Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reconstructive Surgery in Times of Conflict

Background:Smile Train is a charitable organization that partners with and trains surgeons in developing countries to provide surgical care to patients with cleft lip/palate deformities. The organization supports surgeries in several countries that experience high levels of regional conflict and violence. Nigeria, a country where Smile Train is very active, has undergone numerous periods of extreme violence over the past 12 years. The purpose of the present study is to analyze how local violence and conflict have impacted the ability of surgeons partnered with Smile Train to provide care in Nigeria. Methods:The authors retrospectively reviewed Smile Train Express, the organization's database, from 2003 to 2015 for cleft lip/palate repairs performed in Nigeria. The data was chronologically mapped against a detailed timeline of incidents of violence in Nigeria to compare how violence affected the work of Smile Train-affiliated surgeons. Results:Smile Train-affiliates facilitated 11,499 surgeries in Nigeria from 2003 to 2015. During the same period, 46,370 people were killed in Nigeria in acts of terrorism and violence. Major drops in the frequency of cleft surgeries were preceded by spikes in violence. Conclusions:Violence in Nigeria has had a clear impact on the ability of Smile Train-affiliated surgeons to provide adequate cleft care. The international medical community needs to take steps in an attempt to continue to provide essential medical care in areas of conflict and instability.
β-D-glucan Surveillance with Preemptive Anidulafungin for Invasive Candidiasis in Intensive Care Unit Patients: A Randomized Pilot Study

Background Invasive candidiasis (IC) is a devastating disease. While prompt antifungal therapy improves outcomes, empiric treatment based on the presence of fever has little clinical impact. Β-D-Glucan (BDG) is a fungal cell wall component detectable in the serum of patients with early invasive fungal infection (IFI). We evaluated the utility of BDG surveillance as a guide for preemptive antifungal therapy in at-risk intensive care unit (ICU) patients. Methods Patients admitted to the ICU for ≥3 days and expected to require at least 2 additional days of intensive care were enrolled. Subjects were randomized in 3∶1 fashion to receive twice weekly BDG surveillance with preemptive anidulafungin in response to a positive test or empiric antifungal treatment based on physician preference. Results Sixty-four subjects were enrolled, with 1 proven and 5 probable cases of IC identified over a 2.5 year period. BDG levels were higher in subjects with proven/probable IC as compared to those without an IFI (117 pg/ml vs. 28 pg/ml; p<0.001). Optimal assay performance required 2 sequential BDG determinations of ≥80 pg/ml to define a positive test (sensitivity 100%, specificity 75%, positive predictive value 30%, negative predictive value 100%). In all, 21 preemptive and 5 empiric subjects received systemic antifungal therapy. Receipt of preemptive antifungal treatment had a significant effect on BDG concentrations (p< 0.001). Preemptive anidulafungin was safe and generally well tolerated with excellent outcome. Conclusions BDG monitoring may be useful for identifying ICU patients at highest risk to develop an IFI as well as for monitoring treatment response. Preemptive strategies based on fungal biomarkers warrant further study. Trial Registration Clinical Trials.gov NCT00672841
Integrating pedagogical capabilities in a virtual environment agent

Virtual environments are a promising milieu for education and training, because they allow students to practice their skills in 3D simulations of work settings. Autonomous agents can improve the eeectiveness of such e n vironments by assisting and collaborating with students as appropriate. This paper describes an autonomous pedagogical agent called Steve that can support the training of procedural skills such as operating or repairing complex equipment. Steve's architecture permits him to sense and manipulate dynamic virtual worlds. The architecture also enables Steve to assume alternative realizations, either as a full, articulated, human gure or as abstract pointers and disembodied hands. Steve employs a combination of intelligent capabilities in his interactions with students and the environment: plan revision and execution, explanation, and student monitoring. These capabilities are employed in multiple ways in order to support alternative pedagogical styles. Steve's knowledge representation is designed so that agent capabilities can be authored without detailed knowledge of agent architectures and languages.
Randomized Algorithm for Approximate Nearest Neighbor Search in High Dimensions

A randomized algorithm employs a degree of randomness as part of its logic with uniform random bits as an auxiliary input to guide its behavior, in the hope of achieving good average runtime performance over all possible choices of the random bits. In this paper, we formulate a randomized algorithm capable of finding approximate nearest neighbors, specifically in high dimensional datasets. The random bits of this algorithm are sets of kernels chosen from the Gaussian normal distribution, which are used to create a data structure that guarantees sublinear runtime complexity and retrieval accuracy. The algorithm focuses on selecting the optimal cardinalities of the kernels and their members. These cardinalities influence computational, memory and runtime complexities of the algorithm. We demonstrate that using the cardinality of the kernels to determine the kernel size guarantees the highest provable lower bound of the probability of collision of related items; thus accurate retrieval of nearest neighbors. When implemented on Cray XE6 machine using 76 processes, our algorithm achieves speedup of 69 and approximately 48x performance gain in average query runtime with the retrieval accuracy of 90.5%.
Red blood cell storage in additive solution‐7 preserves energy and redox metabolism: a metabolomics approach

Storage and transfusion of red blood cells (RBCs) has a huge medical and economic impact. Routine storage practices can be ameliorated through the implementation of novel additive solutions (ASs) that tackle the accumulation of biochemical and morphologic lesion during routine cold liquid storage in the blood bank, such as the recently introduced alkaline solution AS‐7. Here we hypothesize that AS‐7 might exert its beneficial effects through metabolic modulation during routine storage.
An Internet of Things-Based Model for Smart Water Management

Water is a vital resource for life, and for the economy. Nowadays, one of the most serious challenges to solve is to manage the water scarcity. Current water management ICT systems are supported by specific vendor equipment, without considering any interoperability standards. The lack of standardization among producer's water ICT equipment hinders proper monitoring and control systems, resulting in low efficiency in water distribution and consumption, system's maintenance and improvement, and failure identification. In this paper we propose a smart water management model integrating Internet of Things technologies for decoupling decision support systems and monitoring from business processes coordination and subsystem implementation. The proposed smart water management model makes specific vendor equipment interoperable and manageable in a water management domain in a homogeneous way.
PlA2 Polymorphism in Glycoprotein IIb/IIIa Modulates the Morphology and Nanomechanics of Platelets

Glycoprotein IIb/IIIa (GPIIb/IIIa) is the most abundant platelet surface receptor for fibrinogen and von Willebrand factor. Polymorphism PlA1/A2 in the gene of GPIIb/IIIa is among the risk factors for the development of arterial and venous thrombosis. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effect of the carriage of PlA1/A2 on the size, topographic features, and membrane stiffness of platelets from healthy controls and patients with deep venous thrombosis (DVT). Atomic force microscopy (AFM) imaging and nanoindentation (force–distance curves) were applied to investigate the morphological and nanomechanical properties (Young’s modulus) of platelets immobilized on glass surface. The surface roughness (Ra) and height (h) of platelets from patients with DVT, carriers of mutant allele PlA2 (Ra = 30.2 ± 6 nm; h = 766 ± 182 nm) and noncarriers (Ra = 28.6 ± 6 nm; h = 865 ± 290 nm), were lower than those of healthy carriers of allele PlA2 (Ra = 48.1 ± 12 nm; h = 1072 ± 338 nm) and healthy noncarriers (Ra = 49.7 ± 14 nm; h = 1021 ± 433 nm), respectively. Platelets isolated from patients with DVT, both carriers and noncarriers, exhibit much higher degree of stiffness at the stage of spreading (E = 327 ± 85 kPa and 341 ± 102 kPa, respectively) compared to healthy noncarriers (E = 198 ± 50 kPa). In addition, more pronounced level of platelet activation was found in polymorphism carriers. In conclusion, the carriage of PlA2 allele modulates the activation state, morphology, and membrane elasticity of platelets.
Modelling Context Dependency in Acoustic-Phonetic and Lexical Representations

In 1989, our group first reported on the development of SUMMIT, a segment-based speaker-independent continuous-speech recognition system [13]. The initial version of SUMMIT made use of fairly simple context-independent models for the lexical labels. Recently, we have begun to incorporate more complex models of lexical labels that take into account a variety of contextual factors. These changes, along with an improved corrective training procedure for adapting pronunciation are weights and a larger set of training data, have resulted in the reduction of error rate by almost a factor of two on the Resource Management task.
Fulvestrant 500 mg vs 250 mg in postmenopausal women with estrogen receptor-positive advanced breast cancer: a randomized, double-blind registrational trial in China

The international CONFIRM study showed that fulvestrant 500 mg improved progression-free survival (PFS) vs fulvestrant 250 mg in postmenopausal women with estrogen receptor (ER)-positive locally advanced/metastatic breast cancer (LA/MBC). In this randomized, double-blind study, postmenopausal Chinese women with ER-positive LA/MBC and progression after endocrine therapy received fulvestrant 500 mg (days 0, 14, 28, and every 28 days thereafter) or fulvestrant 250 mg (every 28 days). Consistency with the international study was assumed if the hazard ratio (HR) for comparison of PFS (primary endpoint) was < 1 (stratified log-rank test). The study was not powered to assess between-group differences. In total, 221 patients were randomized (fulvestrant 500 mg: n = 111; fulvestrant 250 mg: n = 110). Baseline characteristics were balanced. Median PFS was 8.0 months with fulvestrant 500 mg vs 4.0 months with 250 mg (HR = 0.75; 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.54−1.03; P = 0.078). PFS (HR; 95% CI) favored fulvestrant 500 mg in post-antiestrogen (0.86; 0.54−1.37) and post-aromatase inhibitor (0.65; 0.42−1.03) settings. No new safety considerations were observed. These results are consistent with the international CONFIRM study, supporting the superior clinical benefit of fulvestrant 500 mg in women with ER-positive LA/MBC experiencing progression following prior endocrine therapy.
Risk factors for vascular dementia: Hypotension as a key point

Physiologically, the cerebral autoregulation system allows maintenance of constant cerebral blood flow over a wide range of blood pressure. In old people, there is a progressive reshape of cerebral autoregulation from a sigmoid curve to a straight line. This implies that any abrupt change in blood pressure will result in a rapid and significant change in cerebral blood flow. Hypertension has often been observed to be a risk factor for vascular dementia (VaD) and sometimes for Alzheimer disease although not always. Indeed, high blood pressure may accelerate cerebral white matter lesions, but white matter lesions have been found to be facilitated by excessive fall in blood pressure, including orthostatic dysregulation and postprandial hypotension. Many recent studies observed among other data, that there was a correlation between systolic pressure reduction and cognitive decline in women, which was not accounted for by other factors. Baseline blood pressure level was not significantly related to cognitive decline with initial good cognition. Some researchers speculate that blood pressure reduction might be an early change of the dementing process. The most confounding factor is that low pressure by itself might be a predictor of death; nevertheless, the effect of low blood pressure on cognition is underestimated because of a survival bias. Another explanation is that clinically unrecognized vascular lesions in the brain or atherosclerosis are responsible for both cognitive decline and blood pressure reduction. We discuss the entire process, and try to define a possible mechanism that is able to explain the dynamic by which hypotension might be related to dementia.
Source tracing of natural organic matter bound mercury in boreal forest runoff with mercury stable isotopes.

Terrestrial runoff represents a major source of mercury (Hg) to aquatic ecosystems. In boreal forest catchments, such as the one in northern Sweden studied here, mercury bound to natural organic matter (NOM) represents a large fraction of mercury in the runoff. We present a method to measure Hg stable isotope signatures of colloidal Hg, mainly complexed by high molecular weight or colloidal natural organic matter (NOM) in natural waters based on pre-enrichment by ultrafiltration, followed by freeze-drying and combustion. We report that Hg associated with high molecular weight NOM in the boreal forest runoff has very similar Hg isotope signatures as compared to the organic soil horizons of the catchment area. The mass-independent fractionation (MIF) signatures (Δ199Hg and Δ200Hg) measured in soils and runoff were in agreement with typical values reported for atmospheric gaseous elemental mercury (Hg0) and distinctly different from reported Hg isotope signatures in precipitation. We therefore suggest that most Hg in the boreal terrestrial ecosystem originated from the deposition of Hg0 through foliar uptake rather than precipitation. Using a mixing model we calculated the contribution of soil horizons to the Hg in the runoff. At moderate to high flow runoff conditions, that prevailed during sampling, the uppermost part of the organic horizon (Oe/He) contributed 50-70% of the Hg in the runoff, while the underlying more humified organic Oa/Ha and the mineral soil horizons displayed a lower mobility of Hg. The good agreement of the Hg isotope results with other source tracing approaches using radiocarbon signatures and Hg : C ratios provides additional support for the strong coupling between Hg and NOM. The exploratory results from this study illustrate the potential of Hg stable isotopes to trace the source of Hg from atmospheric deposition through the terrestrial ecosystem to soil runoff, and provide a basis for more in-depth studies investigating the mobility of Hg in terrestrial ecosystems using Hg isotope signatures.
Adding human interaction aspects in the writing of User Stories: a perspective of software developers

Background: User stories are artifacts largely used to describe requirements in agile software development. However, the writing of user stories usually is focused on describing functional aspects of the software, leaving aside non-functional aspects as usability and user experience. Objective: This paper aims to present the findings of an investigation on how developers use the techniques/methods of the Human Computer Interaction to support them in the writing of user stories; and if, in fact, when the developers use them, they add the usability and user experience aspects in the user story description. Method: An experimental study was conducted to catch and understand the participants' rationales of using each technique/method. Results: Based on the participants' notes, a qualitative analysis was carried out, considering the 92 user stories produced by 42 participants. The results have shown that, in most cases, the participants recognized the importance and the role of the techniques/methods in the writing of user stories. Conclusions: As a conclusion, we can pinpoint that some techniques/methods are used only to unfold functional requirements and not to report aspects regarding the usability and the user experience.
Role of strain and nanoscale defects in modifying the multiferroicity in nanostructured BiFeO3 films

BiFeO3 (BFO) multifunctional oxide exhibits fascinating multiferroic properties suitable for potential application in nanoscale electronic devices such as non-volatile random accesses memory (FeRAM), field effect transistors, capacitors, logic circuits, etc. In this communication, we report the results of studies on 200 MeV Ag+15 ion irradiation-induced modifications in the structural, microstructural, electrical (I–V, C–V and P–E) and magnetic properties of pulsed laser deposited nanostructured BFO films grown on conducting SrTi0.998O0. 002TiO3 (SNTO) substrates. Role of nanoscale structural defects and oxygen vacancies in modifying the physical properties of BFO/SNTO has been discussed in this work.
Link Scheduling Algorithm with Interference Prediction for Multiple Mobile WBANs

As wireless body area networks (WBANs) become a key element in electronic healthcare (e-healthcare) systems, the coexistence of multiple mobile WBANs is becoming an issue. The network performance is negatively affected by the unpredictable movement of the human body. In such an environment, inter-WBAN interference can be caused by the overlapping transmission range of nearby WBANs. We propose a link scheduling algorithm with interference prediction (LSIP) for multiple mobile WBANs, which allows multiple mobile WBANs to transmit at the same time without causing inter-WBAN interference. In the LSIP, a superframe includes the contention access phase using carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) and the scheduled phase using time division multiple access (TDMA) for non-interfering nodes and interfering nodes, respectively. For interference prediction, we define a parameter called interference duration as the duration during which disparate WBANs interfere with each other. The Bayesian model is used to estimate and classify the interference using a signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR) and the number of neighboring WBANs. The simulation results show that the proposed LSIP algorithm improves the packet delivery ratio and throughput significantly with acceptable delay.
One‐Step In‐Situ Growth of Core–Shell SiC@Graphene Nanoparticles/Graphene Hybrids by Chemical Vapor Deposition

A one‐step in‐situ route to free standing core–shell silicon carbide in graphene nanoparticles on monolayer graphene is presented. The core–shell SiC@Graphene nanoparticle growth is realized by a simple chemical vapor deposition (CVD) process where carbon and silica precursors are simultaneously introduced into the growth chamber. This process permits the synthesis of a monolayer graphene sheet dressed with silicon carbide nanoparticles in a single CVD step, with the product controlled by growth temperature and the carbon/SiO2 exposure time. Growth of a high density SiC@Graphene distribution on a continuous graphene layer requires long exposure times (>1 h) and high temperature (1000 °C). The growth process proceeds by a carbothermal mechanism. The simultaneous growth of graphene and SiC nanoparticles enables uniform core–shell SiC@Graphene nanoparticle formation rather than SiC/carbon nanofiber growth. As a proof of concept, the functionalization of preformed nanoparticle graphene surface with a diazonium salt is studied, demonstrating an increase in grafting rate with increasing nanoparticle population. This work provides a general procedure for one‐step synthesis, with further investigation required to develop precursors for hybrid core–shell CVD material growth.
Physical Activity and Sedentary Behaviors of Urban Chinese Children: Grade Level Prevalence and Academic Burden Associations

The objectives of this study were (a) to report grade level prevalence in physical activity and sedentary behaviors and (b) to examine academic burden associations with these behaviors. School-aged children (n = 48,118) reported their physical activity, perception of physical activity sufficiency, factors for activity insufficiency, homework hours, and screen time in a typical week. Data were analyzed using general linear models and logistic regression models of Complex Samples. Prevalence results showed that children had lower physical activity and lower screen viewing time, but higher homework time during transition grades (6th, 9th, and 12th) and high school years. Academic burden was cited as the primary reason for not having sufficient physical activity (76.6%). Compared to those citing academic burden, students who did not report academic burden were significantly more likely to meet physical activity guidelines (Odds Ratio (OR) = 5.38, 95% CI = 4.74–6.11), but less likely to meet screen time guidelines (OR = 0.78, 95% CI = 0.72–0.84), controlling for body mass index, gender, and grade level. Additionally, children who reported academic burdens had significantly longer average daily homework time than those who did not (p < 0.01). Policy makers should promote physical activity and help children find a balance between homework and physical activity time particularly among the educational transition grades.
Diffraction Prediction in HDR Measurements

Modern imaging techniques have proved to be very efficient to recover a scene with high dynamic range values. However, this high dynamic range can introduce star-burst patterns around highlights arising from the diffraction of the camera aperture. The spatial extent of this effect can be very wide and alters pixels values, which, in a measurement context, are not reliable anymore. To address this problem, we introduce a novel algorithm that predicts, from a closed-form PSF, where the diffraction will affect the pixels of an HDR image, making it possible to discard them from the measurement. Our results give better results than common deconvolution techniques and the uncertainty values (convolution kernel and noise) of the algorithm output are recovered. Categories and Subject Descriptors (according to ACM CCS): I.3. 3 [Computer Graphics]: Picture/Image Generation—Line and curve generation In a wide variety of applications, the camera dynamic range does not permit to capture the whole dynamic range of the scene. High dynamic range (HDR) imaging [Rei10] is therefore necessary in order to fully recover the whole scene dynamic range. HDR photography merges photographies of a scene, taken at different levels of exposure, in order to increase the native camera dynamic range. HDR images are very useful because they speed up the acquisition process when using an imaging device. A common artifact arising from the high dynamic range is that star burst patterns can be seen around highlights. This effect is due to light diffraction through the lens diaphragm, and cannot be avoided. From a metrology perspective, these diffraction patterns pollute a lot of pixels around the highlights, which cannot be taken as reliable measurements. Since the camera diffraction pattern has a very high dynamic range, the higher the image dynamic range is, the more prominent is the pollution by diffraction. More generally, even if the effect becomes less visible, high-value pixels can always affect the lower value pixels through diffraction because the spatial range of diffraction is not bounded. One then has to be very careful when considering a low-value pixel as a reliable measurement. This diffraction effect can be described by a convolution, to which is added a classical measurement noise.