Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Natural History of MEN 1 GEP-NET : Single-Center Experience After a Long Follow-Up

Background The multiple endocrine neoplasia type 1 syndrome (MEN1) natural history is poorly evaluated, and few single-institution experiences about hereditary gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (GEP-NET) are reported. Our purpose is to analyze the role of GEP-NET in MEN1-related death, as well as the behavior of these lesions during follow-up. Methods The study population consists of 77 patients diagnosed with MEN1 GEP-NET, regularly followed up since 1990. Extensive clinical data were prospectively recorded. Statistical analysis was performed both on the whole population of 77 patients and on two subgroups including patients who, during the long lasting study period, underwent GEP-NET surgery (50 pts) and who did not (27 pts), respectively. Results Twenty-five males (32.5%) and 52 females (67.5%) were enrolled. Sixty-four patients had MEN1 family history (83.1%), and genetic mutation was detected in 67 cases (87%). The mean age at GEP-NET diagnosis was 41.4 years (SD = 13.6); 16 patients (20.8%) had GEP-NET diagnosed before age 30 and 12 cases (15.6%) before 1996. The mean interval time between MEN1 diagnosis and GEP-NET detection was 5.7 years (range -11/37; SD = 8.1 years). Overall, the mean follow-up time from MEN1 diagnosis was 15.8 years (SD = 9.7 years) and from GEP-NET diagnosis was 9.6 years (SD = 6.9 years). Gastrinoma was the most frequent functioning GEP-NET and pancreatoduodenectomy the most adopted surgery. GEP-NET progression affected 12 patients within the nonsurgical group, while 18 subjects developed progression after surgery. Conclusions Our single-center data provide information on epidemiologic, clinical and pathological features of GEPNET in MEN1 making possible to clarify their natural history.
Using Mini-Tn 10 Transposon System to Research the Genes Involved in Biofilm Formation in Bacillus

Biofilm has great influence for bacteria to resist the harm from outer environment. Its forming and development are controlled by many different genes. In this research, an insertional mutagenesis library of a wide type Bacillus amyloliquefaciens NK10.BAhjaWT was built via mini-Tn10 transposon system to find out genes involved in biofilm formation. Four such genes have been screened, in which, citB, citG, gpsA are all related to the energy metabolism. The function of another gene of yvfB is unknown. In a word, mini-Tn10 transposon system was proved to be efficient and stable in Bacillus.
Modeling volatility persistence and asymmetry with exogenous breaks in the Nigerian stock returns

David A. Kuhe This study examines the volatility persistence and asymmetry with exogenous breaks in Nigerian stock market. The study utilizes daily closing quotations of stock prices from the Nigerian stock exchange for the period 3rd July, 1999 to 12th June, 2017. Standard symmetric GARCH (1,1), asymmetric EGARCH (1,1) and GJR-GARCH (1,1) models with and without structural breaks were employed to measure shocks persistence and leverage effects in the presence of varying distributional assumptions. The empirical findings showed high persistence of shocks in the return series for the estimated models. However, the study found significant reduction in shocks persistence when structural breaks were incorporated in the estimated models. Empirical evidence for the existence of asymmetry without leverage effect was found in Nigerian stock market. The EGARCH (1,1) model with student-t innovation density was found to fit the data better than other competing models. The study recommends the incorporation of structural breaks while estimating volatility in the Nigerian stock market. This will help to avoid over-estimation of volatility shocks and restore investor’s confidence in the stock market.
How Expensive is the Wine? Toward Interface Defaults for Vague Modiﬁers in Natural Language Interfaces for Visual Analysis

Natural language interfaces for data visualizations tools are growing in importance, but little research has been done on how a sys-tem should respond to questions that contain vague modiﬁers like “high” and “expensive. ” This paper makes a ﬁrst step toward design guidelines for this problem, based on existing research from cognitive linguistics and the results of a new empirical study with 274 crowd worker participants. A comparison of four bar chart-based views ﬁnds that highlighting the top items according to distribution-sensitive values is preferred most cases and is a good starting point as a design guideline.
SyDD : Synthetic Depth Data Randomization for Object Detection using Domain-Relevant Background

In industry CAD-models are readily available while it is expensive to obtain 3D scans of actual objects. Consequently, training object detectors exclusively from CAD-models leads to a considerable decrease of the data creation effort. While this works well for recognition, detection requires better models to distinguish the object of interest from the background and to take the expected sensor properties into account. To tackle this problem we synthetically create depth data with domain-relevant background and apply randomized augmentation to create a superset of the variations of real-world depth images. Results with a state-of-the-art object detector, trained using our synthetic data, show that our approach yields better results than learning from real-world, hand-annotated data with the LineMOD
Privatization Through Asset Sales

The objective of this study was to determine whether privatization policies lead to fair welfare contribution to the economy and society as a whole by using the bidder’s announcement return period as a proxy. In addition, privatization is the activity where state agencies sell their assets to the private sector which regards these assets as nationally-owned assets belonging to individuals of the society, thus selling at the fair price shall lead to the highest benefit for the society. The sample is based on the total number of 1,832 state-owned enterprise acquisitions by public firms. The mean difference test suggests statistical significance in the abnormal returns to bidders during the announcement periods which are 1.06%, 1.03% and 2.01%, for the full sample, deal value disclosure, and deal value not disclosed for a 5-day window, respectively. Furthermore, decomposing the samples into different countries, industries, type of M&A settings, also allow for different outcomes. The country settings result in higher abnormal returns for higher corruption level and communist countries which are statistically significant. The industry setting shows a statistically significant higher return for bidders in the regulated industries. The test of foreign versus local acquirer results in higher bidder returns.The case of local acquirer and diversified transactions also yield statistically significant higher abnormal returns. With the significant statistics results, the study has suggested that privatization activities through M&A creates abnormal returns to acquirers on average which means that the price the acquirer pays may be lower than the fair value for the target company value due to private benefit or motives of the parties involved in M&A activity. Therefore, the separation of samples into sub-sample groups was adopted to reflect on the private benefit motives. The study has shown that the privatization of nationally-owned assets tends not to maximize the welfare of the society as a whole.
THE IXe RECORD : EARLY ONSET OF AQUEOUS ALTERATION IN MAGNETITES SEPARATED FROM CM AND CV CARBONACEOUS CHONDRITES

Introduction: Magnetite is one of the first alteration products formed in carbonaceous chondrites during aqueous alteration. Thus it could provide a timeline for the metamorphic changes on various carbonaceous chondrite parent bodies. In preparation for the broader study of magnetites, we first analyzed by the IXe method two sets of Orgueil magnetite samples neutron irradiated at different times. Highly magnetic fractions were separated with hand magnet from crushed Orgueil, and later we analyzed another set of samples which consisted of highly magnetic fractions and 2 samples of pure magnetites from Orgueil, one chemically separated prior to the irradiation and another after, both separated following the procedure developed by Lewis and Anders [1]. All samples yielded welldefined isochrons and consistent I-Xe ages, with both of the pure magnetites indicating I-Xe closure in CI Orgueil 2.1 ± 0.2 Ma after formation of CAIs [2, 3, 4] contrary to the early report of Lewis and Anders [1]. However, the major thrust of this study is comparison of formation times of magnetites from different objects. To study onset of the alteration and its chronology, we collected and prepared 25 magnetite-rich samples from carbonaceous chondrites of different types and metamorphic grades (Table). 6 samples of Orgueil magnetic separates included 5 provided by R. Lewis and prepared in an attempt to study magnetite grains of different morphologies. It was shown that they can potentially preserve individual I-Xe age records, reflecting complex alteration in Orgueil [5]. In CO3 chondrites the I-Xe ages of magnetites seem to reflect their petrologic type [6, 7]. And ungrouped C2 and C3 carbonaceous chondrites both indicated two distinct closure ages for the I-Xe system [8]. Results: Here we present new I-Xe data for 5 magnetite rich samples from CM Murchison and CV3 Bali, Kaba, Mokoia, Vigarano. Murchison separate was provided by R. Lewis. All meteorites was treated following same separation procedure [1], finely ground and stirred with a saturated LiCl solution for 8 days at 60 °C to remove possible silicate-magnetite intergrowth. After further separation in NaOH and washing [9] samples were dried and weighted, small amounts of resulting samples were saved for the later study of the magnetites morphologies. Grosnaja CV3 was part of the study, but did not yield any magnetic material. All CV samples had masses less than 1 gram before the chemical separation, 0.629 g for Grosnaja. Thus, if magnetites were distributed heterogeneously in the matrices, it would be difficult to obtain representative magnetite abundances. The samples were sealed under vacuum in separate fused quartz ampoules and irradiated with thermal neutrons at the Missouri University Research Reactor along with reference standard and irradiation monitor Shallowater. All 25 magnetite separates which were part of this study were irradiated together in the package designated SLC-16 (Table).
Funding real options under adverse selection and moral hazard

We analyze optimal financing of an entrepreneur’s real option investment when investors do not observe the stochastic quality process driving the investment’s value. Optimal contracts encourage entrepreneurs to postpone investment by paying them for waiting. When there is adverse selection on initial quality, high quality entrepreneurs invest inefficiently early to signal their type. In the presence of moral hazard, paying before investment reduces entrepreneur incentives to work, and in response, also in this case the optimal contract induces early investment.
Frequency of HIV in Obstructive Lung Disease Patients

AbstractBackground: Obstructive lung disease (OLD) is one of the main causes of mortality and morbidity worldwide. Obstructive lung disease is the narrowing of bronchioles mainly due to excessive smooth muscle contraction. The objective of this study is to evaluate the Frequency of HIV in obstructive lung disease patients.Methodology: Samples were collected randomly, and study was completed in almost six months. 100 samples were taken with an informed consent taken from all the patients. EDTA and Clotted blood was collected for HIV ELISA and HIV screening.Results: In this study, 69% Males and 31%Females, 34% Smokers, 26% patients were Hypertensive, 10% patients were diabetic, 3% patients were diagnosed HIV positive by screening and ELISA.Conclusion: The frequency of HIV in obstructive lung disease patients in this research is not very high as compared to the previous researches, showing high frequency and relationship between HIV and obstructive lung disease patients. The reason behind low frequency is due to low sample size so by increasing the sample size we can get better understanding of frequency of HIV in obstructive lung disease patients. Another reason of insignificant results is low prevalence of HIV in Pakistan as compared to the previous researches in certain countries.
An Evaluation of Associate Degree Distance Education Programs in Terms of Student Occupancy Rates

This paper will discuss the student occupancy rates between 2007 and 2016 of two-year associate degree distance education programs in Turkey on the basis of both the program and the university and to identify the potential variances. As a result of descriptive analyses, it has been determined that Tour Guiding, Mapping and Cadastral Survey, and Mechatronic programs and Kafkas, Nevsehir Haci Bektas Veli and Celal Bayar Universities have the highest occupancy rates. It has been observed during the statistical analyses that the occupancy rates have not varied based on the period during which the program has been open and the university count. Therefore, the hypothesis that the programs opened by many universities or has accepted students for many years have the highest occupancy rate has not been supported. The university-based analyses have demonstrated that the occupancy rates of universities have varied with regard to the total number of years that distance education programs have been opened. Correspondingly, the universities which have opened the programs in more years than others, those having much experience, in other words, have higher occupancy rates.
Regulating Financial Networks Under Uncertainty

I study the problem of regulating a network of interdependent financial institutions that is prone to contagion when there is uncertainty regarding its precise structure. I show that such uncertainty reduces the scope for welfare-improving interventions. While improving network transparency potentially reduces this uncertainty, it does not always lead to welfare improvements. Under certain conditions, regulation that reduces the risk-taking incentives of a small set of institutions can improve welfare. The size and composition of such a set crucially depend on the interplay between (i) the (expected) susceptibility of the network to contagion, (ii) the cost of improving network transparency, (iii) the cost of regulating institutions, and (iv) investors' preferences.
A NEW PROOF OF BOURGAIN’S THEOREM ON SIMPLICES IN R

We present a new direct proof, in fact two, of Bourgain’s theorem on simplices in Rd in which he established that any subset of Rd of positive upper Banach density necessarily contains an isometric copy of all sufficiently large dilates of any fixed non-degenerate k-dimensional simplex provided d ≥ k + 1.
Observations on development and incidence of black rot disease with causal agent Phyllosticta ampelicida ( asexual phase from Guignardia bidwellii ) in organic and conventional agriculture in the conditions of the years 2015 and 2016

РЕЗЮМЕ SUMMARY В Изпитателната база на Институт по лозарство и винарство Плевен са проведени двегодишни наблюдения върху развитието и разпространението на заболяването черно гниене. Сравнени са две идентични насаждения, с едни и същи сортове лози, които са непосредствено едно до друго. При едното насаждение са използвани продукти за конвенционално земеделие, а при другото – продукти за биологично земеделие. През 2015 година в насаждението с биологично направление се открояват три сорта, които показват висока чувствителност към заболяването. Това са: Врачански мискет с индекс на нападение (27,5 %), Мискет отонел с (7,16 %) и Дружба (11,5 %). А тези с най-висока устойчивост са Каберне совиньон с (2,5 %) и Мискет Two-year observations were held on the development and incidence of black rot disease in the Experimental base of IVE Pleven.
Combining Deep Learning and Variational Level Sets for Segmentation of Buildings

—The larger context behind this work is the automated visual assessment of building characteristics (e.g. building age and condition) for the estimation of real estate prices from outdoor pictures. A basic requirement to this end is the automated segmentation of buildings from photos, which is the focus of this work. We propose a combined deep-learned and variational segmentation method for the extraction of the building area from real estate images and our experimental results with dice similarity of approx. 92% demonstrate its capabilities on a novel dataset for building segmentation.
Social Media As A Political Platform In Nigeria : A Focus On Electorates In South-Eastern Nigeria

The place of social media to rally political support is no longer in doubt. To advance the conversation and mobilize political supports, social media has become a critical political tool for campaign planners. The 2011 general elections in Nigeria arguably marked a significant milestone in the use of social media for political communication in the country. Motivated by President Barrack Obama’s successful use of Facebook to win the United States elections in 2008 as the first black American president, Nigerian politicians are indeed, gradually taking their campaigns to the social networking sites and other online platforms. Within the election period, political aspirants were disposing of all means to gear up their support base, following the realization that electioneering requires more than just handshakes and physical persuasion. This study is anchored on the theoretical frameworks of technological determinism and social judgment theory which suggest that exposure to Political campaigns encourages people to “assimilate” or equate their feelings about related target attitudes. Using electorates in the South-East of Nigeria, the paper explores the extent of youth involvement with the social media for electioneering process. The data generated were analyzed using frequency distribution and simple percentage. The findings indicate that the political campaigns through the new media had significant effect on the electorate’s decision-making and participation in Nigerian elections. The study therefore recommends the embracing of social media for successive political campaigns that grants the electorate the interactive opportunity with the political candidates.
Non-invasive electromagnetic micro-stirring device

The process of mixing reagents on a microscopic sca le is of significant interest and of use in everyday biological laboratory work and research. I t is of particular importance in the areas of bio-medical applications for drug delivery, DNA hybridisation and PCR amplification that rapid homogeneous mixing is achieved [1]. Thus it i s of little surprise that there is a vast amount of devices and techniques produced to perfor m micro-mixing of biologically relevant materials. Despite this being a seemingly simple ta sk it has only been in recent years where most developments have been made with a significant emphasis on electromagnetic devices [2]. Most research now focuses on the development o f lab-on-a-chip based technologies with the mixing of fluids in micro-channels due to effic iency and reduced reagent waste. However, very few developments have been made with devices t hat deal with individual particle movement on the cellular level.
Frequency of Hepatotoxicity in Pulmonary Tuberculosis Patients taking Anti-Tuberculosis Therapy

Background: Tuberculosis is a global pandemic which affects millions of people every year. The treatment of tuberculosis consists of simultaneous use of several drugs for a prolonged period of time, therefore anti-tuberculosis treatment induced toxicity is a real problem. It is the most common side effect leading to interruption of therapy. Wide variations have been found in the reported incidence of hepatotoxicity during short-course chemotherapy. This study was conducted to determine the frequency of ATT induced hepatotoxicity in pulmonary TB patients. Methodology: This descriptive, cross-sectional study was conducted at Gulab Devi Chest Hospital Lahore from November 2015 to January 2016. Total 137 pulmonary TB patients were included in this study according to inclusion and exclusion criteria. Data of patients was collected by Questionnaire. Blood samples were taken and LFTs were done. Data was analyzed by using SPSS version 16. Results: Data of 137 patients was taken in the study. Out of which 60 (43.8%) were male and 77 (56.2%) were female. The mean age was 40.59±16.57. 45 (32.8%) patients out of 137, develop hepatotoxicity while 92 (67.2%) shows normal patterns of liver function. 22 (16.1%) patients out of 137 showed elevation of serum bilirubin levels. Conclusion: ATT induced hepatotoxicity is a frequent complication in Pulmonary Tuberculosis patients. So, all patients put on ATT must be followed up for at least the initial month. The patients and the treating physicians must be well-educated about the adverse effects of the ATT, its early recognition and management.
Integration of the Static Analysis Results Interchange Format ( SARIF ) in CogniCrypt

Background Software companies increasingly rely on static analysis tools to detect potential bugs and security vulnerabilities in their software products. In the past decade, more and more commercial and open-source static analysis tools have been developed and are maintained. Each tool comes with its own reporting format, preventing an easy integration of multiple analysis tools in a single interface, such as the Static Analysis Server Protocol (Sasp). In 2017, a collaborative effort in industry, including Microsoft and GrammaTech, has proposed the Static Analysis Results Interchange Format (Sarif) to address this issue. Sarif is a standardized format in which static analysis warnings can be encoded, to allow the import and export of analysis reports between different tools. Purpose This paper explains the Sarif format through examples and presents a proof of concept of the connector that allows the static analysis tool CogniCrypt to generate and export its results in Sarif format. Design/Approach We conduct a cross-sectional study between the SARIF format and CogniCrypt’s output format before detailing the implementation of the connector. The study aims to find the components of interest in CogniCrypt that the Sarif export module can complete. Originality/Value The integration of Sarif into CogniCrypt described in this paper can be reused to integrate Sarif into other static analysis tools. Conclusion After detailing the Sarif format, we present an initial implementation to integrate Sarif into CogniCrypt. After taking advantage of all the features provided by Sarif, CogniCrypt will be able to support Sasp. CCS CONCEPTS • Security and privacy→ Software security engineering; Cryptography; • Software and its engineering→ Source code generation; Parsers; Software maintenance tools.
Late Bacterial Endocarditis after Amplatzer Atrial Septal Occluder Without Residual Shunt in a Pediatric Patient

In the pediatric population, the risk of developing an infectious endocarditis following the percutaneous closure of an atrial septal defect (ASD) is extremely rare. We report the case of a 10-year-old child who developed an infectious endocarditis nineteen months after closure with an Amplatzer septal occluder without residual shunt. The patient was treated with triple antibiotic regimen successfully, avoiding device removal. Trans-esophageal color Doppler suggested lack of endothelialization of the device, the most commonly described finding on extracted devices following an infective endocarditis. Proper assessment of the endothelialization process of septal occlusion devices is needed for individualized endocarditis prophylaxis.