Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Pesticide use, allergic rhinitis, and asthma among US farm operators

ABSTRACT Objective: The objective of the study is to examine associations between use of specific pesticides and lifetime allergic rhinitis and current asthma in US primary farm operators. Methods: The 2011 Farm and Ranch Safety Survey data from 11,210 primary farm operators were analyzed. Pesticide use on the farm was determined using an affirmative response to the question of whether the operator ever mixed, loaded, or applied pesticides on their farm in the 12 months prior to the interview. Operators who answered “yes” were further asked about the specific trade name and formulation identifiers of the product they used and personal protective equipment (PPE) used. Data were weighted to produce national estimates. Adjusted prevalence odds ratios (PORs) were calculated using logistic regression. The referent group included operators who did not use any pesticides in the 12 months prior to the interview. Results: Of an estimated 2.1 million farm operators, 40.0% used pesticides, 30.8% had lifetime allergic rhinitis, and 5.1% had current asthma. Insecticide and herbicide use were significantly associated with lifetime allergic rhinitis and current asthma. The use of 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (POR = 1.5; 95% CI 1.2–1.9) and carbaryl (POR = 2.3; 1.4–3.7) was significantly associated with lifetime allergic rhinitis. Of operators using pesticides, 64.9% used PPE the last time they mixed, loaded, or applied pesticides. Conclusions: Pesticide use was associated with lifetime allergic rhinitis and current asthma among farm operators. Further studies are needed to clarify the dose–response relationship between pesticide use and adverse respiratory health effects.
Geographic Hematology: Some Observations in Mexico

In 1963 Jean Bernard introduced the concept of “geographic hematology” and distinguished 2 branches, i.e., “ethnic hematology,” which deals with differences between populations, and “environmental hematology,” which considers factors such as food habits, infections, and others. Both of these branches have implications in the distribution of hematological diseases worldwide. In comparison with Caucasian populations, in Mexico a significantly higher prevalence of acute lymphoblastic, acute promyelocytic, and acute megakaryoblastic leukemias has been described. The rate of chronic myeloid leukemia seems to be as high as that reported in Caucasian populations, while other myeloproliferative neoplasias are significantly less frequent in Mexico. Significantly lower prevalences of hairy cell leukemia, chronic lymphocytic leukemia, multiple myeloma, and Waldenström’s macroglobulinemia have been reported from Mexico. Regrettably, the influence of drug companies interested in selling their new and expensive drugs has resulted in both overdiagnosis of some diseases and overidentification of the refractory forms of some of these conditions to justify the use of unnecessary drugs.
The Writeprints of Man: a Stylometric Study of Lafayette's Hand in Paine's 'Rights of Man'

Thomas Paine's Rights of Man (Part I, 1791; Part II, 1792) is one of the most influential political tracts ever written. Recently, Clark (2015) has queried the long-established notion that Part I is the work of a single author, Paine himself. Clark argues that a passage of approximately 6000 words just prior to the “Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizens”, near midway through the book, was written by Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, and inserted by Paine into his book, perhaps with some editing. Clark's assertion rests mainly on judgement of the tone and content of the queried passage, as well as a hint in a letter by Lafayette to George Washington. This paper presents the results of a stylometric study of this question. Three computational approaches to stylistic analysis — one involving a consensus of six attribution techniques — were applied to the text of the Rights of Man, Part I, along with a corpus of comparison texts from the same period. Our findings tend to corroborate Clark's contention, as well as identifying two other short passages in which Lafayette may have had a hand, thus rendering this important document ripe for re-interpretation.
Regulatory Informatics Reveals Minimal Residual Disease Trends in Hematologic Malignancies

Background The application of regulatory informatics to identify trends in clinical trials is a new methodology with the potential to shape drug development programs. As an endpoint in hematologic malignancies, minimal residual disease (MRD) measures the depth of response to treatment, and has been given initial attention in draft regulatory guidelines and workshops by health authorities in the EU and US. Methods In this paper, we analyze hematologic malignancy trials by searching for terms in Trialtrove, parsing the data sets with ActivePerl, and determining significance with the statistical package R. Results We identify trends in the use of MRD compared to other endpoints and in different indications over time from 2005 to 2014. Results show that 2 trends of endpoint and MRD use emerge over time and the use of MRD as a primary endpoint is growing. We also take a case-study approach to investigate the functional context of MRD in chronic lymphocytic leukemia and show that it is predominantly used to determine MRD-negativity and also in correlation with other endpoints. Conclusion The application of informatics tools to regulatory science can evaluate the role and context of MRD as it evolves in the changing pharmaceutical landscape.
Low wear rate at 6-year follow-up of vitamin E-infused cross-linked polyethylene: a randomised trial using 32- and 36-mm heads

Background: Free radicals formed in the cross-linking process may over time alter the mechanical properties of highly cross-linked polyethylene. Vitamin E-infused highly cross-linked polyethylene was therefore developed to achieve low wear-rate and good mechanical properties in the long term. Aim: To present 6-year results from the initial randomised controlled trial. Patients and methods: We measured wear and periacetabular bone remodelling in cementless total hip arthroplasty; 32- or 36-mm Biolox Delta heads and vitamin E-infused highly cross-linked polyethylene (E-Poly) were used. Markerless radiosterometric analysis measured the in vivo wear and dual energy x-ray absorptiometry was used to analyse bone remodelling in 40 hips at 6-year follow-up. Results: In the proximal direction the wear for 32- and 36-mm heads was 0.15 mm (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.08–0.21) and 0.06 mm (95% CI, -0.002–0.12), respectively (p = 0. 015). However, between 3 months and 6 years (excluding the period of “bedding in”), the proximal wear for 32- and 36-mm heads was 0.10 mm (95% CI, 0.05–0.15) and 0.05 mm (95% CI, -0.01–0.11), respectively (p = 0.12). The annual proximal wear rate for 32- and 36-mm heads from 3 months to 6 years was 0.02 mm and 0.01 mm, respectively. There was no difference in bone remodelling around the cup from baseline to 6 years for the total material and no differences between study groups. Conclusion: Wear of this vitamin E-infused highly cross-linked polyethylene is still low at 6-year follow-up, with no significant difference in wear from 3 months to 6 years between 32- and 36-mm heads.
Electric vehicle handling routing and battery swap station location optimisation for automotive assembly lines

ABSTRACT As electric vehicles (EVs) have been more and more widely used recently, in this paper, an electric vehicle handling routing and battery swap station location problem (EV–HR–BSSL) is presented to extend their range of application, which aims to determine the handling routing plan of a fleet of EVs and the location decisions of battery swap stations (BSSs) simultaneously under limited battery driving range. A mathematical problem is developed to illustrate the identified problem, where a fleet of identical EVs are assumed to fulfil the demand of stations for automotive assembly lines based on in-plant milk run handling strategy. Subsequently, several definitions and properties are proposed to solve this model more efficiently. A two-phase dynamic programming method is adopted to obtain the global optimum for small scale problems. For medium and large scale problems, an improved discrete cuckoo search algorithm is developed. The performances are evaluated in simulation and the results indicate that the proposed algorithm is valid and feasible.
Context-based Time Score: An Effective Similarity Function for Link Prediction in Social Networks

Online social networks (OSNs) have become an extremely relevant way for modeling social interactions among people in a group or community. A comprehensive set of studies has analyzed how to predict which new interactions will occur between the participants from OSNs. The problem of predicting new interactions is formally stated as link prediction. Most studies related to link prediction is based on similarity functions that use data from different types such as topological (data about the network structure), temporal (chronological interaction data) or contextual (participant and link attributes), usually available on OSNs. However, none of those studies uses the different types of data simultaneously, leading to poor incorporation of the different aspects of the OSNs in link prediction. To address this issue, the present paper introduces a new similarity function called Context-based Time Score (CTS), which combines topological, temporal and contextual data to improve accuracy in predicting the occurrence of new connections. Experiments with ten different datasets revealed that CTS can outperform similarity functions that do not take the three types of data simultaneously.
Filtering Graduate Courses based on LinkedIn Profiles

People are overloaded with the everyday massive amount of information they consume. There are several options available for choice, from TV shows, books, traffic routes to graduate courses. In this scenario of multiple choices, the manual search and evaluation of all possibilities to make decisions is unfeasible. In the academic context, the HEIs (Higher Education Institutions) offer several graduate courses and, with so many options, students need mechanisms to choose relevant courses to their interest in order to reduce the dropout and financial loss risks. In this article, we propose a recommendation approach that filters graduate courses for students using their LinkedIn professional profiles. Experiments show that features based on competences and activity area are more effective than professional summary and experiences to recommend graduate courses within a content-based approach. In addition, our proposed approach performs recommendations with precision of up to 68.50% in the top-1 recommendation lists, achieving 100% coverage.
Carotid Body Type-I Cells Under Chronic Sustained Hypoxia: Focus on Metabolism and Membrane Excitability

Chronic sustained hypoxia (CSH) evokes ventilatory acclimatization characterized by a progressive hyperventilation due to a potentiation of the carotid body (CB) chemosensory response to hypoxia. The transduction of the hypoxic stimulus in the CB begins with the inhibition of K+ currents in the chemosensory (type-I) cells, which in turn leads to membrane depolarization, Ca2+ entry and the subsequent release of one- or more-excitatory neurotransmitters. Several studies have shown that CSH modifies both the level of transmitters and chemoreceptor cell metabolism within the CB. Most of these studies have been focused on the role played by such putative transmitters and modulators of CB chemoreception, but less is known about the effect of CSH on metabolism and membrane excitability of type-I cells. In this mini-review, we will examine the effects of CSH on the ion channels activity and excitability of type-I cell, with a particular focus on the effects of CSH on the TASK-like background K+ channel. We propose that changes on TASK-like channel activity induced by CSH may contribute to explain the potentiation of CB chemosensory activity.
Everyday life and mastocytosis from a patient perspective-a qualitative study.

AIM To investigate and gain knowledge about patients' perspectives on everyday life with mastocytosis and how they experience, understand and manage symptoms and challenges. BACKGROUND Indolent systemic mastocytosis (ISM) is a disease characterised by the accumulation and activation of mast cells. Symptoms are diverse and range from mild to severely debilitating or even fatal. It is considered rare but is underdiagnosed due to lack of awareness. Quantitative studies have shown that ISM can negatively impact quality of life. No qualitative studies have described everyday life with the disease. DESIGN A qualitative interview study taking a phenomenological approach. METHODS Seven qualitative, semi-structured interviews with adult patients with ISM. The analysis was inspired by Giorgi's phenomenological method. COREQ reporting guidelines were used. RESULTS Three themes and five subthemes emerged from the analysis. (a) The everyday life with a rare disease, unknown to most people. Being perceived as a hypochondriac in the encounter with the health system. The diagnosis makes a difference. Expert knowledge is important. (b) Living with and handling the invisible and visible symptoms. The visible body. (c) Fearing an attack. Feeling safe and vulnerable at the same time. CONCLUSION Patients with ISM are severely affected in their everyday lives, especially in terms of their relationship with family and social network. Symptoms restrict and complicate activities and participation in social contexts, and the fear of an anaphylactic attack is always present. The disease affects patients' self-perception and sexuality. The rarity of the disease and general low awareness seems to be of great importance in the encounter with the healthcare system, both before and after diagnosis, and there is a need for expert knowledge, support and care. RELEVANCE FOR CLINICAL PRACTICE The focus of counselling should not only be on the disease itself, but also on living life with the disease.
Pirfenidone in patients with unclassifiable progressive fibrosing interstitial lung disease: design of a double-blind, randomised, placebo-controlled phase II trial

Introduction Despite extensive multidisciplinary team (MDT) assessment, some patients have interstitial lung disease (ILD) that is considered unclassifiable (uILD), for which there are currently no approved treatments. This study will assess the efficacy and safety of the antifibrotic pirfenidone in treating uILD. Methods and analysis This double-blind, randomised, placebo-controlled phase II trial is enrolling adults with fibrosing ILD, including uILD that fulfils proposed research criteria for interstitial pneumonia with autoimmune features (IPAF), that cannot be classified with moderate or high confidence to any category of ILD following MDT discussion. Study participants must have >10% fibrosis on high-resolution CT scan within the previous 12 months, forced vital capacity (FVC) ≥45% and diffusing capacity of the lung for carbon monoxide ≥30% of predicted values. Study participants will be randomised to receive 801 mg pirfenidone or placebo three times daily for 24 weeks. The efficacy of pirfenidone vs placebo will be assessed by daily measurement of FVC using a handheld spirometer over the treatment period. Other functional parameters, patient-reported outcomes, samples for biomarker analysis and safety endpoints will be collected. Additionally, the study will assess the efficacy and safety of pirfenidone with and without concomitant mycophenolate mofetil treatment and in study participants with or without IPAF. Ethics and dissemination This trial is being conducted in accordance with the International Conference on Harmonisation E6 guideline for Good Clinical Practice, Declaration of Helsinki and local laws for countries in which the research is conducted. Trial registration number NCT03099187.
Albumentations: fast and flexible image augmentations

Data augmentation is a commonly used technique for increasing both the size and the diversity of labeled training sets by leveraging input transformations that preserve corresponding output labels. In computer vision, image augmentations have become a common implicit regularization technique to combat overfitting in deep learning models and are ubiquitously used to improve performance. While most deep learning frameworks implement basic image transformations, the list is typically limited to some variations of flipping, rotating, scaling, and cropping. Moreover, image processing speed varies in existing image augmentation libraries. We present Albumentations, a fast and flexible open source library for image augmentation with many various image transform operations available that is also an easy-to-use wrapper around other augmentation libraries. We discuss the design principles that drove the implementation of Albumentations and give an overview of the key features and distinct capabilities. Finally, we provide examples of image augmentations for different computer vision tasks and demonstrate that Albumentations is faster than other commonly used image augmentation tools on most image transform operations.
Brincando e Socializando: Uma Revisão Sistemática Sobre Empatia, Habilidades Sociais e Design Emocional

The area of emotional design initially focused on how design could stimulate situational emotional experiences, such as the fascination with a new product or the desire to attend a sales outlet. It is possible to highlight new research in the field of emotional design that focus on affective experience in a more embracing and lasting view. Among them is the Design for Human Development, field of studies that has as one of the main purposes the understanding of how design can stimulate healthy development at different points in the life cycle. One of the crucial points in this cycle is childhood, in which important social skills are developed. Design research in the field of human development commonly focuses on toy and games projects to contribute to the stimulation of social skills in children, since it is understood that the toys available in the market lack this kind of design purpose. Among these skills, this paper emphasizes empathy, understood as an essential ability for healthy social and emotional development and defined as an affective expression that highlights the needs of others. The aim of this systematic review is to map the current production in research that deals with the theme of empathy and other social skills stimulated through toys and games, healthy children's contexts, free of pathologies. For this, five searches were conducted in the CAPES Journal Portal, by peer-reviewed articles published in English in between 2012 and 2017. The final search resulted in 125 articles and, after a more detailed selection of content, only 33 of them were considered relevant for the analysis. It is possible to synthesize, from this research, some key points that were found and divided into four categories: a) The contact with others as a source of skills training, b) Games and the use of technology as tools, c) Social skills observed in the school environment and d) Interventions based on the theoretical foundations of the study area. It is evident, after the searches, the absence of research that uses design emotion theories to study the proposed theme and the shortage of articles that specifically focus on empathic social skills. Finally, a research agenda is developed to help researchers explore the field of Design for Human Development and designers to project toys to stimulate social skills.
Data and Expert Models for Sleep Timing and Chronotype Estimation from Smartphone Context Data and Simulations

We present a sleep timing estimation approach that combines data-driven estimators with an expert model and uses smartphone context data. Our data-driven methodology comprises a classifier trained on features from smartphone sensors. Another classifier uses time as input. Expert knowledge is incorporated via the human circadian and homeostatic two process model. We investigate the two process model as output filter on classifier results and as fusion method to combine sensor and time classifiers. We analyse sleep timing estimation performance, in data from a two-week free-living study of 13 participants and sensor data simulations of arbitrary sleep schedules, amounting to 98280 nights. Five intuitive sleep parameters were derived to control the simulation. Moreover, we investigate model personalisation, by retraining classifiers based on participant feedback. The joint data and expert model yields an average relative estimation error of -2±62 min for sleep onset and -5±70 min for wake (absolute errors 40±48 min and 42±57 min, mean median absolute deviation 22 min and 15 min), which significantly outperforms data-driven methods. Moreover, the data and expert models combination remains robust under varying sleep schedules. Personalising data models with user feedback from the last two days showed the largest performance gain of 57% for sleep onset and 59% for wake up. Our power-efficient smartphone app makes convenient everyday sleep monitoring finally realistic.
Cargo regulates clathrin-coated pit invagination via clathrin light chain phosphorylation

Clathrin light chains (CLCs) control selective uptake of a range of G protein–coupled receptors (GPCRs), although the mechanism by which this occurs has remained elusive thus far. In particular, site-specific phosphorylation of CLCb controls the uptake of the purinergic GPCR P2Y12, but it is dispensable for the constitutive uptake of the transferrin receptor (TfR). We demonstrate that phosphorylation of CLCb is required for the maturation of clathrin-coated pits (CCPs) through the transition of flat lattices into invaginated buds. This transition is dependent on efficient clathrin exchange regulated by CLCb phosphorylation and mediated through auxilin. Strikingly, this rearrangement is required for the uptake of P2Y12 but not TfR. These findings link auxilin-mediated clathrin exchange to early stages of CCP invagination in a cargo-specific manner. This supports a model in which CCPs invaginate with variable modes of curvature depending on the cargo they incorporate.
Process Innovation Improves Trial Operation Efficiency

Background Despite the fact that unaddressed delays in clinical trial operation could severely compromise the overall effort invested, there seems to be a lack of concerted effort in reforming such delays. This study evaluated the composite effect of initiatives in reforming trial operation efficiency. Methods A high-volume academic medical center in Korea has implemented various initiatives to improve the trial operation efficiency by expediting times from institutional review board (IRB) submission to approval, from IRB submission to trial open for subject enrollment, and from trial open to first patient-in. The initiatives include implementation of the protocol preliminary review, parallel processing of the clinical trial agreement review in line with the protocol submission to the IRB, and involvement of project manager for operational risk management. Times from IRB submission to approval, from IRB submission to trial open, and from trial open to first patient-in before and after implementation of initiatives were compared. Results The median time required in IRB approval was meaningfully shorter in the postinitiative group (19 vs 14 days; P <.001). The median times from IRB submission to trial open for subject enrollment and from trial open to first patient-in were reduced significantly in the postinitiative group (trial open: 25 vs 18 days, P <.001; first patient-in: 111.5 vs 100 days, P =.014). Conclusions The initiatives were effective in reforming trial operational efficiency. Additional studies to address the cause of operational delay and modifiable factors influencing subject enrollment are needed to further improve operational efficiency.