Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Towards Human Activity Recognition and Objective Performance Assessment in Human Patient Simulation: A Case Study

In this paper, we present an exploratory work towards the recognition of activities and performing real-time objective assessment in human patient simulation (HPS). Although HPS has been pervasively used in medical and nursing programs in developed countries, there is a huge need in providing consistent and objective assessment on student performance during HPS. Current methods all depend on instructor subjective observation, which not only could lead to inconsistency in evaluation across different students and different instructors, but also are very time and resource intensive. Recognizing complex human activities in the context of HPS is very challenging because it involves the recognition of human actions, gestures, as well as human-object and human-mannequin interactions. Hence, we study the feasibility of developing such a system for a particular simulation where a student is required to first identify the patient and then place a neck brace on the patient’s neck. The system we that we have developed identifies the actions and activities in the simulation and provides qualitative assessment on the student performance using computer vision, OpenPose, and TensorFlow. The system also consists of a debriefing mobile app that the student and instructor could use to view an automatically generated report with supporting key frames captured and annotated by our system.
Simulating survival data with predefined censoring rates under a mixture of non-informative right censoring schemes

Abstract Simulation studies have been routinely used to validate the performances of statistical methods for censored survival data under various scenarios. Our previous work proposed an integrated approach of simulating right censored survival data for proportional hazards models given a set of arbitrarily distributed baseline covariates and predefined censoring rates. However, the limitations are that all study subjects are assumed to be enrolled at the same time and there is no study ending time. We extended the previous work to accommodate the more realistic scenario under which study subjects are enrolled at a constant rate during an enrollment period and are then followed until one of the following events occurs: (a) the event of interest (e.g., death or occurrence of disease); (b) the end of study period; (c) early withdraws from random censoring events, whichever comes first. To demonstrate the application of the proposed approach in practice, we generated censored survival data and assessed the impact of several factors (the magnitude of confounding, size of treatment effect, the sine distance between coefficient vectors of confounders in the treatment and outcome models, and censoring rate) on the potential bias of propensity score matching estimators in estimating conditional and marginal hazards ratios.
Three different types of tea as surfactant in liquid exfoliation of graphite: green tea, black tea and oolong tea

Liquid phase exfoliation (LPE) with surfactant-assisted is a method to produce graphene that used water and surfactant as solvent. Tea is one of possible surfactants that can be used in LPE of graphite as it reduced the surface tension energy of water (72.75 mJ m−2) to ~40 – 50 mJ m−2 which is suitable level to exfoliate graphite. Three different types of tea were used as surfactant through one-step production of graphene which were green tea (GT), black tea (BT) and oolong tea (OT). The exfoliation of graphite in each tea solutions were successful as the UV spectra of supernatant samples show peak at 270 nm which indicates the C – C bond of graphene flakes. Morphology analysis (AFM) of resulted graphene samples show that graphene sheets have sharp edges caused by sonication process. The effect of sonication time was being investigated in this work. Green tea has higher exponent factor of time (1.715) compare to black tea (1.033) and oolong tea (0.762) due to high quantity of small molecules of polyphenols present in green tea solution. Thus, it is better to used GT as surfactant in LPE of graphite compare to BT and OT.
Comparative Analysis of Genomic Data To Determine Codon Usage and Amino Acid Usage in Tropheryma Whipplei

The next-generation sequencing methods assisted the scientific community in creating an enormous amount of genomic data, which is found to be very useful in terms of comparing the structural properties and pathogenicity of various bacterial strains. Tropheryma whipplei causes constitutional diseases like Gastroenteritis, Endocarditis, where aetiology directly depends significantly on genetic sequences.
Association entre la vaccination contre le Virus du Papillome Humain (VPH) et la prévalence de l’infection à VPH dans une cohorte de femmes enceintes de 2010 à 2016 à Montréal

iii Table des matières. v Liste des tableaux . viii Liste des sigles . x Liste des abréviations . xi Gardasil-9 : Vaccin nonavalent contre le VPH . xi Remerciements . xiii Chapitre
Novel insights and developments in thrombosis and haemostasis

The first part of this thesis focuses on direct oral anticoagulants (DOACs), a new class of antithrombotic agents which can be prescribed in a stable dosage, unlike their predecessors the Vitamin K antagonists (VKA). In healthy volunteers, prothrombin complex concentrate completely reversed the anticoagulant effect of DOAC rivaroxaban as assessed by coagulation assays, but not of dabigatran. Also, a post-hoc analysis showed evidence that major bleeding under treatment with rivaroxaban had a milder clinical presentation versus VKA associated bleeding. Suitable drug-specific antidotes for DOACs therefore do not appear to be necessary. The second part of this thesis focuses on (the role of ADAMTS13 in) no-reflow. Percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI) are known to be life-saving for treating acute myocardial infarctions (AMI), but nevertheless approximately 50% of all PCI are followed by no-reflow: a lack of reperfusion of the myocardium. No-reflow is associated with increased mortality and morbidity. Few therapies have shown success in substantially decreasing no-reflow. Unlike common belief that no-reflow is caused by microvascular obstruction of the pericardium, intramyocardial haemorrhage was detected by cardiac MRIs performed on pigs and patients, and using histopathologic findings from pigs with no-reflow. Metalloprotease ADAMTS13 diminishes the thrombotic properties of coagulation protein Von Willebrand Factor (VWF). In a prospective study following patients with AMI, ADAMTS13 levels were lower and VWF levels higher in case of no-reflow. In a porcine AMI model however, recombinant ADAMTS did not decrease damage caused by no-reflow. The alterations of ADAMTS13/VWF levels seem therefore to be compensatory and necessary.
Crowd counting by the dual-branch scale-aware network with ranking loss constraints

Image crowd counting is a challenging problem. This study proposes a new deep learning method that estimates crowd counting for the congested scene. The proposed network is composed of two major components: the first ten layers of VGG16 are used as the backbone network, and a dual-branch (named as Branch_S and Branch_D) network is proposed to be the second part of the network. Branch_S extracts low-level information (head blob) through a shallow fully convolutional network and Branch_D uses a deep fully convolutional network to extract high-level context features (faces and body). Features learnt from the two different branches can handle the problem of scale variation due to perspective effects and image size differences. Features of different scales extracted from the two branches are fused to generate predicted density map. On the basis of the fact that an original graph must contain more or equal number of persons than any of its sub-images, a ranking loss function utilising the constraint relationship inside an image is proposed. Moreover, the ranking loss is combined with Euclidean loss as the final loss function. Our approach is evaluated on three benchmark datasets, and better results are achieved compared with the state-of-the-art works.
Metastases to the craniovertebral junction: illustrative case report and review of literature

Metastases at the craniovertebral junction represent 0.5-1% of spinal metastatic lesions. Common primary sites include breast, lung and prostate carcinoma. Initial presenting features include neck pain and occipital neuralgia. High index of suspicion is required to recognize this entity in patients presenting with neck pain. If left unrecognized, these metastatic lesions have the propensity to cause catastrophic collapse leading to significant morbidity and mortality due to fracture subluxation and spinal cord compression. Here we discuss such a patient who presented with acute onset quadriparesis and lower cranial nerve palsies due to metastatic lesion involving the C1 and C2 vertebra causing medullary and cervical cord compression. Early detection and timely intervention are key to improving outcomes in such patients.
Low‐loss frequency selective surface for multi‐band THz transmission measurement

Frequency selective surface is a key component in a quasi‐optical system enabling multi‐band operation. This work presents the design, fabrication and measurement of a low‐loss frequency selective surface in a quasi‐optical system for terahertz transmission measurement to separate 220 to 260 GHz and 325 to 340 GHz bands. High‐precision milling technique was employed for fabrication. The measurement was conducted using a terahertz time domain spectroscopy and a home‐made quasi‐optical test bench. Good agreement was achieved between the measured results and simulated ones. The design and measurement methods can be applied to frequency selective surfaces working in other millimeter wave bands.
Demonstrating FOP4: A Flexible Platform to Prototype NFV Offloading Scenarios

Emulation platforms supporting Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) allow developers to rapidly prototype network services. None of the available platforms, however, supports experimenting with programmable data planes to enable VNF offloading. In this demonstration, we show FOP4, a flexible platform that provides support for Docker-based VNFs, and VNF offloading, by means of P4-enabled switches. The platform provides interfaces to program the P4 devices and to deploy network functions. We demonstrate FOP4 with two complex example scenarios, demonstrating how developers can exploit data plane programmability to implement network functions.
One-Dimensional Residual Convolutional Autoencoder Based Feature Learning for Gearbox Fault Diagnosis

Vibration signals are generally utilized for machinery fault diagnosis to perform timely maintenance and then reduce losses. Thus, the feature extraction on one-dimensional vibration signals often determines accuracy of those fault diagnosis models. These typical deep neural networks (DNNs), e.g., convolutional neural networks (CNNs), perform well in feature learning and have been applied in machine fault diagnosis. However, the supervised learning of CNN often requires a large amount of labeled images and thus limits its wide applications. In this article, a new DNN, one-dimensional residual convolutional autoencoder (1-DRCAE), is proposed for learning features from vibration signals directly in an unsupervised-learning way. First, 1-D convolutional autoencoder is proposed in 1-DRCAE for feature extraction. Second, a deconvolution operation is developed as decoder of 1-DRCAE to reconstruct the filtered signals. Third, residual learning is employed in 1-DRCAE to perform feature learning on 1-D vibration signals. The results show that 1-DRCAE has good signal denoising and feature extraction performance on vibration signals. It performs better on feature extraction than the typical DNNs, e.g., deep belief network, stacked autoencoders, and 1-D CNN.
Estimation of Broadband Complex Permeability Using SIW Cavity-Based Multimodal Approach

In this article, an attractive multimodal substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) based methodology is presented for the characterization of magnetic materials in the broadband microwave frequency. The proposed approach employs a modified feed under-coupled SIW cavity instead of conventional feed over-coupled multiple SIW cavities; it uses the modified closed-form expression, developed from the first principle to consider the effect of finite sample dimensions, and mode-specific sinusoidal field variations, which were not considered before for magnetic testing using the over-coupled SIW cavity and conventional formulations. The metallic cavity borne approximations i.e., very small frequency shift for the imaginary part calculation, and very high ${Q}$ -factor for the real permeability estimation are also relaxed in the modified formulations. The proposed technique is numerically verified using the full-wave electromagnetic (EM) simulator for several dispersive and nondispersive standard samples; thereafter, it is validated for the estimation of complex permeability of synthesized dispersive magnetic composites. It can characterize the dispersive magnetic composites, where the permeability value varies from paramagnetic to diamagnetic range, with improved accuracy than that of the conventional cavity perturbation approach. The modified formulation provides 34% and 12% better estimation of loss tangent and real permeability, respectively, as compared with the conventional technique. The uncertainty analysis for change in sample volume, sample misalignment, and the possible air gap is also carried out in detail. The proposed scheme typically provides more than 92% and 84% accuracy in the measured values of real permeability and loss tangent data, respectively, for various synthesized magnetic samples in broadband of microwave frequency (10–22 GHz).
Can the Cream Replace the Lasers for the Acne Scars

The most common dermatological disease is acne, due to genetic factors, lifestyle and the food. In the most cases, acne resolve but the acne scars are permanent. In some individual, the acne scars significantly affect the quality of the life and cause the psychological problem like loss of the self-confidence. The lasers and other technologies are very effective to remove acne scars. We want to represent the first cream to reduce and smooth acne scars. It’s based on but resorcinol which also speeds up the acne resolution at the same time. The cream is applied 1 or 2 times daily on the scars. The results are seen mostly in the first few weeks. The cream is only for the use of the acne scars.
Effect of Ultra-Turrax on Nanocellulose Produced by Acid Hydrolysis and Modified by Nano ZnO by Sol-Gel Method

Cellulose nanocrystals (NCC) and cellulose nanofibrils (CNF) were obtained by a single step process, with synergy between 64% sulfuric acid hydrolysis and high shear from ultra-turrax stirring, which is an advantageous process for disintegrating cellulose microcrystalline and also may improve the hydrolysis process. The surface modification on the cellulose was performed by the sol-gel process, in which the sulfate groups from hydrolysis were replaced by nanoparticles of zinc oxide, which led to the increase of up to 54°C Tonset, according to thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) results. The morphology and crystallinity degree were characterized by Helium Ion Microscopy (HIM), atomic force microscopy (AFM) and X-ray diffraction. In addition, the ZnO band was observed in Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, furthermore, the change in the zeta potential confirmed the cellulose modification. The changes in the values of proton spin-spin relaxation time for the systems showing the confined hydrogen in the rigid domains, confirmed the results observed with the aforementioned techniques, for both cellulose after hydrolysis and ZnO modified cellulose, suggesting that ZnO disrupted crystal formation in cellulose.
Role of Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Ultrasonography in Diagnosis and Follow Up Rheumatoid Arthritis in Hand and Wrist Joints

Aim of the work: to compare the role of ultrasonography and magnetic resonance imaging in the diagnosis of wrist joint affection in patients with rheumatoid arthritis. Patients and methods: this study included 50 patients diagnosed as rheumatoid arthritis (41 females and 9 males) with mean age 43 years; they were subjected to high resolution ultrasound and MRI of the wrist joint for the dominant affected wrist clinically. Comparison and correlation between both modalities was done. Results:our results showed agreement between ultrasound and MRI in the assessment of synovial inflammation, activity and bone erosions in wrist joint in rheumatoid arthrtis patients. Conclusion: we concluded that both modalities were comparable and close to each others as regards the bony erosions and synovial hypertrophy and inflammation in the wrist joints in patient with rheumatoid arthritis and the ultrasound was useful tools in detection of erosions and synovial inflammation so can be used in patients without erosions on conventional x ray and also can be used in follow up and monitoring the patients with established diagnosis of rheumatoid.
Enrichment of Denitrifying Bacterial Community Using Nitrite as an Electron Acceptor for Nitrogen Removal from Wastewater

This work aimed to enrich a denitrifying bacterial community for economical denitrification via nitrite to provide the basic objects for enhancing nitrogen removal from wastewater. A sequencing batch reactor (SBR) with continuous nitrite and acetate feeding was operated by reasonably adjusting the supply rate based on the reaction rate, and at a temperature of 20 ± 2 °C, pH of 7.5 ± 0.2, and dissolved oxygen (DO) of 0 mg/L. The results revealed that the expected nitrite concentration can be achieved during the whole anoxic reaction period. The nitrite denitrification rate of nitrogen removal from synthetic wastewater gradually increased from approximately 10 mg/(L h) to 275.35 mg/(L h) over 12 days (the specific rate increased from 3.83 mg/(g h) to 51.80 mg/(g h)). Correspondingly, the chemical oxygen demand/nitrogen (COD/N) ratio of reaction decreased from 7.9 to 2.7. Both nitrite and nitrate can be used as electron acceptors for denitrification. The mechanism of this operational mode was determined via material balance analysis of substrates in a typical cycle. High-throughput sequencing showed that the main bacterial community was related to denitrification, which accounted for 84.26% in the cultivated sludge, and was significantly higher than the 2.16% in the seed sludge.
An interpretable low-complexity machine learning framework for robust exome-based in-silico diagnosis of Crohn’s disease patients

Abstract Whole exome sequencing (WES) data are allowing researchers to pinpoint the causes of many Mendelian disorders. In time, sequencing data will be crucial to solve the genome interpretation puzzle, which aims at uncovering the genotype-to-phenotype relationship, but for the moment many conceptual and technical problems need to be addressed. In particular, very few attempts at the in-silico diagnosis of oligo-to-polygenic disorders have been made so far, due to the complexity of the challenge, the relative scarcity of the data and issues such as batch effects and data heterogeneity, which are confounder factors for machine learning (ML) methods. Here, we propose a method for the exome-based in-silico diagnosis of Crohn’s disease (CD) patients which addresses many of the current methodological issues. First, we devise a rational ML-friendly feature representation for WES data based on the gene mutational burden concept, which is suitable for small sample sizes datasets. Second, we propose a Neural Network (NN) with parameter tying and heavy regularization, in order to limit its complexity and thus the risk of over-fitting. We trained and tested our NN on 3 CD case-controls datasets, comparing the performance with the participants of previous CAGI challenges. We show that, notwithstanding the limited NN complexity, it outperforms the previous approaches. Moreover, we interpret the NN predictions by analyzing the learned patterns at the variant and gene level and investigating the decision process leading to each prediction.
Victimization, Physical Activity, and Affective Outcomes During Recess in Students with and Without Disabilities

Research has revealed that school recess is often challenged by a social landscape that can undermine opportunities for positive interactions and meaningful play. This study assessed differences in levels of inside and outside recess enjoyment, positive and negative affect, peer belongingness, victimization, and physical activity between students with and without a disability. The sample consisted of 337 students in grades 4 through 8 from 14 elementary schools in southern Ontario, Canada. Of these, 31 students reported having a disability and 306 reported none. Data was collected through a 36-item online survey. Results revealed that those with a disability scored significantly (p < .01) higher on measures of enjoyment of inside recess, negative affect, and victimization while significantly lower in positive affect and outside recess enjoyment, peer belongingness, and physical activity. Children with a disability may benefit from a recess climate with more psychosocial supports. Key words: play, disabilities, playground, emotions, perspectives La recherche a révélé que les récréations à l’école sont souvent modelées par un paysage social qui peut miner les possibilités d’entreprendre des interactions positives et les occasions de jeu significatif. Cette étude a évalué les différences entre les élèves avec un handicap et les élèves sans handicap quant aux facteurs suivants : le niveau de plaisir ressenti pendant les récréations à l’intérieur et les récréations à l’extérieur; les affects positifs and négatifs; le sentiment d’appartenance au groupe de pairs; la victimisation; et l’activité physique. Notre échantillon regroupait 337 élèves de la 4e à la 8e année provenant de 14 écoles élémentaires dans le sud de l’Ontario, au Canada. Parmi ceux-ci, 31 élèves ont déclaré avoir un handicap et 306 ont indiqué ne pas avoir de handicap. Les données ont été recueillies par un sondage en ligne à 36 questions. Les résultats indiquent que la cote pour les élèves avec un handicap était significativement supérieure (p < .01) pour les mesures portant sur le plaisir ressenti pendant les récréations à l’intérieur, l’affect négatif et la victimisation. Leur cote était significativement inférieure pour les mesures portant sur l’affect négatif, le plaisir ressenti pendant les récréations à l’extérieur, le sentiment d’appartenance au groupe de pairs et l’activité physique. Les enfants ayant un handicap pourraient bénéficier de récréations dont le milieu présente plus de supports psychosociaux. Mots clés : jeu, handicaps, terrain de jeux, émotions, perspectives
Developmental changes in infant heart rate responses to head‐up tilting

Aim: Newborn infants produce significant heart rate responses to both head‐up and head‐down tilting: heart rate increases with head‐up tilting and decreases with head‐down tilting. However, previously we found that, at 2–4 mo of age, heart rate increases were no longer significant following slow head‐up tilting. This study was designed to determine if 2–4‐mo‐old infants have significant increases in heart rate when tilted rapidly. Methods: Fifty‐four infants were tested as newborns or at 2–4 mo of age. Heart rate was measured while infants were tilted to a 30° head‐up angle either slowly over a period of 30 s or rapidly in 5 s. Results: Newborns exhibited increases in heart rate using both tilt speeds; however, at 2–4 mo of age, heart rate did not change significantly using either speed of tilting.