Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Internally displaced people in Lagos: environmental health conditions and access to healthcare in the context of COVID-19

ABSTRACT The paper documents environmental health conditions and healthcare access challenges faced by internally displaced people (IDPs) from Borno State living in informal settlements in Lagos, Nigeria, in 2020, during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. This qualitative study with 32 IDPs suggests a high vulnerability to COVID-19. Their accommodation often lacked basic sanitation including water and toilet facilities; overcrowding and high population density restricted ability to adhere to social distancing; and IDPs experienced serious consequences from lockdown, as the majority depended on daily wages, and did not receive food packages or other support from the State. Finally, there were obstacles to accessing healthcare. We highlight the importance of an integrated approach, consolidating the efforts of communities, non-governmental organisations, environmental and public health, and international organisations to address the health and well-being issues of IDPs in urban informal settlements.
LPWAN Key Exchange: A Centralised Lightweight Approach

The Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the fastest emerging technologies in the industry. It includes diverse applications with different requirements to provide services to users. Secure, low-powered, and long-range transmissions are some of the most vital requirements in developing IoT applications. IoT uses several communication technologies to fulfill transmission requirements. However, Low Powered Wide Area Networks (LPWAN) transmission standards have been gaining attention because of their exceptional low-powered and long-distance transmission capabilities. The features of LPWAN transmission standards make them a perfect candidate for IoT applications. However, the current LPWAN standards lack state-of-the-art security mechanism s because of the limitations of the IoT devices in energy and computational capacity. Most of the LPWAN standards, such as Sigfox, NB-IoT, and Weightless, use static keys for node authentication and encryption. LoRaWAN is the only LPWAN technology providing session key mechanisms for better security. However, the session key mechanism is vulnerable to replay attacks. In this paper, we propose a centralized lightweight session key mechanism for LPWAN standards using the Blom–Yang key agreement (BYka) mechanism. The security of the session key mechanism is tested using the security verification tool Scyther. In addition, an energy consumption model is implemented on the LoRaWAN protocol using the NS3 simulator to verify the energy depletion in a LoRaWAN node because of the proposed session key mechanisms. The proposed session key is also verified on the Mininet-WiFi emulator for its correctness. The analysis demonstrates that the proposed session key mechanism uses a fewer number of transmissions than the existing session key mechanisms in LPWAN and provides mechanisms against replay attacks that are possible in current LPWAN session key schemes.
Phylogenomics and Diversification of the Schistosomatidae Based on Targeted Sequence Capture of Ultra-Conserved Elements

Schistosomatidae Stiles and Hassall 1898 is a medically significant family of digenetic trematodes (Trematoda: Digenea), members of which infect mammals or birds as definitive hosts and aquatic or amphibious gastropods as intermediate hosts. Currently, there are 17 named genera, for many of which evolutionary interrelationships remain unresolved. The lack of a resolved phylogeny has encumbered our understanding of schistosomatid evolution, specifically patterns of host-use and the role of host-switching in diversification. Here, we used targeted sequence capture of ultra-conserved elements (UCEs) from representatives of 13 of the 17 named genera and 11 undescribed lineages that are presumed to represent either novel genera or species to generate a phylogenomic dataset for the estimation of schistosomatid interrelationships. This study represents the largest phylogenetic effort within the Schistosomatidae in both the number of loci and breadth of taxon sampling. We present a near-comprehensive family-level phylogeny providing resolution to several clades of long-standing uncertainty within Schistosomatidae, including resolution for the placement of the North American mammalian schistosomes, implying a second separate capture of mammalian hosts. Additionally, we present evidence for the placement of Macrobilharzia at the base of the Schistosoma + Bivitellobilharzia radiation. Patterns of definitive and intermediate host use and a strong role for intermediate host-switching are discussed relative to schistosomatid diversification.
The Impact of Merger and Acquisition Motives on Value-Based Financial Performance of Banks

The study investigates the impact of merger and acquisition (M&A) motives on the value-based financial performance (VBFP) of acquirer banks on Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE). This study utilized a cross-sectional and quantitative research design. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was used to identify the key M&A motives that add value to shareholders. The findings show that M&A motives (MAM) enhance shareholder value (EVA, MVA and CVA). Strengthening market power, financial synergy; Synergy Gain (Cost Saving); and desiring control to replace incompetent management are the five main motives behind the acquisitions in the Ghanaian Banking Sector. MAM such as Pre-emptive and Defensive Motive, Solving/Avoiding Banking Crises, Empire Building and Hubris and Risk Spreading all negatively affect VBFP. Thus, they have high tendencies of destroying shareholder value in the banking sector. Prior work clearly shows that M&A performance depends on pre-merger issues and post-merger matters. Therefore, this study introduces another construct – MAM to the existing two above to form a holistic M&A success framework. The study provides an in-depth analysis of the effect of MAM on the success of acquisitions regarding VBFP. The
Developing countries and the need for building engineering capacity

In the global fight for additional world security, stability and sustainability, the need for enhancing human, institutional and infrastructure capacity in developing countries is insistently of dire concern. To enhance the respective capacities, a concrete structure of technologically equipped people to efficiently advance their economies, quality and standard of living are drastically required. Such type of structure will enable the mixture of foreign capital via pulling in transnational corporations and establishments to invest in the developing country, aid in making the most of international aid funds, and offer a basis for business development by indigenous entrepreneurs. For these reasons, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and World Federation of Engineering Organizations (WFEO) are intensifying key efforts in developing countries as a synchronized approach towards technical capacity building. The paper therefore unpacks some basic attempts and outcomes by UNESCO and WFEO in empowering competent engineering and science graduates/ engineers towards building a sustainable circular economy. Keywords— Education, Capacity, Infrastructure, Sustainability
Effect of different exposure conditions on the self‐healing capacity of engineered cementitious composites with crystalline admixture

In this study, the effect of different exposure conditions of ambient air, tap water, and seawater on two levels of crack widths in engineered cementitious composites (ECC) were investigated. Crystalline admixture (CA) was implemented in the ECC mix to promote self‐healing capacity. Flexural testing on prism specimens (100 × 100 × 350 mm) was conducted to evaluate self‐healing by recovering the stiffness in the specimens with crack widths below 200 μm. Water permeability test was also carried out to assess the crack‐filling capability of ECC disk specimens (100‐mm diameter × 50‐mm thickness) with single crack widths over 1 mm. Digital image correlation technique was used to monitor crack propagation patterns and crack widths. To analyze the microstructure of the healing products, X‐ray diffraction test was conducted on groups of tap water and seawater exposures. Concluding results proved seawater to be a promising environmental condition for the self‐healing process in ECC specimens incorporating CA, in terms of recovery of mechanical and transport properties. Brucite was found to be formed as the additional healing agent that promoted self‐healing in this condition. These results can be applied for coastal concrete structures.
Defining a Data Quality (DQ) profile and DQ report using a prototype of Node.js module of the Fitness for Use Backbone (FFUB)

Despite the increasing availability of biodiversity data, determing the quality of data and informing would-be data consumers and users remains a signi ﬁ cant issue. In order for data users and data owners to perform a satisfactory assessment and management of data ﬁ tness for use, they require a Data Quality (DQ) report, which presents a set of relevant DQ measures, validations, and amendments assigned to data. Determining the meaning of " ﬁ tness for use" is essential to best manage and assess DQ. To tackle the problem, the TDWG Biodiversity Data Quality (BDQ) - Interest Group (IG) (htt ps://github.com/tdwg/bdq) has proposed a conceptual framework that de ﬁ nes the necessary components to describe Data DQ needs, DQ solutions, and DQ reports (Fig. 1). It supports, in a global and collaborative environment, a consistent description of: (1) the meaning of data ﬁ tness for use in speci ﬁ c contexts, using the concept of a DQ pro ﬁ le; (2) DQ solutions, using the concepts of speci ﬁ cations and mechanisms; and (3) the status of quality of data according to a DQ pro ﬁ le, using the concept of a DQ report (Veiga 2016, Veiga et al. 2017). Based on this this conceptual framework, we implemented a prototype
Do bilinguals get the joke? Humor comprehension in mono- and bilinguals

Abstract Understanding jokes may differ between mono- and bilinguals because of differences in lexical access; fluency and sense of humor may also be relevant. Three experiments examined English-language joke comprehension in monolingual (n = 91) and bilingual (n = 111) undergraduates, Russian–English bilinguals (n = 39), and MTurk monolinguals (n = 77). Participants rated jokes and non-jokes in English as funny or not funny. We assessed the effects of bilingualism, language dominance, fluency, sense of humor, experience, and motivation on response time (RT) and sensitivity (d′) in identifying jokes. Bilingualism predicted neither RT nor d′ in mono- and English-dominant bilingual undergraduates; English fluency predicted d′. Russians were slower than English-dominant bilinguals but were more not less sensitive to humor. MTurk monolinguals were faster than undergraduates and equally sensitive; sense of humor predicted sensitivity. Overall, humor processing is alternately affected by fluency, sense of humor, and motivation, depending on the population. Bilingualism per se is not a factor.
Effects of Renin-Angiotensin-Aldosterone System Inhibition on Left Ventricular Hypertrophy, Diastolic Function, and Functional Status in Patients With Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy: A Systematic Review

The renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system (RAAS) plays a vital role in cardiovascular homeostasis by regulating blood pressure, salt, and water balance. The kidneys produce renin which converts angiotensinogen to angiotensin-1 (AT-I) and angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) to angiotensin-II (AT-II). AT-II binds to receptors in the adrenal cortex to release aldosterone. AT-II and aldosterone promote water and salt retention, vascular tone, and myocardial contractility. These physiological changes raise blood pressure and circulation. Reduced renal perfusion pressure sensed by baroreceptors and the sympathetic nervous system’s β-adrenergic receptors trigger renin release and RAAS activation. RAAS restores hemodynamic stability in pathological states associated with low perfusion. This adaptive response is important for restoring perfusion and hemodynamic stability, but prolonged RAAS activation has deleterious effects on the cardiovascular system. Long-term mineralocorticoid exposure has been linked to left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) and remodeling. AT-II activates fibroblasts and cardiac myocytes to promote cardiac remodeling. Blocking RAAS can eliminate the long-term negative effects of RAAS activation. Direct renin inhibitors, ACE inhibitors, angiotensin receptor blockers, and aldosterone antagonists are RAAS blockers. RAAS blockade improves mortality and hospitalization in systolic heart failure and acute myocardial infarction. RAAS blockade has not demonstrated the same benefits in other cardiac populations, such as those with preserved ejection fraction. Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) causes LVH and asymmetric septal hypertrophy. When the outflow tract gradient exceeds 30 mmHg and is associated with septal hypertrophy, it is known as obstructive HCM. Dyspnea on exertion, syncope, and exertional angina are symptoms of HCM. RAAS activation worsens LVH by increasing blood pressure and by directly affecting cardiac myocytes with AT-II and aldosterone. RAAS blockade reverses myocardial fibrosis and slows HCM progression in animal models. We performed a meta-analysis of randomized clinical trials to further investigate the potential benefit of RAAS blockade in HCM patients. Although our findings included significant results for some of the RAAS blockade agents, these findings were not consistent throughout all the studies. Mavacamten, one of the newest treatments, has shown promising outcomes.
The Asthma Risk Is Increased in Children with Severe Allergic Rhinitis

Objective: The aim of the study was to evaluate the allergic rhinitis severity, to identify risk factors associated with asthma, and to determine the frequency of comorbid conditions in allergic rhinitis patients with positive skin prick test. Materials and Methods: Clinical characteristics of pediatric patients with allergic rhinitis were investigated. The frequency of comorbidities and risk factors for asthma development were investigated. Results: A total of 120 patients with a mean age of 13.05 ± 3.20 years were included in the study. Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus was the most common source of allergic sensitization (n = 78, 61.0%), whereas mild-persistent disease was the most common type of allergic rhinitis severity (n = 44, 36.6%). Sensitization to Dermatophagoides farinea, Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus, and Alternaria was more common in patients with a moderate–severe course of allergic rhinitis than in the mild group (P = .006, P = .008, and P = .005, respectively). The most frequent comorbidity in children with allergic rhinitis was allergic conjunctivitis (71.7%). The incidence of asthma in those with moderate–severe allergic rhinitis was found to be significantly higher compared to those with mild disease severity (P = .009). Also, the multivariate analysis disclosed moderate–severe allergic rhinitis severity and persistent allergic rhinitis symptoms (OR: 3.822; 95% CI: 1.587–9.200; P =0.003 and OR: 0.333; 95% CI: 0.150–0.737; P =.007, respectively) as risk factors for asthma development. Conclusion: Sensitization to Dermatophagoides farinea, Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus, and Alternaria was more frequent in patients with moderate–severe allergic rhinitis course. Also, having moderate–severe allergic rhinitis severity and persistent allergic rhinitis symptoms are associated with the development of asthma. Awareness of the risk factors could prevent the progression and complications of allergic rhinitis in children.
Introducing the CYSAS-S3 Dataset for Operationalizing a Mission-Oriented Cyber Situational Awareness

The digital transformation of the defence sector is not exempt from innovative requirements and challenges, with the lack of availability of reliable, unbiased and consistent data for training automatisms (machine learning algorithms, decision-making, what-if recreation of operational conditions, support the human understanding of the hybrid operational picture, personnel training/education, etc.) being one of the most relevant gaps. In the context of cyber defence, the state-of-the-art provides a plethora of data network collections that tend to lack presenting the information of all communication layers (physical to application). They are synthetically generated in scenarios far from the singularities of cyber defence operations. None of these data network collections took into consideration usage profiles and specific environments directly related to acquiring a cyber situational awareness, typically missing the relationship between incidents registered at the hardware/software level and their impact on the military mission assets and objectives, which consequently bypasses the entire chain of dependencies between strategic, operational, tactical and technical domains. In order to contribute to the mitigation of these gaps, this paper introduces CYSAS-S3, a novel dataset designed and created as a result of a joint research action that explores the principal needs for datasets by cyber defence centres, resulting in the generation of a collection of samples that correlate the impact of selected Advanced Persistent Threats (APT) with each phase of their cyber kill chain, regarding mission-level operations and goals.
Evaluation of Simple Algorithms for Proportional Control of Prosthetic Hands Using Intramuscular Electromyography

Although seemingly effortless, the control of the human hand is backed by an elaborate neuro-muscular mechanism. The end result is typically a smooth action with the precise positioning of the joints of the hand and an exerted force that can be modulated to enable precise interaction with the surroundings. Unfortunately, even the most sophisticated technology cannot replace such a comprehensive role but can offer only basic hand functionalities. This issue arises from the drawbacks of the prosthetic hand control strategies that commonly rely on surface EMG signals that contain a high level of noise, thus limiting accurate and robust multi-joint movement estimation. The use of intramuscular EMG results in higher quality signals which, in turn, lead to an improvement in prosthetic control performance. Here, we present the evaluation of fourteen common/well-known algorithms (mean absolute value, variance, slope sign change, zero crossing, Willison amplitude, waveform length, signal envelope, total signal energy, Teager energy in the time domain, Teager energy in the frequency domain, modified Teager energy, mean of signal frequencies, median of signal frequencies, and firing rate) for the direct and proportional control of a prosthetic hand. The method involves the estimation of the forces generated in the hand by using different algorithms applied to iEMG signals from our recently published database, and comparing them to the measured forces (ground truth). The results presented in this paper are intended to be used as a baseline performance metric for more advanced algorithms that will be made and tested using the same database.
Study of Lipid Profile in Patients with Diabetes Mellitus Presenting at Tertiary Referral Center in Nepal

Introduction: Diabetes mellitus is a metabolic disorder associated with dyslipidemia especially in type 2 diabetes mellitus. Lipid abnormalities are associated with increased risk of cardiovascular diseases. The aim of the study was to find out the incidence of dyslipidemia in patients with diabetes mellitus presenting at tertiary referral center of Kathmandu, Nepal. Methods: This was a retrospective study conducted in Medicine and Endocrine OPD of Shree Birendra Hospital, Chhauni, Kathmandu, Nepal after approval from the Institution Review committee. Cases within the period from December 2019 to January 2021 were studied. Data were analyzed using SPSS 21.0. Results: Out of 150 patients with diabetes mellitus, 32.6% had total cholesterol > 200 mg / dl, 60% had elevated LDL, 26.67% patient had elevated TG and 36% patients had low HDL level. Poor glycemic control (HbA1c > 7%) was observed in 86 (57.33%) subjects. Among patients with HbA1c > 9, 3.33% patients had cholesterol > 200, 4.67% patients had TG > 250, 5.33% patients had LDL > 100 and 6.67% patients had HDL < 40. Conclusions: Diabetes mellitus is associated with high incidence of dyslipidemia. The most common pattern observed was elevated level of low-density lipoprotein, cholesterol and triglyceride and low level of HDL. Routine monitoring of lipid profile should be part of patient care.
On Achieving the Minimum Energy for Sending One Single Bit with Feedback

This master thesis was aimed to provide methods for coding construction which incurs the minimum energy when sending one single bit of information in the presence of noiseless feedback. At first, we tried to find a coding scheme for general channels having a free symbol. Motivated by the original coding scheme proposed by Verdu in his paper which has to do with hypothesis testing and Stein lemma, we focused on sequential hypothesis testing (Wald testing) in the presence of feedback. It is proved that sequential hypothesis testing can not be exploited generally to achieve the minimum energy. Next, we narrowed down the problem and considered only Gaussian channel. This thesis gave an optimal coding scheme -which incurs the minimum possible energy for sending one single bitbased on MMSE estimation. We then showed that in infinite-bandwidth Gaussian channel a single bit can be sent reliably with the same amount of energy that would be required per bit if one were sending a large number of bits. In next step, we considered the transmission of a single bit over the discretetime and also continuous-time Poisson channel with noiseless and delayless feedback. Firstly, the least amount of energy for sending reliably a single bit over Poisson channel was calculated and then a coding scheme which achieves it, was proposed. We showed that in the absence of peak-power constraints, sending reliably a single bit over Poisson channel requires, on the average at least, half the energy of a photon. We also extend these results for sending reliably finite number of bits. Finally, we showed that, in the absence of peak-power constraints, the amount of energy required to send reliably one bit is more than the amount of energy per bit when sending large number of bits. For the Poisson channel with peak power constraint, we also proposed two different coding schemes which can be used with bounded energy when error probability is bounded.
H-infinity output feedback control design for discrete-time fuzzy systems

This paper investigates the relaxed non-quadratic stability conditions, fuzzy observer designs and ∞ controller designs for discrete-time Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy systems based on a relaxed approach in which fuzzy Lyapunov functions are used. First, a new relaxed condition of non-quadratic stability is presented, which is shown to be useful in designing fuzzy controller and observer. Second, new fuzzy observers based on the relaxed non-quadratic stability conditions have been proposed. Then, a sufficient linear matrix inequality (LMI)-type condition is proposed to guarantee the existence of the ∞ controllers based on the fuzzy observers designed. It is shown that the controller and observer parameters can be obtained by solving a set of LMIs that are numerically feasible with commercially available software. Finally, the effectiveness and less conservativeness of the proposed approach are demonstrated by two examples