Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Antidermatophytic and antioxidant activity of hexane extracts of Cassia alata leaves and its phytochemical screening

Copyright  2017 irjpbs The aim of the study was to evaluate the free radical scavenging and antidermatophytic activity of hexane extract of Cassia alata leaves. Hexane extract was prepared by using soxhlet apparatus by boiling 50 g of dried leaves powder mixed with 200 ml of hexane. Prepared hexane extract was screened in-vitro for their antioxidant and antidermatophytic activity. The inhibitory concentration (IC50) of hexane extract against free radical DPPH was assayed. The antidermatophytci activity was performed against Trichophyton mentagrophytes, Trichophyton rubrum, Epidermophyton floccosum, Microsporum audouinii and Microsporum canis. Minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) and minimum fungicidal concentration (MFC) of the hexane extract was determined as 29. 3μg/ml. The MIC value of the hexane extract was determined ranging between 20 and 75 μl/ml. The MFC values of the hexane extracts is 25 μl /mL. From these results we concluded that the extracts of Cassia alata leaves could be exists effective antioxidant and antidermatophytic activity even at minimum concentrations. However, hexane extracts exhibits excellent antifungal agent properties and it found to be alternative to chemotherapeutic agents.
STUDY OF LIGNIN NANOPARTICLE-REINFORCED PHENOLIC COMPOSITE FOAMS FORMULATION USING AN EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN

The formulation of lignin nanoparticle-reinforced phenolic composite foams (LRPF) was studied using an experimental design. The variables anaylzed were lignin nanoparticle weight fraction (wt.%) and blowing agent amount (1.5-3.5 wt.%) and the responses analyzed were apparent density and compressive modulus and strength. In addition, characterization of lignin nanoparticles incorporated in the material was carried out. Apparent density and compressive modulus and strength decreased as lignin nanoparticle weight fraction and blowing agent amount were increased. The greatest compressive mechanical properties of LRPF were obtained when 8.5 wt. % of lignin nanoparticles was incorporated. Compressive modulus and strength of LRPF were improved and the amount of blowing agent necessary to produce a LRPF was reduced compared to unreinforced phenolic foams.
Automating News Comment Moderation with Limited Resources: Benchmarking in Croatian and Estonian

This article describes initial work into the automatic classiﬁcation of user-generated content in news media to support human moderators. We work with real-world data — comments posted by readers under online news articles — in two less-resourced European languages, Croatian and Estonian. We describe our dataset, and experiments into automatic classiﬁcation using a range of models. Performance obtained is reasonable but not as good as might be expected given similar work in offensive language classiﬁcation in other languages; we then investigate possible reasons in terms of the variability and reliability of the data and its annotation.
Assessment of Postoperative Pain by the Parent, Nur se and an Independent Observer Among 1-7 Year Old Children

Aim: This study was carried out to detect the difference s in the assessment of the pain that may occur foll owing operation between 1 and 7 years old children, by pa rent, nurse and an independent observer. Methods: This cross-sectional and descriptive study was con ducted on 236 pediatric patients between 1 and 7 years old who were operated in Pediatric Surgery Cl inic between April 1-October 1, 2016 in Ankara, Tur key. Data were collected by parent, nurse and independen t observer information forms, “Numeric Pain Rating Scale” and “Wong-Baker Faces Pain Rating Scale. Results: Based on Numeric Pain Rating Scale in the study; at first admission of the operated child to the servi ce following the operation, pain rating scores of the parent, nurse and independent observer were found t o be incompatible with intraclass correlation coefficien t of 0.676 (p<0.05). At two hours after the admissi on of the pediatric child to the service following the operat ion, pain rating scores between parent, nurse and i ndependent observer were found to be compatible with an intrac lass correlation coefficient of 0.702 at a signific ant level (p<0.05). Based on Wong-Baker Faces Pain Rating Sca le in the study, pain rating scores at first admiss ion to the service (an intraclass correlation coefficient of 0 .696) and at two hours after the admission to the s ervice (an intraclass correlation coefficient of 0.684) were f ound to be incompatible (p<0.05). Conclusion: Postoperative pain levels of operated children were evaluated by the parent, nurse and independent observer in a different way.
Persistent Central Bronchospasm Caused by Esophageal Ulcer Complicated with Esophageal Fistula and Mediastinal Abscess

Bronchospasm caused by an esophageal fistula or mediastinal abscess is not uncommon. Most of patients occur in small and medium-sized airways. It is rare to take the presentation of persistent central branch tracheal spasm and acute hypoxia as the primary symptoms. This article describes a 63-year-old female patient had a 1-day history of wheezing. Chest CT scan showed evident extensive stenosis of the bilateral central bronchi, and the formation of an abscess around the esophagus. Esophagoscopy revealed esophageal fistula. The patient received a series of anti-infective, antispasmodic, and antiasthmatic therapy methods, and recovered soon. Esophageal fistula caused by esophageal ulcer could occur in some tumor patients, resulting in mediastinal infection for the patients. But esophageal ulcers caused by accidental fishbone stuck in the throat are seldom. Most of the patients firstly may present with some symptoms related to digestive system organs. The study demonstrates the case is the rare presentation of a persistent central bronchial spasm caused by an esophageal ulcer, esophageal fistula, and mediastinal abscess induced by fishbone. We suggest that when patients accidentally are stuck in the throat with fishbone, they should seek medical assistance timely to make a definite diagnosis and treatment as early as possible.
UNIVERSITY OF LATVIA FACULTY OF PHYSICS AND MATHEMATICS

4 Introduction . 5 Goals and tasks . 8 Theoretical background . 9 1.1. Hierarchical organization for form and color . 9 1.2. Texture segregation . 9 1.3. Visual masking . 10 1.4. Color vision deficiencies . 11 1.5. Color after-images . 12 1.6. Filling-in . 12 2. Texture segregation experiments . 14 2.1. Perceptual learning with texture segregation . 14 2.1.1. Stimuli and methods . 14 2.1.2. Results . 15 2.2. Contextual modulation in texture segmentation task . 16 2.2.1. Materials and methods . 16 2.2.2. Results . 17 2.3. Application for amblyopia research . 19 2.3.
A Multi-Factor Risk Model for Severe Covid-19 for Vaccine Prioritization and Monitoring Based on a 15 Million Medicare Cohort

Background: Public Health interventions to slow the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic focus on protecting individuals at risk for severe disease. Risk categorization is essential to effective pandemic response. However, existing risk models for severe Covid-19 lack needed integration of both socio-demographic and clinical risk factors, and geographic characteristics. Methods: We present an integrated multi-factor risk model for severe Covid-19 using de-identified Medicare claims from which we extracted demographic and clinical data for a cohort of 15 million Medicare beneficiaries with 770,000 Covid-19 cases, and socio-economic data at the county and zip code level from the CDC Social Vulnerability Index. The model and associated digital maps were developed as part of Project Salus of the Department of Defense Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, for use by the National Guard and other military personnel in their support mission to hospitals and local jurisdictions impacted by the pandemic. Results: The model affirms ethnicity (Black: OR 1.64; 95% CI 1.61-1.68, American Indian: OR 2.21; 95% CI 2.01-2.42), age over 85 (OR 1.75, 95% CI 1.69-1.81), the socio-economic factor of residing in a zip code in the lowest quartile of income (OR 1.23; 95% CI 1.21-1.26), ESRD (OR 2.35; 95% CI 2.25-2.45) and chronic lung disease (OR 1.95; 95% CI 1.90-2.00) as leading risk factors for Covid-19 hospitalizations, but reveals low risk for COPD (OR 1.15; 95% CI 1.13 -1.17) and minimal or no risk for diabetes (OR 1.03; CI 1.01-1.05), CHF (OR 1.10, 95% CI 1.08-1.12) or hypertension (OR 0.96; 95% CI 0.94-0.98), and demonstrates an association between prior herpes zoster immunization (OR 0.74; 95% CI 0.71-0.77), and to a lesser degree prior influenza and pneumococcal vaccines with less severe Covid-19. Conclusions: This multi-factor risk model and derived digital maps can be applied for use by national and local health authorities to augment existing tools for pandemic response, including monitoring of post Covid-19 sequelae, prioritization of Covid-19 vaccine, and vaccine monitoring for both safety and efficacy.
Comparison of modeled wind speed fields with scatterometer wind data over the Black Sea

The present work is dedicated to the quality assessment of wind at 10m from atmospheric numerical weather prediction models (NWP) ALADIN and ECMWF NWP HRES for the Black Sea using the scatterometer wind data for the period January 2018 May 2019. The accuracy of atmospheric models is of great importance for the operational marine forecasting products for the Black Sea, developed at the National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology (NIMH). The driving forces for the wave models are the wind fields at 10 m over the sea surface provided by the atmospheric models. The output from wave models depends largely on the quality of the wind fields. Validation of the products is a difficult task because of the lack of conventional (in situ) data. For more than 50 years, satellite technology has given a possibility to use the satellite-derived wind and wave data for the validation of numerical models. The evaluation of the regional atmospheric model ALADIN and the ECMWF NWP HRES model is performed for wind at 10 m over the Black Sea through comparisons with the satellite observations from the Advanced Scatterometer (ASCAT) Ocean Surface Wind Vectors data of 12 km resolution on board the Metop-B satellite. The scatterometer wind data, which are scientifically qualified and regularly updated are provided by the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS), part of the Copernicus Programme. This paper presents statistical results of the verification study. The winds predicted by the limited area model ALADIN show better coincidence with the observed winds than those obtained by the ECMWF NWP HRES model.
Image enhancement through data-domain least-squares migration: an Orphan basin example

Depth migration techniques have been widely used in areas with strong lateral velocity variation. Though very robust, these methods suffer from acquisition and propagation effects that limit resolution and impact amplitudes of seismic images. Least-Squares migration (LSM) is becoming a standard in areas with complex geology. It compensates for acquisition limitations and variable illumination, and results in more reliable amplitude information with higher resolution. In this case study, data-domain LSM is applied to a deep water seismic data from offshore Canada targeting vertical resolution and fault definition improvements.
Prevalence and Pattern of Congenital Malformations among Neonates in a Medical College Hospital-A Retrospective Study

Background: Congenital malformations (CMs) represent a major cause of admission in most of the NICU all over the world. They represent a defect in the morphogenesis during early fetal life. With the advances in delivery and newborn care, CMs have emerged as one of the most common causes of perinatal mortality. Objective: The objective of this study was to determine the prevalence and pattern of CMs among neonates in a teaching hospital. Materials and Methods: The retrospective study of live neonates from newborn to 28 days of age both inborn and outborn admitted to the unit irrespective of their general condition with CMs comprised the study population. Details of investigations like ultrasonography, radiology, echocardiography, laboratory studies have done were noted from the case record. Their outcome in the form of morbidity, hospital stay, and mortality was analyzed. Results: In 2132 babies, with malformations were 87 (4.08%). Of which inborn babies were 3.9% and outborn babies were 4.8%. Of the malformed babies were 54% of male and 45% of female, 1% was DSD. Cesarean delivery was 63.2%, other modes were 36.8%. The cardiovascular system was involved in 35.6% of babies, followed by the musculoskeletal system (26.4%), then the genitourinary system 13.8%, gastrointestinal (9.2%), and central nervous system (10.3%). Maternal risk factors associated with malformations were maternal diabetes in 2.3%, age between 21 and 30 in 87.4%, and consanguinity in 8%. Maximum mortality occurred in babies with cardiovascular system malformations (76.5%). Majority of babies with malformations discharged (65.5%) only 19.5% of babies expired and 15% of babies were referred for intervention at a higher center. Conclusions: CMs represent one of the causes of neonatal mortality. Health-care managers must stress on primary prevention in the form of good antenatal care, nutrition, and drugs to decrease the preventable share of CMs. Early detection and timely management are required to decrease mortality.
Gaming Console Home-Based Exercise for Adults with Cystic Fibrosis: Study Protocol.

Background Despite evidence of exercise benefits to lung function, adherence to routine exercise in adults with cystic fibrosis (CF) is low. The incorporation of interactive virtual reality video exergame activities in home-based programs as an incentive may help improve motivation and adherence to exercise. This proposed study will attempt to improve the physical fitness and respiratory function of sedentary adults with CF by engaging them in a Nintendo Wii Fit Plus™ home-based exercise program. Methods A single group pretest-posttest design will be used to examine the immediate (12-weeks) and long-term effect (24-weeks) of a home-based exergame program on improving pulmonary-related function (physical fitness and respiratory function) in sedentary adults with CF. Participants will receive a one-time orientation to the Wii Fit Plus, and will be requested to use it to exercise according to the recommended guidelines 3 times a week for 30 min in the following 24 weeks. Monthly phone monitoring will be conducted during the first 12 weeks. Besides evaluating the efficacy of a home-based exergame program on improving aerobic capacity, physical activity, and respiratory-related symptoms, we will examine the impact of the exergame on airway ion transport as measured by nasal potential difference, which will be collected at baseline and at the end of 12-weeks only. Discussion This is the first study to evaluate the feasibility, acceptability and potential effectiveness of a low-cost exercise avenue (i.e., exergames) for adults with CF to improve their pulmonary-related function, which is important for CF disease management and prevention of complications. In addition, the proposed study will be the first to investigate the therapeutic efficacy of home-based exergames on airway ion transport among adults with CF. Through an increase in physical activity, it is expected that participants will improve their physical fitness and respiratory function at the end of the study. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov ID: NCT02277860.
Neurite orientation dispersion and density imaging in cocaine use disorder

Cocaine use disorder (CUD) is characterized by compulsive searching for cocaine that produces cognitive deficits, including lack of inhibition and decision-making. Several studies have shown that cocaine users exhibit brain volume and diffusion-based white-matter alterations in a wide variety of brain regions. However, the non-specificity of standard volumetric and diffusion-tensor methods to detect structural micropathology may lead to wrong conclusions. To better understand microstructural pathology in CUD, we analyzed 60 CUD participants (3 female) and 43 non-CUD controls (HC; 2 female) retrospectively from our cross-sectional Mexican SUD neuroimaging dataset (SUDMEX-CONN), using multi-shell diffusion-weighted imaging and the neurite orientation dispersion and density imaging (NODDI) analysis whose aims to more accurately model micro-structural pathology . We used Viso values of NODDI that employ a three-compartment model in white (WM) and gray-matter (GM). These values were correlated with clinical measures, including psychiatric severity status, impulsive behavior and pattern of cocaine and tobacco use in the CUD group. As hypothesized, we found higher whole-brain microstructural pathology in WM and GM in CUD patients than controls. ROI analysis revealed higher Viso-NODDI values in superior longitudinal fasciculus, cingulum, hippocampus cingulum, forceps minor and Uncinate fasciculus, as well as in frontal and parieto-temporal GM structures. Correlations between significant ROIs showed a dependency of impulsivity and years of cocaine consumption over Viso-NODDI. However, we did not find correlations with psychopathology measures. Overall, microstructural pathology seems to be present in CUD both in gray and white-matter, however their clinical relevance remains questionable.
The association between socioeconomic status and mobility reductions in the early stage of England's COVID-19 pandemic

This study uses mobile phone data to examine how socioeconomic status was associated with the extent of mobility reduction during the spring 2020 lockdown in England in a manner that considers both potentially confounding effects and spatial dependency and heterogeneity. It shows that socioeconomic status as approximated through income and occupation was strongly correlated with the extent of mobility reduction. It also demonstrates that the specific nature of the association of socioeconomic status with mobility reduction varied markedly across England. The methodological implication is that conventional, spatially naive econometric analysis of the links between an area's socioeconomic status and mobility reduction is inadequate. Spatial regression modelling, and preferably multi-scale geographically weighted regression analysis, should be used instead. Finally, the analysis suggests that the ability to restrict everyday mobility in response to a national lockdown is distributed in a spatially uneven manner, and may need to be considered a luxury or, failing that, a tactic of survival for specific social groups
Road Classification from VHR Imagery

Updating of topographic maps or rapid mapping for supporting crisis management are examples of applications where automated or semi-automated procedures of road extraction are demanded. The paper focuses on development of classification rules for road extraction from very high resolution satellite images. From the methodological point of view, a main emphasis is on object based image analyses and finding suitable features for discriminating consolidated (asphalt) roads from other land cover classes. Results of practical tests on QuickBird images from the surroundings of Prague (combination of agriculture, urban and forest areas) are presented. Supervised, per-pixel approach was also applied. A comparison of automatically derived land cover classes with manual interpretation of imagery showed similar level of accuracy of pixel and object based classification results. Nevertheless, a visual inspection proved better consistency of OBIA derived road segments that should be an input for creating a vector road network GIS layer.
ProbRobScene: A Probabilistic Specification Language for 3D Robotic Manipulation Environments

Robotic control tasks are often first run in simulation for the purposes of verification, debugging and data augmentation. Many methods exist to specify what task a robot must complete, but few exist to specify what range of environments a user expects such tasks to be achieved in. ProbRobScene is a probabilistic specification language for describing robotic manipulation environments. Using the language, a user need only specify the relational constraints that must hold between objects in a scene. ProbRobScene then automatically generates scenes which conform to this specification. By combining aspects of probabilistic programming languages and convex geometry, we provide a method for sampling this space of possible environments efficiently. We demonstrate the usefulness of our language by using it to debug a robotic controller in a tabletop robot manipulation environment.
SLAM in the Field: An Evaluation of Monocular Mapping and Localization on Challenging Dynamic Agricultural Environment

This paper demonstrates a system capable of combining a sparse, indirect, monocular visual SLAM, with both offline and real-time Multi-View Stereo (MVS) reconstruction algorithms. This combination overcomes many obstacles encountered by autonomous vehicles or robots employed in agricultural environments, such as overly repetitive patterns, need for very detailed reconstructions, and abrupt movements caused by uneven roads. Furthermore, the use of a monocular SLAM makes our system much easier to integrate with an existing device, as we do not rely on a LiDAR (which is expensive and power consuming), or stereo camera (whose calibration is sensitive to external perturbation e.g. camera being displaced). To the best of our knowledge, this paper presents the first evaluation results for monocular SLAM, and our work further explores unsupervised depth estimation on this specific application scenario by simulating RGB-D SLAM to tackle the scale ambiguity, and shows our approach produces reconstructions that are helpful to various agricultural tasks. Moreover, we highlight that our experiments provide meaningful insight to improve monocular SLAM systems under agricultural settings.
Dissipation Asymmetry Relation.

We establish a relation between the degree of dissipation and the degree of asymmetry of the statistics of random quantities obeying the fluctuation theorem. The relation is expressed in terms of a lower bound on the average dissipation: the more asymmetry is displayed the more dissipation is necessary to sustain it. The reported result improves the thermodynamic uncertainty relation that similarly establishes a lower bound on average dissipation in terms of the precision of the statistics. The result is illustrated with examples and generalisations.
Locating the gamma-ray emission region in the brightest Fermi-LAT flat-spectrum radio quasars

We present a temporal and spectral analysis of the gamma-ray flux from nine of the brightest flat spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs) detected with the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) during its first eight years of operation, with the aim of constraining the location of the emission region. Using the increased photon statistics provided from the two brightest flares of each source, we find evidence of sub-hour variability from B2 1520+31, PKS 1502+106 and PKS 1424-41, with the remaining sources showing variability on timescales of a few hours. These indicate gamma-ray emission from extremely compact regions in the jet, potentially compatible with emission from within the broad line region (BLR). The flare spectra show evidence of a spectral cut-off in 7 of the 18 flares studied, further supporting the argument for BLR emission in these sources. An investigation into the energy dependence of cooling timescales finds evidence for both BLR origin and emission from within the molecular torus (MT). However, Monte Carlo simulations show that the very high energy (VHE) emission from all sources except 3C 279, 3C 454.3 and 4C 21.35 is incompatible with a BLR origin. The combined findings of all the approaches used suggest that the gamma-ray emission in the brightest FSRQs originates in multiple compact emission regions throughout the jet, within both the BLR and the MT.