Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Insights from Cochlear and Auditory Midbrain Implantees

Central auditory processing in humans was investigated by comparing the perceptual effects of temporal parameters of electrical stimulation in auditory midbrain implant (AMI) and cochlear implant (CI) users. Four experiments were conducted to measure the following: effect of interpulse intervals on detection thresholds and loudness; temporal modulation transfer functions (TMTFs); effect of duration on detection thresholds; and forward masking decay. The CI data were consistent with a phenomenological model that based detection or loudness decisions on the output of a sliding temporal integration window, the input to which was the hypothetical auditory nerve response to each stimulus pulse. To predict the AMI data, the model required changes to both the neural response input (i.e., midbrain activity to AMI stimuli, compared to auditory nerve activity to CI stimuli) and the shape of the integration window. AMI data were consistent with a neural response that decreased more steeply compared to CI stimulation as the pulse rate increased or interpulse interval decreased. For one AMI subject, the data were consistent with a significant adaptation of the neural response for rates above 200 Hz. The AMI model required an integration window that was significantly wider (i.e., decreased temporal resolution) than that for CI data, the latter being well fit using the same integration window shape as derived from normal-hearing data. These models provide a useful way to conceptualize how stimulation of central auditory structures differs from stimulation of the auditory nerve and to better understand why AMI users have difficulty processing temporal cues important for speech understanding.
Prevalence and Perception of Shisha Smoking among University Students: A Cross-sectional Study

Aims and Objectives: Understanding perceptions and factors behind the rise in the prevalence of shisha smoking is important for the development of prevention strategies and policies. The aim of this descriptive study was to assess the prevalence and perception of shisha smoking among university students. Materials and Methods: The anonymous, self-structured 12-item questionnaire was administered to 450 male university students, with an overall response rate of 82.44% (n = 371). Prevalence, knowledge, and other associated factors regarding shisha smoking were compared between dental and other specialty students using SPSS software for descriptive statistical analysis. Results: Among 371 university students, 40.43% (n = 150) were nonsmokers, 32.88% (n = 122) were shisha smokers, 12.94% (n = 48) were cigarette smokers, and 13.75% (n = 51) smoked both shisha and cigarette. The overall prevalence of shisha smoking (46.63%, n = 173) was higher than that of cigarette smoking (26.68%, n = 99). The percentage of those knowledgeable about the ill effects of shisha smoking was 44.2% with lesser knowledge among shisha smokers than cigarette smokers. There was no statistically significant difference in the mean total knowledge score between dental (5.65 ± 2.08) and other specialty (5.21 ± 2.3) students. Conclusions: A high prevalence of shisha use among university students is reported in this study as well as a general lack of understanding of the dangers involved with this behavior. Study authors recommend the development of policies targeted at preventing further rise in the prevalence of shisha smoking through the implementation of preventive strategies such as incorporating this topic into the school syllabus and encouraging research on shisha smoking.
Response assessment of gefitinib therapy in the epidermal growth factor receptor- mutant advanced adenocarcinoma lung at a tertiary care center in North India

Context: Oral tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) have been proven to improve response rates (RRs) and progression-free survival in a chemo-naïve setting in the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)-mutant advanced lung adenocarcinoma patients in studies conducted in Western countries. Similar data from India are currently sparse. Aims: The aim is to study the epidemiological, clinical, and radiological profile of advanced-stage of lung adenocarcinoma patients harboring an EGFR mutation and to assess the response of TKIs in these patients. Settings and Design: This was a prospective observational study performed at a tertiary care hospital. Materials and Methods: A total of 40 advanced-stage lung adenocarcinoma patients who harbored an EGFR mutation and received an oral TKI (gefitinib) were included in the study and response was evaluated using the Response Evaluation Criteria for Solid Tumors. Statistical Analysis Used: Qualitative variables were compared using the Chi-square test/Fisher's exact test as appropriate. Results: A total of 30 (75%) patients had an exon 19 mutation and 3 (7.5%) patients had an exon 21 mutation. The overall RR to gefitinib was 57.5%. Eleven (27.5%) patients had partial response, 12 (30%) patients had stable disease (SD), and 6 (15%) patients had progressive disease. The RR was more favorable among females, rural residents, nonsmokers, patients having good performance score, and stage III disease. Conclusions: The overall RR to gefitinib was comparable to those reported in western studies but lower than those reported in Asian studies at our center.
Anticoagulants for cancer-associated ischemic stroke

Patients with cancer-associated ischemic stroke pose similar clinical manifestations and image characteristics, mainly embolic infarction, as patients with atrial fibrillation do. D-dimer, a degraded product of fibrin polymer, is a useful indicator of hypercoagulability, which frequently increases in cancer-associated stroke, but not in stroke resulted from atrial fibrillation. The level of serum D-dimer is associated with mortality, prognosis, and recurrence of systemic thromboembolism in these patients. Theoretically, drugs block coagulation cascade, such as heparin and low-molecular-weight-heparin (LMWH), oral direct anticoagulants, could attenuate the status of hypercoagulation and decrease the amount of D-dimer. These drugs may be helpful to prevent thromboembolic events in patients with cancer-associated hypercoagulability. Vitamin K antagonist, warfarin, decreases the production of coagulation factors, but not interrupts coagulation cascade may not be helpful to decrease hypercoagulability, but increase the risk of bleeding. However, the treatment of cancer-associated embolic stroke is still controversial. This article reviews relevant clinical studies and proposes the applicability of direct oral anticoagulants from the pathophysiological mechanism.
Computer vision syndrome among mobile phone users in Al-Ahsa, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Background: The growing number of mobile phone users or video display terminals (VDTs) puts them at hazards of computer vision syndrome (CVS) resulting in ocular surface damage, eye strain, exhaustion, and muscular complaints as result of improper usage of VDTs. Objectives: To determine the prevalence of CVS and to get a baseline data about this syndrome among inhabitants of Al-Ahsa, Saudi Arabia. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted for the duration of 1 month in Al Ahsa Saudi Arabia. Convenience sampling was used with a validated questionnaire to measure the CVS symptoms and to collect data. Consequently, Chi-square test was performed to observe the prevalence of CVS with its risk factors using SPSS version 22. Results: This study showed the prevalence of CVS among Al-Ahsa population to be 43.5% of the screened sample; this was significance results in the term of blurred vision (P = 0.002), dry eye (P = 0.011) and ocular discomfort (P = 0.013) among individuals suffer from CVS. Regarding extraocular complaint, there was a significant result seen in the presence of neck and shoulder pain (P = 0.008) and dizziness (P = 0.045) in individual developed CVS. Conclusion: The study found significant results in term of ocular and nonocular complaints among individuals who developed CVS from Al-Ahsa. Further longitudinal studies are required to study the effect of VDTs on ocular health.
Credit Risk Management in Commercial Banks Chinwe

The study examined credit risk and management in Nigeria Commercial Banks. From the findings it is concluded that banks profitability is inversely influenced by the levels of loans and advances, non-performing loans and deposits thereby exposing them to great risk of illiquidity and distress. Therefore, management need to be cautious in setting up a credit policy that will not negatively affects profitability and also they need to know how credit policy affects the operation of their banks to ensure judicious utilization of deposits and maximization of profit. Improper credit risk management reduce the bank profitability, affects the quality of its assets and increase loan losses and non-performing loan which may eventually lead to financial distress. CBN for policy purposes should regularly assess the lending attitudes of commercial banks. One direct way is to assess the degree of credit crunch by isolating the impact of supply side of loan from the demand side taking into account the opinion of the firms about banks’ lending attitude.
0 1 5 ) 0 5 6 Classical nova V 339 Del ( Nova Del 2013 )-a short review

Multifrequency observations of the classical CO nova V339 Del, detected in all frequencies from γ-rays to radio, are reviewed. Nova V339 Del was discovered on 2013 August 14.584 UT. The times of decline from the brightness maximum V = 4.4 mag, reached on 2013 August 16.47, UT, was estimated as t2,V = 10 days, t3,V = 18 days, so V339 Del can be classified as a fast nova with super-Eddington luminosity at maximum. The maximum-magnitude-rate-of-decline relations were used to determine an absolute magnitude at maximum MV,max = −8.70± 0.03, MB,max = -8.45 ±0.08 and distance d = 3.2±0.3 kpc, using the interstellar extinction E(B−V ) = 0.184±0.035. The distance to the nova found by different methods is in the range 2.7 4.54 kpc. The white dwarf mass was estimated from MB,max as Mwd = 1.04±0.02 M⊙. We suggest that the eruption occurred on the surface of a CO white dwarf. V339 Del is the first nova that has been observed to synthesize the element lithium. The dust consisted of amorphous carbon grains was detected in infrared region. The UBV RCIC light curves of nova constructed from daily means of all available data, including our own observations obtained from its discovery till August 2015, are presented and used to show the track of the nova in the color-color diagram during the first 100 days. The dust particles formed in the dense clumps of ejecta were responsible for the U light curve variability. Our medium-resolution spectrum of V339 Del taken in August 2015 by the 6m SAO telescope in North Caucasus confirms a non-spherical structure of the ejected shell.
CLASSIFICATION PROCEDURES FOR INTRUSION DETECTION BASED ON KDD CUP 99 DATA SET

In network security framework, intrusion detection is one of a benchmark part and is a fundamental way to protect PC from many threads. The huge issue in intrusion detection is presented as a huge number of false alerts; this issue motivates several experts to discover the solution for minifying false alerts according to data mining that is a consideration as analysis procedure utilized in a large data e.g. KDD CUP 99. This paper presented various data mining classification for handling false alerts in intrusion detection as reviewed. According to the result of testing many procedure of data mining on KDD CUP 99 that is no individual procedure can reveal all attack class, with high accuracy and without false alerts. The best accuracy in Multilayer Perceptron is 92%; however, the best Training Time in Rule based model is 4 seconds . It is concluded that ,various procedures should be utilized to handle several of network attacks.
The role of renewable energy consumption in Evidence from asymmetric causality 1

This paper investigates the causality among economic growth, renewable energy consumption, capital and labor for new EU member countries for the period of 1990–2009, by using asymmetric causality test approach and autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach. The empirical results support that renewable energy consumption has positive impacts on economic growth for all investigated countries. But only for Bulgaria, Estonia, Poland, and Slovenia there is statistically significant impact on economic growth has found. And also supports neutrality hypothesis for Cyprus, Estonia, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia while the conservation hypothesis is present for Czech Republic. The fact that there is a causal relationship from economic growth to renewable energy consumption and the growth hypothesis is supported for Bulgaria, referring to causality from energy consumption to economic growth.
The Influence of the Resource Wealth on the Transformations in Competitive Authoritarian Regimes

As a result of the absence of a firm agreement, the discussions about the political regime classifications appear on a scientific agenda and causes, even more, controversy. The minimalist concept of the democracy corresponds with the previous theories and argumentations, however, the weak side of this was evinced in the studies of the last two decades. Rapid changes in the economic performance and the regime transitions in Southern Europe (the 1970s), Latin America (from the late 1970s through the late 1980s) etc. were fondly interpreted by scholars as the “transition to democracy” or “democratization”. Nevertheless, the “third wave” of democracy and other explanations in this paradigm were criticized. The “gray area” between democracies and autocracies is exceedingly wide. Countries which were roughly marked as democracies are developing in a new turn of the political regime transformations. Larry Dimond, for instance, determines this process as the democratic recession basing on trends of the dramatical decline of the freedom and the rule of law in the mature democracies (L. Diamond, 2015). Why do European democracies such as Germany, Great Britain or France still exist and demonstrate the tendencies of the successful development whereas democracies of the third wave tend to be unstable? This is a significant sign of the misunderstanding about the previous classifications. Despite the fact of the concept disagreements, one thing that alarms scientists is connected to the current state of affairs in the countries which are marked as the state of the autocratic transition. In such countries as Russia, Turkey, Ukraine or Venezuela the contradictions between the artificial democratic climate and the real quality of the democratic political institutions becomemore salient. Hence, sharp turns back to the classification of the gray area and the efforts to explain mechanisms of the regime transitions are meaningful in the mainstream of the modern political science. Another meaningful issue is the country’s resource wealth which has become the subject of wide discussions about the regime transformations. The earliest assumption of the oil curse concept explains simple interaction where the resources bonanza leads to much more authoritarian regime characteristics. However, the latest researches show that there are the examples of the resource blessing when the institutional mechanisms are effective. This research is devoted to the regime transitions in the countries of the gray area defined as competitive authoritarian regimes. The combination of the resource wealth theory and the assumptions of the competitive authoritarianism provide good results in the estimation of institutional quality and the explanation of the regime transition mechanisms, avoiding the democracy bias which commonly appears in the modern political science.
Olive grove residues and olive extraction process solid biowaste streams management via thermo chemical valorization

Olive oil production is a significant economic activity in the Mediterranean basin and a considerable employment source. Nevertheless, the environmental pressures associated with the olive tree farming and olive oil extraction are remaining of note. Olive farming and olive oil processing are generating large quantities of solid wastes the disposal of which is still considered as a major problem for the farmers and the mill operators. The commonly used management practice of combustion is not in line with the terms of sustainability, thus, different waste management techniques should come into scene. In this respect the thermochemical valorization via pyrolysis seems to be a promising alternative as it generates both energy carriers (biomass and bio-oil) that can be utilized in the olive grove and the olive mill, and bio-char that could be efficiently used as a soil amendment. Taking into consideration the size of a typical olive grove and an olive mill, the valorization of the solid wastes in this route, could produce enough energy and materials to cover its own needs. This work investigates the above scenario for an olive grove of 10 hectares. A pyrolysis of the solid wastes from the olive tree pruning and the kernels from the olive mill was contacted. The results shown that the produced electricity is not only sufficient enough to cover the energy requirements for the operation of the mill but in the same time it is producing a surplus that can be sold to the grid and provide an extra income to the farmer ensuring the economic viability of the project.
What ’ s the Best Mini-batch ? Empirical Study on Image Classification

The initial goal of this paper is to analyze and see if there is any pattern that we as humans can pick out by looking at the images that would have been the best training mini-batch at different phases of training. Subsequently, we compute the full gradient, and then see which mini-batch of examples would have led to the best approximation of the true gradient. Stochastic Gradient Descent (henceforth SGD) has been a standard approach in machine learning. Mini-batch Gradient Descent (henceforth MBGD) is another popular approach, that is a compromise between SGD and the standard (Batch or Full) Gradient Descent (henceforth GD). While there has been extensive research on efficient Mini-batch Training for Stochastic Optimization [16], there is a paucity of research in discovering image patterns that could direct us to the best mini-batch at different phases of training. To this end, we explore the existence of patterns in MBGD images in relation to the GD, with the goal to find the best training mini-batch at different phases of training. We compare the true gradients (ones from GD) with the mini-batch gradients (ones from MBGD) on the CIFAR-10 dataset by developing an algorithm that finds the best results. Next, we implement several heuristic metrics in order to discover patterns on these images, as it’s not only subjective but also hard to discern objective patterns in images directly. To the best of our knowledge, there has been no similar research in the past. Statisticians have used for years’ heuristics, such as looking at plots, to quickly uncover patterns in their data without formal statistical tests. A successful recognition of some patterns in this framework could save practitioners a significant amount of time, since the optimization of the parameters is mostly done within a highly non-linear surface that is computationally expensive for learning tasks with big data.
CLINICO-PATHOLOGICAL AND THERAPEUTIC IMPLICATIONS OF BOVINE KETOSIS

INTRODUCTION Bovine ketosis, a metabolic disorder, is caused by impaired carbohydrate and fat metabolism and excessive production of ketone bodies (Radostits et al., 2000). It is of substantial economic significance and both clinical and sub-clinical ketosis are associated with production losses (Littledike et al., 1981; Deluyker, 1989). Prevalence of ketosis is known since 19 century and even today this disease is detected in the primitive as well as the organized dairies (Lean et al., 1991). Clinical ketosis typically occurs spontaneously in susceptible high yielding dairy cows between the 2 and 7 week of lactation (Dohoo and Martin, 1984; Grohn et al., 1986). Varying clinical symptoms have been reported by different workers from different parts of the world (Radostits et al., 2000). Some of the symptoms are consistently repeated in majority of the cases and could possibly be utilized for its diagnosis under different agroclimatic and manage mental conditions. Biochemically, the disease is characterized by hypoglycemia, ketonaemia, ketonuria and low levels of hepatic glycogen (Radostits et al., 2000). The bulk of the economic loss is due to the loss of production while the disease is present and failure to return to full production after recovery (Waage, 1989) and treatment and management cost. Diagnosis of the disease is based on the clinical symptoms and determination of glucose levels in blood and ketone bodies in urine and milk. Several treatments for clinical ketosis like parenteral glucose solution, glucose plus insulin, corticosteroids, oral administration of sodium propionate and nicotinic acid have been reported with varying degrees of success (Shpigel et al., 1996 and Radostits et al., 2000). In some reports, a high percentage of recovery in clinical cases of bovine and ovine ketosis following oral glucose therapy has been reported (Herrler, 1989; Scholz, 1990 and Malik, 1996). The present work was, therefore, undertaken with the objectives to study the prevalence, clinical symptomatology, haematobiochemical findings and to evaluate the efficacy of different therapeutic regimens in treatment of bovine ketosis under field conditions.
Awetism : A User Ergonomic Learning Management System Intended for Autism Diagnosed Students in the Philippines

In the Philippines, the population of autism is vastly growing; males are most likely to be diagnosed with autism compared to females. Special Education (SPED) teachers experience difficulties in teaching autism diagnosed students due to their uncontrollable physical behaviors which is a major challenge for SPED teachers nowadays. Further assessment shows that ninety-percent (90%) of Filipino autism diagnosed students are using gadgets mostly and behaves through it. With an aim to help SPED teachers, researchers identified the factors significant to enhance the current learning system. To measure the learnability, learning preference checklist was deployed. After a keen assessment, autism diagnosed students were most likely to learn through visuals and video models. Through normality testing, data gathered implies a normal distribution with a p-value of 0.190. With correlation, the positive strong side are Adaptability (0.638), Illumination (0.753) and Phonics (0.679). With the aid of structural equation modelling (SEM), it resulted in the following estimates of significant factors: Adaptability (0.28), Sounds (0.32) and Videos and Films (0.14) preference. Recommendation presented in this research is an ergonomic design system which has an intention to promote life skills among autism students by eliminating uncontrollable behaviors thus making communication and learning process easier.