Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Knowledge and practice on magnitude, diagnosis, treatment and prevention strategies of Hepatocellular Carcinoma in Ethiopia: A Systematic Review

Abstract Introduction: In Ethiopia, hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the most common cancer with 100% fatality rate. HCC cases in low income countries die within few months following diagnosis. There is lack of information on the burden, risk factors, diagnosis modalities, surveillance strategies and treatment approaches to HCC in Ethiopia. Objective: To analyze the existing evidence related to burden, risk factors, diagnosis modalities, surveillance strategies, and treatment and prevention strategies of HCC in Ethiopia. Methods: All studies done on HCC in Ethiopian irrespective of year of publication and study types were included. Literatures were retrieved from electronic database of PubMedand Cochrane library during September/2016 to January 2/2017. Key words and mesh terms such as ‘hepatocellular carcinoma’, ‘hcc’, ‘hepatoma’, ‘malignant hepatoma’, ‘hepatocarcinoma’ were used to search for documents. Besides, we searched for articles, guidelines and reviews from world health organizations, lancet and Google scholar sites. Each of the retrieved studies was assessed by two authors for inclusion based on the eligibility criteria, and for quality using the critical appraisal checklist. Qualitative data were synthesized for analyzing the theories of studies. Medley reference manager was used to manage citations. Results: A total of 1448 literatures were retrieved. Eight studies fulfill the eligibility criteria, however, only three were full-fledged articles. HCC is clinically characterized by exhaustion, loss of appetite, rapid loss of weight, epigastric pain, right upper abdominal quadrant pain with a rapidly growing mass, jaundice, and ascites with or without hepatomegaly and splenomegaly. Data on HCC proportion among liver disease patients lies between 16.1%-19.2%. Cirrhosis followed by hepatotoxic indigenous drugs and viral hepatitis were found to be as major risk factor for HCC. In Ethiopia, there is no surveillance activity and no standard staging systems. Furthermore, there was no policy frame -work for management of HCC. Conclusion: As compared to other countries, Ethiopia is far behind in addressing HCC. There is no national policy framework and guideline for the management of HCC. Moreover, HCC is a neglected cancer that is considered as a death penalty by the community. Health professionals working in health facilities and health offices should share the data they have to the scientific community and policy makers, for further searching solutions and informed decision, respectively. An intensified public health strategy on health education and early case detection is of critical importance. In addition concerted effort should be made to develop HCC prevention and treatment modality. [Ethiop. J. Health Dev. 2017;31(1):44-56] Key words: Hepatocellular Carcinoma, Ethiopia
Development and Evaluation of a Commercial Sequence-Based Strain Typing Service for Listeria monocytogenes

Listeria monocytogenes is an important foodborne pathogen and, relatedly, a persistent contaminant in many food processing facilities. Strain typing is critical to detecting and investigating outbreaks, and can be used to track down sources of contamination. The typing systems in current use have limitations ranging from low resolution and data portability to high cost and technical complexity. The aim of this study was to develop an outsourcing option for L. monocytogenes strain typing that addresses these limitations. The NCBI Genomes database representing 109 strains was screened for highly informative, tandem repeat-containing loci. The most promising, termed LmMT1 (0.8-1 kbp) and LmMT2 (0.7-0.8 kbp), exhibited complex patterns of polymorphism (insertions/deletions and single nucleotide polymorphisms), diversity indeces of 0.99 (LmMT1) and 0.98 (LmMT2), and were present in all L. monocytogenes and from one (LmMT1) to four (LmMT2) additional Listeria species represented in NCBI databases. Using a distinct set of strains, Miya et al. (J. Microbiol. Methods, 2012, 90:285-291) previously reported diversity indices of 0.95 and 0.91 for more limited regions (0.3-0.5 kbp) of these same two loci. Phylogenetic analysis of LmMT1 and LmMT2 sequences revealed distinct clusters corresponding to serotype (4b, 1/2a, and 4a complexes) and evolutionary lineage (I, II, and III/IV). Comparisons to PFGE, the current gold standard, suggest that LmMT1 typing is comparably discriminatory. Importantly, strains from four outbreaks formed corresponding clusters, although those from a 2002 outbreak were resolved into related environmental and food/human isolates that challenges their epidemiological connection. In the laboratory, LmMT1 and LmMT2 typing proved to be robust, generating high quality sequence from colonies submitted as non-hazardous heat-inactivated suspensions. Analysis of LmMT1 sequences from 62 diverse strains demonstrated overall agreement with single nucleotide polymorphism-based typing.
Contractor practices for managing extended supply chain tiers

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine how contractor firms manage their relationships with extended supply chain tiers and investigate the range of ICT technologies used to facilitate such practices. Design/methodology/approach – An on-line questionnaire survey was conducted to gather information about supply chain management operations, supplier relationship management and the ICT technologies used by contractor firms to manage their extended supply chain tiers. Findings – The extended supply chain relationships of contractor firms are primarily composed of contractual, technical and financial entities, but findings suggest that the vision to consider extended supply chain firms when selecting suppliers are still myopic. Majority of ICT technologies are used between Tier 1 supply chain firms and there is an inconsistency in the number of technologies adopted with the extended supply chain tiers. Despite having a high involvement relationship with Tier 2 downstream firms, findings indicate a l.
Random Čech complexes on manifolds with boundary

Let M be a compact, unit volume, Riemannian manifold with boundary. We study the homology of a random Čech‐complex generated by a homogeneous Poisson process in M. Our main results are two asymptotic threshold formulas, an upper threshold above which the Čech complex recovers the kth homology of M with high probability, and a lower threshold below which it almost certainly does not. These thresholds share the same leading term. This extends work of Bobrowski–Weinberger and Bobrowski–Oliveira who establish similar formulas when M has no boundary. The cases with and without boundary differ: the corresponding common leading terms for the upper and lower thresholds differ being log(n) when M is closed and (2−2/d)log(n) when M has boundary; here n is the expected number of sample points. Our analysis identifies a special type of homological cycle occurring close to the boundary.
Cognitive Topology Mapping based on HumanComputer Interaction

The system point of view, the human-computer interaction (HCI) structure is composed of "brain cognitive body coupling situation information manifold" cognitive digital system. HCI process coupled interaction between brain cognition and brain outside the information system, the formation of cognitive coupled states. The Outside brain cognition point of view, the situations of HCI is the point of the link between the brain cognition and brain outside information manifold, the cognitive been induced brain outside the cognitive digital manifold. The Outside brain cognitive information measuring point of view, BSM is a brain cognitive observation, mapping, research platform. The cognitive topology layer is system kernel. We tried to use the coupling cognitive research framework in a word memory. Assuming the brain state of English word to the existence of complex networks, explore the network activity model of word. The coupling method is based on BSM online research of models, acquisition of cognitive symbol sequence data of learning word; The formation of the word topology base on word classification specification, definition of the word linear metric space, form the basis and platform on Complex word network of static structure and dynamic growth. Preliminary results of this study confirmed that Cognitive coupling is feasible way to Brain imaging of cognitive information.
Total antioxidant potential of selected indigenous plants and culinary spices

The total antioxidant activity of selected indigenous plants and culinary spices was determined in vitro by phosphomolybdenum method. The antioxidant activity of each extract was expressed as ascorbic acid equivalents. Among the spices tested, Illicium verum (hook fruit) revealed strongest antioxidant potential followed by Cinnamomum zeylanicum, Bl. (Bark), Pimpinella anisum (seed), Myristica fragrans Houtt (seed), Terminalia chebula, Retz. (seed), Mentha piperata (leaf), Cuminum cyminum, L. (Seed) and Nigella sativa, Linn (seed). All the tested spices have exhibited greater antioxidant potential than that of ascorbic acid except for some concentrations of Mentha piperata (leaf), Cuminum cyminum, L. (Seed) and Nigella sativa, Linn (seed). Among the indigenous plants, antioxidant potential observed were in the following descending order; Amaranthus gangeticus (leaf), Gloriosa superba, L. (Tubers), Mangifera indica, L. , Achyranthues aspera, L. (whole plant), Calotropis gigantea, R. Br. (Leaf) and Sesbania grandiflora, L. Pers (Leaf). The present study revealed that the tested plants could be used as natural sources of antioxidants or as nutritional supplements to counter the deleterious effects of the oxidative stress.
Hydraulic Behaviour of the Floating Wave Energy Converter Wave Dragon

One of the main types of wave energy converters is the overtopping devices, that collect the water of incident waves to drive low head turbines. The Wave Dragon is a devise of this type and has been under continuous development since 1995 through national as well as international wave energy programmes. In 1999/2001 the Wave Dragon has been patented national and in Europe. The present paper describes the principle of the Wave Dragon and summarizes the various developments done to the Wave Dragon design ending up in a reconstruction termed the 2. generation Wave Dragon model. The hydraulic behavior of this 2. generation model is evaluated by physical model tests and conclusions from these tests are presented and discussed. Finally, conclusions and the future developments plans are presented.
Is there any association between facial type and mandibular dental arch form in subjects with normal occlusion

The aim of this study was investigate the association between the mandibular arch morphology and the facial type of Brazilian Caucasians with natural normal occlusion. For this, we used a sample comprised of lateral radiographs and respective dental casts of 51 individuals (21 male and 30 female), presenting at least 4 of the 6 Andrews' keys to normal occlusion without previous orthodontic treatment. Angle's first molar relationship was considered indispensable for the sample. The facial type was defined by two cephalometric measurements (SN.SGn and SN.GoGn). After scanning the models (3D) and radiographs, the images were evaluated by 12 orthodontists. A modified Kappa test evaluated the agreement between examiners to classify the morphology of the dental arch. The chi-square test was used to verify the association between the facial type (dolichofacial, mesofacial, or brachyfacial) and the dental arch morphology (square, oval, or tapered), using significance level of 5%. Casual and systematic errors (p > 0.05) showed no significant results and the Kappa test showed significant agreement among examiners for the dental arch form (0.55) with a p < 0.001, considered as 'moderate'. The chi- square test indicated no significant association. The null hypothesis was accepted, as the facial type was not associated with dental arch morphology in individuals with normal occlusion.
Nonlinear mechanism in MEMS devices for energy harvesting applications

This paper reports a novel bistable microelectromechanical system for energy harvesting applications. In particular, we focus here on methodologies and devices for recovering energy from mechanical vibrations. A common energy harvesting approach is based on vibrating mechanical bodies that collect energy through the adoption of self-generating materials. This family of systems has a linear mass–spring damping behaviour and shows good performance around its natural frequency. However, it is not generally suitable for energy recovery in a wide spectrum of frequencies as expected in the vast majority of cases when ambient vibrations assume different forms and the energy is distributed over a wide range of frequencies. Furthermore, whenever the vibrations have a low frequency content the implementation of an integrated energy harvesting device is challenging; in fact large masses and devices would be needed to obtain resonances at low frequencies. Here, the idea is to consider the nonlinear behaviour of a bistable system to enhance device performances in terms of response to external vibrations. The switching mechanism is based on a structure that oscillates around one of the two stable states when the stimulus is not large enough to switch to the other stable state and that moves around the other stable state as soon as it is excited over the threshold. A response improvement can be demonstrated compared to the classical linear approach. Indeed, both a wider spectrum will appear as a consequence of the nonlinear term and a significant amount of energy is collected at low frequencies. In this paper the bistable working principle is first described and analytically modelled, and then a numerical study based on stochastic differential equations (SDE) is realized to evaluate the behaviour of a MEMS device. A micromachined SOI prototype has been realized and a measurement campaign validated the nonlinear mechanism. As expected, the study shows that the nonlinear system exhibits a low pass filter behaviour suitable for harvesting ambient energy at low frequency.
Improving the Health Coverage of the Rural Poor:Does Contracting Out Medical Mobile Teams Work?

Low population density in rural developing country coupled with deficient infrastructure, weak state capacity and limited budgets makes increasing health care coverage difficult.Contracting-out mobile medical teams can be an adequate solution in this context. This paper examines the impact of a large-scale program of this type in Guatemala. Results indicate large impacts on immunization rates for children and prenatal care provider choices. The program increased substantially the role of physician and nurses at the expense of traditional midwives. These results suggest that mobile medical teams can increase coverage of health care services substantially in rural areas in developing countries.
Curvature effects on the empirical mean in Riemannian and affine Manifolds: a non-asymptotic high concentration expansion in the small-sample regime

The asymptotic concentration of the Frechet mean of IID random variables on a Rieman-nian manifold was established with a central limit theorem by Bhattacharya & Patrangenaru (BP-CLT) [6]. This asymptotic result shows that the Frechet mean behaves almost as the usual Euclidean case for sufficiently concentrated distributions. However, the asymptotic covariance matrix of the empirical mean is modified by the expected Hessian of the squared distance. This Hessian matrix was explicitly computed in [5] for constant curvature spaces in order to relate it to the sectional curvature. Although explicit, the formula remains quite difficult to interpret, and the intuitive effect of the curvature on the asymptotic convergence remains unclear. Moreover, we are most often interested in the mean of a finite sample of small size in practice. In this work, we aim at understanding the effect of the manifold curvature in this small sample regime. Last but not least, one would like computable and interpretable approximations that can be extended from the empirical Frechet mean in Rie-mannian manifolds to the empirical exponential barycenters in affine connection manifolds. For distributions that are highly concentrated around their mean, and for any finite number of samples, we establish explicit Taylor expansions on the first and second moment of the empirical mean thanks to a new Taylor expansion of the Riemannian log-map in affine connection spaces. This shows that the empirical mean has a bias in 1/n proportional to the gradient of the curvature tensor contracted twice with the covariance matrix, and a modulation of the convergence rate of the covariance matrix proportional to the covariance-curvature tensor. We show that our non-asymptotic high concentration expansion is consistent with the asymptotic expansion of the BP-CLT. Experiments on constant curvature spaces demonstrate that both expansions are very accurate in their domain of validity. Moreover, the modulation of the convergence rate of the empirical mean's covariance matrix is explicitly encoded using a scalar multiplicative factor that gives an intuitive vision of the impact of the curvature: the variance of the empirical mean decreases faster than in the Euclidean case in negatively curved space forms, with an infinite speed for an infinite negative curvature. This suggests potential links with the stickiness of the Frechet mean described in stratified spaces. On the contrary, the variance of the empirical mean decreases more slowly than in the Euclidean case in positive curvature space forms, with divergence when we approach the limits of the Karcher & Kendall concentration conditions with a uniform distribution on the equator of the sphere, for which the Frechet mean is not a single point any more.
Finding Your Voice: The Linguistic Development of Mental Health Counselors

Mental health counseling is an enterprise with profound societal importance where conversations play a primary role. In order to acquire the conversational skills needed to face a challenging range of situations, mental health counselors must rely on training and on continued experience with actual clients. However, in the absence of large scale longitudinal studies, the nature and significance of this developmental process remain unclear. For example, prior literature suggests that experience might not translate into consequential changes in counselor behavior. This has led some to even argue that counseling is a profession without expertise. In this work, we develop a computational framework to quantify the extent to which individuals change their linguistic behavior with experience and to study the nature of this evolution. We use our framework to conduct a large longitudinal study of mental health counseling conversations, tracking over 3,400 counselors across their tenure. We reveal that overall, counselors do indeed change their conversational behavior to become more diverse across interactions, developing an individual voice that distinguishes them from other counselors. Furthermore, a finer-grained investigation shows that the rate and nature of this diversification vary across functionally different conversational components.
Estuarine soundscapes: distinct acoustic characteristics of oyster reefs compared to soft-bottom habitats

Different types of benthic habitats likely produce distinct soundscapes due to differences in the physical and biological contributors to ambient sound. Despite their potential importance to ecologi- cal processes such as larval settlement, the sound- scapes of most coastal and estuarine habitats have not been characterized. We investigated whether an es- tuarine soundscape is a reliable indicator of habitat type by measuring the sounds of oyster reefs and nearby off-reef soft-bottom areas in Pamlico Sound, North Carolina, USA. Acoustic sampling in 3 areas across the estuary revealed distinct acoustic patterns in oyster reef habitats compared to surrounding off- reef areas, with reef soundscapes dominated by snap- ping shrimp sounds and the vocalizations of reef- dwelling fish species. Compared to soft-bottom habitat, oyster reefs had significantly higher sound pressure levels in the 2−23 kHz frequency band and higher acoustic diversity index values at each concurrent sampling event. Spectral differences between adja- cent reef/off-reef habitats were present throughout the summer and fall sampling season and across 2 sampling years, but the acoustic signal strength dif- fered between reef sites. Passive sound propagation surveys found that the distinct acoustic characteristics of oyster reefs within the 2−23 kHz frequency band were highly localized, with effective source levels of 108.8 to 120.0 dB re 1 μPa @ 1 m and transmission loss approximating a cylindrical geometric spreading model. This soundscape characterization study sug- gests that spatial heterogeneity in ambient sound could serve as a reliable indicator of habitat type and potentially convey habitat quality information to dis- persing organisms.
Classical Linear Harmonic Oscillators to Describe Thermodynamic Properties of Quantum Linear Harmonic Oscillators and Solids

As known all physical properties of solids are described well by the system of quantum linear harmonic oscillators. It is shown in the present paper that the system consisting of classical linear harmonic oscillators having temperature dependent masses or (and) frequencies has the same partition function as the system consisting of quantum linear harmonic oscillators having temperature independent masses and frequencies while the means of the square displacements of the positions of the oscillators from their mean positions for the system consisting of classical linear harmonic oscillators having: the temperature dependent masses; temperature dependent frequencies; and temperature dependent masses and frequencies differ from each other and from that of the system consisting of quantum linear harmonic oscillators, and hence, the system consisting of classical linear harmonic oscillators describes well the thermodynamic properties of the system consisting of quantum linear harmonic oscillators and solids.
Can Body Flexibility Predict Arterial Stiffening

Arterial stiffness is a risk factor for cardiovascular disorders and mortality. Arterial stiffness increases progressively with aging. Although nobody can escape from age-related arterial stiffening, having a high-level of cardiorespiratory fitness delays age-related arterial stiffening. The primary components of physical fitness are muscular strength, cardiorespiratory fitness, and flexibility. Recent cross-sectional studies have shown that flexibility is associated with arterial stiffness, independent of muscular strength and cardiorespiratory fitness. In addition, using a 5-year longitudinal study, we found that a greater progression of age-related arterial stiffening was associated with poor flexibility in healthy adults. These cross-sectional and longitudinal studies suggest that flexibility can predict arterial stiffening. In this article, we review the recent studies regarding the relationship between arterial stiffness and flexibility.