Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Dysphagia Management in the Schools: Past, Present, and Future

Abstract As the number of speech-language pathologists (SLPs) responsible for swallowing and feeding services in the educational setting increases, guidance informing this specialized practice continues to emerge. Although SLPs have provided dysphagia management for children in medical settings for many years, the extension of dysphagia services to the schools is comparatively new. This shift in care delivery for what was previously a hospital-based practice is now occurring more frequently, and in an environment void of extensive medical supports (i.e., the schools). With this transition, evidence-based approaches tailored to children with dysphagia receiving intervention in the school setting are paramount. Components that appear critical to this evolving specialty area include research, best practice guidelines, knowledge and skills training, and collaboration across professionals. This article addresses these pertinent issues by reflecting upon the past, reviewing the present, and planning for the future.
Illness-associated muscle weakness in dystroglycanopathies

Objective: To describe the phenomenon of acute illness-associated weakness (AIAW) in patients with dystroglycanopathy (DG), determine the frequency of this phenomenon in DGs, and compare it to the frequency in Duchenne-Becker muscular dystrophy (DBMD). Methods: Patients enrolled in a DG natural history study provided medical history, including major illnesses or hospitalizations, at enrollment and annually. We noted a recurring syndrome of profound transient weakness in the setting of febrile illness. To determine the frequency of this phenomenon in the DG cohort and compare it to a cohort with another membrane-related muscular dystrophy, DBMD, we surveyed patients (e-survey tool), collecting demographics and information about episodes of sudden progression of weakness and events surrounding the episodes. Results: Surveys were completed by 52 (56.6%) patients with DG and 51 (27.3%) patients with DBMD. AIAW was reported in 12 (23%) patients with DG and 2 (4%) patients with DBMD (odds ratio 7.35; 95% confidence interval 1.55, 34.77; p = 0.005). Altogether (history or survey), 21 patients with DG, with mutations in FKRP, FKTN, POMT1, POMT2, or POMGNT1, reported AIAW. These events typically occurred in children <7 years old, and the preceding illness usually included respiratory symptoms. In 10 (47.6%) patients with DG, AIAW preceded the diagnosis of muscular dystrophy. Conclusions: People with DG, across genotypes, can experience acute, transient weakness associated with a febrile illness, a phenomenon that rarely occurs in DBMD. The physiologic basis of this phenomenon is unknown. Clinicaltrials.gov identifier: NCT00313677.
Prevalence and treatment outcomes of routine Chlamydia trachomatis, Neisseria gonorrhoeae and Trichomonas vaginalis testing during antenatal care, Gaborone, Botswana

Objectives Chlamydia trachomatis (CT), Neisseria gonorrhoeae (NG) and Trichomonas vaginalis (TV) are curable, mostly asymptomatic, STIs that cause adverse maternal and perinatal outcomes. Most countries do not test for those infections during antenatal care. We implemented a CT, NG and TV testing and treatment programme in an antenatal clinic in Gaborone, Botswana. Methods We conducted a prospective study in the antenatal clinic at Princess Marina Hospital in Gaborone, Botswana. We offered pregnant women who were 18 years or older and less than 35 weeks of gestation, CT, NG and TV testing using self-collected vaginal swabs. Testing was conducted using a GeneXpert® CT/NG and TV system. Those who tested positive were given directly observed antibiotic therapy and asked to return for a test of cure. We determined the prevalence of infections, uptake of treatment and proportion cured. The relationships between positive STI test and participant characteristics were assessed. Results We enrolled 400 pregnant women. Fifty-four (13.5%) tested positive for CT, NG and/or TV: 31 (8%) for CT, 5 (1.3%) for NG and 21 (5%) for TV. Among those who tested positive, 74% (40) received same-day, in person results and treatment. Among those who received delayed results (6), 67% (4) were treated. Statistical comparisons showed that being unmarried and HIV infected were positively association CT, NG and/or TV infection. Self-reported STI symptoms were not associated with CT, NG and/or TV infection. Conclusion The prevalence of CT, NG and/or TV was high, particularly among women with HIV infection. Among women with CT, NG and/or TV infection, those who received same-day results were more likely to be treated than those who received delayed results. More research is needed on the costs and benefits of integrating highly sensitive and specific STI testing into antenatal care in Southern Africa.
Computational Biology: The Fundamentals of Sequence-Based Techniques

The subdisciplines within computational biology, especially those of bioinformatics, are relatively new, the word “bioinformatics” not being coined until the early to mid-1970s by Hesper and Hogeweg, 2011. With roots in computer science, information theory, biochemistry, and biology, it was and is a natural nexus of the four disciplines. However, before it could really take off, two essential factors had to become a reality, that of readily and freely available sequence and 3D structural databases and the development of powerful and relatively inexpensive computing power. Both of these are now very much a reality, having followed and/or exceeded the 18 month doubling exponential growth rate of Moore’s law (e.g., Moore, 1965; Wetterstrand, 2012; and see GenBank growth statistics at ftp://ftp.ncbi.nih.gov/ genbank/gbrel.txt) since their development. Within this entire field, one of the most important developments has been the ability for researchers to gain biological understanding of molecules and organismal systems based solely on sequence data. So, given the nucleotide or amino acid sequence of a biological molecule, what can be known about that molecule? Searching for small relevant patterns in sequences that may reflect some function allows for the inference of biologically relevant information. These can be cataloged motifs ascribed to catalytic activities; restriction enzyme or protease cut sites; regional physical attributes, such as secondary structure predictions, hydrophobicities; or even a sequence’s overall content and composition, as is used in some of the gene finding techniques. However, what about comparisons with other sequences? Can one molecule tell another’s story? Yes, naturally it can; inference through homology is a fundamental principle to all the biological sciences. A tremendous amount of knowledge can be gained by comparing one sequence against others. When a sequence is found to fall into a preexisting 30
Benchmarking semantic reasoning on mobile platforms: Towards optimization using OWL2 RL

Mobile hardware has advanced to a point where apps may consume the Semantic Web of Data, as exemplified in domains such as mobile context-awareness, m-Health, m-Tourism and augmented reality. However, recent work shows that the performance of ontology-based reasoning, an essential Semantic Web building block, still leaves much to be desired on mobile platforms. This presents a clear need to provide developers with the ability to benchmark mobile reasoning performance, based on their particular application scenarios, i.e., including reasoning tasks, process flows and datasets, to establish the feasibility of mobile deployment. In this regard, we present a mobile benchmark framework called MobiBench to help developers to benchmark semantic reasoners on mobile platforms. To realize efficient mobile, ontology-based reasoning, OWL2 RL is a promising solution since it (a) trades expressivity for scalability, which is important on resource-constrained platforms; and (b) provides unique opportunities for optimization due to its rule-based axiomatization. In this vein, we propose selections of OWL2 RL rule subsets for optimization purposes, based on several orthogonal dimensions. We extended MobiBench to support OWL2 RL and the proposed ruleset selections, and benchmarked multiple OWL2 RL-enabled rule engines and OWL reasoners on a mobile platform. Our results show significant performance improvements by applying OWL2 RL rule subsets, allowing performant reasoning for small datasets on mobile systems.
Chronotypes and circadian timing in migraine

Background It has been suggested that migraine attacks strike according to circadian patterns and that this might be related to individual chronotype. Here we evaluated and correlated individual chronotypes, stability of the circadian rhythm, and circadian attack timing in a large and well-characterised migraine population. Methods In 2875 migraine patients and 200 non-headache controls we assessed differences in: (i) distribution of chronotypes (Münich Chronotype Questionnaire); (ii) the circadian rhythm’s amplitude and stability (Circadian Type Inventory); and (iii) circadian timing of migraine attacks. Data were analysed using multinomial and linear regression models adjusted for age, gender, sleep quality and depression. Results Migraineurs more often showed an early chronotype compared with controls (48.9% versus 38.6%; adjusted odds ratio [OR] = 2.42; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.58–3.69; p < 0.001); as well as a late chronotypes (37.7% versus 38.1%; adjusted OR = 1.69; 95% CI = 1.10–2.61; p = 0.016). Migraineurs, particularly those with high attack frequency, were more tired after changes in circadian rhythm (i.e. more languid; p < 0.001) and coped less well with being active at unusual hours (i.e. more rigid; p < 0.001) than controls. Of 2389 migraineurs, 961 (40.2%) reported early morning attack onset. Conclusion Migraine patients are less prone to be of a normal chronotype than controls. They are more languid and more rigid when changes in circadian rhythm occur. Most migraine attacks begin in the early morning. These data suggest that chronobiological mechanisms play a role in migraine pathophysiology.
Utility-based k-anonymization

k-Anonymity is a well-researched mechanism for protecting private information released in Web. It requires that each tuple of a public released table must be indistinguishable from at least other k-1 tuples. Subject to this constraint, how to release data as useful as possible is challenge. Most previous works try to develop flexible anonymization method to reduce information loss, however, utility of released data is ignored.
Hardware Acceleration Landscape for Distributed Real-Time Analytics: Virtues and Limitations

We are witnessing a technological revolution with a broad impact ranging from daily life (e.g., personalized medicine and education) to industry (e.g., data-driven healthcare, commerce, agriculture, and mining). At the core of this transformation lies "data". This transformation is facilitated by embedded devices, collectively known as Internet of Things (IoT), which produce real-time feeds of sensor data which are collected and processed to produce a dynamic physical model used for optimized real-time decision making. At the infrastructure level, there is a need to develop a scalable architecture for processing massive volumes of present and historical data at an unprecedented velocity to support the IoT paradigm. To cope with such extreme scale, we argue for the need to revisit the hardware and software co-design landscape in light of two key technological advancements. First is the virtualization of computation and storage over highly distributed data centers spanning across continents. Second is the emergence of a variety of specialized hardware accelerators that complement traditional general-purpose processors. Further efforts are required to unify these two trends in order to harness the power of big data. In this paper, we present a formulation and characterization of the hardware acceleration landscape geared towards real-time analytics in the cloud. Our goal is to assist both researchers and practitioners navigating the newly revived field of software and hardware co-design for building next generation distributed systems. We further present a case study to explore software and hardware interplay for designing distributed real-time stream processing.
Comprehensive Study for Detection of Weak Resistive Open and Short Defects in FDSOI Technology

This paper presents a detailed analysis for the detection of resistive open and resistive short defects using delay test for a didactic circuit implemented in 28nm UTBB FDSOI technology. The two different VT options offered by the technology, i.e. Regular-VT (RVT) and Low-VT (LVT), are explored. Based on HSPICE simulations, this work determines the most suitable operating conditions in terms of power supply and body biasing to achieve maximum coverage of resistive short and resistive open defects in the context of delay test. Results show that low supply voltage along with reverse body biasing favors the detection of resistive short defects, whereas high supply voltage combined with forward body biasing proves to be more appropriate for detection of resistive open defects.
What do we know about the big data researches? A systematic review from 2011 to 2017

Abstract Big data are defined as a new phenomenon that can be novel step for improving social life and business condition. Analysing the big data’s researches to extract insights by systematic literature review is the main objective of this research. For synthesis systematically, data from 123 articles are extracted and kinds of studies that were usually done on big data area are investigated. The Systematic Review showed: the most studies were published in 2014, also the main journal that published big data’s article was ‘Big Data Research’ and country with highest investigate about big data were ‘United State and China’. Beside, most researches were done with analytic background. The main research method was experimental and major research type was case study. Our study proved that the majority of researches carried out around big data focused on data management, and most of them identify ‘volume and variety’ of as significant challenges of big data. Likewise, ‘business analytics’ was described in the major benefits.
The retrosplenial cortex: A memory gateway between the cortical default mode network and the medial temporal lobe

The default mode network (DMN) involves interacting cortical areas, including the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) and the retrosplenial cortex (RSC), and subcortical areas, including the medial temporal lobe (MTL). The degree of functional connectivity (FC) within the DMN, particularly between MTL and medial‐parietal subsystems, relates to episodic memory (EM) processes. However, past resting‐state studies investigating the link between posterior DMN‐MTL FC and EM performance yielded inconsistent results, possibly reflecting heterogeneity in the degree of connectivity between MTL and specific cortical DMN regions. Animal work suggests that RSC has structural connections to both cortical DMN regions and MTL, and may thus serve as an intermediate layer that facilitates information transfer between cortical and subcortical DMNs. We studied 180 healthy old adults (aged 64–68 years), who underwent comprehensive assessment of EM, along with resting‐state fMRI. We found greater FC between MTL and RSC than between MTL and the other cortical DMN regions (e.g., PCC), with the only significant association with EM observed for MTL‐RSC FC. Mediational analysis showed that MTL‐cortical DMN connectivity increased with RSC as a mediator. Further analysis using a graph‐theoretical approach on DMN nodes revealed the highest betweenness centrality for RSC, confirming that a high proportion of short paths among DMN regions pass through RSC. Importantly, the degree of RSC mediation was associated with EM performance, suggesting that individuals with greater mediation have an EM advantage. These findings suggest that RSC forms a critical gateway between MTL and cortical DMN to support EM in older adults.
High-Dose Micafungin for Preterm Neonates and Infants with Invasive and Central Nervous System Candidiasis

ABSTRACT High doses of micafungin are advocated in neonates with systemic candidiasis, but limited pharmacokinetic (PK) and safety data are available to support their use. Eighteen preterm neonates and infants with systemic candidiasis, three of whom had meningitis, were treated for at least 14 days with 8 to 15 mg/kg of body weight/day of intravenous micafungin. Plasma micafungin concentrations (four measurements for each patient) were determined after the third dose, and the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) micafungin concentrations in three patients were also obtained. Population PK analyses were used to identify the optimal model, and the model was further validated using external data (n = 5). The safety of micafungin was assessed by measurement of the levels of liver and kidney function biomarkers. The mean age and weight at the initiation of treatment were 2.33 months (standard deviation [SD], 1.98 months) and 3.24 kg (SD, 1.61 kg), respectively. The optimal PK model was one that scaled plasma clearance to weight and the transaminase concentration ratio. The CSF of three patients was sampled, and the observed concentrations were between 0.80 and 1.80 mg/liter. The model-predicted mean micafungin area under the concentration-time curve over 24 h was 336 mg · h/liter (SD, 165 mg · h/liter) with the 10-mg/kg/day dosage. Eighteen of the 23 subjects (78.2%) had clinical resolution of their infection, but 5 had neurologic impairments. Among the transaminases, alkaline phosphatase measurements were significantly higher posttreatment, with a geometric mean ratio of 1.17 (90% confidence interval, 1.01, 1.37). Furthermore, marked elevations in the gamma-glutamyltransferase (GGT) level were observed in three patients treated with 10- to 15-mg/kg/day doses, and improvement of the GGT level was noted after a dose reduction. Higher weight-based doses of micafungin were generally well tolerated in neonates and infants and achieved pharmacokinetic profiles predictive of an effect.
The protective effect of ammonium oxalate treatment on the surface of wall paintings

All commonly used protective coatings of mural surfaces are unstable in the long run and chemically incompatible with the undercoating and its water porosity. In the case of naturally weathered stone and mural surfaces, an oxalate patina tends to accumulate naturally. This patina is the subject of ongoing research. The restoration laboratory of the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence, with the help of recent examples, is investigating whether such protective coatings consisting of aqueous solutions of ammonium oxalate can be artificially built up. Air pollution, moreover, could cause the calcium sulfate in plaster coatings to turn into calcium oxalate. This tends to be more resistant to acid rain than lime and plaster. Experiments are continuing. To date, efforts have had satisfying results with no detrimental effects observed. -- AATA
Who gets the most out of cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety disorders? The role of treatment dose and patient engagement.

OBJECTIVE The present study explored treatment dose and patient engagement as predictors of treatment outcome in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for anxiety disorders. METHOD Measures of high versus low treatment dose and high versus low patient engagement in CBT were compared as predictors of 12- and 18-month outcomes for patients being treated for anxiety disorders with CBT (with or without concurrent pharmacotherapy) in primary care settings as part of a randomized controlled effectiveness trial of the Coordinated Anxiety Learning and Management (CALM) intervention. Measures of dose (attendance, exposure completion) and engagement in CBT (homework adherence, commitment) were collected throughout treatment, and blinded follow-up phone assessments of outcome measures (12-item Brief Symptom Inventory, Patient Health Questionnaire 8, Sheehan Disability Scale) were completed at 12 and 18 months. Propensity score weighting controlled for baseline differences in demographics and symptom severity between patients with high and low dose and engagement. These analyses included the 439 patients who selected CBT as treatment modality. RESULTS Completing exposures, having high attendance, and being more adherent to completing homework predicted better outcomes across all measures at 12 and 18 months, and high CBT commitment predicted better outcomes on all measures at 18 months. CONCLUSIONS This study found that higher treatment dose and patient engagement in CBT for anxiety disorders were stable and robust predictors of greater reductions in anxiety symptoms, depression symptoms, and functional disability.
Female sociality and sexual conflict shape offspring survival in a Neotropical primate

Significance In group-living mammals, infants of females with strong social relationships sometimes exhibit higher survivorship than infants of less social females, a finding that holds true in our study population of wild white-faced capuchin monkeys. However, as in many mammals, new alpha male capuchins often kill young infants sired by other males. Our long-term research shows that infants of highly social females are at greater risk of dying or disappearing during periods of alpha male replacements than infants of less social females. These findings indicate that new alpha males are more likely to target the infants of more social, and therefore central, females. Our study provides evidence that female sociality can negatively affect offspring survival by increasing the likelihood of infanticide. Most mammals live in social groups in which members form differentiated social relationships. Individuals may vary in their degree of sociality, and this variation can be associated with differential fitness. In some species, for example, female sociality has a positive effect on infant survival. However, investigations of such cases are still rare, and no previous study has considered how male infanticide might constrain effects of female sociality on infant survival. Infanticide is part of the male reproductive strategy in many mammals, and it has the potential to override, or even reverse, effects of female reproductive strategies, including sociality. Therefore, we investigated the relationships between female sociality, offspring survival, and infanticide risk in wild white-faced capuchin monkeys using long-term data from Santa Rosa, Costa Rica. Female capuchins formed differentiated bonds, and bond strength was predicted by kin relationship, rank difference, and the presence of female infants. Most females formed stable bonds with their top social partners, although bond stability varied considerably. Offspring of highly social females, who were often high-ranking females, exhibited higher survivorship during stable periods compared with offspring of less social females. However, offspring of highly social females were more likely to die or disappear during periods of alpha male replacements, probably because new alpha males are central to the group, and therefore more likely to target the infants of highly social, central females. This study shows that female sociality in mammals can have negative fitness consequences that are imposed by male behavior.