Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Changing patterns of acute viral hepatitis at a major urban referral center in Egypt.

BACKGROUND Changes in the viral etiology of hospitalized patients can inform us of changes in the overall epidemiology of acute viral hepatitis infections. We hypothesized that improvements in health care and sanitation in the past 2 decades in Egypt have significantly impacted the viral causes of acute viral hepatitis in hospitalized patients. We compared the viral causes of acute viral hepatitis at a major urban referral center with results reported from the same center 20 years earlier. METHODS Over a period of 10 months, 200 consecutive inpatients with clinical acute viral hepatitis were enrolled in the study, and serum samples were tested for hepatitis A through E, cytomegalovirus, and Epstein-Barr virus. RESULTS The frequency of acute hepatitis B virus infection as a cause of symptomatic hepatitis decreased from 43.4% in 1983 to 28.5% in 2002 (P<.01), and acute hepatitis A virus infection increased from 2.1% in 1983 to 34% in 2002 (P<.01), and occurred at older ages. In 1983, non-A, non-B hepatitis virus infection caused acute viral hepatitis in 38.7% of cases, compared with 31% in the present study (P=.12). The mean alanine aminotransferase level was highest in patients with combined infections, and clinical presentation did not distinguish between different viral etiologies of hepatitis. CONCLUSIONS A significant decrease in hepatitis B virus infection and an increase in hepatitis A virus infection have occurred since the earlier study was performed in 1983. The decrease in hepatitis B virus infection is attributable to the steep decrease in hepatitis B virus infection among children that resulted from the universal hepatitis B virus immunization of infants that was initiated in 1991. The increase in clinical hepatitis A virus infection occurred in older patients and could be attributed to improved sanitation that delayed individuals' initial exposures to the virus.
Parents and Families in Precollege Preparation: The Lack of Connection between Research and Practice

A discrepancy exists between (a) research supporting the hypothesis that parent and family involvement increases the chances of low-income students’ gaining entrance into college and (b) the practice of family participation in college outreach programs. This article explores the role of cultural capital, structural barriers, cultural integrity in programformation, and identity construction in encouraging or deterring parent and family involvement. A review of the literature and an analysis of various college outreach programs suggest a greater emphasis is needed on incorporating family involvement into the central organization of outreach programs. Given agreement among researchers and practitioners that family involvement is paramount to students’academic success, the author suggests ways to implement familial participation through a prioritization of resource allocation, the creation of evaluative frameworks for assessment of program effectiveness, and continued support in the formof further research, policy making, and funding.
Layer-by-Layer , J-aggregate Thin Films with an Absorption Constant of 106 cm-1 in Optoelectronic Applications

Thin films of J-aggregate cyanine dyes deposited by layer-bylayer (LBL) assembly exhibit exciton-polariton dynamics when incorporated in an optical microcavity. Such LBL, J-aggregate thin films can be precisely deposited in a specific location in an optical microcavity, enabling the development of previously unachievable optoelectronic devices, as for example, the recently demonstrated resonant-cavity exciton-polariton organic light-emitting device [1].
La corrupción en la contratación estatal colombiana -una aproximación desde el neoinstitucionalismo-

Este ensayo pretende generar una discusion sobre el fenomeno de la corrupcion en la contratacion estatal, a partir de una de sus manifestaciones como es el soborno, tomando como marco analitico algunos aportes del neoinstitucionalismo que permitan un mejor entendimiento del fenomeno para formular estrategias integrales enfocadas a su erradicacion
Psychiatric disorders and traumatic brain injury

Psychiatric disorders after traumatic brain injury (TBI) are frequent. Researches in this area are important for the patients’ care and they may provide hints for the comprehension of primary psychiatric disorders. Here we approach epidemiology, diagnosis, associated factors and treatment of the main psychiatric disorders after TBI. Finally, the present situation of the knowledge in this field is discussed.
Physicians' assessment of the value of clinical information: Operationalization of a theoretical model

Inspired by the acquisition–cognition–application model (T. Saracevic & K.B. Kantor, 1997 ), we developed a tool called the Information Assessment Method to more clearly understand how physicians use clinical information. In primary healthcare, we conducted a naturalistic and longitudinal study of searches for clinical information. Forty‐one family physicians received a handheld computer with the Information Assessment Method linked to one commercial electronic knowledge resource. Over an average of 320 days, 83% of 2,131 searches for clinical information were rated using the Information Assessment Method. Searches to address a clinical question, as well as the retrieval of relevant clinical information, were positively associated with the use of that information for a specific patient. Searches done out of curiosity were negatively associated with the use of clinical information. We found significant associations between specific types of cognitive impact and information use for a specific patient. For example, when the physician reported “My practice was changed and improved” as a result of this clinical information, the odds that information was used for a specific patient increased threefold. Our findings provide empirical data to support the applicability of the acquisition‐cognition‐application model, as operationalized through the Information Assessment Method, in primary healthcare. Capturing the use of research‐based information in medicine opens the door to further study of the relationships between clinical information and health outcomes.
Compliance with a Request in Two Cultures: The Differential Influence of Social Proof and Commitment/Consistency on Collectivists and Individualists

University students in Poland and the United States, two countries that differ in individualistic-collectivistic orientation, indicated their willingness to comply with a request to participate without pay in a marketing survey. Half were asked to do so after considering information regarding their own history of compliance with such requests, whereas the other half were asked to do so after considering information regarding their peers’ history of such compliance. This was designed to assess the impact of two social influence principles (commitment/consistency and social proof, respectively) on participants’ decisions. As expected, although both principles were influential across cultures, the commitment/consistency principle had greater impact on Americans, whereas the social proof principle had greater impact on Poles. Additional analyses indicated that this effect was due principally, but not entirely, to participants’ personal individualistic-collectivistic orientations rather than to the dominant individualistic-collectivistic orientation of their cultures.
A new linear method for Euclidean motion/structure from three calibrated affine views

We introduce a unified framework for developing matching constraints of multiple affine views and rederive 2-view (affine epipolar geometry) and 3-view (affine image transfer) constraints within this framework. We then describe a new linear method for Euclidean motion and structure from 3 calibrated affine images, based on insight into the particular structure of these multiple-view constraints. Compared with the existing linear method of Huang and Lee (1989), the new method uses different and more appropriate constraints. It has no failure mode of the Euclidean factorisation method of Tomasi and Kanade (1992). We demonstrate the method on real image sequences.
Promoting and Avoiding Recombination: Contrasting Activities of the Escherichia coli RuvABC Holliday Junction Resolvase and RecG DNA Translocase

RuvABC and RecG are thought to provide alternative pathways for the late stages of recombination in Escherichia coli. Inactivation of both blocks the recovery of recombinants in genetic crosses. RuvABC resolves Holliday junctions, with RuvAB driving branch migration and RuvC catalyzing junction cleavage. RecG also drives branch migration, but no nuclease has been identified that might act with RecG to cleave junctions, apart from RusA, which is not normally expressed. We searched for an alternative nuclease using a synthetic lethality assay to screen for mutations causing inviability in the absence of RuvC, on the premise that a strain without any ability to cut junctions might be inviable. All the mutations identified mapped to polA, dam, or uvrD. None of these genes encodes a nuclease that cleaves Holliday junctions. Probing the reason for the inviability using the RusA Holliday junction resolvase provided strong evidence in each case that the RecG pathway is very ineffective at removing junctions and indicated that a nuclease component most probably does not exist. It also revealed new suppressors of recG, which were located to the ssb gene. Taken together with the results from the synthetic lethality assays, the properties of the mutant SSB proteins provide evidence that, rather than promoting recombination, a major function of RecG is to curb potentially pathological replication initiated via PriA protein at sites remote from oriC.
The Encroachment of Value Pragmatism on Pluralism: The Practice of the Valuation of Urban Green Space Using Stated-preference Approaches

ijur_1069 121.135 Monetary valuation of urban green space using stated-preference approaches has gained prominence among pragmatic urban researchers, but the resultant reduced potential for value pluralism has gone unnoticed. There is confusion on value concepts. Public-social values have been treated as private-economic ones. The potential for reflecting the multiple values and social roles of urban nature is thus reduced. Being method-driven, the practice fails to relate to the claimed objective of comprehensively portraying it. There is inadequate understanding of the philosophy and psychology of the values associated with urban green space, despite its multi-faceted role being widely recognized. This results in an unreflective acceptance of economic techniques. More work is needed to clarify issues concerning the manifestation and theoretical foundation of value pluralism. Deliberative approaches may be a potential complementary or alternative valuation method.
Reliability of Reviewer Ratings in the Manuscript Peer Review Process: An Opportunity for Improvement

Accountability to authors and readers cannot exist without proper peer review practices. Thus, the information a journal seeks from its peer reviewers and how it makes use of this information is paramount. Disagreement amongst peer reviewers can be considerable, resulting in very diverse comments to authors. Incorporating a clear scoring system for key concrete items and requiring referees to provide justification for scores may ensure that reviewers contribute in a consistently fair and effective manner. This article evaluates information collected from reviewers and proposes an example of a system that aims to improve accountability, while having the potential to make it easier for reviewers to perform a more objective review.
Gaussian Visual-Linguistic Embedding for Zero-Shot Recognition

An exciting outcome of research at the inter-section of language and vision is that of zero-shot learning (ZSL). ZSL promises to scale visual recognition by borrowing distributed semantic models learned from linguistic corpora and turning them into visual recognition models. However the popular word-vector DSM embeddings are relatively impoverished in their expressivity as they model each word as a single vector point. In this paper we explore word-distribution embeddings for ZSL. We present a visual-linguistic mapping for ZSL in the case where words and visual categories are both represented by distributions. Experiments show improved results on ZSL benchmarks due to this better exploiting of intra-concept variability in each modality
Emerging real-time services: optimizing traffic by smart cooperation in the network

The rise of new real-time interactive services, in which consumers demand high subjective quality, makes it necessary to define new network mechanisms that can dynamically adapt to traffic variations. Cooperation between the different actors is required in order to adapt the traditional network infrastructure to these new traffic patterns while guaranteeing delay requirements. Thus, standardization is needed in order to make cooperation possible. A method for tunneling compressed multiplexed traffic flows (TCMTF) is proposed as an update to TCRTP, the current practice defined by the IETF for optimizing RTP flows. Some scenarios have been identified in which traffic optimization can be deployed, while granting resource usage fairness and good user experience. This proposal could be used in different application environments, such as operators' networks, Internet service providers, long distance transports, and game providers.
DOODLE: a visual language for object-oriented databases

In this paper we introduce DOODLE, a new visual and declarative language for object-oriented databases. The main principle behind the language is that it is possible to display and query the database with arbitrary pictures. We allow the user to tailor the display of the data to suit the application at hand or her preferences. We want the user-defined visualizations to be stored in the database, and the language to express all kinds of visual manipulations. For extendibility reasons, the language is object-oriented. The semantics of the language is given by a well-known deductive query language for object-oriented databases. We hope that the formal basis of our language will contribute to the theoretical study of database visualizations and visual query languages, a subject that we believe is of great interest, but largely left unexplored.
Raptor codes based distributed storage algorithms for wireless sensor networks

We consider a distributed storage problem in a large-scale wireless sensor network with n nodes among which k acquire (sense) independent data. The goal is to disseminate the acquired information throughout the network so that each of the n sensors stores one possibly coded packet and the original k data packets can be recovered later in a computationally simple way from any (1 + isin)k of nodes for some small isin Gt 0. We propose two Raptor codes based distributed storage algorithms for solving this problem. In the first algorithm, all the sensors have the knowledge of n and k. In the second one, we assume that no sensor has such global information.
Families with a person with intellectual disabilities: stress and impact

Purpose of review This paper reviews research published since March 2002 that has addressed the situation of families with a person with intellectual disabilities. Such research is organized into research concerning families with a child with intellectual disabilities and families with an adult with intellectual disabilities, including parents with intellectual disabilities. Trends in family research, including greater methodological diversity and an expanding conception of the family, are highlighted. Recent findings Parents of children with intellectual disabilities report relatively high levels of distress, with a wide range of child, parent, family and service support factors implicated in parental distress. However, many parents also report positive perceptions of their child with intellectual disabilities. Research with parents who themselves have intellectual disabilities report very high levels of maternal distress, associated with a lack of social support. Methodologically, most studies are quantitative cross-sectional surveys using correlational analyses, with little consistency in measures or constructs across studies. However, increasing methodological diversity in family research is apparent. Summary Research concerning families with people with intellectual disabilities is gradually becoming more methodologically diverse and theoretically sophisticated, although more cooperation between research groups is required. Family research is also changing to reflect the changing status of people with intellectual disabilities in society, with expanding conceptions of family systems and increasing attempts to elicit the views of people with intellectual disabilities on their perceptions of these family systems.
Learning from Labeled and Unlabeled Vertices in Networks

Networks such as social networks, citation networks, protein-protein interaction networks, etc., are prevalent in real world. However, only very few vertices have labels compared to large amounts of unlabeled vertices. For example, in social networks, not every user provides his/her profile information such as the personal interests which are relevant for targeted advertising. Can we leverage the limited user information and friendship network wisely to infer the labels of unlabeled users? In this paper, we propose a semi-supervised learning framework called weighted-vote Geometric Neighbor classifier (wvGN) to infer the likely labels of unlabeled vertices in sparsely labeled networks. wvGN exploits random walks to explore not only local but also global neighborhood information of a vertex. Then the label of the vertex is determined by the accumulated local and global neighborhood information. Specifically, wvGN optimizes a proposed objective function by a search strategy which is based on the gradient and coordinate descent methods. The search strategy iteratively conducts a coarse search and a fine search to escape from local optima. Extensive experiments on various synthetic and real-world data verify the effectiveness of wvGN compared to state-of-the-art approaches.
Semantic view for grid services

The grid technology is expected to have the ability of resolving the problem of large-scale information resources sharing in virtual organizations, which deliver a number of grid services to publish large-scale information to end-users. We propose an intelligent client to grid services, which manipulate information resources at semantic level and provides end-users with a universal and intuitive semantic view for various grid services. With a series of semantic plug-ins in semantic browser, end-users can gain richer interaction with grid services and resolve complex domain problems in a more intuitive and friendly environment.
Prepare and commit certification for decentralized transaction management in rigorous heterogeneous multidatabases

Algorithms for scheduling of distributed transactions in a heterogeneous multidatabase, in the presence of failures, are presented. The algorithms of prepare certification and commit certification protect against serialization errors called global view distortions and local view distortions. View serializable overall histories are guaranteed in the presence of most typical failures. The assumptions are, among others, that the participating database systems produce rigorous histories and that no local transaction may update the data accessed by a global transaction that is in the prepared state. The main advantage of the method, as compared to other known solutions, is that it is totally decentralized. <<ETX>>
FUNCTIONS OF COATED VESICLES DURING PROTEIN ABSORPTION IN THE RAT VAS DEFERENS

The role of coated vesicles during the absorption of horseradish peroxidase was investigated in the epithelium of the rat vas deferens by electron microscopy and cytochemistry. Peroxidase was introduced into the vas lumen in vivo. Tissue was excised at selected intervals, fixed in formaldehyde-glutaraldehyde, sectioned without freezing, incubated in Karnovsky's medium, postfixed in OsO4, and processed for electron microscopy. Some controls and peroxidase-perfused specimens were incubated with TPP,1 GP, and CMP. Attention was focused on the Golgi complex, apical multivesicular bodies, and two populations of coated vesicles; large (> 1000 A) ones concentrated in the apical cytoplasm and small (<750 A) ones found primarily in the Golgi region. 10 min after peroxidase injection, the tracer is found adhering to the surface plasmalemma, concentrated in bristle-coated invaginations, and within large coated vesicles. After 20–45 min, it is present in large smooth vesicles, apical multivesicular bodies, and dense bodies. Peroxidase is not seen in small coated vesicles at any interval. Counts of small coated vesicles reveal that during peroxidase absorption they first increase in number in the Golgi region and later, in the apical cytoplasm. In both control and peroxidase-perfused specimens incubated with TPP, reaction product is seen in several Golgi cisternae and in small coated vesicles in the Golgi region. With GP, reaction product is seen in one to two Golgi cisternae, multivesicular bodies, dense bodies, and small coated vesicles present in the Golgi region or near multivesicular bodies. The results demonstrate that (a) this epithelium functions in the absorption of protein from the duct lumen, (b) large coated vesicles serve as heterophagosomes to transport absorbed protein to lysosomes, and (c) some small coated vesicles serve as primary lysosomes to transport hydrolytic enzymes from the Golgi complex to multivesicular bodies.
Speech analysis and synthesis by linear prediction of the speech wave.

We describe a procedure for efficient encoding of the speech wave by representing it in terms of time‐varying parameters related to the transfer function of the vocal tract and the characteristics of the excitation. The speech wave, sampled at 10 kHz, is analyzed by predicting the present speech sample as a linear combination of the 12 previous samples. The 12 predictor coefficients are determined by minimizing the mean‐squared error between the actual and the predicted values of the speech samples. Fifteen parameters—namely, the 12 predictor coefficients, the pitch period, a binary parameter indicating whether the speech is voiced or unvoiced, and the rms value of the speech samples—are derived by analysis of the speech wave, encoded and transmitted to the synthesizer. The speech wave is synthesized as the output of a linear recursive filter excited by either a sequence of quasiperiodic pulses or a white‐noise source. Application of this method for efficient transmission and storage of speech signals as well as procedures for determining other speechcharacteristics, such as formant frequencies and bandwidths, the spectral envelope, and the autocorrelation function, are discussed.