Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
E-imci: improving pediatric health care in low-income countries

Every year almost 10 million children die before reaching the age of five despite the fact that two-thirds of these deaths could be prevented by effective low-cost interventions. To combat this, the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF developed the Integrated Management of Childhood Illness (IMCI) treatment algorithms. In Tanzania, IMCI is the national policy for the treatment of childhood illness. This paper describes e-IMCI, a system for administering the IMCI protocol using a PDA. Our preliminary investigation in rural Tanzania suggests that e-IMCI is almost as fast as the common practice and potentially improves care by increasing adherence to the IMCI protocols. Additionally, we found clinicians could quickly be trained to use e-IMCI and were very enthusiastic about using it in the future.
Performance analysis of an adaptive SR ARQ scheme for time-varying Rayleigh fading channels

The performance of an adaptive selective-repeat automatic-repeat-request (SR ARQ) scheme with variable packet size is analysed in a time-varying Rayleigh fading channel. A Gilbert-Elliott model is used for the channel. Therefore, the state of the entire system can be modelled by a Markov chain. Channels with many different types of time behaviour can be modelled by adjusting the parameters of the general model. As the numerical results demonstrate, the time-varying characteristics of the channel have a great influence on the optimal values of the design parameters of the adaptive scheme.
Nonlinear viscoelastic properties of tissue assessed by ultrasound

A technique to assess qualitatively the presence of higher-order viscoelastic parameters is presented. Low-frequency, monochromatic elastic waves are emitted into the material via an external vibrator. The resulting steady-state motion is detected in real time via an ultra fast ultrasound system using classical, one-dimensional (1-D) ultrasound speckle correlation for motion estimation. Total data acquisition lasts only for about 250 ms. The spectrum of the temporal displacement data at each image point is used for analysis. The presence of nonlinear effects is detected by inspection of the ratio of the second harmonics amplitude with respect to the total amplitude summed up to the second harmonic. Results from a polyacrylamide-based phantom indicate a linear response (i.e., the absence of higher harmonics) for this type of material at 65 Hz mechanical vibration frequency and about 100 mum amplitude. A lesion, artificially created by injection of glutaraldehyde into a beef specimen, shows the development of higher harmonics at the location of injection as a function of time. The presence of upper harmonics is clearly evident at the location of a malignant lesion within a mastectomy
Formal methods for reconfigurable assembly systems

The XPRESS project defined a new concept of intelligent factory to improve the flexibility of the manucfacturing lines. One of the problems the management layer of this system faces is the decision regarding the composition of new production lines to realize a product. To solve these issues, this work focuses on developing methods to assist the engineer decision by eliminating undesired equipments combinations from the elegible configurations list. The result was a library of optimization functions for combinatorial problems and it is composed by three methods, each corresponding to a different stage of the decision process. This work also analyzes the impact of the problem features in the produced implementation.
Association of Unplanned Reintubation with Higher Mortality in Old, Frail Patients: A National Surgical Quality-Improvement Program Analysis.

BACKGROUND Unplanned postoperative reintubation increases the risk of mortality, but associated factors are unclear. OBJECTIVE To elucidate factors associated with increased mortality risk in patients with unplanned postoperative reintubation. DESIGN Retrospective study. Patients older than 40 years who underwent unplanned reintubation from 2005 to 2010 were identified using the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program database. Multiple regression models were used to examine the impact on mortality of factors that included the modified frailty index (mFI) we developed, American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) score, age decile, and days to reintubation. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE Mortality. RESULTS A total of 17,051 postoperative reintubations in adults were analyzed. Overall mortality was 29.4% (n = 5009). On postoperative day 1, 4434 patients were reintubated and 878 (19.8%) died. On postoperative day 7 and beyond, 6329 patients were reintubated and 2215 (35.0%) died. Increasing mFI resulted in increasing incidence of mortality (mFl of 0 = 20.5% mortality vs mFl of 0.37-0.45 = 41.7% mortality). As ASA score increased from 1 to 5, reintubation was associated with a mortality of 12.1% to 41.6%, respectively. Similarly, increasing age decile was associated with increasing incidence of mortality (40-49 years, 17.9% vs 80-89 years, 42.1%). After adjustment for confounding factors, mFI, ASA score, age decile, and increasing number of days to reintubation were independently and significantly associated with increased mortality in the study population. CONCLUSION Among patients who underwent unplanned reintubation, older and more frail patients had an increased risk of mortality.
A Novel H1N2 Influenza Virus Related to the Classical and Human Influenza Viruses from Pigs in Southern China

Southern China has long been considered to be an epicenter of pandemic influenza viruses. The special environment, breeding mode, and lifestyle in southern China provides more chances for wild aquatic birds, domestic poultry, pigs, and humans to be in contact. This creates the opportunity for interspecies transmission and generation of new influenza viruses. In this study, we reported a novel reassortant H1N2 influenza virus from pigs in southern China. According to the phylogenetic trees and homology of the nucleotide sequence, the virus was confirmed to be a novel triple-reassortant H1N2 virus containing genes from classical swine (PB2, PB1, HA, NP, and NS genes), triple-reassortant swine (PA and M genes), and recent human (NA gene) lineages. It indicated that the novel reassortment virus among human and swine influenza viruses occurred in pigs in southern China. The isolation of the novel reassortant H1N2 influenza viruses provides further evidence that pigs are “mixing vessels,” and swine influenza virus surveillance in southern China will provide important information about genetic evaluation and antigenic variation of swine influenza virus to formulate the prevention and control measures for the viruses.
Neural Nets for On-line Isolated Handwritten Character Recognition: A Comparative Study

Handwriting processing is a domain in great expansion which begins to see several industrial realizations. The field of personal computing has begun to make a transition from the desktop to handheld devices, thereby requiring input paradigms that are more suited for single hand entry than a keyboard. Online handwriting recognition allows for such input modalities. Handwriting recognition has always been a tough problem because of the handwriting variability, ambiguity and illegibility. This paper describes a simple approach involved in online handwriting recognition. Conventionally, the data obtained needs a lot of preprocessing including filtering, smoothing, slant removing and size normalization before recognition process. Instead of doing such lengthy preprocessing, this paper presents a simple approach to extract the useful character information. The whole process requires no preprocessing and size normalization. The method is applicable for off-line character recognition as well. This is a writer-independent system based on two neural net (NN) techniques: back propagation neural network (BPN) and counter propagation neural network (CPN). Performances of BPN and CPN are tested for upper-case English alphabets for a number of different styles from different peoples
Linear matrix inequality based control of tumor growth

In this paper we examine how can be combined the Linear Parameter Varying (LPV) modeling technique with the Linear Matrix Inequality (LMI) based controller and observer design methodology in order to control the tumor growth via anti-angiogenic inhibition. We introduce the important physiological knowledge regard to the control problem together with the design procedure. We used a recently developed minimal model which describes the tumor growth dynamics beside anti-angiogenic inhibition and we transformed this model into the difference based qLPV model. After, LMI based controller and observer were designed by pole clustering LMIs and we realized the control structure. Our aim was to develop a control environment which is — however — advanced, but it can be easily used and provides good performance from the designing properties and the robustization possibilities points of view, respectively. As our results showed, the framework provides appropriate results for tumor control.
Clinical malaria in the tropics

Although malaria has been largely eradicated from temperate countries, it is on the increase in the tropics. Infection with Plasmodium falciparum affects a vast number of people and kills over a million annually. Severe malaria is a multisystem disease affecting particularly the central nervous system (causing coma and convulsions), the kidneys (resulting in acute tubular necrosis), and the liver (contributing to lactic acidosis and hypoglycaemia). Acute pulmonary oedema (acute respiratory distress syndrome) may occur in adults particularly in association with renal impairment. In children these symptoms are rare, whereas hypoglycaemia, lactic acidosis and severe anaemia are more common. Malaria should be suspected in any febrile patient living in or returning from the tropics, and a blood smear examined. Chloroquine has been the mainstay of antimalarial treatment for the past 40 years, but resistance in P. falciparum is now widespread throughout the tropics and has recently been recognised in P. vivax from Oceania. Sulfadoxine‐pyrimethamine resistance is also common. Fortunately, quinine, and the newly introduced compounds, halofantrine and mefloquine, can be relied upon nearly everywhere. The most rapidly acting and effective of all antimalarial drugs, artemisinin and its derivatives, have come from China. They offer a genuine prospect of reducing mortality from malaria in the tropics.
Immunohistochemical Localization of Dopamine D Receptors in Rat Retina

We have localized the dopamine D1 receptor in rat retina using a subtype‐specific monoclonal antibody. Immunolabelling can be detected in the inner and outer plexiform layers and in a number of cells in the inner nuclear layer. In the inner plexiform layer, labelled processes form four distinct horizontal bands and a series of patches. In order further to characterize the labelling pattern of the D1 receptor antibody, double‐labelling experiments were performed with antibodies against population‐specific neuronal markers in the retina. Antibodies against tyrosine hydroxylase. choline acetyltransferase, calretinin, calbindin, the glutamate transporter GLT‐I, protein kinase C, recoverin and parvalbumin were co‐applied with the D, receptor antibody. With these cell markers we demonstrate that horizontal cells, at least three types of cone bipolar cells and a small number of amacrine cells are immunolabelled for the D1 receptor. In the inner plexiform layer, processes labelled by the D1 receptor antibody are co‐stratified with processes labelled by the GLT‐1 antibody. D1 receptor‐labelled processes are not co‐localized with the processes of amacrine cells and ganglion cells labelled by antibodies against tyrosine hydroxylase, choline acetyltransferase or calretinin. Our results indicate that dopamine Dl receptors are localized predominantly to horizontal cells and cone bipolar cells. Furthermore, the spatial disparity between dopaminergic processes and the site of the majority of D1 receptors supports the idea that in the retina dopamine acts as a neuromodulator that diffuses through extracellular space. The localization of D1 receptors to a number of identified cell types enables future physiological work to be directed towards specific synaptic circuits within the retina.
Systemic treatment and targeted therapy in patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma

Background: Advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a malignancy of global importance: it is the sixth most common cancer and the third most common cause of cancer-related mortality worldwide. Despite decades of efforts by many investigators, systemic chemotherapy or hormone therapy has failed to demonstrate improved survival in patients with HCC. Ongoing studies are evaluating the efficacy and tolerability of combining Sorafenib with erlotinib and other targeted agents or chemotherapy. Aims: On the basis of placebo-controlled, randomized phase III trials, Sorafenib has shown improved survival benefits in advanced HCC and has set a new standard for future clinical trials. The successful clinical development of Sorafenib in HCC has ushered in the era of molecularly targeted agents in this disease, which is discussed in this educational review. Material and Methods: Many molecularly targeted agents that inhibit angiogenesis, epidermal growth factor receptor, and mammalian target of rapamycin are at different stages of clinical development in advanced HCC. Future research should continue to unravel the mechanism of hepatocarcinogenesis and to identify key relevant molecular targets for therapeutic intervention. Identification and validation of potential surrogate and predictive biomarkers hold promise to individualize patients’ treatment to maximize clinical benefit and minimize the toxicity and cost of targeted agents. Results: Systemic therapy with various classes of agents, including hormone and cytotoxic agents, has provided no or marginal benefits. Improved understanding of the mechanism of hepatocarcinogenesis, coupled with the arrival of many newly developed molecularly targeted agents, has provided the unique opportunity to study some of these novel agents in advanced HCC. Conclusions: The demonstration of improved survival benefits by Sorafenib in advanced HCC has ushered in the era of molecular-targeted therapy in this disease, with many agents undergoing active clinical development.
The BeppoSAX High Energy Large Area Survey - IV. On the soft X-ray properties of the hard X-ray-selected HELLAS sources

We present a comprehensive study of the soft X-ray properties of the BeppoSAX High-Energy Large Area Survey (HELLAS) sources. A large fraction (about 2/3) of the hard X-ray selected sources is detected by ROSAT . The soft X-ray colors for many of these objects, along with the 0.5-2 keV flux upper limits for those undetected in the ROSAT band, do imply the presence of absorption. The comparison with the ROSAT Deep Survey sources indicates that a larger fraction of absorbed objects among the HELLAS sources is present, in agreement with their hard X-ray selection and the predictions of the X-ray background synthesis models. Another striking result is the presence of a soft (additional) X-ray component in a significant fraction of absorbed objects.
Enhanced antitumor activity of doxorubicin in breast cancer through the use of poly(butylcyanoacrylate) nanoparticles

The use of doxorubicin (DOX), one of the most effective antitumor molecules in the treatment of metastatic breast cancer, is limited by its low tumor selectivity and its severe side effects. Colloidal carriers based on biodegradable poly(butylcyanoacrylate) nanoparticles (PBCA NPs) may enhance DOX antitumor activity against breast cancer cells, thus allowing a reduction of the effective dose required for antitumor activity and consequently the level of associated toxicity. DOX loading onto PBCA NPs was investigated in this work via both drug entrapment and surface adsorption. Cytotoxicity assays with DOX-loaded NPs were performed in vitro using breast tumor cell lines (MCF-7 human and E0771 mouse cancer cells), and in vivo evaluating antitumor activity in immunocompetent C57BL/6 mice. The entrapment method yielded greater drug loading values and a controlled drug release profile. Neither in vitro nor in vivo cytotoxicity was observed for blank NPs. The 50% inhibitory concentration (IC50) of DOX-loaded PBCA NPs was significantly lower for MCF-7 and E0771 cancer cells (4 and 15 times, respectively) compared with free DOX. Furthermore, DOX-loaded PBCA NPs produced a tumor growth inhibition that was 40% greater than that observed with free DOX, thus reducing DOX toxicity during treatment. These results suggest that DOX-loaded PBCA NPs have great potential for improving the efficacy of DOX therapy against advanced breast cancers.
Ber Performance Of Golden Coded Mimo-Ofdm System Over Rayleigh And Rician Fading Channels

In this paper, we analyze the Bit Error Rate (BER) performance of Golden coded Multiple-Input Multiple-Output Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM) system over Rician multipath fading channel. We also compare the performance of the MIMO-OFDM system using Golden code in Rayleigh and Rician multipath fading channels. We discuss the effects of the presence of line-of-sight (LoS) component in the multipath fading environment which renders the improvement in the overall performance of the Golden coded MIMO-OFDM. This paper discusses the performance of Golden codes in a frequency selective Rician fading channel. To deal with the frequency selective fading channel, we use the OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) modulation. The BER performance of the Golden coded MIMO-OFDM system under several propagation conditions has been evaluated. Keywords—MIMO, OFDM, Golden STBC, Rayleigh fading, Rician fading.
Online Conditional Anomaly Detection in Multivariate Data for Transformer Monitoring

Retrofitting condition monitoring systems to aging plant can be problematic, since the particular signature of normal behavior will vary from unit to unit. This paper describes a technique for anomaly detection within the context of the conditions experienced by an in-service transformer, such as loading, seasonal weather, and network configuration. The aim is to model the aged but normal behavior for a given transformer, while reducing the potential for anomalies to be erroneously detected. The paper describes how this technique has been applied to two transmission transformers in the U.K. A case study of 12 months of data is given, with detailed analysis of anomalies detected during that time.
Topic-based social network analysis for virtual communities of interests in the Dark Web

The study of extremist groups and their interaction is a crucial task in order to maintain homeland security and peace. Tools such as social networks analysis and text mining have contributed to the understanding of this kind of groups in order to develop counter-terrorism applications. This work addresses the topic-based community key members extraction problem, for which our method combines both text mining and social network analysis techniques. This is achieved by first applying latent Dirichlet allocation to build two topic-based social networks: one social network oriented towards the thread creator point-of-view, and the other one oriented towards the repliers of the overall forum. Then, by using different Social Network Analysis measures, topic-based key members are evaluated using as benchmark a social network built using the plain documents. Experiments were performed using an English language based forum available in the Dark Web portal.
Evaluation of the pharmacokinetics and absolute bioavailability of three isosorbide-5-mononitrate preparations in healthy volunteers.

The objective of this study was two-fold: 1. to determine the pharmacokinetic parameters and the bioavailability of two 20 mg isosorbide-5-mononitrate (CAS 16051-77-7, IS-5-MN) preparations (treatments A and B) after single oral administration and 2. to evaluate the absolute bioavailability of IS-5-MN, which was possible by the administration of a third IS-5-MN preparation (treatment C) by the intravenous route (1 mg/ml, dose 20 mg). The three preparations were examined in 24 healthy volunteers according to a randomized 3-way cross-over design, blood samples were withdrawn up to 24 h following the administration of IS-5-MN and plasma concentrations of IS-5-MN were quantified by a gas chromatography method. The two oral preparations led to peak concentration values of about 360 ng/ml of IS-5-MN in the mean 0.90 h (treatment A) and 0.97 h (treatment B) after drug administration. The corresponding values for the infusion were 339.6 ng/ml and 2.59 h in the mean. For the areas under the curve (AUC(0-infinity)) mean values of 2733 (treatment A). 2724 (treatment B) and 2877 h x ng/ml (treatment C) were found. The absolute bioavailability of both oral treatments revealed values of 95.00% and 94.74% for treatments A and B, respectively. The statistical comparison (ANOVA, confidence intervals) of the pharmacokinetic parameters showed bioequivalence between both oral preparations and equivalence in the amount of drug absorption between both oral formulations and the i.v. -infusion. The observed undesired side effects (e.g. headache or nausea) are well known to occur after IS-5-MN administration.
Efficacy, Immunogenicity, and Safety of a Pentavalent Human-Bovine (WC3) Reassortant Rotavirus Vaccine at the End of Shelf Life

BACKGROUND. Rotavirus is the leading cause of dehydrating acute gastroenteritis in infants worldwide. Previous studies of a live pentavalent human-bovine reassortant rotavirus vaccine have shown it to be efficacious across a range of potencies. OBJECTIVE. Our goal was to evaluate the efficacy, immunogenicity, and safety of pentavalent rotavirus vaccine at the end of shelf life in healthy infants. PATIENTS AND METHODS. During 2002–2004, 1312 healthy infants ∼6 to 12 weeks old from the United States (47%) and Finland (53%) were randomly assigned to receive 3 oral doses of vaccine (vaccine at ∼1.1 × 107 infectious U per dose) or placebo ∼4 to 10 weeks apart. Infants were to be followed for acute gastroenteritis through 1 rotavirus season after vaccination and for adverse events postvaccination. RESULTS. Three doses of pentavalent rotavirus vaccine at the end of shelf life demonstrated efficacy against rotavirus gastroenteritis caused by human G-serotypes included in the vaccine (G1–G4). Efficacy against severe rotavirus gastroenteritis was 100%, and efficacy against any rotavirus gastroenteritis regardless of severity was 72.5%. A threefold rise in G1 serum neutralizing was observed in 57% and in anti-rotavirus immunoglobulin A in 96% of pentavalent rotavirus vaccine recipients. No statistically significant increase in vomiting, diarrhea, or irritability was observed among pentavalent rotavirus vaccine recipients compared with placebo recipients within the 7-day period from each dose. A statistically significant increase in fevers (≥100.5°F, rectal equivalent) was observed among pentavalent rotavirus vaccine recipients compared with placebo recipients after dose 1. CONCLUSIONS. This pentavalent human-bovine rotavirus vaccine was generally well tolerated, efficacious, and immunogenic at the end of shelf life.