry. HNL was assayed by a specific radioimmunoassay. 22 patients with influenza A with or without complications were included and the results compared with those of 29 patients with acute bacterial infections and 29 healthy subjects. Neutrophil expression of CD64 was increased in influenza A with raised proportion expressing CD64 in complicated compared to uncomplicated influenza. The expression was significantly higher in bacterial infections compared to both influenza groups. Serum levels of HNL were raised in all infection groups, but significantly more so in the group with bacterial infection. ROC-curve analysis showed that neutrophil expression of CD64 and the serum levels of HNL had similar diagnostic power in the discrimination between acute bacterial infections and influenza A. Monocyte expression of CD64 was raised in all infections with no differences between subgroups. We conclude that neutrophil expression of CD64 and serum levels of HNL are both promising assays in the distinction between infections caused by bacteria or influenza A, whereas CD64 could identify patients with complications of their influenza A infection.
Visual noise e ¡ ects on emotion perception : brain potentials and stimulus identi ¢ cation

Event-related potential (ERP) studies revealed an early posterior negativity (EPN) for emotionally arousing pictures.Two studies explored how this e¡ect relates to perceptual stimulus characteristics and stimulus identi¢cation. Adding various amounts of visual noisevaried stimulusperceptibilityof high and low arousingpicture contents, which were presented as rapid and continuous stream. Measuring dense sensor event-related potentials, study I determined that noise level was linearly related to the P1 peak. Subsequently, enlarged EPNs to emotionally arousing contents were observed, however, only for pictures containing lowamounts of noise, which also enabled stimulus identi¢cation as shown by study II.These data support the notion that the EPNmay serve as a measure of a¡ective stimulus evaluation at an early transitory processing period.