Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Impact of User Fees on Health Services in Yemen

The issue towards achieving the United Nations Millennium Development Goals re-invigorated concerns around sustainable health care financing and the adequacy of the financing arrangements in many low-resource settings (developing countries). This necessitated the institution of user-fees as part of health financing reform in many countries in Yemen. These fees are charges levied at the point of service with the intention of reducing ‘frivolous’ consumption of health services, increasing the quality of services available and also increasing coverage and utilization of services. Likewise, as a ‘decisive’ policy to cushion the existing challenges facing health care financing in the region, a critical assessment of the assertions of proponents of user fees who use the principle of cost recovery and revenue mobilization to drive the concept of rational utilization, efficiency and equitable distribution of health care services is often exaggerated. The available evidence suggests that user fees alone will not likely accomplish equity, efficiency, or the sustainability objectives in health services in the region. What is critical is that user fees should be linked to the broader package of financing -such as insurance coverageand with a view to averting any form of equity danger that may thus arise.The aim is to evaluate the impact of user fees on health services in Yemen Keys words and definitions  User fees; amounts levied on consumers of government goods or Services in relation to their consumption.  Utilization; The proportion of the available time (expressed usually as a percentage) that a piece of equipment or a system is operating.  Equity; It implies to giving as much advantage, consideration or latitude to one party as it is given to another. It is essential for ensuring that extent and costs of funds, goods and services are fairly divided among their recipients.  Quality; It is the totality of features and characteristics of a product or services that bears its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs.  Health services; is defined as public service that is responsible for providing medical care.
Automatic Resource Analysis for CUDA Kernels

General-purpose programming on GPUs (GPGPU) is becoming increasingly in vogue as applications such as machine learning and scientific computing demand high throughput in vector-parallel applications. NVIDIA’s CUDA toolkit seeks to make GPGPU programming accessible by allowing programmers to write GPU functions, called kernels, in a small extension of C/C++. However, due to CUDA’s complex execution model, the performance characteristics of CUDA kernels are difficult to predict, especially for novice programmers. This paper introduces a novel quantitative program logic for CUDA kernels, which allows programmers to reason about both functional correctness and resource usage of CUDA kernels, paying particular attention to a set of common but CUDA-specific performance bottlenecks. The logic is proved sound with respect to a novel operational cost semantics for CUDA kernels. The semantics, logic and soundness proofs are formalized in Coq. An inference algorithm based on LP solving automatically synthesizes symbolic resource bounds by generating derivations in the logic. This algorithm is the basis of an end-to-end resource-analysis tool for kernels, which has been implemented using an existing resource-analysis tool for imperative programs. An experimental evaluation on a suite of CUDA benchmarks shows that the analysis is effective in aiding the detection of performance bugs in CUDA kernels.
Uso de micro-ondas e autoclave na esterilização de dentes humanos

Objective: evaluate the sterilization of human teeth irradiated by microwaves. Methods: Sixty human third molars are divided into three groups (n = 20): G1 without sterilization (negative control); G2 autoclaving for 20 minutes 1Kgf/cm2 at 120 ° C (positive control); G3 sterilization in a microwave vessel containing 200ml of distilled water in a microwave irradiated at 650W for 3 minutes. Results: No culture media of G2 and G3 presented contamination after autoclaving and microwave sterilization. Conclusion: Autoclave sterilization and microwave sterilization were effective decontamination methods under the experimental conditions tested. Indexing terms: Deciduous tooth. Disinfection. Sterilization. Tooth.
J12.3 ON THE ROLE OF THE ANDES ON WEATHER PATTERNS AND RELATED ENVIRONMENTAL HAZARDS IN CHILE

The complex topography and unique climatic conditions combined with emissions from highly populated urban areas causes the Chilean territory to exhibit poor air quality and vulnerability to flooding and other natural hazards. The most rigorous scientific tool for forecasting such hazards and evaluating ex-ante the effectiveness of preventive actions and mitigation strategies is numerical modeling, appropriately downscaled via models of different skills. At the present, however, even models such as the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, which is a new-generation mesoscale numerical weather prediction system widely employed for both research and routine weather prediction, appear to fail in fulfilling this goal, such weaknesses and failures being strictly related to the complex topography of the Chile region and the inability of the model to resolve it. The Andes is a continual range of highlands along the western coast of South America and represents the longest continental mountain range in the world. It is about 7000 km long, and about 200 km to 700 km wide (widest between 18° south and 20° south latitude). The average height is about 4000 m, but it reaches more than 6000 m in Northern Chile, the area where the largest biases in temperature and relative humidity are usually found in the model results. Given the steepness of these slopes, the horizontal grid resolution adopted in WRF plays a crucial role in the model ability to capture the flow patterns and phenomena at the mesoscale. The aim of this work is investigating the role of the Andes and the meteorological conditions responsible for the unique rainfall event over the Atacama Desert, and high pollution events formation in Santiago metropolitan area where the impact of the Andes and the other surrounding mountains seems to be adversely affecting air quality in the city. The weather conditions accountable for the worst air quality in Temuco urban area (being considered by the local authorities as one of the most polluted regions in the Country) are studied in addition. Only
Hematological Inflammatory Parameters: Can They Play a Role as Cancer Biomarkers

Background: Cancer is one of the most important causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Association of cancer with systemic inflammation has been widely established. A complete blood count may reveal changes in cell lines as a result of inflammation. Method: The study was conducted in the Department of Pathology at ESIC Medical College, Faridabad in duration of 3 months (July 2018- September 2018). A total of 30 cancer cases and 30 controls were included in the study. The haematological parameters (neutrophil, lymphocyte, monocyte count and platelet count) and indices (NLR, PLR and LMR) were evaluated and statistical analysis was done to find a relationship between the above mentioned indices and cancer. Result: According to our study NLR and PLR along with absolute neutrophil count and platelet count showed a significant difference between cancer cases and controls. However, there was no significant difference between cancer and control groups in terms of LMR values. Conclusion: Absolute neutrophil and platelet count alongwith NLR and PLR can be used as markers of systemic inflammation in cancer
Smart Phone Based Wound Assessment System for Patients with Diabetes

I. The current status of diabetes Diabetes is rapidly acquiring the status of a potential epidemic in India, with more than 62 million people diagnosed with the disease. India topped the world with the highest number of people with diabetes, with 31.7 million people suffering from the diabetes. Wounds in diabetes take time to heal. It is important to treat injuries without any delay. Even minor injuries, especially on feet, can result in serious foot ulcers, which can be fatal and even cost the patient the foot or the leg.
Information Systems Concepts in a Web-based Setting: Two Contrasting Approaches

As more and more courses are offered in a fully online setting, it becomes increasingly important to determine the best manner of presenting the material. This is especially true in courses that have a fairly high technical content such as the undergraduate management information systems course in a school of business. In trying to determine the best teaching method we need to have some way to compare different approaches. Often that is difficult, but if a situation arises where one can minimize intervening factors it is possible to obtain a fairly clean comparison of two contrasting delivery methods. Then, some conclusions might be drawn about the effectiveness of one method when compared to the other. In this situation there were two sections of the same management information systems course being taught in the same semester by two different faculty members. Two different approaches were used to assist these online students in learning basic information systems concepts. One approach used a semester long case study including voluntary computer lab oriented learning projects. The other approach relied upon a group project through a local business that included collaborative discussion boards as a primary communication and learning tool. An online survey instrument was developed in order to obtain user attitudes and opinions of the basic delivery methods in order to evaluate differences between the two groups due to the use of the two contrasting approaches. Since the data was ordinal and a normal distribution could not be assumed, the nonparametric Mann-Whitney test was employed to analyze the data collected from the two approaches. The results of this analysis seemed to indicate that either approach helps students learn the basic information systems concepts. In each case the students were pleased with the structure, the design, and delivery of the course. Both groups were concerned with the issue of cheating or plagiarism. The approach that employed a voluntary lab component seemed to be preferred in regards to the technological aspects of communication. But under this mode of examination there was very little difference between the two approaches in terms of actual effectiveness in learning the information systems concepts. Descriptive statistics appeared to favor Approach 1 but more data would be required before any significance could be attached to this result. An examination of frequency distributions appeared to support that finding as well but that is also tempered with the recommendation for the collection of additional data.
No-Reference Error-Tolerability Evaluation for Videos via Edge and Extreme-Value Checking

Approximate computing has been shown to be a promising manner to enhance circuit performance via acceptable quality degradation. This manner is applicable to many multimedia applications such as videos. In order to carry out a dynamic approximate computing scheme, on-line quality evaluation/monitoring will be needed. However, to the best of our knowledge, on-line error-tolerability evaluation of videos is seldom studied in the literature. To achieve this, a no-reference manner will be helpful, which means that no reference videos are needed for comparison with the videos under test. Implementation of on-line test procedures can thus be greatly simplified. In this paper we investigate how to achieve noreference error-tolerability evaluation for videos where the background may be fixed or changed. We will show that by well exploiting some simple attributes, the acceptability for 81,412 erroneous videos with fixed background can be accurately determined with more than 90% accuracy. As a comparison, the related previous work can only achieve about 80% accuracy. In addition, our attribute acquirement process requires only 33% of the computation time for the previous work. As for videos with background changing, we also discuss possible solutions.
An Algorithmic Model of Decision Making in the Human Brain

Introduction: One of the interesting topics in neuroscience is problem solving and decision-making. In this area, everything gets more complicated when events occur sequentially. One of the practical methods for handling the complexity of brain function is to create an empirical model. Model Predictive Control (MPC) is known as a powerful mathematical-based tool often used in industrial environments. We proposed an MPC and its algorithm as a part of the functionalities of the brain to improve the performance of the decision-making process. Methods: We used a hybrid methodology whereby combining a powerful nonlinear control system tools and a modular fashion approach in computer science. Our hybrid approach employed the MPC and the Object-Oriented Modeling (OOM) respectively. Therefore, we could model the interaction between most important regions within the brain to simulate the decision-making process. Results: The employed methodology provided the capability to design an algorithm based on the cognitive functionalities of the PFC and Hippocampus. The developed algorithm applied for modulation of neural circuits between cortex and sub-cortex during a decision making process. Conclusion: It is well known that the decision-making process results from communication between the prefrontal cortex (working memory) and hippocampus (long-term memory). However, there are other regions of the brain that play essential roles in making decisions, but their exact mechanisms of action still are unknown. In this study, we modeled those mechanisms with MPC. We showed that MPC controls the stream of data between prefrontal cortex and hippocampus in a closed-loop system to correct actions.
Application of Experimental Design to Hydrogen Storage: Optimisation of Lignin-Derived Carbons

Lignin is a significant by-product of the paper pulping and biofuel industries. Upgrading lignin to a high-value product is essential for the economic viability of biorefineries for bioethanol production and environmentally benign pulping processes. In this work, the feasibility of lignin-derived activated carbons for hydrogen storage was studied using a Design of Experiments methodology, for a time and cost-efficient exploration of the synthesis process. Four factors (carbonisation temperature, activation temperature, carbonisation time, and activation time) were investigated simultaneously. Development of a mathematical model allowed the factors with the greatest impact to be identified using regression analysis for three responses: surface area, average pore size, and hydrogen uptake at 77 K and 1 bar. Maximising the surface area required activation conditions using the highest settings, however, a low carbonisation temperature was also revealed to be integral to prevent detrimental and excessive pore widening. A small pore size, vital for efficient hydrogen uptake, could be achieved by using low carbonisation temperature but also low activation temperatures. An optimum was achieved using the lowest carbonisation conditions (350 °C for 30 min) to retain a smaller pore size, followed by activation under the severest conditions (1000 °C for 60 min) to maximise surface area and hydrogen uptake. These conditions yielded a material with a high surface area of 1400 m2 g−1 and hydrogen uptake of 1.9 wt. % at 77 K and 1 bar.
Semi-Supervised GNSS Scintillations Detection Based on DeepInfomax

This work focuses on a machine learning based detection of ionospheric scintillation events affecting Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals. We here extend the recent detection results based on Decision Trees, designing a semi-supervised detection system based on the DeepInfomax approach recently proposed. The paper shows that it is possible to achieve good classification accuracy while reducing the amount of time that human experts must spend manually labelling the datasets for the training of supervised algorithms. The proposed method is scalable and reduces the required percentage of annotated samples to achieve a given performance, making it a viable candidate for a realistic deployment of scintillation detection in software defined GNSS receivers.
Maximizing Charging Utility with Obstacles through Fresnel Diffraction Model

Benefitting from the recent breakthrough of wireless power transfer technology, Wireless Rechargeable Sensor Networks (WRSNs) have become an important research topic. Most prior arts focus on system performance enhancement in an ideal environment that ignores impacts of obstacles. This contradicts with practical applications in which obstacles can be found almost anywhere and have dramatic impacts on energy transmission. In this paper, we concentrate on the problem of charging a practical WRSN in the presence of obstacles to maximize the charging utility under specific energy constraints. First, we propose a new theoretical charging model with obstacles based on Fresnel diffraction model, and conduct experiments to verify its effectiveness. Then, we propose a spatial discretization scheme to obtain a finite feasible charging position set for MC, which largely reduces computation overhead. Afterwards, we re-formalize charging utility maximization with energy constraints as a submodular function maximization problem and propose a cost-efficient algorithm with approximation ratio $\frac{{{{(e - 1)}^2}}}{{2e}}(1 - \varepsilon )$ to solve it. Lastly, we demonstrate that our scheme outperforms other algorithms by at least 14.8% in terms of charging utility through test-bed experiments and extensive simulations.
INTERPRETATION OF THE VALUE OF EVIDENCE

It has been argued for some time that the best way to evaluate evidence is to compare two probabilities, the probability of the evidence if the prosecution proposition is true and the probability of the evidence if the defence proposition is true. How these probabilities are used to evaluate evidence is explained. Various methods which have been used to interpret evidence are illustrated and their correctness or otherwise discussed. More education in the use of probabilities in a court of law is needed to ensure correct interpretations.
Ultrasound-Guided Nerve Hydrodissection for Pain Management: An Updated Review of Anatomy and Techniques

Nerve hydrodissection (HD), a technique used when treating nerve entrapments, involves using an anesthetic or solution such as saline or 5% dextrose solution to separate the nerve from the surrounding tissue, fascia, or adjacent structures. This technique aims to treat neuropathic pain, or pain caused by the nerve. Ultrasound-guided HD of peripheral nerves has gained significant attention in the medical profession and pain management fields in recent years. This is due to a number of high impact publications of randomized control trials demonstrating the efficacy and safety of this technique for the treatment of carpal tunnel syndrome. Even the 20th edition of Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine textbook lists injection of 5% dextrose as an alternative local treatment that does not have the side effects of corticosteroids. At present, there is no review of the current literature on this technique. This manuscript will summarize and discuss the following: 1) the different approaches to doing ultrasound-guided HD of nervous structures, 2) its usages in different clinical situations, 3) its clinical pearls, 4) the solution used, and 5) the postulated mechanisms of action.
Personalized visualizations to promote young learners' SRL: the learning path app

This paper describes the design and evaluation of personalized visualizations to support young learners' Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) in Adaptive Learning Technologies (ALTs). Our learning path app combines three Personalized Visualizations (PV) that are designed as an external reference to support learners' internal regulation process. The personalized visualizations are based on three pillars: grounding in SRL theory, the usage of trace data and the provision of clear actionable recommendations for learners to improve regulation. This quasi-experimental pre-posttest study finds that learners in the personalized visualization condition improved the regulation of their practice behavior, as indicated by higher accuracy and less complex moment-by-moment learning curves compared to learners in the control group. Learners in the PV condition showed better transfer on learning. Finally, students in the personalized visualizations condition were more likely to under-estimate instead of over-estimate their performance. Overall, these findings indicates that the personalized visualizations improved regulation of practice behavior, transfer of learning and changed the bias in relative monitoring accuracy.
Enhanced Flexible Algorithm for the Optimization of Slot Filling Factors in Electrical Machines

The continuous development in the field of industrial automation and electric mobility has led to the need for more efficient electrical machines with a high power density. The improvement of electrical machines’ slot filling factors is one of the measures to satisfy these requirements. In recent years, this topic has aroused greater interest in the industrial sector, since the evolution of the winding technological manufacturing processes allows an economically sustainable realization of ordered winding arrangements, rather than random ones. Moreover, the manufacture of electrical machines’ windings must be preceded by an accurate design phase in which it is possible to evaluate the maximum slot filling factor obtainable for a given wire shape and for its dimensions. For this purpose, this paper presents an algorithmic approach for the evaluation of maximum slot filling factors in electrical machines under an ideal geometric premise. In particular, this algorithm has a greater degree of flexibility with respect to the algorithm approaches found in the literature, since the study has been extended to round, rectangular and hexagonal wire sections. Furthermore, the slot filling factor calculation was carried out both for standard and non-standard slots. The algorithmic approach proposed can be considered as an additional useful tool for the fast design of electrical machine windings.
Fecal indicator bacteria (FIB) enumeration in beach sand: A comparison study of FIB extraction methods in medium to coarse sands

The absence of standardized methods for quantifying fecal indicator bacteria (FIB) in sand hinders comparison of results across studies. This study aimed to compare methods for extraction of fecal bacteria from sands and recommend a standardized extraction technique. Twenty-two methods for extracting enterococci and Escherichia coli from sand were evaluated, including multiple permutations of hand shaking, mechanical shaking, blending, sonication, number of rinses, settling time, eluant to sand ratio, eluant composition, prefiltration, and type of decantation. Tests were performed on sands from California, Florida, and Lake Michigan. Most extraction parameters did not significantly affect bacterial enumeration. ANOVA revealed significant effects of eluant composition and blending, with both sodium metaphosphate buffer and blending producing reduced counts. The simplest extraction method that produced the highest FIB recoveries consisted of 2 minutes of hand shaking, a 30-second settling time, 1 rinse step, and a 10:1 eluant volume to sand weight ratio. This result was consistent across the sand compositions tested in this study, but could vary for other sand types. Method standardization will improve the understanding of how sands affect surface water quality.