Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ASANTE INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS: REPOSITORIES OF CONSERVATION ETHICS FOR GHANA’S BIODIVERSITY

The indigenous knowledge systems of the Asantes handed down to them by their past, but active forebears carries a lot of weight in biodiversity conservation discussions. This is promulgated by the numerous conservation ethics hidden in the cultural and artistic practices of the people. Using the Asante Bekwai Traditional Area and its Protected Areas as a case study, the researcher accentuates the enormous Harvard Research and Publications International December 31, 2019 Vol. 11 No. 2 ISSN: 0081 – 3998 JOURNAL OF AFRICAN SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT INTRODUCTION Biodiversity is a valuable asset that sustains life on earth (Cho, 2011). It offers indispensable provisional services to man such as food, clothing, shelter, medicine etc. (Bradley, Emmet & Gonzalez, 2012). This makes it imperative that humans conserve the biodiversity resources in the environment. Thus, nature’s resources must be used judiciously so as to keep them in constant supply to the present generation and the future progeny. However, it is sad to gleam from various reports that the numbers of biodiversity resources globally are reducing at a very alarming rate with most species at the threshold of extinction. Vaughan (2015) recently reported that there has been an unprecedented rate in the earth’s biodiversity species loss which is hundred times higher than its
Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease: does

The hallmark of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the intrahepatocyte accumulation of lipids with or without necro-inflammatory changes and ballooning [i.e., steatohepatitis or nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH)], fibrosis, cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), which is observed in dysmetabolic individuals in the absence of competing causes of chronic liver disease such as excess alcohol consumption, viral infections, autoimmune or hereditary conditions and steatogenic medications (1). NAFLD represents an example of lipotoxicity caused by ectopic lipid accumulation. Even relatively modest amounts of ectopic lipid accumulation in normally lean organs (e.g., liver, pancreas, heart, kidney and muscle) can trigger functional disturbance in the affected organs and a subsequent vicious circle of adverse metabolic consequences in predisposed individuals (1); this will eventually result in those hepatic and extra-hepatic manifestations and co-morbid conditions which are frequently observed in NAFLD patients. Under this perspective, NAFLD should be viewed as one of the systemic manifestations and consequences resulting from lipid overflow. NAFLD has been drawing major research as well as clinical interests due to (I) rapid epidemic diffusion and identification of the disease on a worldwide basis; (II) its mutual and bidirectional relationship with features of the metabolic syndrome; (III) strong (potentially causal) association with cardiovascular events; (IV) its escalating prevalence as a cause of chronic liver disease, cirrhosis, HCC and liver transplantation; and (V) on the grounds of all the reasons listed above, its posing a major burden on public health budgets in many countries of the world (1). Although the term of ‘nonalcoholic steatohepatitis’ first coined in 1980 by Ludwig with a double composite word, which is typically German, what we now call NASH was probably reported in 1962 by Thaler and liver disease in the obese was recognized as early as 1952 by Zelman (2). So, what is left obscure after almost 70 years of explosive and ever progressing research on NAFLD and NASH?
EPIC: Every Packet Is Checked in the Data Plane of a Path-Aware Internet

An exciting insight of recent networking research has been that path-aware networking architectures are able to fundamentally solve many of the security issues of today’s Internet, while increasing overall efficiency and giving control over path selection to end hosts. In this paper, we consider three important issues related to this new networking paradigm: First, network operators still need to be able to impose their own policies to rule out uneconomical paths and to enforce these decisions on the data plane. Second, end hosts should be able to verify that their forwarding decisions are actually followed by the network. Finally, both intermediate routers and recipients should be able to authenticate the source of packets. These properties have been considered by previous work, but there is no existing system that achieves both strong security guarantees and high efficiency. We propose EPIC, a family of data-plane protocols that provide increasingly strong security properties, addressing all three described requirements. The EPIC protocols have significantly lower communication overhead than comparable systems: for realistic path lengths, the overhead is 3–5 times smaller compared to the state-of-the-art systems OPT and ICING. Our prototype implementation is able to saturate a 40 Gbps link even on commodity hardware due to the use of only few highly efficient symmetric cryptographic operations in the forwarding process. Thus, by ensuring that every packet is checked at every hop, we make an important step towards an efficient and secure future Internet.
PROMOTING YOUTH ENTREPRENEURSHIP SKILLS AND JOB CREATION THROUGH MICRO, SMALL AND MEDIUM ENTERPRISES (MSMES) IN BAUCHI STATE NIGERIA

The goal of this paper is to explore entrepreneurial approach toward job creation and preventing the occurrence of unemployment in Bauchi State Nigeria. Youth unemployment is continuously increasing in our metropolitan areas, particularly in North east Nigeria, Bauchi State precisely. This increase in youth unemployment is bringing high number of social and economic vices. The significance of job creation and availability of training, and the physical and social quality of urban environment on youth are enormous, and thus, affect their health, life-styles, and well-being. The main aim of this study is to explore successful Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) related income generation opportunities for youth and to promote youth entrepreneurship skills in Bauchi state. Quantitative method was employed. Structured questionnaires were administered to youths in the State. Quantitative data was analyzed through Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software version 25. The research shall have both theoretical and practical implications. Theoretically, the study shall provide a behavioral framework for preventing unemployment in Bauchi State. Practically, the research shall be use by traditional community leaders, local government authorities, state government and federal government of Nigeria at large. The study recommends that establishment of Entrepreneurship Acquisition Skills (EAS) Centre where unemployed youth will be training on entrepreneurship skills such as Wielding and fabrication, Furniture making and Tailoring, in each of the three Senatorial zones of the States.
Annotation of virulence factors in schistosomes for the development of a SchistoVir database

Scientific efforts in the eradication of neglected tropical diseases, such as those caused by the parasitic helminthes, can be improved if a database of key virulence factors directly implicated in pathogenesis is available. As a first step towards creating SchistoVir, a database of virulence protein factors in schistosomes, in this study, we curated, annotated and aligned sequences of twenty virulence factors identified from the literature, using several bioinformatics tools including UniProtKB, SchistoDB, VirulentPred, InterProScan, ProtScale, MotifScan, TDRtarget, SignalP, MODBASE, PDB and MUSCLE. Among the protein entries, the most frequently occurring amino acid residues were lysine, serine, leucine, glutamine, glycine and cysteine in order of magnitude. Although sequence repeat regions (SRRs) of significant value were identified manually in fifty percent of the proteins (while dipeptide repeats (DiPs) and single amino acid repeats (SAARs) were not), nevertheless, seventy-two percent of the protein entries were classified as virulent by the prediction model, VirulentPred. Most of the entries (eighty percent) did not have target compounds based on the database of available chemical compounds at TDRtargets. Fourteen of the twenty entries (seventy percent) had more than 30 consecutively negative amino acid residues based on the ProtScale’s Kyte and Doolittle hydrophobicity plot. Hence, they would be hydrophobic enough to be transmembrane in location or secretory in nature. Only 7 (tyrosinase, serine protease1, Tspan-1, VAL4, cathepsin b and L and calreticulin) had cleavage sites and signal peptides, while none had a significant signal anchor probability. The annotations and characterization provided by this work and the development of a SchistoVir database will aid in further research of schistosome pathogenesis and control.
The Incidence of Pars Interarticularis Defects in Athletes

Study Design: Literature review. Objective: To conduct a literature review of studies reporting the incidence of pars interarticularis defects in athletes of specific sports, in order to allow more targeted prevention and treatment strategies to be implemented for the groups at highest risk. Methods: Electronic searches were performed using PubMed, Ovid Medline, EMBASE, Google Scholar, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, and Cochrane Database of Controlled Trials from their dates of inception to September 2017, with the following keywords: “spondylolysis,” “sports,” “low back pain,” and “pars defects. ” Results: A total of 509 total articles were retrieved, of which 114 were used in the final review. The incidence of pars interarticularis defects was found to be highest in diving (35.38%), cricket (31.97%), baseball/softball (26.91%), rugby (22.22%), weightlifting (19.49%), sailing (17.18%), table tennis (15.63%), and wrestling (14.74%). Only 5 studies reported the management instituted for their participants, and these were all case reports. Of 74 players with spondylolysis in these studies, 70 (94.59%) underwent conservative treatment and 4 (5.41%) underwent surgical treatment. 61 (82.43%) returned to their previous level of play, 6 (8.11%) retired, and the disposition of the final 7 was not reported. Conclusion: The current medical literature provides good evidence that the incidence of pars interarticularis defects is higher in the athletic population, with the highest incidence in diving. There remains no gold standard protocol for the management of pars interarticularis defects. Further research is required to compare conservative therapy to surgical therapy and to compare the various surgical techniques to each other.
Problem detection in peer assessments between subjects by effective transfer learning and active learning

Peer assessment adds value when students provide “help-ful” feedback to their peers. But, this begs the question of how we determine “helpfulness. ” One important aspect is whether the review detects problems in the submitted work. To recognize problem detection, researchers have employed NLP and machine-learning text classiﬁcation methods. Past studies have used datasets that were narrowly focused on a small number of classes in speciﬁc academic ﬁelds. This paper reports on how well models trained on one dataset or ﬁeld perform on data from classes that are unlike the classes whose data they have been trained on. Speciﬁcally we took a model developed with data from a computer science class with several programming assignments, and tried to transfer it onto an education class focused more on writing research papers. We have attempted to perform such a task on a few models including logistic regression classiﬁer, random forest classiﬁer, multinomial naive bayes classiﬁer and support vector machine. We made several attempts to raise the accuracy of classiﬁcation, including lemmatizing to deduct variation in data input, and active learning strategies.
COMPARISON OF BALANCE PERFORMANCE BETWEEN DIABETIC AND ELDERLY POPULATION

Objectives: The primary objective of the study was to compare the balance performance of elderly and diabetics in Rawalpindi and Islamabad. Methodology: A comparative cross sectional survey conducted from 01 January and 30 June 2015. Samples of 414 participants were recruited through non probability convenient sampling technique, out of which 207 were in elderly group and 207 belonged to diabetic group. Different constructs of balance performance were assessed and measured through Berg Balance Scale; Timed up and Go test and Dizziness Handicap Inventory. Data was analyzed through SPSS version 21 and differences between both groups were observed through Independent t test. Results: The results demonstrated significant differences between both groups on all measures of balance. The mean score of elderly and diabetic subjects on Berg Balance scale was 42.20±9.59 and 46.23±8.99 respectively (p value <0.05). Mean time taken by the elderly and diabetics on Timed Up and Go test was 15.63±5.16 and 11.71±3.84 respectively (p value <0.05). The average score of elderly and diabetics on Dizziness Handicap Inventory was found to be 52.81±21.83 and 37.65±22.51 respectively (p value <0.05). Conclusion: Non-elderly diabetic population has better dynamic balance and mobility level as compared to elderly population without diabetes. Elderly population suffered from balance issues independent of accompanying diabetes mellitus. Key words: aged; diabetes mellitus; postural balance; dizziness
Geodesic Methods in Computer Vision and Graphics

This monograph reviews both the theory and practice of the numerical computation of geodesic distances on Riemannian manifolds. The notion of Riemannian manifold allows one to define a local metric (a symmetric positive tensor field) that encodes the information about the problem one wishes to solve. This takes into account a local isotropic cost (whether some point should be avoided or not) and a local anisotropy (which direction should be preferred). Using this local tensor field, the geodesic distance is used to solve many problems of practical interest such as segmentation using geodesic balls and Voronoi regions, sampling points at regular geodesic distance or meshing a domain with geodesic Delaunay triangles. The shortest paths for this Riemannian distance, the so-called geodesics, are also important because they follow salient curvilinear structures in the domain. We show several applications of the numerical computation of geodesic distances and shortest paths to problems in surface and shape processing, in particular segmentation, sampling, meshing and comparison of shapes. All the figures from this review paper can be reproduced by following the Numerical Tours of Signal Processing. http://www.ceremade. dauphine.fr/~peyre/numerical-tour/ Several textbooks exist that include description of several manifold methods for image processing, shape and surface representation and computer graphics. In particular, the reader should refer to [42, 147, 208, 209, 213, 255] for fascinating applications of these methods to many important problems in vision and graphics. This review paper is intended to give an updated tour of both foundations and trends in the area of geodesic methods in vision and graphics.
Energy-Efficient Fair Cooperation Fog Computing in Mobile Edge Networks for Smart City

Smart city as a new paradigm for future city development leads to a large amount of computing workload and high network latency especially with artificial intelligence algorithms. Fog computing, as one of the mobile edge computing paradigms, deploys some servers at the edge of mobile networks to solve these problems. However, it still remains a challenging issue how to obtain the energy-effective cooperation policy among fog nodes (FNs) to enhance the users’ quality of experience (QoE) under fairness, where the fairness ensures that FNs are willing to take part in cooperations. Therefore, we first build up a cooperative fog computing system to process offloading workload on the entire fog layer by data forwarding. Then, we formulate a joint optimization problem of QoE and energy in integrated fog computing process with fairness. After that, we prove the convexity of the optimization problem and design a fairness cooperation algorithm (FCA) to obtain the optimal fairness cooperation policy of all FNs. Finally, numerical results show that our FCA can quickly converge to its solution compared with three traditional convex optimization approaches, and FCA can effectively reduce the time overhead and the energy consumption compared to baseline algorithm and distributed optimization algorithm.
Risk factors associated with secondary infertility in women of childbearing age: A matched case–control study

Background: Childbearing and rearing are important events in every human life and are associated with the feeling of completeness, family integration, and happiness. However, approximately 1 in 10 couples worldwide experience difficulty in achieving conception. Objective: This study aims to determine the risk factors associated with secondary infertility in women attending the obstetrics and gynecology clinics of a tertiary hospital in Lagos, Nigeria. Methodology: This individually matched case–control study was carried out from July to October 2015. A total of 160 cases were recruited from the gynecology clinic and 160 matched controls were recruited from the antenatal clinic. Data were collected using a structured interviewer-administered questionnaire. The information collected included sociodemographic characteristics, social history, and obstetric and gynecological history. A conditional logistic regression analysis controlling for possible confounders, which included variables significant at the univariate level, was undertaken. Results: Association with secondary infertility was found with a history of unsafe abortion (adjusted odds ratio [AOR] = 9.3607, confidence interval [CI] = 3.7664–23.2645), alcohol use (AOR = 16.8102, CI = 1.3972–202.2487), family history of secondary infertility (AOR = 4.7346, CI = 1.4892–15.0523), and history of sexually transmitted infections (AOR = 4.5428, CI = 1.7658–11.6866). Contrariwise, a history of regular menses and normal vaginal delivery, respectively, were found to be protective. No statistically significant relationship was observed between educational level or alcohol use of partners and secondary infertility in this study. Conclusion: The extrinsic risk factors identified in this study should be taken into consideration when designing preventive and treatment programs toward reducing the burden of secondary infertility.
Association of Serum Levels of Calcitonin Gene-related Peptide and Cytokines during Migraine Attacks

Background: During a migraine attack, trigeminal activation results in the release of calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP), which stimulates the release of inflammatory cytokines playing an important role in migraine. Objective: We analyze the relation between CGRP and cytokines during attacks to explore the possible mechanism of migraine. Materials and Methods: Migraine patients and healthy control were recruited at the Department of Neurology, the Sixth People's Hospital of Fuyang City, between March 2018 and July 2018. The protein levels of interleukin (IL)-1β, IL-2, IL-6, IL-10, tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α), and CGRP were determined from the sera of patients with migraine and control subjects by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay kits. Spearman's rank correlation coefficient was also determined to calculate the correlation between CGRP and inflammatory factors levels. Results: The level of IL-1β, IL-6, TNF-α, and CGRP in migraine group were significantly higher than normal group (P < 0.05). The level of CGRP was significantly correlated with IL-1 β (r = 0.30, P < 0.05) and IL-6 (r = 0.94, P < 0.05), but not significantly correlated with IL-2 (r =−0.047, P = 0.75), IL-10 (r = 0.12, P = 0.43), and TNF-α (r = 0.05, P = 0.72). Conclusions: In our study, we found migraine patients had a higher IL-6, IL-1β, and TNF level than healthy controls and the level of CGRP was related significantly with the level of IL-1β and IL-6. In conclusion, our results suggest that IL-1β and IL-6 may be involved in the pathogenesis of migraine attacks and CGRP related with the secretion of cytokines.
Investigating the male-driven evolution hypothesis using human alu repeat elements

Thousands of copies of short interspersed repeats (SINEs) are scattered essentially randomly through the human genome. Although copies of each repeat subfamily are identical at the time of their insertion, they become subject to individual substitutions after insertion. As the relative time of insertion is known for many of these repeats, such "junk DNA" can be used to provide a sizeable number of time-series data points for studying substitution effects in a variety of genomic contexts. This dissertation specifically discusses the usefulness of the Alu family of SINE repeats towards addressing open problems in genomics, population genetics, and biology in general. Alus and other repeat elements have been used successfully to approach many open questions in biology. However, a more complete analysis of the statistical properties of the repeats themselves is necessary to more fully categorize any confounding factors that must be considered when reporting repeat-based results. This dissertation provides a study of potentially confounding statistical properties underlying Alu repeats in various genomic contexts. The utility of this statistical approach to the use of repeat elements as time series data is illustrated by furthering investigations designed to elucidate the driving force behind evolution: environmental factors or replication error. Specifically, this dissertation addresses the degree of replication-based error by providing tighter statistical boundaries on the male-to-female mutation ratio, α, in humans. This goal is accomplished by performing a whole-genome analysis of substitutions in characterized Alu repeats. Existent mathematical models are used to provide a strict confidence bounds on the human α. Finally, this dissertation validates the elucidated value of α by performing a whole-genome analysis of replication-induced insertion and deletion events in characterized Alu repeats. This analysis provides a better characterized general mechanism for studying questions in human population genetics as well as a more accurate consideration of the specific genomic issues relevant to the driving force of evolution.