Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Chronic Cerebrospinal Venous Insufficiency in Multiple Sclerosis - A Medical, Sociological and Media Controversy

In 2009, Zamboni et al. coined the term “chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency” (CCSVI). On the basis of transcranial and extra-cranial colour-coded Doppler ultrasonography, they operationally defined CCSVI as occurring when at least two out of five “abnormalities” were present. They claimed to find CCSVI in 100 % of 109 individuals with multiple sclerosis (MS) and in none of 177 healthy controls. Zamboni’s group subsequently reported an uncontrolled treatment trial of cerebral venoplasty, which was termed the “liberation procedure” and claimed that the procedure benefited people with MS. The Zamboni reports were received with considerable skepticism, regarding both their biological plausibility and the claims of 100 % sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value and negative predictive value. No investigators have subsequently been able to replicate the Zamboni observations. Although some additional reports have indicated finding venous abnormalities in more MS patients than in other groups, most have either found no association of CCSVI with MS, or else have found substantial numbers of controls, either healthy or with other neurological disease, to have the abnormalities. The original Zamboni reports were widely publicised in the mainstream media, especially in Canada and sparked a raging controversy in the social media. Patients clamoured for trials of cerebral venoplasty and others demanded its availability or travelled around the globe to undergo the procedure. The Canadian Institutes of Health Research have now solicited proposals for a Phase I/II clinical trial. At this point, additional scientific studies, including many funded by the National Multiple Sclerosis Society and the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada, are moving toward completion and will hopefully allow a proper judgment of the validity of the concept of CCSVI in relation to MS. In the meantime, it is important that physicians remain respectful of patients’ views, but that they are not reticent about expressing their own professional opinions based on available evidence, while emphasising the importance of proper scientific research.
Assessment of the ternary coarse aggregates for economic production of sustainable and low-cost concrete

This paper study the effects of construction and agricultural wastes (CAW) as coarse aggregates in ternary blends on the properties of concrete. A concrete mix ratio of 1:2:4 by weight of cement, sand and granite was adopted with water-cement ratio of 0.50. Five different concrete mixes were prepared in this study; one natural aggregate concrete (NAC) and four concretes with 10%, 20%, 30% and 40% recycled aggregate and 40%, 30%, 20% and 10% palm kernel shell (PKS) contents in reverse order at constant 50% natural coarse aggregate (NCA). The results of slump tests showed an increase in workability as the percentage replacement level of RCA reduces and PKS respectively. The compressive strength of concrete mixes was observed to be less than the strength of lightweight concrete recommended by standards by 23.2%, 28.87%, 31.2%, 43.2% and 45.6% respectively. Based on the result of calculated thermal conductivity, it was observed that as the %RCA content reduces with increasing %PKS content significant amount of energy was saved. Also, an analysis of variance (ANOVA) was carried out to determine the effect of the % replacement and curing period on the compressive strength of concrete. It showed that % replacement had a statistically significant effect on the concrete performance. This type of concrete can be classified as lightweight concrete based on the strength and bulk density.
The ortholog conjecture revisited: the value of orthologs and paralogs in function prediction

The computational prediction of gene function is a key step in making full use of newly sequenced genomes. Function is generally predicted by transferring annotations from homologous genes or proteins for which experimental evidence exists. The “ortholog conjecture” proposes that orthologous genes should be preferred when making such predictions, as they evolve functions more slowly than paralogous genes. Previous research has provided little support for the ortholog conjecture, though the incomplete nature of the data cast doubt on the conclusions. Here we use experimental annotations from over 40,000 proteins, drawn from over 80,000 publications, to revisit the ortholog conjecture in two pairs of species: (i) Homo sapiens and Mus musculus and (ii) Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Schizosaccharomyces pombe. By making a distinction between questions about the evolution of function versus questions about the prediction of function, we find strong evidence against the ortholog conjecture in the context of function prediction, though questions about the evolution of function remain difficult to address. In both pairs of species, we quantify the amount of data that must be ignored if paralogs are discarded, as well as the resulting loss in prediction accuracy. Taken as a whole, our results support the view that the types of homologs used for function transfer are largely irrelevant to the task of function prediction. Aiming to maximize the amount of data used for this task, regardless of whether it comes from orthologs or paralogs, is most likely to lead to higher prediction accuracy.
A Giant Retroperitoneal Abscess Mimicking Incarcerated Inguinal Hernia

An 82-year-old man was admitted to the emergency room with an acute left-sided groin pain and scrotal swelling. He has suffered from a groin hernia for two years. Abdominal x-ray demonstrated air-fluid levels in the left upper quadrant suggesting an intestinal obstruction (Figure 1). Abdominal computed tomography (CT) scan was obtained with an initial diagnosis of an incarcerated inguinal hernia. However, it showed multiple perirenal abscesses and a giant-sized retroperitoneal abscess extending from the retroperitoneal space into the scrotum through the inguinal canal (Figure 2 and 3).
Team Care—The Preferred Approach to Diabetes Treatment

Diabetes is a lifestyle disease that requires the person living with the disease to make many daily decisions about diet, activity level, and medications, as well as adequate support to manage the disease successfully. Research has shown that a team-based approach to diabetes care is an effective way to help people with diabetes manage the disease, prevent and treat complications, provide behavior-change strategies, and cope with the emotional challenges this chronic disease brings [1]. Although the team may look different for each patient, it usually represents a variety of disciplines and may include a physician, registered dietitian, diabetes educator, nurse, pharmacist, psychologist, podiatrist, dentist, other professionals and resources within the community.
Transforming environmental health practitioners’ knowledge-sharing practices through inter-agency formative intervention workshops

ABSTRACT Home-based care facilities provide basic healthcare services to people too sick or frail to access formal clinics and hospitals. These facilities produce ‘healthcare risk waste’ which must be managed responsibly, and it is the work of Environmental Health Practitioners working within municipalities to ensure that the waste produced by home-based care facilities is managed in line with legislation. This paper presents a case study of a twenty-seven-month expansive learning intervention in a South African municipality that sought to transform its healthcare risk waste management practices. Limited knowledge and inadequate knowledge-sharing practices were identified as the main hindrances to effective waste management. The practitioner-researcher facilitated a series of inter-agency, formative intervention workshops with municipal employees and Community Health Workers using the Developmental Work Research methodology. These workshops strengthened both groups of practitioners’ knowledge of the ‘who, how, what, why and when’ that underpins effective healthcare risk waste management, and enabled ‘boundary crossing’ for practitioners to work across their specialist areas towards co-defining and analysing problems and constructing new solutions.
Understanding consumer perceptions of luxury brands

Continuing the stream of luxury brand research that seeks to identify how luxury brands differ from non-luxury brands, we test whether the brand usage and attribute prototypicality influences on consumers’ perceptual responses about non-luxury brands extend to luxury brands. Drawing on data from individuals who qualify in the top 25% income tier in their country, in the United States (n = 300) and China (n = 366), across three luxury categories of Fashion, Jewelry, and Watches, we find that brand usage and attribute prototypicality patterns drive baseline response levels for brands on luxury attributes. Furthermore, a calculation from Romaniuk and Sharp is able to accurately estimate scores (±2pp) for over 90% of luxury brands of the 580 brand–luxury attribute combinations tested. The ability to benchmark scores for brands on luxury attributes will enable practitioners to separate real differences in the positioning of luxury brands from those that simply reflect the current size of the brand’s customer base, and over time more effectively detect the effect of luxury brand marketing activities on consumers.
45S5 bioactive glass coating on Ti6Al4V alloy using pulsed laser deposition technique

Bioactive glass 45S5 (BG) has been proposed as a biomaterial and extensively studied on account of its superior bioactive behavior. In this paper, we report our results on thin film deposition of BG on Ti6Al4V alloy using pulsed laser deposition (PLD) technique. A Nd:YAG laser (532 nm) based pulsed laser deposition system has been used for this work. Post deposition, surface morphology, and chemical composition of the obtained films on Ti-alloy surface have been examined using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy dispersive x-ray analysis (EDX). In vitro bioactivity of these PLD coated Ti-alloy samples was evaluated by immersing the BG coated Ti-alloy samples in simulated body fluid (SBF) for 10 days. SBF immersed samples have been analyzed using SEM, EDX, and micro Raman spectroscopic techniques. Superior growth of bone like apatite i.e. hydroxyapatite (HAP) have been observed on such BG coated Ti-alloy samples in comparison to uncoated Ti-alloy in our investigations. Also, biocompatibility tests carried out by us measuring tolerance of U2OS osteosarcoma cells to these PLD coated Ti6Al4V samples have shown positive results.
Advancing Molecular Simulations of Crystal Nucleation: Applications to Clathrate Hydrates

Crystallization is a fundamental physical phenomenon with broad impacts in science and engineering. Nonetheless, mechanisms of crystallization in many systems remain incompletely understood. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations are a powerful computational technique that, in principle, are well-suited to offer insights into the mechanisms of crystallization. Unfortunately, the waiting time required to observe crystal nucleation in simulated systems often falls far beyond the limits of modern MD simulations. This rare-event problem is the primary barrier to simulation studies of crystallization in complex systems. This dissertation takes a combined approach to advance simulation studies of nucleation in complex systems. First, we apply existing tools to a challenging problem — clathrate hydrate nucleation. We then use methods development, software development, and machine learning to address the specific challenges to simulation studies of crystallization posed by the rare-event problem. Clathrate hydrate formation is an exemplar of crystallization in complex systems. Nucleation of clathrate hydrates generally occurs in systems with interfaces, and even homogeneous hydrate nucleation is inherently a multicomponent process. We address two aspects of clathrate hydrate nucleation which are not well-studied. The first aspect is the effects of interfaces on clathrate hydrate nucleation. Interfaces are common in hydrate systems, yet there are few studies probing the effects of interfaces on clathrate hydrate nucleation. We find that nucleation occurs through a homogeneous mechanism near model hydrophobic and hydrophilic surfaces. The only effect of the surfaces is through a partitioning of guest molecules which results in aggregation of guest molecules at the hydrophobic surface. The second aspect is the effect of guest solubility in water on the homogeneous nucleation mechanism. Experiments show that soluble guests act as strong promoter molecules for hydrate formation, but the molecular mechanisms of this effect are unclear. We apply forward flux sampling (FFS) and a committor analysis to identify good approximations of the reaction coordinate
An asymmetry in the frequency and position of mitosis in the epiblast precedes gastrulation and suggests a role for mitotic rounding in cell delamination during primitive streak epithelial-mesenchymal transition

The epiblast, a pseudostratified epithelium, is the precursor for the three main germ layers required for body shape and organogenesis: ectoderm, mesoderm, and endoderm. At gastrulation, a subpopulation of epiblast cells constitutes a transient posteriorly located structure called the primitive streak, where cells that undergo epithelial-mesenchymal transition make up the mesoderm and endoderm lineages. In order to observe the behavior of individual cells, epiblast cells were labeled ubiquitously or in a mosaic fashion using fluorescent membrane reporters. The cell shapes of individual cells and the packing and behaviour of neighbouring cells during primitive streak formation were recorded through live time-lapse imaging. Posterior epiblast displayed a higher frequency of rosettes, a signature of cell rearrangements, prior to primitive streak initiation. A third of rosettes were associated with a central cell undergoing mitosis. Interestingly, cells at the primitive streak, in particular delaminating cells, underwent mitosis twice more frequently than other epiblast cells, suggesting a role for cell division in epithelial-mesenchymal transition. Pseudostratified epithelia are characterized by interkinetic nuclear migration, where mitosis occurs at the apical side of the epithelium. However, we found that exclusively on the posterior side of the epiblast, mitosis was not restricted to the apical side. Non-apical mitosis was apparent as early as E5.75, just after the establishment of the anterior-posterior axis, and prior to initiation of epithelial-mesenchymal transition. Non-apical mitosis was associated with primitive streak morphogenesis, as it occurred specifically in the streak even when ectopically located. Most non-apical mitosis resulted in one or two daughter cells leaving the epiblast layer to become mesoderm. Furthermore, in contrast to what has been described in other pseudostratified epithelia such as neuroepithelium, the majority of cells dividing apically detached completely from the basal pole in the epiblast. Cell rearrangement associated with mitotic cell rounding in the posterior epiblast during gastrulation, in particular when it occurs on the basal side, might thus facilitate cell ingression through the PS and transition to a mesenchymal phenotype. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT
Future Learning Through Experiences and Spaces

mLearn 2019 marks an important milestone in the trajectory of this conference series. For the first time in many years, mLearn has returned to Europe and like in its early days, it brings together the global community of scholars, researchers and practitioners to discuss the advances of mobile learning. The 18th World Conference on Mobile and Contextual Learning also marks an important point for the conference as a whole. In most countries in Europe, being 18 means to be able participate in the political elections as well as to perform economically and legally independently. It means one has grown up. Similarly, mobile learning has grown massively since its first inception some two decades ago. The field of mobile learning has since witnessed an increasing volume of educational innovations that reached mass markets at a speed faster than any information technology has done before. The advent of the iPhone and of the Android platform just a little over 10 years ago has turned the mobile market upside down. Just around the same time, John Traxler (2007) wrote about the potentials of mobile learning to democratise education. Today, even “dumb” phones provide smart connections with global information channels and enable learners to connect to educational services at fingertips. While technology advanced, many countries move rapidly to full smartphone market penetration in which every citizen possesses an personal device. From this viewpoint the call for one-to-one technology-enhanced learning (Chan et al, 2001) appears to come into reach with little national investments in educational infrastructures. These developments have brought the mobile learning topic into the focus of communities of educational researchers and practitioners. These communities adopted the topic mobile learning into their core interests, so mobile learning is discussed on any conference that even loosely connected to technology-enhanced learning. Consequently, mobile learning has transformed from a niche field into a traversal topic. This raises the questions on the role of a specialised conference on mobile and contextual learning.
Does political conflict affect bilateral trade or vice versa? Evidence from Sino-U.S. relations

Abstract This paper investigates the dynamic causal relationship between Sino-U.S. political conflict and bilateral trade using a time-varying (bootstrap) Granger full-sample causality test and sub-sample rolling window estimation. The result indicates that Sino-U.S. political conflict and bilateral trade may interact in various ways. Bilateral trade has both positive and negative effects on political conflict in several sub-phases, and in turn, political conflict has the same impacts on bilateral trade. In general, the relationship between Sino-U.S. political conflict and bilateral trade is not always consistent with the model of Polachek, which states bilateral trade has significantly reduced political conflict. In the face of a severe economic situation, China and the U.S. government should strengthen trade cooperation and seek common ground of economic interests in order to expand the improvement of political relations.
Aériance® la cure de sevrage tabagique à luchon premiers résultats à 3 mois

Même si les différentes mesures pour lutter contre le tabagisme ont entraîné une diminution du nombre de fumeurs, il reste en France 13,8 millions de fumeurs [1]. Un peu plus de 6 millions de femmes et de 7 millions d’hommes sont considérés comme des fumeurs, soit 32,7 % de la population française et ce, malgré une diminution de 10 % du nombre de fumeurs en 5 ans. Même si les désirs d’arrêt sont en nette augmentation : en 1995, un peu plus d’un tiers (36,7 % des Français âgés de 18 à 75 ans) déclaraient “envisager d’arrêter”[2] ; en 1999, ils étaient près de 3 sur 5 (59,2 %)[3]. Près de la moitié des fumeurs envisagent un arrêt dans les 12 prochains mois. Le tabagisme reste un problème de santé publique prioritaire et la vocation des stations thermales est sûrement de s’impliquer dans ce domaine.
Prediction of Post-Intubation Tachycardia Using Machine-Learning Models

Tachycardia is defined as a heart rate greater than 100 bpm for more than 1 min. Tachycardia often occurs after endotracheal intubation and can cause serious complication in patients with cardiovascular disease. The ability to predict post-intubation tachycardia would help clinicians by notifying a potential event to pre-treat. In this paper, we predict the potential post-intubation tachycardia. Given electronic medical record and vital signs collected before tracheal intubation, we predict whether post-intubation tachycardia will occur within 10 min. Of 1931 available patient datasets, 257 remained after filtering those with inappropriate data such as outliers and inappropriate annotations. Three feature sets were designed using feature selection algorithms, and two additional feature sets were defined by statistical inspection or manual examination. The five feature sets were compared with various machine learning models such as naïve Bayes classifiers, logistic regression, random forest, support vector machines, extreme gradient boosting, and artificial neural networks. Parameters of the models were optimized for each feature set. By 10-fold cross validation, we found that an logistic regression model with eight-dimensional hand-crafted features achieved an accuracy of 80.5%, recall of 85.1%, precision of 79.9%, an F1 score of 79.9%, and an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.85.
Design of strategic risk mitigation with supply chain risk management and cold chain system approach

Marine fish commodities are perishable food. Many risks that can damage the catch of marine fish includes not stored and carried in low temperature conditions. Therefore, risk mitigation is required to reduce the risks that occur. This research aims to identify, analyze, evaluate and design the strategic risk mitigations with supply chain risk management and cold chain system approach. The supply chain risk management consists of: risk identification, risk analysis, risk evaluation, and risk mitigation in the entire of supply chain. The cold chain system is carried out from upstream to downstream in the activities of fishermen at the Karangantu Fisheries Port, Serang, Banten. The results are identified 16 risk events, 5 priority risk agents, and 5 proactive actions. The proposed strategic risk mitigations are: counseling on how to handle good catch results; adding the Port Operational Section in the field of Fish Demolition Inspection; giving penalties for fishermen who do not handle catching results properly; preparing to unload the results of fishing when the ship is on the dock, and proposing the procurement of fishing aids to the Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries.
A UV photodetector based on ordered free standing MWCNT

Multiple wall carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) present advantages for optoelectronic applications such as the large effective photo-collector surface as well as the possibility to tune their band gap and absorbance through the growth parameters. The combination of CNTs with conventional semiconductors and metals to form a device presents technological challenges because of the high temperatures required for the production of CNTs and the catalysts used (e.g. Fe). These conditions may result in structural modifications of the substrate specially when the CNT formation temperature approaches the formation temperatures of other layers or even cause metal migration. The use of ordered free-standing MWCNTs for photodevice presents advantages, since they have a tunable absorbance depending on their height while their dense ordering results in a large effective area sensor. Additionally, the bandgap depends on their thickness, thus it is tunable by changing the formation conditions. In this work, we demonstrate a hybrid MWCNT/Si3N4/n-Si photodetector based on ordered MWCNTs and evaluate its performance in the UV, visual and near IR spectrum (200–1000 nm). Depending on the application the absorbing nanotube layer can be made thick enough (e.g. several millimeters) to enhance radiation absorption and electron-hole pair generation. The best result obtained so far as a UV detector is a 90% Equivalent Quantum Efficiency @ 275 nm for a 20 μm CNT layer thickness.