Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Tuberculosis in Upper and Lower Egypt before and after directly observed treatment short-course strategy: a multi-governorate study

Background Tuberculosis (TB) is a major problem in developing countries. TB in Egypt is considered an important public health problem. Egypt is ranked among the mid-level incidence countries. Objective To evaluate TB status in 19 governorates and to compare the TB situation in Upper and Lower Egypt over 20 years from 1992 to 2012 before and after the application of directly observed treatment short-course strategy (DOTS). Patients and methods This is a retrospective study involving record review. The registered data were collected from TB registration units in the 19 governorates. Results The highest percentage of TB cases was in the age group 15–30 years. Infection was higher in males than females and in rural areas more than urban areas. Pulmonary TB and smear positivity at diagnosis, second, third, and fifth month were higher in Lower Egypt. Treatment after failure or relapse was significantly higher in Upper Egypt, whereas default rate, failure rate, and death rate were significantly higher in Lower Egypt. Regarding treatment outcome, cure, complete treatment, and transfer out were significantly increased after DOTS than before. Failure, default, and death were significantly reduced after DOTS than before DOTS. Upper Egypt included higher incidence rates of TB, new adult smear-positive cases, new extrapulmonary TB cases, and sputum conversion rate at the end of the initial phase of treatment. Cure rate and treatment success rate were significantly higher among patients of Upper Egypt, whereas transfer out rate and retreatment failure rate were significantly higher among Lower Egypt patients. Conclusion TB is still a health problem in Egypt, with pulmonary TB more in Lower Egypt, whereas extrapulmonary more in Upper Egypt, but after the introduction of DOTS, there is a significant increase in cure and success rate, with markers of success being more in Upper Egypt.
Drug resistance assessment following administration of RSV fusion inhibitor presatovir to participants experimentally infected with respiratory syncytial virus.

BACKGROUND Presatovir is an oral respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) fusion inhibitor targeting RSV F protein. In a double-blind, placebo-controlled study in healthy adults experimentally infected with RSV (Memphis-37b), presatovir significantly reduced viral load and clinical disease severity in a dose-dependent manner. METHODS Viral RNA from nasal wash samples was amplified and F gene sequenced to monitor presatovir resistance. Effects of identified amino acid substitutions on in vitro susceptibility to presatovir, viral fitness, and clinical outcome were assessed. RESULTS Twenty-eight treatment-emergent F substitutions were identified. Of these, 26 were tested in vitro; 2 were not due to lack of recombinant virus recovery. Ten substitutions did not affect presatovir susceptibility, and 16 substitutions reduced RSV susceptibility to presatovir (2.9- to 410-fold). No substitutions altered RSV susceptibility to palivizumab or ribavirin. Frequency of phenotypically resistant substitutions was higher with regimens containing lower presatovir dose and shorter treatment duration. Participants with phenotypic presatovir resistance had significantly higher nasal viral load area under the curve relative to those without, but substitutions did not significantly affect peak viral load or clinical manifestations of RSV disease. CONCLUSIONS Emergence of presatovir-resistant RSV occurred during therapy but did not significantly affect clinical efficacy in participants with experimental RSV infection.
Time to Lane Crossing Estimation Using Deep Learning-Based Instance Segmentation Scheme

The main goal of this paper is to develop a deep-learning-based instance segmentation of lane detection for time to lane crossing (TLC) estimation. As is well known, the TLC strategy can build lane departure warning systems (LDWs) with enhanced predictive capabilities which play the role of security early warning in order to prevent dangerous driving situations. LDWs quite relies on the accurate detection of the road markings. Instance segmentation is a task to detect specific objects in an image and create a mask around the object. We use an evolved fully convolutional networks (FCNs) based instance segmentation to yield the high-quality segmentation maps with finer details. It is an effective approach to providing us the high accurate lane detection for LDWs. Time to lane crossing (TLC) is a kind of lane departure indicator in LDWs. For TLC computation, both straight and curved vehicle paths are considered. Thus, the road curvature is an important variable in computations. In this paper, a lane mark fitting algorithm based on inverse perspective mapping (IPM) and sliding window technologies are proposed to compute the road curvature. TLC is duration available for the driver before any lane boundary crossing. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed deep learning-based instance segmentation can significantly detect the lane. The experiment results illustrate that the proposed TLC estimation strategy can significantly enhance the lane marks recognition accuracy and then provide drivers with timely warnings to avoid unintentional lane departure.
Comparison of in vitro digestibility using slaughtered and fistulated cattle as sources of inoculum

In vitro methods of feed evaluation utilise rumen liquour from fistulated cattle. Fistulated cattle are associated with high acquisition and maintenance costs in addition to its implications on animal welfare. An experiment was conducted to compare in-vitro dry matter (INVDMD) and organic matter (INVOMD) digestibility of four diets using two sources of inocula namely; (i) slaughtered cattle and (ii) fistulated steers. Four fistulated crossbred (Friesian × Ankole) steers were assembled and fed on four diets in a Latin Square change-over arrangement. The two-stage Tilley and Terry (1963) method of nutrient digestibility was used. The overall INVDMD significantly increased with dietary crude protein levels (P <0.05). There was no difference in INVDMD obtained from slaughtered cattle or fistulated steers as inocula sources. Rumen liquour from slaughtered cattle can successfully replace use of fistulated cattle as the source of inoculum. Key words: Dry matter, organic matter
Defining Smart Cities: a relative and dynamic approach

Although the level of interest in smart cities is growing, the main issue – the smart city concept – is still open. The definition of smart city is not shared as well as the way to measure city’s smartness. The main approach has developed the concept of an “ideal” city which every city should tend because it represents the optimal standard. In this context, the aim of our paper is to break with the traditional point of view in favour of a new concept of smartness which identifies a city specific value of smartness, based on the efficient use of its own resources and related to the different context in which a city is situated. Thus, in this way, the concept of smartness becomes relative. Moreover when a city is very close to optimal value (i.e. maximum efficient frontier) then the frontier will shift upward because of the more attractiveness of the city but after a while the performance of the city goes down and a new adjustment mechanism should be followed to become efficient again (virtuous cycle). The needed time to be close again to the frontier will be correlated to the degree of inertia (reaction time) of urban government. So the smartness concept becomes dynamic as well as relative because it depends on how long the city takes to react and change the direction of its own performance to become smart again.
Salinomycin suppresses tumorigenicity of liver cancer stem cells and Wnt/beta-catenin signaling.

BACKGROUND Accumulating evidence has revealed the important role of cancer stem cells (CSCs) in driving tumor initiation and tumor relapse or metastasis. Therapeutic strategies that selectively target CSCs may be effective approaches to eliminate cancer. Salinomycin, an antitumor agent, was identified as a selective inhibitor of several types of CSCs. We previously reported that salinomycin inhibits the migration and invasiveness of liver cancer stem cells (LCSCs). OBJECTIVE This study was conducted to explore the role of salinomycin in supressing stemness properties of LCSCs and the mechanism. METHODS LCSCs were identified and enriched from MHCC97H cells. Salinomycin was used to treat LCSCs at the indicated concentrations. Sphere formation ability, chemotherapy resistance, expression of CSC surface markers, Young's modulus and tumorigenicity of LCSCs were assessed to evaluate the effect of salionmycin on LCSCs. The expression of β-catenin was evaluated by western blotting. LiCl was used to activate the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway. RESULTS Salinomycin suppresses the stemness properties of LCSCs. Moreover, salinomycin could also inhibit the activation of Wnt/β-catenin signaling in LCSCs. Nevertheless, the stemness properties of LCSCs could be recovered when Wnt/β-catenin signaling was activated by LiCl. Further studies demonstrated that salinomycin also significantly reduces the tumorigenicity of LCSCs in vivo by suppressing the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway. CONCLUSION Salinomycin could suppress stemness properties and induce differentiation of LCSCs through the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway, which provides evidence that salinomycin may serve as a potential drug for liver cancer therapy targeting LCSCs in the clinic.
Case Report on: Very Early Afterdepolarizations in HiPSC-Cardiomyocytes—An Artifact by Big Conductance Calcium Activated Potassium Current (Ibk,Ca)

Human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (hiPSC-CMs) represent an unlimited source of human CMs that could be a standard tool in drug research. However, there is concern whether hiPSC-CMs express all cardiac ion channels at physiological level and whether they might express non-cardiac ion channels. In a control hiPSC line, we found large, “noisy” outward K+ currents, when we measured outward potassium currents in isolated hiPSC-CMs. Currents were sensitive to iberiotoxin, the selective blocker of big conductance Ca2+-activated K+ current (IBK,Ca). Seven of 16 individual differentiation batches showed a strong initial repolarization in the action potentials (AP) recorded from engineered heart tissue (EHT) followed by very early afterdepolarizations, sometimes even with consecutive oscillations. Iberiotoxin stopped oscillations and normalized AP shape, but had no effect in other EHTs without oscillations or in human left ventricular tissue (LV). Expression levels of the alpha-subunit (KCa1.1) of the BKCa correlated with the presence of oscillations in hiPSC-CMs and was not detectable in LV. Taken together, individual batches of hiPSC-CMs can express sarcolemmal ion channels that are otherwise not found in the human heart, resulting in oscillating afterdepolarizations in the AP. HiPSC-CMs should be screened for expression of non-cardiac ion channels before being applied to drug research.
Physiologically Based Pharmacokinetic Modeling and Simulation of Sunitinib in Pediatrics

Using physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) modeling and simulations, this study estimated the exposure of sunitinib and its active metabolite SU012662 in pediatric patients. A PBPK simulator, SimCYP, was used to develop and validate the pharmacokinetic models. Model development employed a combined “bottom–up” and “top–down” approach to fully utilize the available in vitro or in silico experimental data and in vivo observed clinical data. First, the PBPK model for sunitinib was established, then the cytochrome P450 3A4–mediated metabolism of sunitinib was used as the input for SU012662. PBPK models were validated using pharmacokinetics of sunitinib and SU012662 from one study in adult patients with solid tumors and three clinical trials in pediatric patients with solid or gastrointestinal stromal tumors. The models were further used to predict the exposure of sunitinib and SU012662 by pediatric age groups. The PBPK models for sunitinib and SU012662 developed based on pharmacokinetic characteristics in adults successfully predicted the observed in vivo pharmacokinetics of sunitinib and SU012662 in both adults and pediatric patients. Based on the SimCYP model predictions, a daily dose of 20 mg/m 2 will produce sunitinib and SU012662 total exposures in pediatric patients similar to those in adults with gastrointestinal stromal tumor treated with a clinical dose of 50 mg once daily.
Image-Based Cardiac Diagnosis With Machine Learning: A Review

Cardiac imaging plays an important role in the diagnosis of cardiovascular disease (CVD). Until now, its role has been limited to visual and quantitative assessment of cardiac structure and function. However, with the advent of big data and machine learning, new opportunities are emerging to build artificial intelligence tools that will directly assist the clinician in the diagnosis of CVDs. This paper presents a thorough review of recent works in this field and provide the reader with a detailed presentation of the machine learning methods that can be further exploited to enable more automated, precise and early diagnosis of most CVDs.
Vagus Nerve Stimulation Paired With Rehabilitative Training Enhances Motor Recovery After Bilateral Spinal Cord Injury to Cervical Forelimb Motor Pools

Closed-loop vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) paired with rehabilitative training has emerged as a strategy to enhance recovery after neurological injury. Previous studies demonstrate that brief bursts of closed-loop VNS paired with rehabilitative training substantially improve recovery of forelimb motor function in models of unilateral and bilateral contusive spinal cord injury (SCI) at spinal level C5/6. While these findings provide initial evidence of the utility of VNS for SCI, the injury model used in these studies spares the majority of alpha motor neurons originating in C7-T1 that innervate distal forelimb muscles. Because the clinical manifestation of SCI in many patients involves damage at these levels, it is important to define whether damage to the distal forelimb motor neuron pools limits VNS-dependent recovery. In this study, we assessed recovery of forelimb function in rats that received a bilateral incomplete contusive SCI at C7/8 and underwent extensive rehabilitative training with or without paired VNS. The study design, including planned sample size, assessments, and statistical comparisons, was preregistered prior to beginning data collection (https://osf.io/ysvgf/). VNS paired with rehabilitative training significantly improved recovery of volitional forelimb strength compared to equivalent rehabilitative training without VNS. Additionally, VNS-dependent enhancement of recovery generalized to 2 similar, but untrained, forelimb tasks. These findings indicate that damage to alpha motor neurons does not prevent VNS-dependent enhancement of recovery and provides additional evidence to support the evaluation of closed-loop VNS paired with rehabilitation in patients with incomplete cervical SCI.
Rasmussen Encephalitis In A Nigerian Child: A Case Report

INTRODUCTIONSeizure disorder may be caused by a variety of medical conditions. CASE PRESENTATIONWe report a case of Rasmussen encephalitis (RE) in a 7yearold boy of the Yoruba ethnic group in Nigeria. This to the best of our knowledge is the first reported case of this condition in a Nigerian. He had computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan of the brain and electroencephalography (EEG). CONCLUSIONWe want to emphasize the importance of imaging in the diagnosis of seizure disorder, especially when it is intractable. To diagnose RE, the index of clinical suspicion has to be high. It is probable that some cases of this condition will be missed in our environment as a result of inadequate imaging, stemming from availability and cost considerations. RE is extremely rare and many radiologists practicing in sub-Saharan Africa may not see a single case of RE in their practice life as a result of the paucity of MRI facilities (which is required for diagnosis) in this sub-region.
D S ] 2 1 Ja n 20 16 Testing Shape Restrictions of Discrete Distributions

We study the question of testing structured properties (classes) of discrete distributions. Specifically, given sample access to an arbitrary distribution D over [n] and a property P , the goal is to distinguish between D ∈ P and l1(D,P) > ε. We develop a general algorithm for this question, which applies to a large range of “shape-constrained” properties, including monotone, log-concave, t-modal, piecewise-polynomial, and Poisson Binomial distributions. Moreover, for all cases considered, our algorithm has near-optimal sample complexity with regard to the domain size and is computationally efficient. For most of these classes, we provide the first non-trivial tester in the literature. In addition, we also describe a generic method to prove lower bounds for this problem, and use it to show our upper bounds are nearly tight. Finally, we extend some of our techniques to tolerant testing, deriving nearly–tight upper and lower bounds for the corresponding questions.
Evolutionary Memetic Models for Malware Intrusion Detection: A Comparative Quest for Computational Solution and Convergence

Data security is now a pertinent issue with advent of the Internet. Methods like cryptography, firewalls and gateways used to prevent attacks on data are becoming unsuccessful. Thus, the need for Intrusion Detection System to enhance security efforts. Varying machine learning models are implemented for rule-based IDS using DARPA dataset to train and generate rules for classification via support-confidence framework and a common fitness function to judge quality of each rule. This will help detect network anomalies, new attack types via rules and allow their addition into knowledgebase. Study presents results of the various stochastic models used with an aim to improve data security and integrity for networked resources.
Placental growth factor : A review of literature and future applications

Placental growth factor is an angiogenic protein, highly expressed during pregnancy, which correlates well with placental function. In this review, we highlight the origin, structure and function of Placental Growth Factor and its receptors. We discuss how their pro-angiogenic/ anti-angiogenic synergism is critical for successful placentation and how their imbalance may be utilised as a diagnostic marker of disease or a potential therapeutic target for adverse pregnancy outcomes.
Paper to be presented at the DRUID Academy Conference 2020 at University of Southern Denmark , Odense , Denmark January 16-17 , 2020 China in the Global Markets for Technologies

Raphael Mateus Martins, Aalborg University, Department of Business and Management, IBC/IKE/DRUID, Denmark Year of enrollment: 2 Expected final date: 01.12. 2020 email: rmm@business.aau. dk China has gained more attention in the past few years. One of the main observations is the increase in patent applications and granted patents both at the national patent office and at international patent offices such as the USPTO. This increase in the output of technology presents an interesting base for exploring if and how China is interacting in the global market for technologies. Utilizing data from USPTO patent reassignment dataset, this analysis maps international flows of patent ownership transfer between China and other countries. Data from the US patent reassignment database have been subject to several filters resulting in 1176 patents granted between 2000-2017 that have been traded internationally between China and another country in small bundles. The analyse explores, first, at the macro level, which countries China interacts the most with and the main role China plays in this international market for patents. Secondly, it explores the type of technologies involved in these transfers. The results suggest that China has a specific role in supplying certain types of technologies to the international market for patents. It also hints that although most flows occur between China and the United States, the top partners are present across different continents. The analysis is of explorative nature and aims at identifying relevant key aspects of Chinese implication in the global markets for technology that shall be pursued in future research.
QURATOR: Innovative Technologies for Content and Data Curation

In all domains and sectors, the demand for intelligent systems to support the processing and generation of digital content is rapidly increasing. The availability of vast amounts of content and the pressure to publish new content quickly and in rapid succession requires faster, more efficient and smarter processing and generation methods. With a consortium of ten partners from research and industry and a broad range of expertise in AI, Machine Learning and Language Technologies, the QURATOR project, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, develops a sustainable and innovative technology platform that provides services to support knowledge workers in various industries to address the challenges they face when curating digital content. The project's vision and ambition is to establish an ecosystem for content curation technologies that significantly pushes the current state of the art and transforms its region, the metropolitan area Berlin-Brandenburg, into a global centre of excellence for curation technologies.
New Late-Pleistocene uranium–thorium and ESR dates for the Singa hominid (Sudan)

Abstract The Singa (Sudan) calvaria has been interpreted previously as a terminal Pleistocene modern human fossil, perhaps related to the Bushman of Southern Africa. Here we report new mass-spectrometric U–Th dates for the calcrete deposit enclosing the fossil teeth and the calvaria itself and new electron spin resonance (ESR) dates for associated dental materials. The new data constrain the age of the hominid to at least 133±2 ka. Together with the preferred linear uptake (LU) ESR dates, the U–Th data confirm that the intriguing mixture of modern and archaic characteristics in the Singa specimen date from isotope stage 6. Far from being a modern human fossil, it represents a rare example of an archaic African population which may have been ancestral to all modernHomo sapiens.
AVADHAN: System for Open-Domain Telugu Question Answering

This paper presents the Question Answering (QA) system for a low resource language like 'Telugu' named 'AVADHAN'. This work started with preparing a pre-tagged data set for Telugu Question Classification (QC). We also explained the ambiguities and complexities involved in the data set. AVADHAN exhibits the comparisons between Support Vector Machine (SVM), Logistic Regression (LR) and Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) classifiers for achieving the plausible answers. After performing various experiments the overall accuracies obtained, for both 'exact match' and 'partial match' based approaches, were for SVM (31.6%, 68.5%), LR (31%, 66.6%) and for MLP (30%, 67%) respectively.