Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cochlear implants in unilateral hearing loss for tinnitus suppression

Tinnitus is a pervasive symptom that can affect many people with hearing loss. It is found that its incidence is increasing due to accompanying occupational and environmental noise. Even, there is no standard treatment is present up till now, but cochlear implants (CIs) positive effects are well proven and documented. This article provides an overview of many publicly available reports about cochlear implants and tinnitus, with review of several articles demonstrating the benefit of cochlear implants for unilateral hearing loss and tinnitus. We believe that this approach will help many, and should be considered as standard practice and reimbursed.
How to differentiate athlete ’ s heart from pathological cardiac hypertrophy ?

Left ventricular hypertrophy is defined as an increase in left ventricular mass. It can be physiological in athletes, as a result of cardiac adaptation to long-term training, or pathological in different conditions, such as chronic pressure overload (e.g. systemic hypertension, aortic stenosis), volume overload (e.g. aortic regurgitation), or myocardial disease (e.g. hypertrophic cardiomyopathy). Distinction between physiological and pathological hypertrophy might have major implications, since undiagnosed hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is one of the most common causes of sudden cardiac death in athletes, whereas identification of cardiovascular disease in an athlete may be the basis for disqualification from competitions. Conventional echocardiography is used as the standard method to assess the differentiation between physiological and pathological hypertrophy, however there are still more than 20% of cases when this remains difficult. In these ambiguous cases, new echocardiographic techniques, such as tissue Doppler, can provide new criteria that can be used for the differential diagnosis. This review will discuss main reasons to differentiate physiological from pathological hypertrophy, role of conventional echocardiography, and potentials of new echo criteria.
Comparing Business Intelligence Methods : Textometry and Information Extraction for mining the Enron Crisis

Business Intelligence, a field involving information science and economics attempts to collect and analyze pertinent information for developing business strategies. The aim of this paper is to present a Textometric method for identifying events and to compare these results to an NLP approach: pattern-based information extraction. The results of a series of Textometric experiments on a corpus of New York Times articles from the Business/ Financial section from November 2001 to March 2002 will be compared to the relationships extracted between Enron and other named entities by an information extraction system. Emerging co-occurrences will be used to chronologically identify the event the Enron crisis. Résumé A la frontière des disciplines de l’économie et des sciences de l’information, la veille stratégique se préoccupe de la collecte et de l’analyse d’informations pertinentes pour l’établissement de la stratégie d’une entreprise. Notre objectif est de présenter une méthode textométrique pour détecter des événements à partir du texte brut et de comparer les résultats de cette méthode à ceux d’une approche TAL robuste : extraction de l’information à base de patterns. Dans cette perspective, une série d’expériences textométriques sur le corpus New York Times de Novembre 2001 à Mars 2002, (rubrique Business/Financial) seront comparées aux relations extraites entre Enron et d’autres entités nommées pour la même période par un système d’extraction d’informations. Les cooccurrences évolutives sont utilisées ici comme méthode de fouille dans le but de détecter le déroulement d’un événement économique, la faillite d’Enron.
AIS Council White Paper: Tools and Techniques for AIS Strategic Planning

AIS went through and will continue to undergo evolution and revolution as it grows. This article analyzes the current state of AIS and concludes that it is in, or approaching, a crisis of priorities. Planning is the recommended path for solving this crisis. Four planning methods are proposed: stakeholder analysis, service matrix analysis, missions matrix analysis, and a four-year budget cycle.
PROXIMATE AND FUNCTIONAL PROPERTIES OF OPEN AIR , SOLAR AND OVEN DRIED COCOYAM

This study was carried out to determine the functional and proximate characteristics of cocoyam flour produced using different drying methods namely; sun (open air), solar and oven drying methods. Flours were obtained from two cultivars of cocoyam (Colocasia spp : coco India and Xanthosoma spp : red cocoyam) by peeling, slicing, washing, blanching, drying, milling and sieving. The flours obtained were evaluated for functional properties and proximate composition. The flour samples had proximate composition ranging from 6.55% to 13,2% moisture, 1.2% to 2.5% ash, 1.5% to 2.4% crude fiber, 1.7% to 2.6% fat, 7.4% to 8.9% protein and 72.1% to 79.3% carbohydrate. The flour samples have functional properties ranging from 1.50 ml/g to 3.70 ml/g water absorption capacity, 0.54 ml/g to 1.34 ml/g oil absorption capacity, 0.69 g/ml to 0.81 g/ml bulk density, 82°C to 90°C gelatinization point, 13 ml to 22 ml swelling index, 7secs to 16secs wettability and 21 cp to 34 cp viscosity measurement. The result of this study showed that the drying methods have effect both on the proximate and functional properties of flour from the two cocoyam varieties.
Avian biology, the human influence on global avian influenza transmission, and performing surveillance in wild birds

Abstract This paper takes a closer look at three interrelated areas of study: avian host biology, the role of human activities in virus transmission, and the surveillance activities centered on avian influenza in wild birds. There are few ecosystems in which birds are not found. Correspondingly, avian influenza viruses are equally global in distribution, relying on competent avian hosts. The immune systems, annual cycles, feeding behaviors, and migration patterns of these hosts influence the ecology of the disease. Decreased biodiversity has also been linked to heightened disease transmission in several disease systems, and it is evident that active destruction and modification of wetland environments for human use is impacting avian populations drastically. Legal and illegal trade in wild birds present a significant risk for introduction and maintenance of exotic diseases. After the emergence of HPAI H5N1 in Hong Kong in 1996 and the ensuing geographic spread of outbreaks after 2003, both infected countries and those at risk of introduction began intensifying avian influenza surveillance efforts. Several techniques for sampling wild birds for influenza viruses have been applied. Benefits, problems, and biases exist for each method. The wild bird avian influenza surveillance programs taking place across the continents are now scaling back due to the rise of other spending priorities; hopefully the lessons learned from this work will be preserved and will inform future research and disease outbreak response priorities.
The Legitimacy Puzzle : Why So Many People Confuse the Absence of Democracy with Its Presence

A puzzling paradox consists in the fact that large population segments in many countries confuse the absence of democracy with its presence. Significantly, these are also the countries where widespread support for democracy coexists with severe deficiencies in the latter, including its outright absence. Addressing this puzzle, we introduce a framework to sort out the extent to which populations over-estimate their countries' democraticness. We find that over-estimating democracy is a widespread phenomenon, although it varies systematically across countries. Out of a dozen possible influences, cognitive stimulation and moral emancipation—what we call "enlightenment forces"— provide the strongest anti-dote against over-estimating democracy. In fact, enlightenment forces not only reduce over-estimations of democracy; they actually drive people towards under-estimations, thus increasing criticality rather than accuracy in assessments. Hence, the enlightening effect is more normative than cognitive in nature. We conclude that—by elevating normative expectations—enlightenment forces release prodemocratic selection pressures in regime evolution.
Influence of Conservation Tillage on Soil Microbial Diversity, Structure and Crop Yields in Sub"=Humid and Semi"=Arid Environments in Kenya

Conservation tillage is one of the ways to maximise benefits derived from farming mainly through enhanced soil biological and physical conditions as well as better utilisation of rain water. In a study conducted over 5 to 10 cropping seasons in two agro-ecological zones in Kenya (three sites), the effect of conservation tillage practices on soil microbial diversity, soil structure, water conservation and crop yield were investigated. The on-farm experiments were laid out as split-split plot design involving different cropping systems and crop residue management strategies superimposed on the tillage practices. Clearly, higher soil macro-aggregation was observed in reduced tillage (by up to18 %) and tied-ridges compared to conventional tillage system. Similarly, application of crop residue had positive effects on soil aggregation indices (increase by 13 %) in clay soil within sub-humid zone while combination of crop residue and manure was better than sole application of manure (by 4 %) in a sandy semi-arid zone. Among the cropping systems, aggregation indices declined in the order: intercropping> continuous maize > rotation. Conservation tillage practices showed higher diversity of bacterial and fungal populations compared to conventionally tilled plots. In the dryland zone, regardless of tillage system, application of 1 t ha−1 of maize stover and manure each, was the best practice. In the humid zone, although reduced tillage had lower yields than conventional tillage its performance was enhanced when combined with ripping or sub-soiling. Thus from the study, conservation tillage was superior in improving soil microbial diversity and soil structure but low agronomic performance must be overcome though ripping and sub-soiling.
Chronic meningococcemia in childhood. Case report and review of the literature.

Chronic meningococcemia occurred in a 2-year-old boy. As in adults, the clinical constellation in childhood include a prolonged period of variable rash, fever, and arthritis accompanied by surprisingly little systemic toxicity. Because of its rarity and nonspecific symptomatology, this entity is frequently mistaken for a wide range of other infectious diseases, vasculitides, and collagenoses. Thus, the positive blood culture remains the diagnostic sine qua non. Although the pathophysiology of this peculiar host-bacterial interaction has not been elucidated, it may prove fruitful to consider the clinical features as results of immune-complex deposition rather than direct bacterial invasion.
Distributed Spectrum Sharing in Cognitive Radio Networks: A Pricing-Based Decomposition Approach

The limited radio spectrum has become a bottleneck for various wireless communications. To better utilize the scare radio spectrum, cognitive radios have recently attracted increasing attention, which makes spectrum sharing more viable. Sharing radio spectrum from primary users to secondary users is of great importance. A licensed primary user (PU) can lease its spectrum to secondary users (SUs) for wireless communications. This paper studies the problem of social welfare maximization of distributed spectrum sharing among a PU and SUs. We first formulate the problem of social welfare maximization which takes into account both the cost of the PU and the utility gained by each SU. The social welfare maximization is a convex optimization problem and thus can be solved by a centralized algorithm. However, the utility function of each SU may contain the private information. To avoid privacy leakage of SUs, we propose an iterative distributed algorithm based on a pricing-based decomposition framework. It is theoretically proved that our algorithm converges to the optimal solution. Simulation results are presented to show that our algorithm achieves the optimal social welfare and converges quickly in a practical setting.
A NOVEL COMPOSITE MATERIAL WITH FLAME RETARDANT AND ANTIBACTERIAL PROPERTIES IN INTERIOR SYSTEM

To meet the special standards of interior systems in space station or high speed rail, a novel series of T700/602 prepregs with flame retardment and antibacterial properties were prepared by hot melt impregnation. In this study, their mechanical properties, production of combustion, flame retardment, antibacterial and mildew proof properties were systematicly studied to get the relationship between additives and properties. The concentration of composite faceplates’ production of combustion (CO,HF,HCl,NOx,SO2,HCN) was far below the standard value. Meanwhile, it had the outstanding flame retardment property without any flame penetration and drippage of melt, since their selfextinguishment time were all 0s. We also found that the mildew proof level of all the samples was 0. Moreover, along with the concentration of additives increasing, antibacterial property became stronger while mechanical properties was weaker. When the concentration of antimicrobial additives was higher than 2%, it can meet the standard requirement.
Gastric emptying measured by ultrasonography.

A number of different methods have been used toestimate gastric emptying in humans, and all havetheir advantages and disadvantages. The method ofchoice will depend on whether solid or liquid mealsare studied, the level of precision required, the degreeof invasiveness that the subject or patient willtolerate, ethical considerations, and not at least thefacilities available. Scintigraphy, with appropriatelabelling of the test meal components and appropriatecorrections applied, is considered so far the goldstandard for measurement of gastric empty ing.However, its application is limited by the need torestrict exposure to ion ising radiation. Othermethods are gastric aspiration techniques,radiography, ultrasonography, magnetic resonanceimaging, e pigastric impedance measurements, appliedpotential tomography, tracer methods (e.g. paracetamol),and breath tests. Regardless of the method used, theinvestigator must be aware of the limitations of the methodin use, the large inter-individual variability and of the factors known to influence gastric emptying. Ultrasonography is non-invasive, cheap, widelyavailable, and can be repeatedly performed becauseof its safety. two- dimensional ultrasound has, formany year s, been widely used to assess gastricemptying rates
A TRANSFORMERLESS HYBRID SERIES ACTIVE FILTER FOR ENHANCING POWER QUALITY OF ELECTRIC TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS

In this paper to enhance the power quality in single-phase systems with critical loads a transformer less hybrid series active filter is proposed. This paper consists the power quality energy and management issues related to electric transportation and focuses on improving power to electric vehicle load connection to the grid. While protecting sensitive loads from voltage disturbances, sags, and swells initiated by the power system, ridded of the series transformer, this proposed method is advantageous for industrial implementation purpose. This proposed topology prevents or isolate the harmonics and compensates the voltage distortion could absorb or inject the auxiliary power to the grid function is advised. Here the control strategy is designed to mitigate the harmonics which is flowing to load. To protect the common coupling voltage from distortion voltage here DVR is used (dynamic voltage restorer). Here we are using the fuzzy controller compared to other controllers because of its high performance. The simulations results are shown using MATLAB/SIMULINK.
Combinatorial Complexity of 5′ Alternative Acetylcholinesterase Transcripts and Protein Products*[boxs]

To explore the scope and significance of alternate promoter usage and its putative inter-relationship to alternative splicing, we searched expression sequence tags for the 5′ region of acetylcholinesterase (ACHE) genes. Three and five novel first exons were identified in human and mouse ACHE genes, respectively. Reverse transcription-PCR and in situ hybridization validated most of the predicted transcripts, and sequence analyses of the corresponding genomic DNA regions suggest evolutionarily conserved promoters for each of the novel exons identified. Distinct tissue specificity and stress-related expression patterns of these exons predict combinatorial complexity with known 3′ alternative AChE mRNA transcripts. Unexpectedly one of the 5′ exons encodes an extended N terminus in-frame with the known AChE sequence, extending the increased complexity to the protein level. The resultant membrane variant(s), designated N-AChE, is developmentally regulated in human brain neurons and blood mononuclear cells. Alternative promoter usage combined with alternative splicing may thus lead to stress-dependent combinatorial complexity of AChE mRNA transcripts and their protein products.
DataMining Clustering Techniques in the Prediction of Heart Disease using Attribute Selection Method

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the world over the past 10 years. In this paper proposes the performance of clustering algorithm using heart disease data. We are evaluating the performance of clustering algorithms of EM, Cobweb, Farthest First, Make Density Based Clusters, Simple K-Means algorithms. The performance of clusters will be calculated using the mode of classes to clusters evaluation. The selected attributes after the Common Features Subset Evaluator (CFs) and Best-First Search (BFs) are cp, restecg, thalach, exang, oldpeak, ca, thal, and num. In the final result, Make Density Based Clusters shows the high performance algorithms for heart disease data after applying the Attribute selection Method and their Prediction Accuracy is 85.80%.
Racial Anxiety

: Many have embraced evidence from the mind sciences that our behaviors are often influenced by our implicit biases rather than our conscious beliefs. This is one reason why implicit bias has become a staple in trainings for judges, lawyers, police officers, teachers, and health care providers. While understanding that implicit bias is important, social science research demonstrates that implicit bias alone does not fully account for the racial dynamics that undermine student achievement and trigger disproportionately harsh discipline, diminish the efficacy of health care and affect morbidity and mortality rates, trigger harsher prison sentences, result in child removal, and lead to unnecessary uses of force by police against civilians. Following the “behavioral realist” approach to provide the most empirically accurate understanding of human behavior, in this Essay, we introduce “racial anxiety” as an additional lens for understanding racial disparities of all types. In the social psychological literature, racial anxiety refers to the concerns that often arise both before and during interracial interactions. People of color experience racial anxiety when they worry that they will be subject to discriminatory treatment. White people, on the other hand, experience it when they worry that they will be perceived as racist. Racial anxiety can influence behaviors and judgments in ways that contribute to significant and unwarranted racial disparities even in the absence of both conscious and implicit racial bias. Additionally, in concert with implicit racial bias, racial anxiety can aggravate interracial dynamics in ways that create significant harm. This Essay explores how racial anxiety operates, discusses its probable
Molecular Dynamics Simulations of Al-Cu Thin Film Growth Processes

MD simulation is a powerful tool to interpret the thin film growth behavior by deposition process, which is widely used in semiconductor industry for last few decades. Among the several thin film growth behaviors, Al and Cu deposition process are needed to be understood for further applications in semiconductor industry. In order to understand the mechanism of Al and Cu deposition process, the atoms with various kinds of energy were deposited on substrate in order to calculate the efficiency of deposition using by ion bombardment. The threshold energy of sputtering is about 25eV and most of atoms would be deposited on substrate without sputtering because most atoms have less energy than 20eV. The intermixing behaviors between Al atoms on Cu substrate atoms and the reverse case were observed. This is due to different characteristic of Al and Cu. To investigate the key factors determining intermixing behavior, many deposition processes were executed at various conditions, such as various incident energy, various substrate temperature and substrate orientation. The information about the dynamics of the deposition process was obtained by tracing the evolution of atoms with time. This simulation procedure proved the layers do not grow layer-by-layer. Considering these results, experimental data of Cu/Al/Cu trilayer was used to reproduce. To reduce the gap between experiment and simulation, flawed substrate was made by same atoms deposition process. These results are coincident with experimental data and the intermixing length was increased and more atoms penetrate into substrate. Annealing process was adapted to prevent the intermixing behavior between Al atoms and Cu substrate atoms and the reverse case. In this thesis, the Al and Cu deposition mechanism are studied and compared with experimental result. The simulation results of Al and Cu deposition were well matched with experimental results. Based on these simulation results, MD simulation is one of the powerful tools to investigate the thin film growth behavior.
EECACL: Energy Efficient Clustering Algorithm using Cross Layer for WSN

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) consists of micro Sensor Nodes (SNs) with limited energy and processing ability. Sensors are grouped into several clusters to avoid long distance and redundancy in WSN. From the view of energy efficiency, it is important to choose a distinct node as Cluster Head (CH). The CH is selected without considering the distance and residual energy in Low Energy Adaptive Cluster Hierarchical (LEACH) routing protocol. The objective of this paper is to present a new algorithm for reducing the energy consumption in the network. The optimal cluster size, number of CH's along with residual energy, cross-layer information, and distance from SN to the sink node are considered during selection of CH in WSN. An algorithm uses cross layer information for energy efficiency in WSN with a novel clustering scheme called Energy Efficient Clustering Algorithm using Cross Layer for WSN (EECACL). The simulation result of the proposed approach is more efficient in increasing the network lifetime with more number of live nodes, reducing end to end delay, less packet drop with low message cost in a network as compared to the advanced existing protocols.