Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Treatment with Vasoactive Drugs and Outcomes in Surgical Critically Ill Patients: The Results from the THAI-SICU Study.

Objective The purpose of this study is to assess the impact of the use of vasoactive drugs on morbidity and mortality in surgical critically ill patients. Material and Method We conducted a multi-center prospective observational study in Thai university-based surgical intensive care units (SICU) over a 22-month period. Patient data were recorded by case record form in 3 main phases: admission, daily and discharge. Data collection included patient characteristics, pattern of vasoactive drugs use, and outcomes. Results Nine university-based SICU comprising 4,652 patients were included in the study. The vasopressor exposed patient group had 1,155 patients (24.8%). Either vasopressor or inotrope exposed group demonstrated significantly higher ICU mortality, 28-day mortality and new arrhythmia than the non-exposed group (p<0.001). In multivariable analysis, norepinephrine or epinephrine significantly increased risks of all unfavorable outcomes while dopamine significantly increased only new arrhythmia (OR 1.44; 95% CI 1.02-2.02, p = 0.036) in vasopressor-exposed patients. Epinephrine had the highest risk of all unfavorable outcomes with an OR 3.17; 95% CI 2.10-4.78, (p<0.001) for ICU mortality, OR 2.62; 95% CI 1.73-3.97, (p<0.001) for 28-day mortality, and OR of 1.77; 95% CI 1.13-2.75, (p = 0.012) for new arrhythmia. Neither dobutamine nor milrinone showed any significant results in inotrope exposed patients. Conclusion Vasoactive drug exposed patient groups had significantly higher incidence of new arrhythmia, ICU mortality, and 28-day mortality. Epinephrine exposure was associated with the highest risk of unfavorable outcomes. Further information from well-designed studies is needed to justify the most appropriate use of vasoactive drugs.
Metodologia de Desenvolvimento para Sistema de Reconhecimento de Vogais utilizando GMM

Larissa de Melo Soares Departamento de Engenharia Elétrica Universidade Federal da Paraíba João Pessoa, Brasil Email: larissa.soares@cear.ufpb. br Rafael de Sousa Marinho Departamento de Engenharia Elétrica Universidade Federal da Paraíba João Pessoa, Brasil Email: rsmarinho@cear.ufpb. br Fabrício Braga Soares de Carvalho Departamento de Engenharia Elétrica Universidade Federal da Paraíba João Pessoa, Brasil Email: fabricio@cear.ufpb. br
Cancer cells copy migratory behavior and exchange signaling networks via extracellular vesicles

Recent data showed that cancer cells from different tumor subtypes with distinct metastatic potential influence each other's metastatic behavior by exchanging biomolecules through extracellular vesicles (EVs). However, it is debated how small amounts of cargo can mediate this effect, especially in tumors where all cells are from one subtype, and only subtle molecular differences drive metastatic heterogeneity. To study this, we have characterized the content of EVs shed in vivo by two clones of melanoma (B16) tumors with distinct metastatic potential. Using the Cre‐LoxP system and intravital microscopy, we show that cells from these distinct clones phenocopy their migratory behavior through EV exchange. By tandem mass spectrometry and RNA sequencing, we show that EVs shed by these clones into the tumor microenvironment contain thousands of different proteins and RNAs, and many of these biomolecules are from interconnected signaling networks involved in cellular processes such as migration. Thus, EVs contain numerous proteins and RNAs and act on recipient cells by invoking a multi‐faceted biological response including cell migration.
Integration of a Communal Henhouse and Community Composter to Increase Motivation in Recycling Programs: Overview of a Three-Year Pilot Experience in Noáin (Spain)

This paper presents a three-year pilot experience of a new municipal waste management system developed in Navarre, Spain that integrates composting and hens. The aim of this new system is to motivate the general public to participate more in waste prevention programs. The Composter-Henhouse (CH) is a compact facility comprised of a henhouse and three composters. This is shared by 30 families who provide the organic part of their kitchen waste to feed the hens. Hens help speed up the composting process by depositing their droppings and turning the organic residue into compost. This study assesses the CH in terms of treatment capacity, the technical adequacy of the composting process, the quality and safety of the compost obtained and some social aspects. Over three years, the CH has managed nearly 16.5 tons of organic waste and produced approximately 5600 kg of compost and more than 6000 high-quality fresh eggs. No problems or nuisances have been reported and the level of animal welfare has been very high. The follow up of the composting process (temperature, volume reduction and compost maturity) and a physicochemical and microbiological analysis of the compost have ensured the proper management of the process. The level of involvement and user satisfaction has been outstanding and the project has presented clear social benefits.
Sustainability practices and indicators in food retail logistics: findings from an exploratory study

The aim of this paper is to provide an overview and an analysis of recent developments and changes in the implementation of sustainability practices by food retailers. It also aims to explore whether the sustainability measurement criteria and indicators identified in the literature can be applied in practice. A literature review identified the current trends, developments and the proposed sustainability objectives, criteria and indicators. Via case study research, we collected empirical data from four retailers. This involved both qualitative and quantitative data drawn from questionnaires and in-depth interviews with logistics directors from four retailers' distribution centres. The empirical data collected from the interviews indicate similarities in some of the characteristics of distribution centres, as well as differences. However, it was difficult to make cross-company comparisons due to the absence of benchmarks or assessments of the relative importance of each sustainability criterion and indicator. This research focused only on two sustainability objectives. Further research on other sustainability objectives is therefore required. Lessons learnt from the four case studies can be taken into consideration when developing future sustainability performance rating scales. The paper provides an in-depth analysis of sustainability in the food chain, with emphasis on food retailing. Its value lies in presenting an attempt to test in practice how a number of sustainability objectives, criteria and indicators are applied in logistics-related processes, identifying the gaps and reporting the potential difficulties.
Variational time discretization of Riemannian splines

We investigate a generalization of cubic splines to Riemannian manifolds. Spline curves are defined as minimizers of the spline energy - a combination of the Riemannian path energy and the time integral of the squared covariant derivative of the path velocity - under suitable interpolation conditions. A variational time discretization for the spline energy leads to a constrained optimization problem over discrete paths on the manifold. Existence of continuous and discrete spline curves is established using the direct method in the calculus of variations. Furthermore, the convergence of discrete spline paths to a continuous spline curve follows from the $\Gamma$-convergence of the discrete to the continuous spline energy. Finally, selected example settings are discussed, including splines on embedded finite-dimensional manifolds, on a high-dimensional manifold of discrete shells with applications in surface processing, and on the infinite-dimensional shape manifold of viscous rods.
Experience based localization in wide open indoor environments

Abstract This paper solves the problem of localization for indoor environments using visual place recognition, visual odometry and experience based localization using a camera. Our main motivation is just like a human is able to recall from its past experience, a robot should be able to use its recorded visual memory in order to determine its location. Currently experience based localization has been used in constrained environments like outdoor roads, where the robot is constrained to the same set of locations during every visit. This paper adapts the same technology to wide open maps like halls wherein the robot is not constrained to specific locations. When a robot is turned on in a room, it first uses visual place recognition using histogram of oriented gradients and support vector machine in order to predict which room it is in. It then scans its surroundings and uses a nearest neighbor search of the robot’s experience coupled with visual odometry for localization. We present the results of our approach test on a dynamic environment comprising of three rooms. The dataset consists of approximately 5000 monocular and 5000 depth images.
Emotion recognition from facial expressions using hybrid feature descriptors

Here, a hybrid feature descriptor-based method is proposed to recognise human emotions from their facial expressions. A combination of spatial bag of features (SBoFs) with spatial scale-invariant feature transform (SBoF-SSIFT), and SBoFs with spatial speeded up robust transform are utilised to improve the ability to recognise facial expressions. For classification of emotions, K -nearest neighbour and support vector machines (SVMs) with linear, polynomial, and radial basis function kernels are applied. SBoFs descriptor generates a fixed length feature vector for all sample images irrespective of their size. Spatial SIFT and SURF features are independent of scaling, rotation, translation, projective transforms, and partly to illumination changes. A modified form of bag of features (BoFs) is employed by involving feature's spatial information for facial emotion recognition. The proposed method differs from conventional methods that are used for simple object categorisation without using spatial information. Experiments have been performed on extended Cohn-Kanade (CK+) and Japanese female facial expression (JAFFE) data sets. SBoF-SSIFT with SVM resulted in a recognition accuracy of 98.5% on CK+ and 98.3% on JAFFE data set. Images are resized through selective pre-processing, thereby retaining only the information of interest and reducing computation time.
Acute effects of dynamic and static stretching on muscle strength , power and endurance in untrained male subjects

Purpose: On this basis, the purpose of this study was to compare the acute effects of dynamic and static stretching on upper body maximal muscle strength, power and endurance in untrained male subjects. Methods: 12 untrained college-aged male (age: 23.17±4.06 years; hieght:175.17±5.55 cm; weight: 67.33±8.26 Kg; body fat: 16.67±1.82 percent;BMI: 21.78±2.13 Kg.m-2) in three different position of dynamic stretching, static stretching and non-stretching during three consecutive weeks by using strength, endurance and power tests in counterbalance method were be investigated. In each week three session of test with 48 hours intervals between sessionswere performed.Data with using of repeated measures and post hoc test with significant level of (P<0.05) were analyzed. Results: The results of the present study indicated that performing dynamic and static stretching during pre-exercise periodin comparision to non-stretching method significantly improved upper body performnce (muscular strength, endurance and power) in untrained subjects (P<0.05). Also, dynamic stretching in comparision tostatic stretching significantly increased three above mentioned factors (P<0.05). Discussion: The findings of current study showed that performing pre-exercise session dynamic stretching in comparision tostatic stretching significantly improved performance in these subjects.over all, this study suggested that performing stretching in this period can improves performance during an exercise bout. also advises untrained individuals who want to begin resistance exercises to use dynamic stretching in worm up period befor exercise bout.
Accuracy and retest reliability of mobile eye-tracking in Parkinson ’ s disease and older adults

1 Mobile eye-tracking is important for understanding the role of vision during real-world tasks 2 in older adults (OA) and people with Parkinson’s disease (PD). However, accuracy and 3 reliability of such devices have not been established in these populations. We used a novel 4 protocol to quantify accuracy and re-test reliability of a mobile eye-tracker in OA and PD. 5 A mobile eye-tracker (Dikablis, 50Hz) measured the saccade amplitudes of 20 OA and 14 6 PD on two occasions. Participants made saccades between targets placed 5°, 10° and 15° 7 apart. Impact of visual correction (glasses) on saccadic amplitude measurement was also 8 investigated in 10 OA. 9 Saccade amplitude accuracy (median bias) was -1.21° but a wide range of bias (-7.73° to 10 5.81°) was seen in OA and PD, with large vertical saccades (15°) being least accurate. 11 Reliability assessment showed a median difference between sessions of <1° for both 12 groups, with poor to good relative agreement (Spearman rho: 0.14 to 0.85). Greater 13 accuracy and reliability was observed in people without visual correction. 14 Saccade amplitude can be measured with variable accuracy and reliability using a mobile 15 eye-tracker in OA and PD. Human, technological and study-specific protocol factors may 16 introduce error and are discussed along with methodological recommendations. 17
Kurzfristorientierung und Informationseffizienz von Finanzmärkten

Lange Zeit wurde in der Volkswirtschaftslehre das Konzept der effizienten Märkte (vgl. Fama, 1968) als das dominierende theoretische Konzept zur Erklärung der Preisbildung auf Finanzmärkten angesehen. Preisveränderungen werden innerhalb dieser Theorie stets auf das Eintreffen neuer, bislang unbekannter und somit in den Preisen unberücksichtigter Informationen zurückgeführt (vgl. Pierdzioch/Stadtmann, 2002). Effiziente Märkte (im strengen Sinn) zeichnen sich dadurch aus, dass unabhängig davon, wie vielen Marktteilnehmern eine Information bekannt ist, der Preis unmittelbar seinen fundamental gerechtfertigten Wert annimmt, so dass selbst aus der Kenntnis neuer privater Informationen kein Gewinn erzielt werden kann.
Role of etelcalcetide in the management of secondary hyperparathyroidism in hemodialysis patients: a review on current data and place in therapy

Secondary hyperparathyroidism (sHPT) is a frequently occurring severe complication of advanced kidney disease. Its clinical consequences include extraskeletal vascular and valvular calcifications, changes in bone metabolism resulting in renal osteodystrophy, and an increased risk of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. Calcimimetics are a cornerstone of parathyroid hormone (PTH)-lowering therapy, as confirmed by the recently updated 2017 Kidney Disease: Improving Global Outcomes chronic kidney disease – mineral and bone disorder clinical practice guidelines. Contrary to calcitriol or other vitamin D-receptor activators, calcimimetics reduce PTH without increasing serum-calcium, phosphorus, or FGF23 levels. Etelcalcetide is a new second-generation calcimimetic that has been approved for the treatment of sHPT in adult hemodialysis patients. Whereas the first-generation calcimimetic cinacalcet is taken orally once daily, etelcalcetide is given intravenously thrice weekly at the end of the hemodialysis session. Apart from improving drug adherence, etelcalcetide has proven to be more effective in lowering PTH when compared to cinacalcet, with an acceptable and comparable safety profile. The hope for better gastrointestinal tolerance with intravenous administration did not come true, as etelcalcetide did not significantly mitigate the adverse gastrointestinal effects associated with cinacalcet. Enhanced adherence and strong reductions in PTH, phosphorus, and FGF23 could set the stage for a future large randomized controlled trial to demonstrate that improved biochemical control of mineral metabolism with etelcalcetide in hemodialysis patients translates into cardiovascular and survival benefits and better health-related quality of life.
Weighted Multi-Region Convolutional Neural Network for Action Recognition With Low-Latency Online Prediction

Spatio-temporal contexts are crucial in understanding human actions in videos. Recent state-of-the-art Convolutional Neural Network (ConvNet) based action recognition systems frequently involve 3D spatio-temporal ConvNet filters, chunking videos into fixed length clips and Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) networks. Such architectures are designed to take advantage of both short term and long term temporal contexts, but also requires the accumulation of a predefined number of video frames (e.g., to construct video clips for 3D ConvNet filters, to generate enough inputs for LSTMs). For applications that require low-latency online predictions of fastchanging action scenes, a new action recognition system is proposed in this paper. Termed “Weighted Multi-Region Convolutional Neural Network” (WMR ConvNet), the proposed system is LSTM-free, and is based on 2D ConvNet that does not require the accumulation of video frames for 3D ConvNet filtering. Unlike early 2D ConvNets that are based purely on RGB frames and optical flow frames, the WMR ConvNet is designed to simultaneously capture multiple spatial and short term temporal cues (e.g., human poses, occurrences of objects in the background) with both the primary region (foreground)and secondary regions (mostly background). On both the UCF101 and HMDB51 datasets, the proposedWMRConvNet achieves the state-of-the-art performance among competing low-latency algorithms. Furthermore, WMR ConvNet even outperforms the 3D ConvNet based C3D algorithm that requires video frame accumulation. In an ablation study with the optical flow ConvNet stream removed, the ablated WMR ConvNet nevertheless outperforms competing algorithms.
Quantitative genomic analyses in the pacific whiteleg shrimp litopenaeus vannamei

Traditional genetic improvement programs for Pacific white-leg shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei) rely on family selection to improve growth and disease resistance traits. DNA technologies can help in simplifying breeding schemes and increasing genetic gains particularly for complex or difficult to measure traits. Here we present the results of genome-wide association and whole genomic prediction analyses using average family allele frequencies and the family mean of a growth trait in a genetic resource population consisting 1,934 animals and 690 families of L. vannamei genotyped with 8,967 genome-wide SNPs. After correcting for FDR, no significant SNPs were detected for growth. The accuracy of DGV in mirror prediction is much higher (0.65-0.69) as compared to forward prediction. A SNP that may be closely linked to the sex locus was identified with the female being the heterogametic sex.
Notions of Computation as Monoids (extended version)

There are diﬀerent notions of computation, the most popular being monads, applicative functors, and arrows. In this article we show that these three notions can be seen as instances of a unifying abstract concept: monoids in monoidal categories. We demonstrate that even when working at this high level of generality one can obtain useful results. In particular, we give conditions under which one can obtain free monoids and Cayley representations at the level of monoidal categories, and we show that their concretisation results in useful constructions for monads, applicative functors, and arrows. Moreover, by taking advantage of the uniform presentation of the three notions of computation, we introduce a principled approach to the analysis of the relation between them.
Conditional Probability and Word Discovery: A Corpus Analysis of Speech to Infants

Analyses of an idealized corpus of English speech to infants revealed that simple conditional decision rules can separate frequent bisyllabic words from bisyllables not corresponding to words. If infants accurately represent speech in terms of syllables, and compute conditional statistics over these syllables, such computations have the potential to inform infants of likely English words.
A Strategy for Producing E icient NetLogo Code

NetLogo has become a standard platform for agent-based simulation, yet there appears to be widespread belief that it is not suitable for large and complex models due to slow execution. Our experience does not support that belief. NetLogo programs o en do run very slowly when written to minimize code length and maximize clarity, but relatively simple and easily tested changes can almost always produce major increases in execution speed. We recommend a five-step process for quantifying execution speed, identifying slow parts of code, and writing faster code. Avoiding or improving agent filtering statements can o en produce dramatic speed improvements. For models with extensive initialization methods, reorganizing the setup procedure can reduce the initialization e ort in simulation experiments. Programming the same behavior in a di erent way can sometimes provide order-of-magnitude speed increases. For models in which most agents do nothing on most time steps, discrete event simulation – facilitated by the time extension to NetLogo – can dramatically increase speed. NetLogo’s BehaviorSpace tool makes it very easy to conduct multiple-model-run experiments in parallel on either desktop or high performance cluster computers, so even quite slowmodels can be executed thousands of times. NetLogo also is supported by e icient analysis tools, such as BehaviorSearch and RNetLogo, that can reduce the number of model runs and the e ort to set them up for (e.g.) parameterization and sensitivity analysis.
Deforming the Window of a Gabor Frame: the Ellipsoid Method

In a recent paper in Appl. Comput. Harmon. Anal. 38(2), 196--221 (2014) we have introduced and studied the notion of weak Hamiltonian deformation of a Gabor (=Weyl-Heisenberg) frame. In this Note we use these results to prove that one can modify the window of a Gabor frame using certain metaplectic operators provided that one modifies only a finite number of points of the frame lattice.