Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
NOVEL PHARMACEUTICAL COMBINATION CONFERS PROTECTION FROM DELAYED CELL DEATH FOLLOWING TRANSIENT CEREBRAL ISCHEMIA

Stroke is a leading cause of death and disability throughout the world; ischemia is the most common form of stroke. Medical procedures such as cardio-pulmonary bypass surgery can cause ischemic stroke can be caused. There are no treatments to limit neural impairment following stroke. The current research investigates neuroprotection offered by treatment with a novel drug combination consisting of SimvastatinTM, GemfibrozilTM, TroglitazoneTM, and SpironolactoneTM. Animals were treated with the drug cocktail three weeks proceeding and one week subsequent to surgery. Ischemic insult was induced by clamping the carotid arteries for 5 min. Sham subjects underwent similar surgical procedures, but the carotids were not clamped. Twenty-four hrs following the surgical procedure locomotor activity was monitored in an open field for 5 min. Seven to fourteen days following ischemia or the sham procedure animals were sacrificed and sections containing the hippocampal CA1 region were mounted on slides and stained with cresyl violet. The CA1 region was rated on a 4-point scale for level of damage. Rodents generally show increased locomotor activity following transient global ischemia in an open field. In our study, ischemic animals that received vehicle demostrated increased activity relative to the animals that received the drug treatment on all behavioral measures. Ischemic animals that received vehicle treatment had significantly more neural damage in the hippocampal CA1 region than ischemic animals receiving the drug. The appearance of neurons in the CA1 hippocampal regions of animals in the sham condition was not significantly different from ischemic animals in the drug treatment condition. It is concluded that the drug treatment is effective in offering neuroprotection during transient global ischemia. The next step is to characterize the biochemical mechanisms behind the neuroprotection conferred by the drug treatment. Contrasting the protein expression levels of animals receiving the vehicle treatment with animals receiving the drug treatment following an ischemic insult will assist in elucidating these pathways. Predictions are made regarding the biochemical mechanisms affected by the drug treatment based on previous research on the biochemical pathways affected by each pharmaceutical.
BreastScreen Australia monitoring report 2000–2001

This report is the fifth annual report based on key program activity, performance and outcome indicators to monitor the achievements of the BreastScreen Australia Program. The report presents the most recent information on participation in breast screening, cancer detection, program sensitivity and recall to assessment and rescreening rates. It also presents national breast cancer incidence and mortality data to provide a context for these indicators of screening activity. Where possible, the data are presented by state and territory as well as nationally.
Peak Flow Monitoring For Guided Self-Management in Childhood Asthma: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Wensley D, Silverman M. Am J Respir Crit Care Med . 2004;170:606–612 To determine if the addition of peak expiratory flow (PEF) recordings to a symptom-based self-management plan improved outcome in schoolchildren with asthma. Children ( n = 90), aged 7 to 14 years with physician-diagnosed asthma, who are on regular inhaled corticosteroid therapy. Children were randomized to receive a management plan based on either symptoms alone or symptoms plus PEF readings for 12 weeks. Children were asked to perform twice-daily spirometry (using …
Improving the prescription of antibiotics, focus on surgical prophylaxis.

This thesis comprises several studies on the implementation of guidelines for antimicrobial use in prophylaxis as well as in therapy. The main part focuses on the data of the CHIPS-study; a quality improvement project of surgical prophylaxis in the Netherlands promoting prudent use of antibiotics and implementing the national guideline for prophylaxis of the Ducth Working Party of Antibiotic Policy (SWAB). Thirteen hospitals, in four surgical disciplines, participated in the study. Audits in the hospitals showed that in general the willingness to adhere to local guidelines for prophylaxis was good, although adherence to guidelines for timing was problematic. Implementation of the SWAB-guideline for prophylaxis resulted in significant improvements: increased use of narrow spectrum antibiotics, shorter duration of prophylaxis and correct timing. A significant decrease in total antimicrobial use and costs was achieved while maintaining efficacy in terms of preventing surgical site infections (SSI). Barriers for change varied per parameter of surgical prophylaxis and between hospitals and surgical specialties. There was no magic improvement strategy and identifying key players for change was essential for success. In total hip arthroplasty it was shown that, although not statistically significant, timing of prophylaxis seems to be the most relevant prophylaxis parameter that influences patient outcome in terms of SSI. Timely administration of antibiotics also effects patient outcome in antibiotic therapy, and an intervention study in an University Hospital showed that the delay between the order and administration of the first dose of the antibiotic could be signifcantly shortened. In conclusion important improvements in the quality of surgical prophylaxis and therapy could be achieved and, even in a country with a history of prudent antibiotic use, cost savings could be obtained in prophylaxis while maintaining efficacy in terms of prevention of SSI
Resultados imediatos da cirurgia de revascularização miocárdica: comparação entre homens e mulheres

OBJETIVO: Avaliar a morbimortalidade de homens e mulheres submetidos a cirurgia de revascularizacao miocardica isolada e os fatores relacionados as diferencas eventualmente encontradas. METODOS: Analise comparativa de 2032 pacientes, 1402 (69%) homens e 630 (31%) mulheres submetidos consecutivamente a cirurgia, de janeiro 1999 a dezembro 2002. RESULTADOS: As mulheres apresentaram idade media mais elevada, maior numero de fatores de risco e taxas de angina instavel. Enxertos com arteria toracica interna foram mais frequentemente usados nos homens, 85,6% vs. 78,3%, p<0,001. Nao houve diferencas nas taxas de complicacoes pos operatorias, exceto as infeccoes, mais frequentes nas mulheres. A mortalidade hospitalar foi de 4,1% e 6,3%, para homens e mulheres respectivamente, p=0,026. Na analise multivariada o sexo feminino nao foi identificado como fator prognostico independente para obito, assim como o uso de enxertos com arteria toracica nao foi tambem isoladamente identificado como fator protetor, porem a interacao sexo-arteria toracica interna foi significativa; foram ainda selecionados, idade (OR 1,03; [IC] 95% 1,01 a 1,06; p=0,004), insuficiencia renal no pre-operatorio (OR 1.82; [IC] 95% 1,07 a 3,11; p=0,028) e cirurgia de urgencia/emergencia (OR 2,85; [IC] 95% 1,32 a 6,14; p=0,008). CONCLUSAO: O sexo feminino apresentou maior mortalidade operatoria porem nao se mostrou fator prognostico independente para obito; o uso de enxertos com arteria toracica mostrou-se protetor; pacientes mais idosos, com insuficiencia renal e em situacao emergencial apresentaram maiores indices de obito hospitalar.
Prevalence and genotyping of HPV, by cervical brushing, in Irpinia area of Campania region

Cervical cancer is due to persistent genital infection with Human Papillomavirus (HPV). The purpose of this study was to evaluate prevalence of HPV in Irpinia (Campania region, Italy), distribution of different viral genotypes, correlating cytological results and virological investigations. In the period 2006-2011, were made 1080 cervical samples of women aged 18-65 years for HPV identification and genotyping. Detection of the virus was performed by Multiplex-PCR System (Seegene,Arrow) and typing with INNO-LiPA HPV Genotyping Extra test (Innogenetics). Out of the 1080 tested samples, 330 (30.6%) samples were positive for HPV DNA. The most frequently occurring High Risk (HR)-HPV genotype in single infections was HPV16 (16.6%), followed by HPV51 (10.7%), in multiple infections HPV16 (15.7%) and 31 (14.6%). The prevalence of infection, correlated with age of patients studied, is greater in the group aged 26-30 years (42.5%). HR-HPV were detected in different percent in patients with Pap test scores: 22.5% in normal Pap smear (20% HPV16), 14.5% ASCUS (47.6% HPV16), 24% LSIL (20% HPV16), 79.3% HSIL (72.7% HPV16; 9.1% HPV18 detected only in this type of cellular alteration). The high prevalence of HR-HPV in patients with ASCUS or normal Pap test, suggesting the real advantage of HPV screening test, more sensitive in selecting the actual population at risk. Based on the findings of our epidemiological study, HR-HPV screening and HPV genotyping test should be strongly advised also to the vaccinated population for the high incidence of genotypes which are not included in vaccines (67%).
Predicting adult smoking: the influence of smoking during adolescence and smoking among friends and family

The aim of the study was to predict smoking from early adolescence to adulthood by using longitudinal data. The data was gathered in connection with the North Karelia Youth Project The project was started in 1978 with students in the seventh grade of junior high school (aged 13 years) and finished in 1980 when the students reached the ninth grade. The follow-up study included four additional surveys over 15 years, the last being in 1993-94. The results show that two-thirds of the smokers in the ninth grade of junior high school (aged 15 years) were still smoking at the age of 28. About half of the smokers at the age of 28 were smokers in the ninth grade and the other half had started after that Previous smoking status and smoking by friends were the most important predictors of smoking. The continuity of smoking and non-smoking from adolescence to adulthood supports the importance of prevention programs in junior high school. On the other hand, about half of the smoking adults had started smoking after that This indicates that the prevention programs should continue after junior high school.
Sowa Rigpa, spirits and biomedicine: layTibetan perspectives on mental illness andits healing in a medically-pluralisticcontext in Darjeeling, Northeast India

This thesis examines Tibetan perspectives on the causation, management and treatment of mental illness (Tib.: sems nad) within a Tibetan exile community in Darjeeling, northeast India. Based on two six-month periods of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2011 and 2012, it examines common cultural understandings of mental illness and healing, and how these are reflected in health-seeking behaviour. To date, research on lay Tibetan perspectives of mental illness and their impact on health-seeking behaviour has been limited, especially in relation to the concept of smyo nad (‘madness’). Following on from work by Jacobson (2000, 2002, 2007) and Millard (2007), the thesis investigates lay Tibetan perceptions of the causation and treatment of various kinds of mental disorders through the use of indepth semi-structured interviews and participant observation, comparing and contrasting Tibetan approaches to those of biomedical psychology and psychiatry and their accompanying classification systems, the American Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) and European International Classification of Disease (ICD). Four case studies of individuals labelled with different Tibetan and biomedical diagnoses related to mental health conditions are described in order to illustrate a number of key concepts in Tibetan approaches to mental illness and its healing. The research found that that a number of informants successfully combined different – sometimes opposing – explanatory frameworks and treatment approaches in response to an episode of mental illness. However, the thesis concludes that the Tibetan and biomedical categories remain difficult to correlate, due in part to their culturally-specific nature, based on significantly different underlying assumptions regarding individuals and their relationship to the environment.
IGF-I Bioactivity in Aging, Health and Disease

textabstractThe existence of insulin-like growth factors (IGFs) in blood was fi rst recognized by Wiliam D. Salmon Jr. and Wiliam H. Daughaday in 1956. Examining the role of pituitary-regulated growth-stimulating substances, these authors demonstrated that a growth hormone (GH) dependent factor in serum could stimulate labeled sulfate (35SO4) incorporation into chondroitin sulfate (cartilage) in vitro. In line with their fi ndings, Salmon and Daughaday initially designated this factor as ‘sulfation factor’. Comparative studies were also performed in vivo. Hypophysectomy of rats markedly reduced labeled sulfate incorporation into chondroitin sulfate of epiphyseal cartilage, whereas injections of pituitary extracts and purifi ed bovine GH effectively restored 35SO4 incorporation. The observations that the direct effect of bovine GH on costal cartilage was minimal, whereas serum from hypophysectomized rats treated with bovine GH stimulated 3H-thymidine incorporation into cartilage led to the postulation that GH utilized the intermediary substance sulfation factor.
On the Robustness of Information Retrieval Metrics to Biased Relevance Assessments

Information Retrieval (IR) test collections are growing larger, and relevance data constructed through pooling are suspected of becoming more and more incomplete and biased. Several studies have used IR evaluation metrics specifically designed to handle this problem, but most of them have only examined the metrics under incomplete but unbiased conditions, using random samples of the original relevance data. This paper examines nine metrics in more realistic settings, by reducing the number of pooled systems and the number of pooled documents. Even though previous studies have shown that metrics based on a condensed list, obtained by removing all unjudged documents from the original ranked list, are effective for handling very incomplete but unbiased relevance data, we show that these results do not hold when the relevance data are biased towards particular systems or towards the top of the pools. More specifically, we show that the condensed-list versions of Average Precision, Q-measure and normalised Discounted Cumulative Gain, which we denote as AP', Q' and nDCG', are not necessarily superior to the original metrics for handling biases. Nevertheless, AP' and Q' are generally superior to bpref, Rank-Biased Precision and its condensed-list version even in the presence of biases.
An Improved Classification Strategy for Filtering Relevant Tweets Using Bag-of-Word Classifiers

: In this paper we have presented a classiﬁcation framework for classifying tweets relevant to some speciﬁc target sectors. Due to the imposed length restriction on an individual tweet, tweet classiﬁcation faces some additional challenges which are not present in most other short text classiﬁcation problems, needless to say in classiﬁcation of standard written text. Hence, bag-of-word classiﬁers, which have been successfully leveraged for text classiﬁcation in other domains, fail to achieve a similar level of accuracy in classifying tweets. In this paper, we have proposed a collocation feature selection algorithm for tweet classiﬁcation. Moreover, we have proposed a strategy, built on our selected collocation features, for identifying and removing confounding outliers from a training set. An Evaluation on two real world datasets shows that the proposed model yields a better accuracy than the unigram model, uni-bigram model and also a partially supervised topic model on two di ﬀ erent classiﬁcation tasks.
Fear of death and dying

Perspective on the paper by Barr ( see page 104 ) It would be possible to respond to Peter Barr’s paper “Relation of neonatologists’ end-of-life decisions to their personal fear of death” with anger, disbelief or indifference, and it could be misunderstood as suggesting that covert euthanasia is a rampant practice in neonatal units, at least in Australasia. Neither these responses nor such a misreading would do justice to a paper that explores the personal attitudes that mediate the decision-making processes of neonatal consultants when faced with babies in whom the possibility of forgoing continued life support has become an option to be seriously considered. In a survey of Australian and New Zealand (ANZ) neonatologists, using validated instruments for measuring dimensions related to fear of death or dying, Barr confirmed that some ANZ neonatologists are comfortable with knowingly hastening death with sedation and analgesia. This has already been shown in Europe, and Barr’s paper suggests that the finding is generalisable across culturally similar nations. The most striking finding was an association between the acknowledgement of this practice and greater “fear of the dying process” and “fear of premature death”. We are left with the question as …
Pain Level Detection From Facial Image Captured by Smartphone

Accurate symptom of cancer patient in regular basis is highly concern to the medical service provider for clinical decision making such as adjustment of medication. Since patients have limitations to provide self-reported symptoms, we have investigated how mobile phone application can play the vital role to help the patients in this case. We have used facial images captured by smart phone to detect pain level accurately. In this pain detection process, existing algorithms and infrastructure are used for cancer patients to make cost low and user-friendly. The pain management solution is the first mobile-based study as far as we found today. The proposed algorithm has been used to classify faces, which is represented as a weighted combination of Eigenfaces. Here, angular distance, and support vector machines (SVMs) are used for the classification system. In this study, longitudinal data was collected for six months in Bangladesh. Again, cross-sectional pain images were collected from three different countries: Bangladesh, Nepal and the United States. In this study, we found that personalized model for pain assessment performs better for automatic pain assessment. We also got that the training set should contain varying levels of pain in each group: low, medium and high.
Barriers to uptake of eye care services by the Indian population living in Ealing, west London

Background Despite a relatively high prevalence of eye disease, the Indian population in London does not fully utilize the available eye care services. This study in Ealing, London was aimed at determining the reasons for poor utilization of eye care services. Methods Qualitative research methods were used. These included: focus group discussions with community members and religious leaders; semi-structured interviews with general practitioners and Indian patients attending the eye unit for the first time at Ealing hospital, and non-participatory observation methods. Results Attitudinal barriers showing visual health is not a priority and the elderly are resigned to a ‘fate’ of poor vision in old age. Difficulties in the patient-doctor relationship at the primary care level that cause delays in gaining access to specialist care. Dissatisfaction at hospital level due to long waiting lists and poor communication with specialists and staff. Although the community does not perceive language as a major barrier, the majority of patients receiving health care in the hospital system still need interpreters often resulting in dissatisfaction and misconceptions. Conclusion The social attitudes towards visual health issues, along with the perceived difficulties with their general practitioners result in delays in seeking help for their visual impairment. These are the principal barriers that would have to be addressed if uptake of services is to be improved.
Gesture Recognition Method Utilizing Ultrasonic Active Acoustic Sensing

We propose a method for gesture recognition that utilizes active acoustic sensing, which transmits acoustic signals to a target, and recognizes the target’s state by analyzing the response. In this study, the user wore a contact speaker that transmitted ultrasonic sweep signals to the user’s body and a contact microphone that detected the ultrasound propagated through the body. The propagation characteristics of the ultrasound changed depending on the user’s movements. We utilized these changes to recognize the user’s gestures. One of the important novelty features of our method is that the user’s gestures can be acquired not only from the physical movement but also from the user’s internal state, such as muscle activity, since ultrasound is transmitted via both the user’s internal body and body surface. Moreover, our method is not adversely affected by audible-range sounds generated by the environment and body movements because we utilize ultrasound. We implemented a device that uses active acoustic sensing to effectively transmit/detect the ultrasound to/from the body and investigated the performance of the proposed method in 21 contexts with 10 subjects. The evaluation results confirmed that the precision and recall are 93.1% and 91.6%, respectively when we set 10% of the data as training data and the rest as testing data in the same data set. When we used the data set for training and the other data set for testing in the same day, the precision and recall are 51.6% and 51.3%, respectively.
Robust Feature Matching for Distorted Projection by Spherical Cameras

In this work, we proposes a simple yet effective method for improving performance of local feature matching among equirectangular cylindrical images, which brings more stable and complete 3D reconstruction by incremental SfM. The key idea is to exiplictly generate synthesized images by rotating the spherical panoramic images and to detect and describe features only from the less distroted area in the rectified panoramic images. We demonstrate that the proposed method is advantageous for both rotational and translational camera motions compared with the standard methods on the synthetic data. We also demonstrate that the proposed feature matching is beneficial for incremental SfM through the experiments on the Pittsburgh Reserach dataset.