Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Levels of apolipoproteins as risk factors for coronary artery disease

INTRODUCAO: A populacao da Arabia Saudita e conhecida por sua dieta nao-saudavel e inatividade fisica. OBJETIVO: Investigar as apolipoproteinas B (apo B), AI (apo AI) e B/AI como fatores de risco que podem estar associados ao aumento da incidencia da doenca arterial coronariana. METODOS: Duzentos e vinte pacientes com suspeita de doenca art RESULTADOS: Cenerial coronariana foram submetidos a angiografia coronaria e extracao de sangue apos jejum de 12 horas. As apolipoproteinas B e AI foram medidas por metodos turbidimetros.to e quarenta pacientes foram positivos e 80 foram negativos para a doenca arterial coronariana. Ambas apolipoproteinas foram estatisticamente significativas como fatores de risco para doenca arterial coronariana: apolipoproteinas B (105,33±29,22 versus 94,56±24,35 mg/dL, p<0,003), AI (123,98±25,6 versus 133,5±24,1, p<0,004) e B/A-I (0,88±0,28 versus 0,72±0,2, p<0,0001). CONCLUSOES: As medidas das apolipoproteinas B, AI e o calculo da relacao B/AI tanto por ou em adicao as medidas habituais de colesterol das lipoproteinas podem aumentar significativamente a previsao e avaliacao dos fatores de risco coronariano na populacao saudita.
Impact of climate change on occupational health and productivity: a systematic literature review focusing on workplace heat

Background: With climate change, mean annual air temperatures are getting hotter and extreme weather events will become more and more common in most parts of the world. Objectives: As part of the EU funded project HEAT-SHIELD we conducted a systematic review to summarize the epidemiological evidence of the effects of global warming-related heat exposure on workers’ health and productivity. Methods: Three separate searches, focused, respectively, on: i) heat-related illness (HRI), cardiovascular, respiratory and kidney diseases; ii) traumatic injuries; and iii) vector-borne diseases or vectors distribution, were conducted in PubMed. EMBASE was also consulted to retrieve relevant studies focused on the health effects of climate change. A fourth search strategy to assess the effects on work productivity was conducted both in PubMed and in the SCOPUS database. Results: A significant proportion of studies reported findings regarding the Mesoamerican nephropathy issue. This is a disease occurring especially among young and middle-aged male sugarcane workers, without conventional risk factors for chronic kidney disease. For injuries, there is a reversed U-shaped exposure-response relationship between Tmax and overall daily injury claims. Outdoor workers are at increased risk of vector-borne infectious diseases, as a positive correlation between higher air temperatures and current or future expansion of the habitat of vectors is being observed. As for productivity, agriculture and construction are the most studied sectors; a day with temperatures exceeding 32°C can reduce daily labour supply in exposed sectors by up to 14%. Conclusions: The present findings should inform development of further research and related health policies in the EU and beyond with regard to protecting working people from the effects of workplace heat during climate change.
Automatic Investigation Framework for Android Malware Cyber-Infrastructures

The popularity of Android system, not only in the handset devices but also in IoT devices, makes it a very attractive destination for malware. Indeed, malware is expanding at a similar rate targeting such devices that rely, in most cases, on Internet to work properly. The state-of-the-art malware mitigation solutions mainly focus on the detection of the actual malicious Android apps using dy- namic and static analyses features to distinguish malicious apps from benign ones. However, there is a small coverage for the In- ternet/network dimension of the Android malicious apps. In this paper, we present ToGather, an automatic investigation framework that takes the Android malware samples, as input, and produces a situation awareness about the malicious cyber infrastructure of these samples families. ToGather leverages the state-of-the-art graph theory techniques to generate an actionable and granular intelligence to mitigate the threat imposed by the malicious Internet activity of the Android malware apps. We experiment ToGather on real malware samples from various Android families, and the obtained results are interesting and very promising
Validity, Test-Retest Reliability and Long-Term Stability of Magnetometer Free Inertial Sensor Based 3D Joint Kinematics

The present study investigates an algorithm for the calculation of 3D joint angles based on inertial measurement units (IMUs), omitting magnetometer data. Validity, test-retest reliability, and long-term stability are evaluated in reference to an optical motion capture (OMC) system. Twenty-eight healthy subjects performed a 6 min walk test. Three-dimensional joint kinematics of the lower extremity was recorded simultaneously by means of seven IMUs and an OptiTrack OMC system. To evaluate the performance, the root mean squared error (RMSE), mean range of motion error (ROME), coefficient of multiple correlations (CMC), Bland-Altman (BA) analysis, and intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) were calculated. For all joints, the RMSE was lower than 2.40°, and the ROME was lower than 1.60°. The CMC revealed good to excellent waveform similarity. Reliability was moderate to excellent with ICC values of 0.52–0.99 for all joints. Error measures did not increase over time. When considering soft tissue artefacts, RMSE and ROME increased by an average of 2.2° ± 1.5° and 2.9° ± 1.7°. This study revealed an excellent correspondence of a magnetometer-free IMU system with an OMC system when excluding soft tissue artefacts.
Offset Neural Network for Document Orientation Identification

With advancements in deep learning, artificial neural networks have been used increasingly in various document analysis problems such as character recognition, layout analysis, and orientation identification of documents. However, because of the ambiguity of the document image (caused by complicated appearances, multiple languages, etc.), it is difficult to use Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) directly for orientation identification of the document. In order to solve this problem, we present offset neural networks (ONN), a new type of neural network that is especially designed for orientation identification. The ONN successfully reduces the negative influence of the ambiguous parts whose orientation cannot be distinguished. Meanwhile, the distinguishable parts of the document can be enhanced, which further improves the performance of the whole model. In the experiment, ONN shows better performance and robustness compared with the ordinary CNN. Especially for some extreme cases, the ONN is still able find the correct orientation. Considering that no one has ever proposed a dedicated neural network for orientation identification, our work is very practical and innovative.
FPGA implementation of HOG based multi-scale pedestrian detection

Pedestrian detection is needed for many vison applications including surveillance, Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), Intelligent Transport System (ITS), drone, robotics, etc. There are different sizes of pedestrian or human in an image due to the different distances from the camera and different object's height. To detect all of the objects with different sizes, a multi-scale detector is needed. In this study, a multi-scale pedestrian detection is designed based on histogram of oriented gradients (HOG) and implement the method on a field programmable gate array (FPGA). The processing includes three stages: the input color image is converted to a gray one and then down sampled the gray image by 2 and by 4, respectively. different window sizes are used to extract the features of HOG from three size gray images. Final, linear support vector machine (SVM) is used to classify the extracted features for different window sizes. The experimental results show that the system costs 94,374 logic elements, which is about 82% of total logic elements s of Terasic DE2-115 development board. The system detection accuracy is about 97% on average and the processing speed can achieve 60 fps for 640×480 resolution.
TaqMan real-time RT-PCR assay for detecting Japanese encephalitis virus in swine blood samples and mosquitoes

Abstract Japanese encephalitis (JE) is an emerging mosquito-borne zoonotic flaviviral disease. The present study was undertaken with the objective to develop TaqMan real-time reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) assay for rapid detection and quantification of Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV) in swine blood and mosquito vectors. The amplification of envelope (E) gene was targeted by designing gene-specific MGB TaqMan fluorescent probe along with the primers. The best performance in terms of sensitivity was achieved by standardized TaqMan real-time RT-PCR with a detection limit of 2.8 copies/reaction and it was found to be 4-log more sensitive than conventional RT-PCR. The applicability of the standardized TaqMan assay was evaluated by screening representative sets of field swine blood samples and mosquito pools for JEV. The viral load ranged between 3.32 × 107–4.2 × 102 copies/ml of swine blood samples, and 5.7 × 109–1.3 × 102 copies/pool of mosquitoes. The standardized assay which is highly sensitive, specific and rapid would aid in screening sentinel swine and mosquitoes under JEV surveillance programs for effective prevention and control of disease in human beings.
Historical epistemology of the body-mind interaction in psychiatry

This paper deals with the history of the relationship between the mind-body dualism and the epistemology of madness. Earlier versions of such dualism posed little problem in regard to the manner of their communication. The Cartesian view that mind and body did, in fact, name different substances introduced a problem of incommunicability that is yet to be resolved. Earlier views that madness may be related to changes in the brain began gaining empirical support during the 17th century. Writers on madness chose to resolve the mind-body problem differently Some stated that such communication was not needed; others, that mind was a redundant concept, as madness could be fully explained by structural changes in the brain; and yet others described psychological spaces for madness to inhabit as a symbolic conflict. The epistemology of the neurosciences bypasses the conundrum, as it processes all together the variables representing the brain, subjectivity, and behavior and bridges the “philosophical” gap by means of correlational structures.
HOW DO CUSTOMERS EVALUATE HOTEL SERVICE QUALITY? AN EMPIRICAL STUDY IN TEHRAN HOTELS

The purpose of this study is to investigate the dimensio ns of hotel service quality, to ass ess relative importance of them and to evaluate service quality of Tehran hotels in terms of guests’ perspectives. The paper examines the reliability and validity of the designed scale based on SERVQUAL model. A cross-sectional research based on SERVQUAL model conducted on nine hotels in Tehran (n=1080). Several statistical analyses such as EFA, CFA, Linear regression and t-test were applied to analyze the data. Five service quality dimensions were identified and named as “tangibles”, “problem solving”, “service supply”, “empathy” and “security”. Even though our findings confirmed five dimensional SERVQUAL constructs, some dimensions have been identified differing from SERVQUAL scale dimensions. Finding showed that the best overall service quality predictor is “tangibles” followed by “service supply”, “problem solving”, “assurance” and “empathy”.
Validity of Retrospective Session Rating of Perceived Exertion to Quantify Training Load in youth Athletes

Abstract Scantlebury, S, Till, K, Sawczuk, T, Phibbs, P, and Jones, B. Validity of retrospective session rating of perceived exertion to quantify training load in youth athletes. J Strength Cond Res 32(7): 1975–1980, 2018—Youth athletes frequently participate in multiple sports or for multiple teams within the same sport. To optimize player development and minimize undesirable training outcomes (e.g., overuse injuries), practitioners must be cognizant of an athlete's training load within and outside their practice. This study aimed to establish the validity of a 24-hour (s-RPE24) and 72-hour (s-RPE72) recall of session rating of perceived exertion (s-RPE) against the criterion measure of s-RPE collected 30 minutes' post training (s-RPE30). Thirty-eight adolescent athletes provided a s-RPE30 following the first field based training session of the week. Approximately 24 hours later subjects were asked to recall the intensity and duration of the previous days training. The following week subjects once again provided an s-RPE30 measure after training before recalling the intensity and duration of the session approximately 72 hours later. A nearly perfect correlation (0.98 [0.97–0.99]) was found between s-RPE30 and s-RPE24, with a small typical error of estimate (TEE; 8.3% [6.9–10.5]) and trivial mean bias (−1.1% [−2.8 to 0.6]). Despite a large correlation between s-RPE30 and s-RPE72 (0.73 [0.59–0.82]) and a trivial mean bias (−0.2% [−6.8 to 6.8]), there was a large TEE (35.3% [29.6–43.9]). s-RPE24 provides a valid measure of retrospectively quantifying s-RPE; however, the large error associated with s-RPE72 suggests that it is not a suitable method for monitoring training load in youth athletes.
Application of a minimized wearable device combined with SpO2 and ECG sensors to detect stenosis or occlusion of arteriovenous fistula/graft, progression of arteriosclerosis and arrhythmia

Stroke is a common disease in modern society, which is the occluded and/or hemorrhaging of the blood vessels in the brain, producing blood clots leading to brain dysfunctions. When faced with the risk of stroke, most people tend to measure their blood pressure first; however, aside from hypertension, vessel atherosclerosis and loss of elasticity are also the causes for blood vessel stenosis and/or rupturing. Additionally, in dialysis patients, prolonged needle puncture will also decrease vessel elasticity, which leads to increased stenosis of hemodialysis access and ineffective hemodialysis. In this study, we proposed a method to integrate and analyze signals measured from SpO2 and ECG sensors to detect blood vessel elasticity and stenosis. Our proposed system has advantages in size and cost, is portable and allows patients to record real-time and long-term blood vessel health status. Our method is a non-invasive measurement of the physiological signals, which can rapidly analyze the stenosis of hemodialysis access, and to take long-term records. The data collected can be analyzed by physicians for precision medicine and preventative health.
How much is enough? Effects of technical and biological replication on metabarcoding dietary analysis

DNA metabarcoding is increasingly used in dietary studies to estimate diversity, composition and frequency of occurrence of prey items. However, few studies have assessed how technical and biological replication affect the accuracy of diet estimates. This study addresses these issues using the European free‐tailed bat Tadarida teniotis, involving high‐throughput sequencing of a small fragment of the COI gene in 15 separate faecal pellets and a 15‐pellet pool per each of 20 bats. We investigated how diet descriptors were affected by variability among (a) individuals, (b) pellets of each individual and (c) PCRs of each pellet. In addition, we investigated the impact of (d) analysing separate pellets vs. pellet pools. We found that diet diversity estimates increased steadily with the number of pellets analysed per individual, with seven pellets required to detect ~80% of prey species. Most variation in diet composition was associated with differences among individual bats, followed by pellets per individual and PCRs per pellet. The accuracy of frequency of occurrence estimates increased with the number of pellets analysed per bat, with the highest error rates recorded for prey consumed infrequently by many individuals. Pools provided poor estimates of diet diversity and frequency of occurrence, which were comparable to analysing a single pellet per individual, and consistently missed the less common prey items. Overall, our results stress that maximizing biological replication is critical in dietary metabarcoding studies and emphasize that analysing several samples per individual rather than pooled samples produce more accurate results.
Cache Lube Scheduler Available Worker Pool Lube Client Model Update Online

Over the past decade, we have witnessed exponential growth in the density (petabyte-level) and breadth (across geo-distributed datacenters) of data distribution. It becomes increasingly challenging but imperative to minimize the response times of data analytic queries over multiple geo-distributed datacenters. However, existing scheduling-based solutions have largely been motivated by pre-established mantras (e.g., bandwidth scarcity). Without data-driven insights into performance bottlenecks at runtime, schedulers might blindly assign tasks to workers that are suffering from unidentified bottlenecks. In this paper, we present Lube, a system framework that minimizes query response times by detecting and mitigating bottlenecks at runtime. Lube monitors geo-distributed data analytic queries in real-time, detects potential bottlenecks, and mitigates them with a bottleneck-aware scheduling policy. Our preliminary experiments on a real-world prototype across Amazon EC2 regions have shown that Lube can detect bottlenecks with over 90% accuracy, and reduce the median query response time by up to 33% compared to Spark’s built-in locality-based scheduler.
Scapular muscle balance and spinal stabilizer recruitment during an inverted row

ABSTRACT Persons with subacromial impingement syndrome (SIS) have an imbalance in scapular muscle recruitment. To avoid humeral head compression against the coracoacromial arch during the early stages of rehabilitation, physical therapists recommend movements targeting scapular retraction, shoulder depression, and arm extension such as the inverted row (IR) exercise. The purposes of this study were to describe: (1) scapular balance ratios during an IR and (2) the magnitudes of recruitment of spinal stabilizer muscles. Scapular muscle balance ratios from 26 healthy participants were calculated from electromyographic (EMG) activity of the upper trapezius (UTP), lower trapezius (LTP), middle trapezius (MTP), serratus anterior (SA), posterior deltoid (PD), latissimus dorsi (LD), and biceps brachii (BB) during an IR on stable and unstable support surfaces. Balance ratios were obtained by dividing normalized EMG activity of the UTP by the normalized EMG values from each of the other six muscles. Four median scapular balance ratios (UTP/MTP, UTP/PD, UTP/LD, and UTP/BB) ranged from 0.9 to 2.2, whereas the UTP/LTP ratio ranged from 1.6 to 2.2 and the UTP/SA ratio ranged from 1 to 4.7. Activation of seven muscles promoted safe containment of the humeral head within the glenoid fossa during the IR in healthy persons and potentially people with the tendency for development of SIS. Four spinal stabilizer muscles were examined: longissimus thoracis (LT), multifidus (MF), rectus abdominis (RA), and external oblique (EO). Spinal stabilizer EMG activation values ranged from 34% to 40% maximum voluntary isometric contraction (MVIC) for the RA and EO and from 54% to 66% MVIC for the LT and MF.
Improving the integration of e-textile microsystems' encapsulation by modifying PDMS formulation.

Electronic Textiles (e-textiles) enhance traditional fabrics with electronic functionality. When embedded into textiles, flexible electronic circuits need to have reliable functionality but also survive within a textile once it has been integrated. For this, electronic microsystems would be expected by consumers and manufacturers to not alter the typical characteristics the textile inherently has - such as its washability, durability, and manufacturability. Therefore, the choice of packaging substrate for microsystems in a textile must also be hydrophobic and offer minimal expansion when washed; ensuring electronics are undetectable when the textile is handled or cleaned. This paper addresses this by using polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) as packaging encapsulation and tailoring its fabrication method specifically for textile integration. PDMS of five different base/curing agent mixing ratios were investigated - 5:1, 7:1, 10:1, 15:1, and 20:1. Contact angle measurements and swelling tests with room-temperature distilled water, tap water, detergent, and fabric conditioner solutions show PDMS as a suitable elastomeric encapsulation for electronic textile and wearable applications. Results show that a 20:1, rather than the typical 10:1, mixing ratio offers greater aqueous resistance at smaller dimensions. Having 20:1 compared to 10:1 can reduce swelling by approximately 48% - 45% in water making it more compatible with washing.
Identification of epigenetic modulators in human breast cancer by integrated analysis of DNA methylation and RNA-Seq data

ABSTRACT Human tumors undergo massive changes in DNA methylation. Recent studies showed that site-specific methylation of CpG sites is determined by the DNA sequence context surrounding the CpG site, which alludes to a possible mechanism for site-specific aberrant DNA methylation in cancer through DNA-binding proteins. In this paper, DNA methylation data and RNA-Seq data of breast tumors and normal tissues in the database of The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) were integrated with information of DNA motifs in seven databases to find DNA-binding proteins and their binding motifs that were involved in aberrant DNA methylation in breast cancer. A total of 42,850 differentially methylated regions (DMRs) that include 77,298 CpG sites were detected in breast cancer. One hundred eight DNA motifs were found to be enriched in DMRs, and 109 genes encoding proteins binding to these motifs were determined. Based on these motifs and genes, 63 methylation modulator genes were identified to regulate differentially methylated CpG sites in breast cancer. A network of these 63 modulator genes and 645 transcription factors was constructed, and 20 network modules were determined. A number of pathways and gene sets related to breast cancer were found to be enriched in these network modules. The 63 methylation modulator genes identified may play an important role in aberrant methylation of CpG sites in breast cancer. They may help to understand site-specific dysregulation of DNA methylation and provide epigenetic markers for breast cancer.