Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Trade Costs, Export Development, and Poverty in Rwanda

For Rwanda, one of the poorest countries in the world, trade offers the most effective route for substantial poverty reduction. But the poor in Rwanda, most of whom are subsistence farmers in rural areas, are currently disconnected from markets and commercial activities by extremely high transport costs and by severe constraints on their ability to shift out of subsistence farming. The constraints include lack of access to credit and lack of access to information on the skills and techniques required to produce commercial crops. The paper is based on information from the household survey and a recent diagnostic study of constraints to trade in Rwanda. It provides a number of indicative simulations that show the potential for substantial reductions in poverty from initiatives that reduce trade costs, enhance the quality of exportable goods, and facilitate movement out of subsistence into commercial activities.
Influence of Pregnancy in Patients With Congenital Long QT Syndrome

Congenital long QT syndrome (LQTS) is a disorder of myocardial repolarization and is characterized by a prolonged QT interval on an electrocardiogram. A prolonged QT predisposes patients to an increased risk of syncope and sudden cardiac death secondary to polymorphic ventricular tachycardia. Several mutations linked to the LQTS have been identified, the most common of which have been found in the potassium channel KCNQ1 (LQT1) and hERG (LQT2) genes and in the sodium channel SCN5A (LQT3) gene. Female sex is an independent risk factor for the development of torsades de pointes in LQTS. Furthermore, although pregnancy may be associated with protection against cardiac events in LQTS, the 9-month postpartum period represents a time of increased arrhythmogenicity. Interestingly, these cardiac events during the postpartum period are more common in patients with LQT2. The precise mechanisms that influence the cardiac repolarization during the postpartum period are unclear. Beta-blockers are considered reasonably safe during pregnancy and should be continued or initiated in patients with LQTS to reduce the risk of cardiac events. Implantable cardioverter defibrillators are safe in pregnancy, and there is no evidence that pregnant women with these devices are at any greater risk for adverse complications solely on the grounds of having the device.
Is Adult ADHD a Childhood-Onset Neurodevelopmental Disorder? Evidence From a Four-Decade Longitudinal Cohort Study.

OBJECTIVE Despite a prevailing assumption that adult ADHD is a childhood-onset neurodevelopmental disorder, no prospective longitudinal study has described the childhoods of the adult ADHD population. The authors report follow-back analyses of ADHD cases diagnosed in adulthood, alongside follow-forward analyses of ADHD cases diagnosed in childhood, in one cohort. METHOD Participants belonged to a representative birth cohort of 1,037 individuals born in Dunedin, New Zealand, in 1972 and 1973 and followed to age 38, with 95% retention. Symptoms of ADHD, associated clinical features, comorbid disorders, neuropsychological deficits, genome-wide association study-derived polygenic risk, and life impairment indicators were assessed. Data sources were participants, parents, teachers, informants, neuropsychological test results, and administrative records. Adult ADHD diagnoses used DSM-5 criteria, apart from onset age and cross-setting corroboration, which were study outcome measures. RESULTS As expected, childhood ADHD had a prevalence of 6% (predominantly male) and was associated with childhood comorbid disorders, neurocognitive deficits, polygenic risk, and residual adult life impairment. Also as expected, adult ADHD had a prevalence of 3% (gender balanced) and was associated with adult substance dependence, adult life impairment, and treatment contact. Unexpectedly, the childhood ADHD and adult ADHD groups comprised virtually nonoverlapping sets; 90% of adult ADHD cases lacked a history of childhood ADHD. Also unexpectedly, the adult ADHD group did not show tested neuropsychological deficits in childhood or adulthood, nor did they show polygenic risk for childhood ADHD. CONCLUSIONS The findings raise the possibility that adults presenting with the ADHD symptom picture may not have a childhood-onset neurodevelopmental disorder. If this finding is replicated, then the disorder's place in the classification system must be reconsidered, and research must investigate the etiology of adult ADHD.
IN VIVO EVALUATION OF EFFECT FLUORIDE VARNISH ON BACTERIAL COLONIZATION OF TOOTH ENAMEL USING SCANNING ELECTRON MICROSCOPY

SUMMARY: The purpose of this study was to assess the antimicrobial effect of Duraphat, a fluoride varnish. The Duraphat-treated human enamel specimens were mounted on one side of maxillary removable space-maintainers with the untreated ones on opposite sides as control specimens. After 24 hours and one week the amount and nature of plaque accumulation were examined under scanning electron microscope (SEM). The majority of the organisms were found to be coccal following the examinations made on specimens at 24 hours. T here seemed to be no significant difference in the amount of plaque accumulations between the experimental and control specimens at 24 hours. After one week however a thick layer of bacteria was observed to cover enamel surfaces, which was less dense on Duraphat-treated specimens compared to those of the control cases.
A UV-to-NIR Study of Molecular Gas in the Dust Cavity around RY Lupi

We present a study of molecular gas in the inner disk around RY Lupi, with spectra from HST-COS, HST-STIS, and VLT-CRIRES. We model the radial distribution of flux from hot gas in a surface layer between r = 0.1–10 au, as traced by Lyα-pumped H2. The result shows H2 emission originating in a ring centered at ∼3 au that declines within r < 0.1 au, which is consistent with the behavior of disks with dust cavities. An analysis of the H2 line shapes shows that a two-component Gaussian profile is statistically preferred to a single-component Gaussian. We interpret this as tentative evidence for gas emitting from radially separated disk regions . The 4.7 μm 12CO emission lines are also well fit by two-component profiles . We combine these results with 10 μm observations to form a picture of gapped structure within the mm-imaged dust cavity, providing the first such overview of the inner regions of a young disk. The HST SED of RY Lupi is available online for use in modeling efforts.
Joint Recognition of Handwritten Text and Named Entities with a Neural End-to-End Model

When extracting information from handwritten documents, text transcription and named entity recognition are usually faced as separate subsequent tasks. This has the disadvantage that errors in the first module affect heavily the performance of the second module. In this work we propose to do both tasks jointly, using a single neural network with a common architecture used for plain text recognition. Experimentally, the work has been tested on a collection of historical marriage records. Results of experiments are presented to show the effect on the performance for different configurations: different ways of encoding the information, doing or not transfer learning and processing at text line or multi-line region level. The results are comparable to state of the art reported in the ICDAR 2017 Information Extraction competition, even though the proposed technique does not use any dictionaries, language modeling or post processing.
Influence of Cracking on Moisture Uptake in Strain-Hardening Cementitious Composites

AbstractStrain-hardening cementitious composites (SHCCs) are a class of cement-based materials that show strain-hardening behavior in tension. This is achieved by multiple microcracking, which results in a tightly spaced crack pattern with relatively small crack widths (50–80 μm, in general) and high strain capacity (up to 4–5%). Because of their ductile behavior and tight crack widths, SHCCs are commonly used for concrete repair applications. However, because of the tight crack width and crack spacing, moisture uptake by capillary suction can take place very fast. This could result in rapid access of deleterious substances, such as chloride ions, resulting in corrosion initiation. In this study, X-ray tomography is used for monitoring and quantification of water uptake in SHCC. Specimens were first loaded to different strain levels in uniaxial tension. Then, they were subjected to a capillary suction test. The performed test was subsequently modeled using a lattice model.
High elevation Plantago lanceolata plants are less resistant to herbivory than their low elevation conspecifics: is it just temperature?

Traits that mediate species interactions are evolutionarily shaped by biotic and abiotic drivers, yet we know relatively little about the relative importance of these factors. Herbivore pressure, along with resource availability and ‘third-party’ mutualists, are hypothesized to play a major role in the evolution of plant defence traits. Here, we used the model system Plantago lanceolata, which grows along steep elevation gradients in the Swiss Alps, to investigate the effect of elevation, herbivore pressure, mycorrhizal inoculation and temperature on plant resistance. Over a 1200 m elevation gradient, the levels of herbivory and iridoid glycosides (IGs) declined with increasing elevation. By planting seedlings at three different elevations, we further showed that both low-elevation growing conditions and mycorrhizal inoculation resulted in increased plant resistance to herbivores. Finally, using a temperature-controlled experiment comparing highand low-elevation ecotypes, we showed that high-elevation ecotypes are less resistant to herbivory, and that lower temperatures impair IGs deployment after herbivore attack. We thus propose that both lower herbivore pressure, and colder temperatures relax the defense syndrome of high elevation plants.
Saccades during Attempted Fixation in Parkinsonian Disorders and Recessive Ataxia: From Microsaccades to Square-Wave Jerks

During attempted visual fixation, saccades of a range of sizes occur. These “fixational saccades” include microsaccades, which are not apparent in regular clinical tests, and “saccadic intrusions”, predominantly horizontal saccades that interrupt accurate fixation. Square-wave jerks (SWJs), the most common type of saccadic intrusion, consist of an initial saccade away from the target followed, after a short delay, by a “return saccade” that brings the eye back onto target. SWJs are present in most human subjects, but are prominent by their increased frequency and size in certain parkinsonian disorders and in recessive, hereditary spinocerebellar ataxias. Here we asked whether fixational saccades showed distinctive features in various parkinsonian disorders and in recessive ataxia. Although some saccadic properties differed between patient groups, in all conditions larger saccades were more likely to form SWJs, and the intervals between the first and second saccade of SWJs were similar. These findings support the proposal of a common oculomotor mechanism that generates all fixational saccades, including microsaccades and SWJs. The same mechanism also explains how the return saccade in SWJs is triggered by the position error that occurs when the first saccadic component is large, both in the healthy brain and in neurological disease.
Optimized implementation of AES algorithm on Leon3 processor

Advance Encryption Standard Algorithm is the favored algorithmic rule for data encryption because it is upheld in numerous embedded processors and smart cards. This paper presents the implementation of AES Algorithm in C language and soft core of Leon3 processor on FPGA board. The code is implemented for both encryption and decryption of key length. After that code is optimised for memory and speed.
Challenges in the Medicinal Applications of Carbon Nanotubes (CNTs): Toxicity of the Central Nervous System and Safety Issues

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are gradually emerging as a new option for possible use in neural prosthesis, drug delivery, cancer treatment, bioengineering, gene therapy and regeneration therapy. With an increase in the development and application of CNT-based medicinal products, the potential hazards of CNTs to biological systems are getting greater public attention. A lack of toxicity information and safety standards has hampered possible applications of the CNT-based products in humans and animals. Since many CNT-based products are designed for the central nervous systems (CNS) applications (neural prosthesis, drug delivery and regeneration therapy), it is important to understand the danger these nanotubes may pose to the CNS. Therefore, the aims of article is to review the adverse effects of different forms of CNTs on the CNS, the role of protein corona in CNTs’ toxicity, the challenges the adverse effects pose in applications of the CNT-based products, and possible mechanism for the evolution of CNTs’s neurotoxicity. The information presented in this review will be useful in designing more effective and safer CNT-based products. Abbreviations
Extending SSD Lifetime with Persistent In-Memory Metadata Management

Flash-based solid state drive (SSD) is now widely deployed to speed up data intensive applications. However, I/O amplifications caused by file system metadata and journaling shorten the lifetime of SSD. In this paper, a mechanism named Persistent In-memory Metadata Management (referred to as PIMM) is proposed to reduce I/O traffics to SSD by exploiting the persistency and byte-addressability of Non-volatile Memory (NVM). The PIMM decouples data and metadata access paths, putting data on SSD and metadata in NVM at runtime. Thus, metadata is accessed in byte-addressable manner via the memory bus and metadata I/O is eliminated because metadata in NVM is not flushed back to SSD anymore. The PIMM is prototyped on real NVDIMM platform. Extensive evaluations on implemented prototype show that the proposed PIMM reduces the block erase for SSD by up to 91% and improves performance for different workloads.
Recovery from Misanalyses of ‘ Garden-Path Sentences FERNANDA

In five experiments we examined the way in which readers reanalyze garden-path sentences, using grammaticality judgments as the dependent measure. The stimuli were twoclause sentences containing an ambiguous noun phrase which could function as either the object of the first clause or the subject of the second. Prior research has shown that the former analysis is generally preferred. In the first two experiments, we varied the number of words in the ambiguous phrase and found that reanalysis of garden-path sentences was more difficult with a longer ambiguous phrase. The third experiment established that this effect of phrase length is not attributable to the greater syntactic complexity of longer phrases. The fourth and fifth experiments demonstrated that the effect of phrase length is attributable to increasing the distance from the head of the ambiguous phrase to the disambiguating word of the garden-path sentence: Ambiguous phrases made long by the addition of prenominal adjectives were easy for the parser to reanalyze, but phrases made long by the addition of postnominal modifying prepositional phrases (Experiment 3) or relative clauses (Experiments 4 and 5) were hard for the parser to reanalyze. From these results, we argue that sentence comprehension requires the creation of phrase structure and the assignment of thematic roles to phrases, with the assignment taking place at the phrasal head. Reanalysis is affected by the ease with which thematic roles can be reassigned to misanafyzed phrases.
Biodiesel production from jatropha oil and its characterization

Biodiesel, a promising substitute as an alternative fuel has gained significant attention due to the predicted shortness of conventional fuels and environmental concern. The utilization of liquid fuels such as biodiesel produced from Jatropha oil by transesterification process represents one of the most promising options for the use of conventional fossil fuels. The Jatropha oil is converted into jatropha oil methyl ester known as biodiesel prepared in the presence of homogeneous acid catalyst. The physical properties such as density, flash point, Kinematic viscosity, Cloud point and Pour point were found out for Jatropha oil and Jatropha methyl ester. The same characteristics study was also carried out for the diesel fuel for obtaining the base line data for analysis. The values obtained from the Jatropha methyl ester is closely matched with the values of conventional diesel and can be used in the existing diesel engine without any modification.
Body Mass Index as a Measure of Obesity: Racial Differences in Predictive Value for Health Parameters During Pregnancy.

BACKGROUND As a measure of obesity, body mass index (BMI; kg/m2) is an imperfect predictor of health outcomes, particularly among African Americans. However, BMI is used to guide prenatal care. We examined racial differences in the predictive value of maternal BMI for physiologic correlates of obesity, serum interleukin (IL)-6 and C-reactive protein (CRP), as well as cesarean section and infant birth weight. METHODS One hundred five pregnant women (40 European American, 65 African American) were assessed during the second trimester. BMI was defined as per prepregnancy weight. Electrochemiluminescence and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays were used to quantify IL-6 and CRP, respectively. Birth outcomes were determined by medical record review. RESULTS Women of both races classified as obese had higher serum IL-6 and CRP than their normal-weight counterparts (ps ≤ 0.01). However, among women with overweight, elevations in IL-6 (p < 0.01) and CRP (p = 0.06) were observed among European Americans, but not African Americans (ps ≥ 0.61). Maternal obesity was a significantly better predictor of cesarean section among European Americans versus African Americans (p = 0.03) and BMI was associated with infant birth weight among European Americans (p < 0.01), but not African Americans (p = 0.94). Effects remained after controlling for gestational age at delivery, gestational diabetes, and gestational weight gain as appropriate. CONCLUSIONS BMI may be a less valid predictor of correlates of overweight/obesity among African Americans versus European Americans during pregnancy. This should be considered in epidemiological studies of maternal-child health. In addition, studies examining the comparative validity of alternative/complementary measures to define obesity in pregnancy are warranted to inform clinical care.
Achieving equity in HIV-treatment outcomes: can social protection improve adolescent ART-adherence in South Africa?

ABSTRACT Low ART-adherence amongst adolescents is associated with morbidity, mortality and onward HIV transmission. Reviews find no effective adolescent adherence-promoting interventions. Social protection has demonstrated benefits for adolescents, and could potentially improve ART-adherence. This study examines associations of 10 social protection provisions with adherence in a large community-based sample of HIV-positive adolescents. All 10–19-year-olds ever ART-initiated in 53 government healthcare facilities in a health district of South Africa’s Eastern Cape were traced and interviewed in 2014–2015 (n = 1175 eligible). About 90% of the eligible sample was included (n = 1059). Social protection provisions were “cash/cash in kind”: government cash transfers, food security, school fees/materials, school feeding, clothing; and “care”: HIV support group, sports groups, choir/art groups, positive parenting and parental supervision/monitoring. Analyses used multivariate regression, interaction and marginal effects models in SPSS and STATA, controlling for socio-demographic, HIV and healthcare-related covariates. Findings showed 36% self-reported past-week ART non-adherence (<95%). Non-adherence was associated with increased opportunistic infections (p = .005, B .269, SD .09), and increased likelihood of detectable viral load at last test (>75 copies/ml) (aOR 1.98, CI 1.1–3.45). Independent of covariates, three social protection provisions were associated with reduced non-adherence: food provision (aOR .57, CI .42–.76, p < .001); HIV support group attendance (aOR .60, CI .40–.91, p < .02), and high parental/caregiver supervision (aOR .56, CI .43–.73, p < .001). Combination social protection showed additive benefits. With no social protection, non-adherence was 54%, with any one protection 39–41%, with any two social protections, 27–28% and with all three social protections, 18%. These results demonstrate that social protection provisions, particularly combinations of “cash plus care”, may improve adolescent adherence. Through this they have potential to improve survival and wellbeing, to prevent HIV transmission, and to advance treatment equity for HIV-positive adolescents.
Staphylococcus epidermidis Isolated in 1965 Are More Susceptible to Triclosan than Current Isolates

Since its introduction to the market in the 1970s, the synthetic biocide triclosan has had widespread use in household and medical products. Although decreased triclosan susceptibility has been observed for several bacterial species, when exposed under laboratory settings, no in vivo studies have associated triclosan use with decreased triclosan susceptibility or cross-resistance to antibiotics. One major challenge of such studies is the lack of strains that with certainty have not been exposed to triclosan. Here we have overcome this challenge by comparing current isolates of the human opportunistic pathogen Staphylococcus epidermidis with isolates collected in the 1960s prior to introduction of triclosan to the market. Of 64 current S. epidermidis isolates 12.5% were found to have tolerance towards triclosan defined as MIC≥0.25 mg/l compared to none of 34 isolates obtained in the 1960s. When passaged in the laboratory in the presence of triclosan, old and current susceptible isolates could be adapted to the same triclosan MIC level as found in current tolerant isolates. DNA sequence analysis revealed that laboratory-adapted strains carried mutations in fabI encoding the enoyl-acyl carrier protein reductase isoform, FabI, that is the target of triclosan, and the expression of fabI was also increased. However, the majority of the tolerant current isolates carried no mutations in fabI or the putative promoter region. Thus, this study indicates that the widespread use of triclosan has resulted in the occurrence of S. epidermidis with tolerance towards triclosan and that the adaptation involves FabI as well as other factors. We suggest increased caution in the general application of triclosan as triclosan has not shown efficacy in reducing infections and is toxic to aquatic organisms.
Occult hepatitis B virus infection in HIV positive patients at a tertiary healthcare unit in eastern India

Occult HBV infection (OBI), defined by the presence of HBV DNA in absence of hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg), is a significant concern in the HIV-infected population. Of 441 HIV+/HBsAg- patients analyzed, the overall prevalence of OBI was 6.3% (28/441). OBI was identified in 21 anti-HBc positives (17.8%), as well as among those who lacked any HBV-specific serological markers (2.2%). Comparison with HIV/HBV co-infection revealed that the levels of CD4, ALT, and HBV DNA were significantly lower during occult infection. Discrete differences were also observed with respect to quasispecies divergence. Additionally, subgenotype D1 was most frequent in occult infection, while D2 was widespread during chronic infection. The majority (~90%) of occult D1 sequences had the sQ129R mutation in the surface gene. This study highlights several distinct features of OBI in India and underscores the need for additional HBV DNA screening in HIV-positive individuals.