Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Immunity around the clock

Immunity is a high-cost, high-benefit trait that defends against pathogens and noxious stimuli but whose overactivation can result in immunopathologies and sometimes even death. Because many immune parameters oscillate rhythmically with the time of day, the circadian clock has emerged as an important gatekeeper for reducing immunity-associated costs, which, in turn, enhances organismal fitness. This is mediated by interactions between extrinsic environmental cues and the intrinsic oscillators of immune cells, which together optimize immune responses throughout the circadian cycle. The elucidation of these clock-controlled immunomodulatory mechanisms might uncover new approaches for treating infections and chronic inflammatory diseases.
PROCYCLICALITY AND BANK LENDING BEHAVIOR IN INDONESIA: THE CASE OF DUAL BANKING SYSTEM

It is widely suggested in the literature that procyclicality of bank lending behavior may lead to financial instability. This study examines bank-lending channel over the business cycle for Indonesian dual banking system by ascertaining to what extent Islamic banks have a role in the credit smoothing. In this context, we utilize Indonesian dual banking system unbalanced panel data for the period 2001-2015. By employing two-step dynamic GMM estimators, the study shows that the bank lending behaviour are procyclical. However, when we categorize the lending behaviour into conventional and Islamic banks, the cyclicality of bank lending affects only for conventional banks. As for the Islamic banks, the business cycle does not affect their financing decision. Specifically, large Islamic banks are more counter-cyclical in their financing behavior than small and medium size Islamic banks. Robustness tests using different measures of loans and model specifications confirm the results that Islamic bank is more stable and less procyclical in the case of Indonesia banking system.
A Review of the Potential Pathogenicity and Management of Frequent Premature Ventricular Contractions

Very frequent premature ventricular complexes (PVCs) may be a reversible cause of dilated cardiomyopathy. Literature on this largely unrecognized entity has increased in the last 15 years. This paper reviews the literature on the consequences of frequent PVCs on myocardial function and management of PVC‐associated cardiomyopathy.
Estimation of ground deformation in mountain areas with improved SAR interferometry

Persistent scatterers synthetic aperture radar interferometry (PSI) is a powerful remote sensing technique to detect the subsidence and landslides with an accuracy of millimeters. Distributed scatterers (DS) can be extracted to increase the measurement points with preserved Persistent scatterers (PSs), especially in non-urban areas covered with vegetation. In the experiment, we selected a set of SAR images of Radarsat-2 satellite, covered Mao country area, to detect the subsidence during the six months. An improved method has been presented to optimize measurement points for applying the InSAR technique to monitor the deformation of mountain areas through processing small scales full-polarization SAR Images.
Various Confocal Scan Features of Cysts and Trophozoites in Cases with Acanthamoeba Keratitis

Purpose To describe the various confocal scan features of cysts and trophozoites in patients with Acanthamoeba keratitis and to specify the associated findings. Methods In a retrospective study of cases between June 2005 and June 2010, we reviewed all the recorded confocal scan images of patients given a high index in regards to clinical suspicion of Acanthamoeba keratitis, in order to specify the various morphometric and morphologic features of Acanthamoeba cysts and trophozoites and to characterize the associated findings in such cases. Results Confocal scan images of 170 eyes from 170 patients were reviewed. Bilayered, target-shaped, coffee-bean and rod-shaped appearances of the cysts were observed in 100%, 82.9%, 36.4%, and 17.5% of cases, respectively. Single file arrangement of the cysts was noticed in 22 cases. The mean size of the cysts was 18.9 μm (range 10-39.6). In all cases, trophozoites were observed as pear-shaped or irregularly wedge-shaped structures, some surrounded by a brilliant halo and some exhibiting fine pseudopodia-like extensions, with mean size of 30.2 μm (range 19.2-55.6). Keratoneuritis and the anterior stromal honeycomb pattern were seen in 28.2% and 5.9% of cases, respectively. Conclusions To our knowledge, this is the largest case-series study on confocal scan features of Acanthamoeba cysts and trophozoites in cases with clinical diagnosis of Acanthamoeba keratitis specifying the morphologic and morphometric criteria of this infectious organism and the associated findings.
Health information technology: promise and progress

ABSTRACT Healthcare costs have risen faster than the rate of inflation for decades. The resulting resource constrains have placed substantial burden on organizations, governments, and societies. While the problem is most prominent in the United States, it is a substantial problem all over the world as populations age. Health information technology holds great promise at helping to alleviate these problems. In this commentary, we use the lens of health economics to outline how health IT holds the potential reduce of some these inefficiencies, highlight the progress that has been made, and provide a framework to connect the lessons learned in health economics with the current efforts in health IT. We discuss ideas at the population, organizational, and individual levels. To this end, we highlight the papers in this special issue which deal with both organizational level healthcare deliver issues and individual-level self-care.
Creating online surveys: some wisdom from the trenches tutorial

With the advent of handy Internet building tools, online surveys are becoming a promising alternative to traditional paper- and mail-based surveys to collect data for survey research. While conducting online surveys has its advantages, it comes with a unique set of challenges. Leveraging our experience in developing multiple online surveys, we highlight some of the critical issues of the process. This tutorial provides insights to develop and conduct online surveys effectively. In a step-by-step process, we offer recommendations to researchers at various decision stages of developing an online survey, from initial planning through the final data-collection phase.
21st CENTURY CORPORATE GOVERNANCE: BALANCING SHAREHOLDERS’ AND STAKEHOLDERS’ INTERESTS

Corporate governance is about the way in which boards oversee the running of a company by its managers, and how board members are in turn accountable to shareholders and the company. This has implications for company behavior towards employees, shareholders, customers and creditors. Good corporate governance plays a vital role in underpinning the integrity and efficiency of financial markets. Poor corporate governance weakens a company’s potential and at worst can pave the way for financial difficulties and even fraud. Corporate governance is used by many companies to ensure that the relationship between management and their stakeholders is kept at a professional level. Just as the name governance suggests authority, the companies use this method to ensure that the company is not involved in any conflict with its stakeholders and in the case where it happens, there is a mechanism of how to solve them. It helps in ensuring discipline within the organization. Good corporate governance should provide proper incentives for the board and management to pursue objectives that are in the interests of the company and its stakeholders and should facilitate effective monitoring. If companies are well governed, they will usually outperform other companies and will be able to attract investors whose support can help to finance further growth.
Health Insurance Status, Cost-Related Medication Underuse, and Outcomes Among Diabetes Patients in Three Systems of Care

BackgroundChronically ill patients often experience difficulty paying for their medications and, as a result, use less than prescribed. ObjectivesThe objectives of this study were to determine the relationship between patients with diabetes’ health insurance coverage and cost-related medication underuse, the association between cost-related underuse and health outcomes, and the role of comorbidity in this process. Research DesignWe used a patient survey with linkage to insurance information and hemoglobin A1C (A1C) test results. Patients.We studied 766 adults with diabetes recruited from 3 Veterans Affairs (VA), 1 county, and 1 university healthcare system. Main Outcomes.Main outcomes consisted of self-reported medication underuse as a result of cost, A1C levels, symptom burden, and Medical Outcomes Study 12-Item Short-Form physical and mental functioning scores. ResultsFewer VA patients reported cost-related medication underuse (9%) than patients with private insurance (18%), Medicare (25%), Medicaid (31%), or no health insurance (40%; P <0.0001). Underuse was substantially more common among patients with multiple comorbid chronic illnesses, except those who used VA care. The risk of cost-related underuse for patients with 3+ comorbidities was 2.8 times as high among privately insured patients as VA patients (95% confidence interval, 1.2–6.5), and 4.3 to 8.3 times as high among patients with Medicare, Medicaid, or no insurance. Individuals reporting cost-related medication underuse had A1C levels that were substantially higher than other patients (P <0.0001), more symptoms, and poorer physical and mental functioning (all P <0.05). ConclusionsMany patients with diabetes use less of their medication than prescribed because of the cost, and those reporting cost-related adherence problems have poorer health. Cost-related adherence problems are especially common among patients with diabetes with comorbid diseases, although the VA’s drug coverage may protect patients from this increased risk.
Developing a Web-Based Intervention to Prevent Drug Use Among Adolescent Girls

Objectives: Girls’ rates of drug use have met up with and, in some instances, surpassed boys’ rates. Although girls and boys share risk and protective factors associated with drug use, girls also have gender-specific risks. Interventions to prevent girls’ drug use must be tailored to address the dynamics of female adolescence. Methods: One such intervention, called RealTeen, is a 9-session, web-based drug abuse prevention program designed to address such gender-specific risk factors associated with young girls’ drug use as depressed mood, low self-esteem, and high levels of perceived stress as well as general drug use risk factors of peer and social influences. Web-based delivery enables girls to interact with the program at their own pace and in a location of their choosing. Implications: This article describes the processes and challenges associated with developing and programming a gender-specific, web-based intervention to prevent drug use among adolescent girls.
Early Metabolic Response to Neoadjuvant Treatment: FDG PET/CT Criteria according to Breast Cancer Subtype.

PURPOSE To investigate parameters based on fluorine 18 fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) positron emission tomographic (PET) imaging that are best correlated with pathologic complete response (PCR) in human epidermal growth factor receptor type 2 (HER2)-positive cancer and triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) and with partial or complete response in ER-positive/HER2-negative breast cancer. MATERIALS AND METHODS This study was approved by institutional review board with waivers of informed written consent and included consecutive patients treated by neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Five PET examination-derived parameters were tested: standard uptake value (SUV) maximum (SUV(max)), peak (SUV(peak)), and mean (SUV(mean)), metabolically active tumor volume, and total lesion glycolysis (TLG). Absolute values at baseline PET, at PET imaging after two cycles of chemotherapy, and variation (ie, change) were measured. Correlations with pathologic response (Wilcoxon rank-sum test) and predictive power assessed (area under the curve [AUC] on the basis of receiver operating characteristic analysis) were examined. RESULTS Included were 169 consecutive patients (mean age, 50 years). PCR was more frequent in HER2-positive tumors (16 of 33 patients [48.5%]) and TNBCs (20 of 54 patients [37%]) than in ER positive/HER2-negative tumors (four of 82 [4.9%]) (P < .001). Among patients with ER-positive/HER2-negative cancers, 33 patients had partial response. In TNBC, best association with PCR was obtained with change in SUV(max) (AUC, 0.86) or change in TLG (AUC, 0.88). In HER2-positive phenotype, absolute SUV(max) (or SUV(peak)) values at PET imaging after two cycles of chemotherapy (AUC for each cycle, 0.93) were better correlated with PCR than change in SUV(max) (AUC, 0.78; P = .11) or change in TLG (AUC, 0.62; P = .005). Regarding ER-positive/HER2-negative cancers, change in SUV(max) or change in TLG (AUC, 0.75) were parameters best correlated with partial or complete response. Baseline SUV(max) was higher in lymph nodes than in primary tumor in 31 patients. Findings were similar considering the site with highest FDG uptake. CONCLUSION Quantitative indexes of tumor glucose use that are best correlated with pathologic response vary by phenotype: change in SUV(max) or TLG are most adequate for TNBCs and ER-positive/ HER2-negative cancers and absolute SUV(max) after two cycles of chemotherapy for HER2-positive breast cancers.
Book Marketing and Publicity Strategies as Determinants of Book Sales

Books have been the conventional means of spreading, preserving and sharing information and knowledge. The book publishing process is divided into conception, production, and marketing which involves publicity, promotion and distribution of published books. Hence the study investigates the effect of book marketing and publicity strategies on book sales. The study adopted a descriptive survey design for a target population which comprises of Eight (8) publishing houses in Ibadan with a total of140 staff. The purposive sampling technique was used to select 80 staff (from marketing, editorial and finance section) with accurate and relevant responses to the study. To achieve the objectives of the study, four (4) research questions were developed to pilot the study. The results indicated that Advance Information Sheet was the most used way of creating awareness on published books and publishing firms find out the impression of readers about their books mainly through marketers. Moreover, it was also revealed that adequate book marketing and publicity strategies will increase book sales and subsequently profit. The study recommends increase level of training for marketers and that the use of internet should be exploited as a tool for book marketing
Analisis de rugosidad por microscopia de fuerza atomica (afm) y software spip aplicado a superficies vitreas

En este trabajo se realiza por medio de metodos estadisticos un analisis de los parametros de confiabilidad, de la medida de rugosidad que proporciona el software SPIP, comparandolo con datos experimentales obtenidos con AFM, para diferentes muestras de vidrio comercial. Ademas se proponen las condiciones optimas de muestreo para obtener un analisis confiable de la calidad del vidrio en cuanto a parametros superficiales de rugosidad y topografia. Finalmente se propone la rugosidad como un metodo de seguimiento en el control de calidad a nivel industrial, usando la tecnica de AFM y correlacionandola con el software SPIP.
Affordances as Properties of the Animal-Environment System

In this article, I argue that affordances are properties of the animal-environment system, that is, that they are emergent properties that do not inhere in either the environment or the animal. I critique and review the formal definition of affordance offered by Turvey (1992). Turvey defined affordances as properties of the environment; I discuss some consequences of this and argue that Turvey's strategy of grounding the definition of affordance in terms of dispositional properties is problematic. I also suggest that Turvey's definition of affordance may lead to problems for the specification and direct perception of affordances. Motivated by these problems, I propose a new definition of affordance, in which affordances are properties of the animal-environment system. This definition does not rely on the concept of dispositional properties and is consistent with direct perception.
Title The role of climate variability in the spread of malaria in Bangladeshihighlands

Background: Malaria is a major public health problem in Bangladesh, frequently occurring as epidemics since the 1990s. Many factors affect increases in malaria cases, including changes in land use, drug resistance, malaria control programs, socioeconomic issues, and climatic factors. No study has examined the relationship between malaria epidemics and climatic factors in Bangladesh. Here, we investigate the relationship between climatic parameters [rainfall, temperature, humidity, sea surface temperature (SST), El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI)], and malaria cases over the last 20 years in the malaria endemic district of Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT). Methods and Principal Findings: Monthly malaria case data from January 1989 to December 2008, monthly rainfall, temperature, humidity sea surface temperature in the Bay of Bengal and ENSO index at the Niño Region 3 (NIÑO3) were used. A generalized linear negative binomial regression model was developed using the number of monthly malaria cases and each of the climatic parameters. After adjusting for potential mutual confounding between climatic factors there was no evidence for any association between the number of malaria cases and temperature, rainfall and humidity. Only a low NDVI was associated with an increase in the number of malaria cases. There was no evidence of an association between malaria cases and SST in the Bay of Bengal and NIÑO3. Conclusion and Significance: It seems counterintuitive that a low NDVI, an indicator of low vegetation greenness, is associated with increases in malaria cases, since the primary vectors in Bangladesh, such as An. dirus, are associated with forests. This relationship can be explained by the drying up of rivers and streams creating suitable breeding sites for the vector fauna. Bangladesh has very high vector species diversity and vectors suited to these habitats may be responsible for the observed results. Citation: Haque U, Hashizume M, Glass GE, Dewan AM, Overgaard HJ, et al. (2010) The Role of Climate Variability in the Spread of Malaria in Bangladeshi Highlands. PLoS ONE 5(12): e14341. doi:10.1371/journal.pone. 0014341 Editor: Erika Martins Braga, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil Received June 28, 2010; Accepted November 4, 2010; Published December 16, 2010 Copyright: 2010 Haque et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: The study was supported by the Global Center of Excellence program, Institute of Tropical Medicine, Nagasaki University, Japan. GG was supported by the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. * E-mail: hashizum@nagasaki-u.ac. jp
Hierarchical Multilevel Space-Shift Keying for Unequal Error Protection under Rician Fading

Hierarchical Multilevel Space-Shift Keying Modulation is proposed for Unequal Error Protection under Line-Of Sight conditions in Rician fading channels. The High Priority (HP) information is conveyed via the number of active antennas employed to transmit a codeword. The Low Priority (LP) information is transmitted employing Generalized Space Shift Keying (GSSK) in the codeword subsets corresponding to the transmission of the HP symbols. Hierarchical modulation is accomplished by associating phase shifts with every transmit antenna and adjusting these phase shifts to achieve different levels of Unequal Error Protection. The simulations demonstrate the performance and design options offered by the proposed scheme.
Application of auctions club in cloud computing

The clouds have changed the way services are delivered to the companies. The attractiveness of the clouds comes from the efficiency gains (cost, performance, availability, fault tolerance, .) and agility of enterprise applications and services. The computer infrastructure is becoming a supply chain services. Existing systems of clouds do not support advanced mechanisms for the optimal trade applications across different clouds. To improve resource management in the cloud, we integrated the concept of auction club, which regroup a set of clients who want to process their tasks in this environment. The work presented in this paper proposes first the way to satisfy clubs in terms of quality of processing cloudlets (tasks) for each member of clubs, while minimising their cost, and their time of processing, and then to integrate the principle of auction clubs in simulator CloudSim.
UNIVERSAL STEGANALYSIS : DEFEND AGAINST ADAPTIVE STEGANOGRAPHIC ATTACK USING MX-QUADTREE NEIGHBOR FINDING MECHANISM

In the world of information security, Trapping of Illegal secret communication plays an imperative role. Especially, defending against such type of attacks plays important role in the area of defense. Steganalysis is the countermeasure against steganography. Steganalysis deals with the extraction of hidden data from the cover media. The cover media could be an image or an audio or a video file. Human Visual System (HVS) may not clearly identify the images with hidden information. Universal steganalysis is the method of attacking the stego images regardless of the method used for embedding secret information into the cover media. Universal steganalysis is a combination of two methods; they are feature extraction and classification. Adaptive steganography is a perceptual masking technique which is based on color contrast of the image. This type of steganography does not modify the image quality, which has higher rate of embedding capacity and unperceivability. In the existing method, payload locations of JPEG stego images were identified using Point Region quad tree (PR quad tree) mechanism in which more levels in tree should be identified to split two closely spaced points. In PR quad tree mechanism, each node has 2 pointers to represent ‘n’ dimensions. In this proposed method, a new steganalytic method called MatriX quadtree (MX quadtree) neighbor finding technique is used to reveal the hidden information from adaptive steganographic stego images. The MX quad tree mechanism helps to concentrate on individual pixel values of densely populated color contrast values. Image quality ratio is between original and stego image is analyzed using True Positive Rate (TRP).