Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Dapsone-Induced Methemoglobinemia Presenting Concomitantly With COVID-19 Pneumonia and Pulmonary Embolism: A Case Report

Acquired methemoglobinemia is a treatable condition that is often clinically subtle and can be missed on routine clinical assessment. We present a 73-year-old male who was evaluated in the emergency department with worsening respiratory symptoms requiring oxygen. He tested COVID-19 positive and had new pulmonary emboli evident on his CT chest. The patient was on dapsone therapy as a treatment for bullous pemphigoid. The discrepancy between his oxygen levels on the pulse oximeter and blood gas was noted and was treated with 3% methylene blue for dapsone-induced methemoglobinemia. The patient received treatment for COVID-19 pneumonia and pulmonary emboli. Our case demonstrates that dapsone-induced methemoglobinemia can present concomitantly with other more common causes of acute hypoxic respiratory failure. It is noteworthy for physicians to maintain a high index of suspicion for oxygen level discrepancy in hypoxic patients and consider the possibility of acquired methemoglobinemia. Hence, earlier detection and treatment of the etiology of tissue hypoxia.
Effects of High-Energy Electron Beam Irradiation on The Structure, Composition and Morphological Properties of Graphene Nanoplatelet Films

This work demonstrated the effects of 1.2 GeV high-energy electron beam irradiation on a few-layers of graphene (FLG) and multi-layer graphene (MLG) films grown via an in-house hot wire chemical vapour deposition (HWCVD) system. The FLG and MLG films were grown on highly doped n-type c-Si (100) substrates which were pre-treated using argon plasma (50 W) for 1 min and 10 min, respectively. The as-prepared samples were then irradiated using a 1.2 GeV high-energy electron beam with a dosage of 1.2 × 109 e-/cm2 at atmospheric and room temperature ambient conditions. The effects of the irradiation-mediated defects on the carbon lattice structure of both graphene samples were validated from the decreased sp2 C=C carbon content, and the increase in the adventitious carbon contamination C-O-C content. Raman results showed an elevation of the ID/IG ratio and blue-shift of the 2D and G band peaks for both the irradiated samples, which validated the mediated defects due to the dislocation of carbon atoms in the graphene sheets. The blue-shifted of 2D and G peaks were much more significant in the MLG than FLG which may indicate a better self-reconstructing property for the MLG atomic network, compared to the FLG. The stability of the films against high-energy electron beam irradiation was validated by their conductivity and surface topography. In conclusion, HWCVD grown graphene nanoplatelet films have high potential for graphene-based high-energy charged particle detectors.
Fast Flapping Aerodynamics Prediction Using a Recurrent Neural Network

: One of the major tasks of aerodynamics is the study of the flow around airfoils. While most conventional methods deal well with steady flows, unsteady airfoils, like the ones on helicopter blades, are subject to such complex dynamic flows that their study can impose substantial difficulties. However, recent applications of machine learning, in the form of neural networks, have shown very promising results when dealing with complex dynamic aerodynamic phenomena. For this reason, this paper proposes the implementation of a recurrent neural network for the time-wise prediction of the lift, momentum, and drag coefficients for an airfoil subject to plunging motion, using the Re , k , h , kh and the time history of the effective angle of attack as inputs. Results from early training already suggest the network’s capability to approximate the desired outputs, even if with some limitations. However, the network configuration is flexible enough to be fed with either experimental or numerical data in the future.
Where to park? Architecture and implementation of an empty parking lot, automatic recognition system

The traffic congestion present in practically every city has, among its increasing factors, the unavailability of enough parking spaces. A typical driver invests a considerable part of the total trip time looking for a free space where to park his vehicle; in many cases, this leads to delays and the consequent discomfort due to the undesired consequences of the generated tardiness. For this problem it is possible to find partial palliative solutions, minimizing the time spent searching for parking by applying Internet of Things techniques, oriented to smart cities and buildings. This research has been focused on finding an appropriate computer architecture that will allow the implementation of a distributed system, which, thanks to the use of computer vision and machine learning techniques, detects free parking spaces inside a parking lot, and provides real time information to the driver, allowing him to go as directly as possible to a vacant parking space.
Why Acute Undernutrition? A Qualitative Exploration of Food Preferences, Perceptions and Factors Underlying Diet in Adolescent Girls in Rural Communities in Nigeria

Background: Adolescent girls are nutritionally vulnerable due to their rapid growth and increased nutrient requirements. Nigeria has the sixth-largest population in the world. This study qualitatively explored the food preferences, perceptions of nutritive value and factors underlying food consumption of adolescent girls in rural communities in Nigeria. Methods: The data were collected via the free listing of foods and focus group sessions conducted in the Hausa language with 48 unmarried adolescent girls. The discussions were audio-recorded, transcribed, translated into English, and analyzed using a deductive thematic framework. Results: The mean age of the respondents was 13.0 ± 2.7, and almost half (48%) had a primary school education. A total of 19 and 23 foods were identified as preferred, and perceived as nourishing, respectively. The top 10 foods present on both free lists overlapped considerably in terms of cognitive salience. The focus group themes included nutrition knowledge, food preferences, autonomy, household food allocation, courtship practices, and agricultural landscapes and economic access. The participants had minimal knowledge of nutrients and food groups, and their preferred foods were limited in diversity. The key factors in food preferences were desirable health effects, sensory attributes, and the contribution of foods to a desirable body image for marriage. Household food choices depended on parents. Thus, a desire for independence was an incentive for early marriage, mostly at 13 to 17 years. Gender inequities in household food distribution (quantity) and animal protein intake were reported. The participants believed that boys need more food for strength to impregnate girls. As part of a courtship practice, the girls received gifts of animal source foods from potential suitors. The food options were limited by financial challenges and low agricultural diversity. Conclusion: To interrupt the cycle of inadequate food consumption and undernutrition in these adolescent girls, policy makers need to promote nutrition education and address the underlying determinants of inequitable access to nutritious foods.
Effect of prebiotics, probiotics, and synbiotics on gut microbiome in diabetes among coastal communities

Cutting-edge research on oceans and human health is enhancing our comprehension of disease-causing organisms in coastal ecosystems. Coastal areas are affected by pollution resulting from the changes in hydrology and land utilization. In the coastal population, an elevated incidence of diabetes was observed. Diabetes mellitus is a prominent metabolic disease that is causing major burdens for patients as well as physicians. Diabetes is an intricate condition that encompasses several molecular pathways associated with the gut microbiome. The gut microbiome significantly influences the permeability of the gastrointestinal mucosa. Alterations in the wide range of gut microbiomes have been associated with various health issues including diabetes. The two major contributors to type 2 diabetes are insulin resistance and inflammation which may result in metabolic dysregulation due to dysbiosis. Due to gut dysbiosis, diabetes may show high prevalence in individuals living in coastal areas. The correlation between dysbiosis and diabetes can be made, especially considering probiotics have been demonstrated to have some impact in helping diabetic patients with their interrupted metabolism revert to normal. Probiotic intake has reportedly resulted in improved metabolic control among patients with type 2 diabetes. Prebiotics can be non-digestible carbohydrates that are naturally extracted or synthetically produced. Uses of synbiotics show a synergistic impact on type 2 diabetes by altering the gut environment. In coastal communities, the potential effects of probiotic, prebiotic, and synbiotic therapy on the gut microbiome of diabetic patients have been investigated. Although these therapies have demonstrated encouraging results in coastal areas, more research is needed to fully understand their implications for controlling diabetes in this setting. In this review, we describe the role of the gut microbiome in diabetes patients residing in coastal regions and the underlying mechanisms that existed for analysing and predicting the function of the microbiome in diabetic people. The role of pre, pro, and synbiotics in type 1 and type 2 diabetes are precisely summarized. Keywords: Type 1 diabetes, gut microbiome, type 2 diabetes, coastal region, dysbiosis, prebiotics, synbiotics, probiotics.
Changes in North Africa production systems to meet climate uncertainty and new socio-economic scenarios with a focus on dryland areas

Production systems in North Africa are typically marked by the scarcity of water resources throughout the region. This scarcity is expected to worsen and to negatively affect food security under the grim scenarios of climate change with a predicted 20% reduction of precipitation by the end of the century and 0.2 o C temperature increase per decade in the coming 2 decades. Most affected areas are those of the pastoral and agro-pastoral systems where rainfall is both low and highly variable, and productivity is continuously threatened and indeed negatively by the unfavorable changing climate. A clear change is being witnessed through the evolving livelihood pattern, marked by a more sedentary living of local populations and a strong preference for more remunerating and less-labor intensive activities, including high value animal and plant products, such as niche products, honey, aromatic and medicinal plants, and off- farm derived income including handicraft and eco-tourism. In areas less affected by drought, lowland cereal- based systems including integration of intensive livestock production are dominant. In those areas farmers are more benefiting from technological advances including mechanized farming operations, supplemental irrigation of cereal and forage crops and occasional full irrigation of high value commodities, including fruits, vegetables, and highly nutritious forage crops for animal fattening and intensive dairy production. Mountainous regions have been traditionally neglected despite their rich biodiversity and more abundant water resources. Nonetheless, local populations in a ll regions are more and more proactively involved in deciding on the strategies to address the dilemma of securing better livelihood and conserving natural resources in a global environment marked by a relentless climate change.
Los Beneficios de las Instrucciones Dirigidas Externamente para la Enseñanza de la Técnica y la Táctica

Este artículo revisa los resultados de las investigaciones que prueban los beneficios que tiene para el aprendizaje de destrezas motrices el uso de las instrucciones dirigidas de manera externa en lugar de interna. Se proporcionan ejemplos y se hacen sugerencias prácticas durante el entrenamiento.
Self-Attention Based Sequential Recommendation With Graph Convolutional Networks

Learning embeddings representations of users and items lies at the core of modern recommender systems. Existing methods based on Graph Convolutional Network (GCN) and sequential recommendation typically obtain a user’s or an item’s embedding by mapping from pre-existing features into better embeddings for users and items, such as ID and attributes. GCN integrates the user-item interaction as the bipartite graph structure into the embedding process, which can better represent sparse data, but cannot capture users’ long-term interests. Sequential recommendation seek to capture the “context” of users’ activities based on their historical actions, but requires dense data to support it. The goal of our work is to combine the advantages of GCN and sequential recommendation models by proposing a novel Self-Attention based Sequential recommendation with Graph Convolutional Networks (SASGCN). It uses multiple lightweight GCN layers to capture high-order connectivity between users and items, and by introducing ratings as auxiliary information into the user-item interaction matrix, it provides richer information. By incorporating self-attention based methods, the proposed model capture long-term semantics through relatively few actions. Extensive experiments on three benchmark datasets show that our model outperforms various state-of-the-art models consistently.
oxide coated

: High-performance textiles – such as those used in protective clothing – age silently, undergoing a gradual reduction in their protective properties. We propose that an electrically conducting layer that loses its conductivity systematically under aging conditions can be used as an end-of-life-sensor for textiles. In the present work, we first present a simple method to prepare conductive tracks on a meta-aramid woven fabric using reduced graphene oxide (rGO). While 15 iterations of rGO coating cycles were needed to wrap around each m-aramid fiber with rGO sheets completely, 10 cycles were sufficient to establish the electrical conductivity that remained stable for up to 10 laboratory wash cycles (equivalent to 50 domestic laundry cycles). The conductivity of these rGO
Associations between genetic variants in sphingolipid metabolism pathway genes and hepatitis B virus-related hepatocellular carcinoma survival

Background Although the sphingolipid metabolism pathway is known to play a significant role in tumor progression, there have been few studies on how genetic variants in the sphingolipid metabolism pathway genes affect the survival of patients with hepatitis B virus (HBV)-related hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Methods We utilized available genotyping data to conduct multivariate Cox proportional hazards regression model analysis, examining the associations of 12,188 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in 86 sphingolipid metabolism pathway genes on the survival of 866 HBV-HCC patients, and the model was also used in additive interaction analysis. We used bioinformatics functional prediction and expression quantitative trait locus (eQTL) analysis to explore the potential functions of SNPs and to evaluate the association of SNPs with the corresponding mRNA expression, respectively. We also used the online database TIMER2.0 (http://timer.comp-genomics.org/) to analyze the relationship between the corresponding mRNA expression levels and immune cell infiltration. Results Our study found that GBA2 rs1570247 G>A was significantly associated with elevated survival of HBV-HCC patients [(hazards ratio (HR)=0.74, 95% confidence interval (CI)=0.64-0.86, P<0.001)]. And on an additive scale, a synergistic effect was observed between the GG genotype of rs1570247 and advanced BCLC stage. Among HBV-HCC patients with advanced BCLC stage, those carrying the GBA2 rs1570247 GG genotype exhibited a significantly elevated risk of mortality (HR=3.32, 95%CI=2.45-4.50). Further functional prediction and eQTL analysis revealed that rs1570247 were located in the 5’ untranslated region of the GBA2, the A allele of SNP rs1570247 was associated with higher mRNA expression levels of GBA2 in normal liver tissues (P=0.009). Moreover, we observed a positive correlation between GBA2 mRNA expression and the infiltration level of B lymphocytes cell (R=0.331, P<0.001), while a negative correlation was noted between GBA2 mRNA expression and the infiltration level of macrophage M2 in HCC (R=-0.383, P<0.001). Conclusion Our findings suggest that GBA2 rs1570247 G>A in sphingolipid metabolism pathway may be a key factor for survival of HBV-HCC patients by regulating the expression of corresponding genes and affecting the infiltration level of immune cells.
Importance of Stratum Corneum Acidification to Restore Skin Barrier Function in Eczematous Diseases

Skin barrier function relies on three essential components: stratum corneum (SC) lipids, natural moisturizing factors (NMFs), and the acidic pH of the SC surface. Three endogenous pathways contribute to acidity: free fatty acids from phospholipids, trans-urocanic acid from filaggrin (FLG), and the sodium-proton antiporter (NHE1) activity. An acidic SC environment boosts the activity of enzymes to produce ceramides, which are vital for skin health. Conversely, an elevated pH can lead to increased skin infections, reduced lipid-processing enzyme activity, impaired permeability barrier recovery, and compromised integrity and cohesion of the SC due to increased serine protease (SP) activity. Elevated SC pH is observed in neonatal, aged, and inflamed skin. In atopic dermatitis (AD), it results from decreased NMF due to reduced FLG degradation, decreased fatty acids from reduced lamellar body secretion, and reduced lactic acid due to decreased sweating. Moreover, the imbalance between SP and SP inhibitors disrupts barrier homeostasis. However, acidifying the SC can help restore balance and reduce SP activity. Acidic water bathing has been found to be safe and effective for AD. In three different AD murine models, SC acidification prevented the progression of AD to respiratory allergies. In aging skin, a decrease in NHE1 leads to an increased skin pH. Mild acidic skin care products or moisturizers containing NHE1 activators can normalize skin pH and improve barrier function. In conclusion, maintaining the acidity of the SC is crucial for healthy skin barrier function, leading to significant benefits for various skin conditions, such as AD and aging-related skin issues.
Audit committee characteristics and firm performance: a cross-country meta-analysis

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of audit committee characteristics on firm performance. In particular, the authors employ the random-effects variant of the Hunter–Schmidt meta-analyze procedure to analyze the effects of key audit committee attributes, namely audit committee independence, audit committee expertise, audit committee size, audit committee meeting along with big four impact on firm performance. The authors hope to gain a better understanding of the function of audit committees in enhancing firm performance and to uncover potential discrepancies in prior findings due to varying economic levels or performance metrics.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses the Hunter–Schmidt method to conduct a meta-analysis of 39 previous studies published between 2012 and 2022 to investigate the relationship between audit committee characteristics and firm performance.FindingsThe results indicate that audit committee independence, expertise, size and affiliation with the big four have a significant and positive effect on firm performance, while audit committee meetings have a non-significant effect. Furthermore, findings suggest that companies should carefully consider the contextual factors that may impact the effectiveness of their corporate governance structures, such as economic level, when designing and implementing governance mechanisms.Originality/valueThis study is significant as it is the first to combine and analyze previous research on this topic and highlights the importance of certain audit committee characteristics in enhancing financial reporting quality and corporate governance.
Optimal design and development of a fast steering robot inspired by scallops

The improvement of the steering performance of jet robots is challenging due to single inflexible jet aperture. Scallops provide a potential solution with hard shells and a double-hole jet propulsion, which are expected to achieve fast steering movement under water. Inspired by scallops, a bionic propulsion dynamic mesh is proposed in this article, and a three-dimensional computational model of scallops is established. We further calculated the scallop propulsion mechanism under the swing of shells with different shapes. The coupling of simultaneous swing of two shells and their coupling with velum are presented, revealing the unique movement mechanism of Bivalvia. Based on this, the advantages of the double-hole jet propulsion are applied to develop a scallop robot with excellent steering capabilities. Experiments are conducted to verify the steering performance of the scallop robot.
El Tenis en los Grand Slams Individuales de Varones entre 1995 y 2009. Parte 2: Puntos, Juegos y Sets

En este artículo se presentan datos sobre los partidos de individuales de varones de Grand Slam correspondientes al período 1995 - 2009 mostrando cómo ha variado la distribución en el puntaje de los sets con el tiempo y en los cuatro eventos. La cantidad relativa de sets con muerte súbita proporciona una buena indicación de la velocidad de la cancha, como también la cantidad de sets 6-0 o 6-4. Mostramos (a) cómo las probabilidades de ganar un punto de servicio varían entre ganadores y perdedores de los partidos, (b) que los ganadores de los partidos ganan cerca de 9 de cada 10 juegos de servicio como promedio, mientras que los perdedores ganan alrededor de 7 de cada 10 juegos de servicio, (c) alrededor de 1/3 de todos los puntos los gana un jugador con un golpe un ganador, (d) alrededor del 78% de los ganadores de partidos ganan el primer set y (e) un jugador que gana el primer set 7-6 tiene 2.5 veces más probabilidades de ganar el partido que su adversario.
An Investigation on Selection Mechanisms for Mobile Camera-based Cursor Manipulation

To avoid the occlusion problem and the fat finger problem while manipulating mobile touch devices, researchers in HCI community have explored the area of mobile camera-based interaction which utilizes camera input instead of touch input. For mobile camera-based cursor manipulation, selection mechanisms may have an effect on users' pointing performance, and therefore worthy of study. In this research, we conducted a user study to explore how selection mechanisms influenced users' performance in mobile camera-based cursor manipulation and users' preferences. The quantitative results indicate that the users' performances of using two selection mechanisms (the button-based selection and tapping-based selection) are similar to each other from a statistical point of view. However, subjective feedback from the participants shows that the tapping-based selection is believed to be more comfortable and easy to use.