Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Thyroid Dysfunctions in HIV Positive Patients

Original Research Article Thyroid function abnormalities are associated with a number of systemic conditions, including patients infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Opportunistic infections involving the thyroid gland, neoplasms such as lymphoma and Kaposi's sarcoma, and medications can alter the thyroid function in individuals with advanced HIV infection. If thyroid dysfunction is diagnosed in an HIV-infected patient, it should be treated in the usual manner. However, high index of suspicion and caution in the interpretation of thyroid function tests in patients with HIV disease are needed for optimal diagnosis and treatment. A cross-sectional study was conducted in OPD of Tertiary care centre. Serum thyroid hormone concentrations (FT4, FT3, and TSH) were measured. A total of 176 HIV-infected outpatients were included. 111 (63.7%) patients were men. Mean duration of HIV infection was 70 months and 35 patients had previous opportunistic infections (OI). Mean baseline CD4 cell count was 339 cells/cmm. Of the total study population, 146 patients received antiretroviral therapy (ART). Abnormal thyroid function test was detected in 31 patients (17.61%), including 17 (54.8%) patients with subclinical hypothyroidism, 2 (6.4%) with overt hypothyroidism,5 (16.1%) patients with low T4, and 7 (22.6%) patients with sick euthyroid syndrome. TSH values and CD4 count of the first visit had significant negative correlation in patients on HAART. 141 patients did not have pre existing opportunistic infections, out of them 122(86.5%) had normal thyroid parameters. Out of 88 patients on TLE, 6 (6.8%) had subclinical hypothyroidism. Out of 31 patients on ZLN, 6 (19.3%) had subclinical hypothyroidism. Baseline CD4 was significantly lower in patients with subclinical hypothyroidism. Duration of infection is significantly higher in patients with overt hypothyroidism. It is therefore suggested that screening and monitoring of thyroid functions in HIV-infected patients should be considered.
Power Allocation Evaluation for Downlink Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA)

Fifth-generation of wireless cellular systems has the potential to increase capacity, spectral efficiency, and fairness among users. The Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access based wireless networks (NOMA) is the next generation multiplexing technique. NOMA breaks the orthogonality of traditional multiple access to allow multiple users to share the same radio resource simultaneously. The main challenge in designing NOMA is the selection of the resource allocation algorithms since user pairing and power allocation are coupled. This paper compares the performance of three power allocation schemes: fixed power allocation, fractional transmit power allocation and full search power allocation. The algorithms are analyzed in different simulation scenarios using three performance metrics of the spectrum efficiency and energy efficiency and sum rate. Additionally, the impact of user pairing algorithms studied through two user pairing schemes: random user pairing and channel state sorting based user pairing. Results indicate the superiority of NOMA to increase the capacity compared to traditional orthogonal multiple access. On the other hand, full search power allocation is the best performance compared to the other power allocation schemes though it is highly complex compared to fractional transmit power that gives a suboptimal performance.
WEAKLY SEMI-SUPERVISED NEURAL TOPIC MODELS

We consider the problem of topic modeling in a weakly semi-supervised setting. In this scenario, we assume that the user knows a priori a subset of the topics she wants the model to learn and is able to provide a few exemplar documents for those topics. In addition, while each document may typically consist of multiple topics, we do not assume that the user will identify all its topics exhaustively. Recent state-of-the-art topic models such as NVDM, referred to herein as Neural Topic Models (NTMs), fall under the variational autoencoder framework. We extend NTMs to the weakly semi-supervised setting by using informative priors in the training objective. After analyzing the effect of informative priors, we propose a simple modification of the NVDM model using a logit-normal posterior that we show achieves better alignment to user-desired topics versus other NTM models.
Adversarial and Cooperative Correlated Domain Adaptation based Multimodal Emotion Recognition

In this paper, we propose a new model, Adversarial and Cooperative Correlated Domain Adaptation (ACCDA), to make multimodal emotion recognition. Adversarial and Cooperative Correlated Domain Adaptation (ACCDA) is an extension and unity, which unifies adversarial discriminative domain adaptation and cooperative generative domain adaptation with deep canonical correlation analysis to train highly correlated domains of multiple physiological data (EEG and eye movement signals), which make use of their complentarity and relevance. In experiments on two real world datasets, we find that our model can significantly contribute to higher emotion classification accuracy when higher correlation is acquired. Our experiment results indicate that the Adversarial and Cooperative Correlated Domain Adaptation model performs better than the state-of-theart methods with a mean accuracy of 88.64% for four emotion classification on SEED IV dataset. It also outperforms than the state-of-the-art results on DEAP dataset with a mean accuracy of 86.15% for two dichotomies.
Hematology and serum biochemistry of broilers at the initial and growth stages submitted to different levels of digestible sulfur amino acids

ABSTRACT: The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of digestible methionine and cystine (Met + Cys) levels on the hematological and serum biochemical parameters of broiler chickens during the initial and growth stages. For this, 1,800 male chicks of the Coob 500 strain were used, with 900 chicks in the initial phase (1 to 21 days old) and 900 chicks in the growth phase (22 to 42 days old), distributed in a completely randomized design of five treatments with six replicates of 30 birds. The treatments consisted of 0.545, 0.616, 0.711, 0.782, and 0.853%; and 0.514, 0.571, 0.647, 0.704, and 0.761% digestible Met + Cys for “1 to 21” and “22 to 42” days of breeding, respectively. Results showed that digestible Met + Cys levels in broiler feed altered some hematological parameters (erythrocyte, hematocrit hemoglobin, total leukocytes, heterophile: lymphocyte) and serum biochemistry (uric acid, PST, total LDL, and TG). The digestible Met + Cys levels in the diet of broilers affected the hematological parameters and serum biochemistry, especially at higher levels. From the inclusion level 0.761 of Met + Cist in the broiler diet, red blood cells, hemoglobin and hematocrit changes begin to appear.
3D Hand Gesture Representation and Recognition through Deep Joint Distance Measurements

Hand gestures with finger relationships are among the toughest features to extract for machine recognition. In this paper, this particular research challenge is addressed with 3D hand joint features extracted from distance measurements which are then colour mapped as spatio temporal features. Further patterns are learned using an 8-layer convolutional neural network (CNN) to estimate the hand gesture. The results showed a higher degree of recognition accuracy when compared to similar 3D hand gesture methods. The recognition accuracy for our dataset KL 3DHG with 220 classes was around 94.32%. Robustness of the proposed method was validated with only available benchmark 3D skeletal hand gesture dataset DGH 14/28.
Purchasing efficiency in a mining food service organisatin

Aankope sluit 'n reeks aktiwiteite in wat die keuse en verkryging van verlangde kommoditeite of dienste tot gevolg het. Die primere doel van hierdie navorsing was om die effektiwiteit en doeltreffendheid van die sentrale aankoopafdeling wat vir die voedselaankope van 35 mynvoedseldienseenhede verantwoordelik is te meet voor en nadat 'n prosedurehandleiding geimplementeer is. 'n Ander doelwit was om misverstande tussen aankopers en leweransiers op te los deur oedselspesifikasies en 'n gestandaardiseerde tenderdokument te ontwikkel en te implementeer. Die metodologie sluit eenheidsbesoeke, vraelyste en die toepassing van sekere kriteria vir die meet van aankoopdoeltreffendheid en –effektiwiteit in. Daar is 'n prysoorlog in die mynindustrie en dit is belangrik om koste te besnoei om mededingend te kan bly. Om hierdie rede is koste en prysverhogings as die hoofkriteria by die meting van effektiwiteit gebruik. Die resultate in hierdie studie dui daarop dat die sentrale aankoopafdeling baie effektief was aangesien prysverhogings laer as die inflasiekoers was. Hierdie laer prysverhogings kan ook aan die implementering van die voedselspesifikasies toegeskryf word. Die navorsing het ook bewys dat minder misverstande voorkom wanneer voedselspesifikasies en 'n gestandaardiseerde tenderdokument gebruik word. Dit dra by tot beter beheer en bestuur deur ‘n sentrale aankoopafdeling.
Theoretical studies of the dissociation of charged protein complexes in the gas phase

Understanding the dissociation mechanism of multimeric protein complex ions is important for interpreting gas-phase experiments. The aim of this thesis work was to study the dissociation of charged protein complexes. To pursue this, a number of model and molecular dynamics calculations were conducted using the cytochrome c′ dimer. The energetics of differing charge states, partitionings, and configurations were examined in both the low and high charge regimes. It is shown that one must always consider distributions of charge configurations, once protein relaxation effects are taken into account, and that no single configuration dominates. These results also indicate that in the high charge limit, the dissociation is governed by electrostatic repulsion from the net charges. This causes two main trends: i) charges will move so as to approximately maintain constant surface charge density, and ii) the lowest barrier to dissociation is the one that produces fragment ions with equal charges. Free energies are also calculated for the protonated dimer ion as a function of the center of mass distance between the monomers. In addition, the change of intermolecular properties such as intermolecular hydrogen bonds and the smallest separation of intermolecular residues were analyzed. It is found that monomer unfolding competes with complex dissociation, and that the relative importance of these two factors depends upon the charge partitioning in the complex. Symmetric charge partitionings preferentially suppress the dissociation barrier relative to unfolding, and complexes tend to dissociate promptly with little structural change occurring in the monomers. Alternatively, asymmetric charge partitionings preferentially lower the barrier for monomer unfolding relative to the dissociation barrier. In this case, the monomer with the higher charge unfolds before the complex dissociates. For large multimeric proteins, the unfolding and subsequent charging of a single monomer is a favorable process, cooperatively lowering both the unfolding and dissociation barriers at the same time. For the homodimer considered here, this pathway has a large free energy barrier. Overall, the work presented herein demonstrates that molecular dynamics simulation can be useful for understanding the dissociation mechanism of protein complexes.
Internet connectivity and domestic terrorism in democracies

Abstract Through case study analyses a small body of research has focused on the role the internet plays in radicalizing potential lone wolf terrorists. However, scholars have yet to examine how internet connectivity influences terrorism cross-nationally. Thus, this project attempts to address that limitation. This paper examines the effect internet connectivity has on domestic terrorism in 80 democracies from 1992–2012. Using standard controls and multiple connectivity indicators, we find that greater connectivity is associated with increased domestic terrorism. However, the effects of internet connectivity on domestic terrorism are conditioned by levels of state wealth and domestic turmoil within democracies.
Gingival Crevicular Blood Glucose Levels: Is it a Reliable Tool for Screening Diabetes in a Dental Office?

AIM Periodontal disease is associated with gingival bleeding. Thus, the present study was aimed towards evaluating, whether the blood oozing during routine periodontal examination can be used for evaluating blood glucose levels. MATERIALS AND METHODS A total of 100 patients reporting to Department of Oral Medicine and Radiology, within the age group of 25-55 years were enrolled. In fasting condition, gingival crevicular blood (GCB), finger-stick blood (FSB) was measured using a glucometer and venous blood (VB) glucose values were measured in the laboratory with glucose oxidase method. All the parameters thus recorded were then subjected to statistical analysis. RESULTS When compared, the GCB glucose values, VB glucose values and the FSB glucose values measured with glucometer in the diabetic and nondiabetic group were found to be highly statistically significant (p = 0.000). CONCLUSION Gingival crevicular blood collected during diagnostic periodontal examination can provide a valid and acceptable source for measuring blood glucose levels using a glucometer. In addition, the technique described is quick, safe, easy to perform and more acceptable to the patients. CLINICAL SIGNIFICANCE Dental surgeon can play an active role in screening of patients for glucose levels during routine periodontal examination and help to increase the frequency of diabetes screening in dental offices especially in undiagnosed diabetic cases which can be referred to the physician for appropriate management of the condition.
Yield and biomass quality of the whole plant of four maize hybrids for silage production

This paper presents the results of a study on the yields of green matter, dry matter and digestible dry matter of the whole plant of four ZP silage maize hybrids (gown in four different locations in the Republic of Serbia) and the quality of their whole-plant biomass. The results obtained indicate that the highest average yields of green matter (40.4 t·ha), dry matter (14.4 t·ha) and digestible dry matter of the whole plant (8.8 t·ha) were recorded in the ZP 707 hybrid at all four locations considered. The highest average content of lignocellulosic fibres was detected in the ZP 735 hybrid, which also exhibited the lowest dry matter digestibility of the whole plant (57.24%). The highest average digestibility of dry matter (61.00%) and NDF (NDFD Neutral Detergent Fibres Digestibility) (26.20%) of the whole maize plant was determined in the ZP 707 hybrid, which also had the lowest average content of all lignocellulosic fibres.
In-Vivo Vibroacoustic Surveillance of Trees in the Context of the IoT

This work introduces a device for long term systematic monitoring of trees against borers. A widely applied way to detect wood-boring insects is to insert a piezoelectric probe with an uncoated waveguide in the tree trunk and listen for locomotion or feeding sounds through headphones. This approach has several shortcomings: (a) frequent manual inspection of trees is costly and impractical to scale to hundreds or thousands of trees, (b) the larvae could be present but inactive during the inspection time and, (c) when the trees are in urban environments the background noise can be significant and can mask the feeble sounds of wood-boring insects even with the use of specialized headphones. We introduce a remotely controlled device that records and wirelessly transmits on a scheduled basis short recordings of the internal vibrations of a tree to a server. The user can listen remotely or process the recording automatically to infer the infestation state of the tree with wood-boring insects that feed or move inside the tree. When integrated within the IoT framework this device can scale up to automatically monitoring the trees of the entire city. The proposed approach led to detection results in field trials of the pests Xylotrechus chinensis (Chevrolat) (Cerambycidae) and Rhynchophorus ferrugineus Olivier (Coleoptera: Curculionidae).
New topological invariants in non-Hermitian systems

Both theoretical and experimental studies of topological phases in non-Hermitian systems have made a remarkable progress in the last few years of research. In this article, we review the key concepts pertaining to topological phases in non-Hermitian Hamiltonians with relevant examples and realistic model setups. Discussions are devoted to both the adaptations of topological invariants from Hermitian to non-Hermitian systems, as well as origins of new topological invariants in the latter setup. Unique properties such as exceptional points and complex energy landscapes lead to new topological invariants including winding number/vorticity defined solely in the complex energy plane, and half-integer winding/Chern numbers. New forms of Kramers degeneracy appear here rendering distinct topological invariants. Modifications of adiabatic theory, time-evolution operator, biorthogonal bulk-boundary correspondence lead to unique features such as topological displacement of particles, ‘skin-effect’, and edge-selective attenuated and amplified topological polarizations without chiral symmetry. Extension and realization of topological ideas in photonic systems are mentioned. We conclude with discussions on relevant future directions, and highlight potential applications of some of these unique topological features of the non-Hermitian Hamiltonians.
Management of spinal dural arteriovenous fistula in a child with myelopathy

Background: Spinal dural arteriovenous fistulas (DAVF) are rare intradural spinal lesions. Patients with DAVF are typically in the 40’s or 50’s, and classically present with acute neurological deterioration. Notably, these lesions are exceedingly rare in the pediatric age group. Case Description: A 2-year-old child presented with the sudden onset of lethargy, and 4/5 weakness of the left lower extremity with accompanying ataxia. The cervicothoracic MR scan revealed central cord edema from C5 to T4. A DAVF was diagnosed based on the multiple dilated intradural perimedullary veins. Following endovascular treatment, the child markedly recovered and remained stable 2 years later. Conclusion: DAVFs are treatable lesions that rarely occur in the pediatric age group. They are associated with serious neurological morbidity. When suspected, they should be immediately diagnosed with magnetic resonance imaging/magnetic resonance angiography, and formal angiography. Prompt neurosurgical and neuroradiological/ endovascular opinions and intervention should be sought to provide and the best treatment strategy.
First Implantation of Retinal Prosthesis in a Patient with High Myopia After Surgery and Rehabilitation Program in Taiwan.

The implantation of the Argus II retinal prosthesis system in a 54-year-old woman with retinitis pigmentosa who presented with an eye of long axial length at 26.82 mm was successful. Post-operative examination revealed a gap of 700 um between the electrode array and the retina, which caused decreased visual perception. A modified strategy with quad and quinary electrode stimulation was introduced to generate higher perceptual thresholds. The patient experienced visual function changes during the first half of the year after surgery, although no remarkable difference was observed in terms of implant-retina distance. Fibrosis around the tack developed and extended between the gap with the retina elevated from the tack toward the center array 8 months after the surgery. Schisis of the retina developed and filled the gap, resulting in decreased threshold, and the strategy was then shifted back to single electrode stimulation mode. Rehabilitation program is an evolving process that depends on the distance between the array and the retina in the eye with staphyloma. This study first showed the implantation in a patient with high myopia who presented with long axial length after surgery and rehabilitation program in Taiwan.This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
The roles played by boards of directors: an integration of the agency and stakeholder theories

Abstract This paper explores the development and articulation of the agency and stakeholder theories of the firm and their corresponding logics of shareholder wealth maximisation and stakeholder interest optimisation. We note how these two perspectives have been viewed as diametrically opposite normative, instrumental and descriptive theories, despite efforts by some authors to find common ground. Each has served as a basis for firm governance. We explore the relationship of the agency and stakeholder theories to the conceptualisations of the roles of boards of directors, and how both theories hold value in understanding two board functions/roles: control/monitoring roles and service roles (which covers both resources and strategy).
A feed-forward signalling circuit controls bacterial virulence through linking cyclic di-GMP and two mechanistically distinct sRNAs, ArcZ and RsmB.

Dickeya dadantii is a plant pathogen that causes soft rot disease on vegetable and potato crops. To successfully cause infection, this pathogen needs to coordinately modulate the expression of genes encoding several virulence determinants, including plant cell wall degrading enzymes (PCWDEs), type III secretion system (T3SS) and flagellar motility. Here, we uncover a novel feed-forward signalling circuit for controlling virulence. Global RNA chaperone Hfq interacts with an Hfq-dependent sRNA ArcZ and represses the translation of pecT, encoding a LysR-type transcriptional regulator. We demonstrate that the ability of ArcZ to be processed to a 50 nt 3'- end fragment is essential for its regulation of pecT. PecT down-regulates PCWDE and the T3SS by repressing the expression of a global post-transcriptional regulator- (RsmA-) associated sRNA encoding gene rsmB. In addition, we show that the protein levels of two cyclic di-GMP (c-di-GMP) diguanylate cyclases (DGCs), GcpA and GcpL, are repressed by Hfq. Further studies show that both DGCs are essential for the Hfq-mediated post-transcriptional regulation on RsmB. Overall, our report provides new insights into the interplays between ubiquitous signalling transduction systems that were most studied independently and sheds light on multitiered regulatory mechanisms for a precise disease regulation in bacteria.
In Silico Analysis of the Subtype Selective Blockage of KCNA Ion Channels through the µ-Conotoxins PIIIA, SIIIA, and GIIIA

Understanding subtype specific ion channel pore blockage by natural peptide-based toxins is crucial for developing such compounds into promising drug candidates. Herein, docking and molecular dynamics simulations were employed in order to understand the dynamics and binding states of the µ-conotoxins, PIIIA, SIIIA, and GIIIA, at the voltage-gated potassium channels of the KV1 family, and they were correlated with their experimental activities recently reported by Leipold et al. Their different activities can only adequately be understood when dynamic information about the toxin-channel systems is available. For all of the channel-bound toxins investigated herein, a certain conformational flexibility was observed during the molecular dynamic simulations, which corresponds to their bioactivity. Our data suggest a similar binding mode of µ-PIIIA at KV1.6 and KV1.1, in which a plethora of hydrogen bonds are formed by the Arg and Lys residues within the α-helical core region of µ-PIIIA, with the central pore residues of the channel. Furthermore, the contribution of the K+ channel’s outer and inner pore loops with respect to the toxin binding. and how the subtype specificity is induced, were proposed.