Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The heritability and morphology of lumbar Modic changes and their association with pain

Low back pain (LBP) causes enormous costs to society. Certain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) findings, including disc degeneration and disc herniation, have been associated with LBP in epidemiologic studies. Even though LBP should be considered a biopsychosocial condition, there is a need to define the possible existence of specific pathological conditions beyond LBP. One of these possible conditions is Modic change (MC). Modic changes are subchondral and vertebral bone marrow changes revealed by MRI. Although their association with LBP has been previously studied, some results remain contradictory, and we need to explore MC more thoroughly and to determine whether they are a feature of intervertebral disc degeneration or whether they exist in isolation. Moreover, it is unknown whether heritability is a contributing factor to MC. This study explored the heritability and morphology of MC and their association with severe, prolonged and disabling LBP. The data consisted of two general population samples, TwinsUK from the United Kingdom (mainly female), and the Hong Kong Disc Degeneration Cohort (HKDDC) from Hong Kong, China. The TwinsUK sample included a longitudinal ten-year follow-up, whereas the HKDDC sample was cross-sectional. The heritability of MC was found to be 30%. Modic changes were associated with other MRI findings such as disc degeneration, disc displacement and Schmorl’s nodes. A greater size of MC increased these associations. Type 1 MC were more strongly associated with disc displacement and disc degeneration than Modic type 2 change. Modic changes appeared to be independently associated with disabling LBP; severe, prolonged LBP; and back-related disability. Posterior MC and MC in the whole antero-posterior (AP) length of the vertebral body were more strongly associated with severe, prolonged LBP than other MC. A greater number and size of MC increased this association. In terms of disc degeneration, MC were independently associated with loss of disc height and disc signal intensity. Incident MC were independently associated with loss of disc height and disc bulge in a ten-year follow-up. Modic changes are heritable, and are associated with severe and disabling LBP. The location, size and number of MC affect the association of MC with other MRI findings, LBP and backrelated disability.
Sexual Differences in Biomass and Nutrient Allocation in the Dioecious Rubus Chamaemorus

I compared the seasonal pattern of biomass distribution and amounts of N and P in male and female ramets of the dioecious perennial herb Rubus chamaemorus L. Two populations, one in an open and one in a shaded habitat, were studied for 2 yr. The cost of fruit production in terms of reduction in vegetative growth was estimated in a field experiment. Ramets were larger, but the proportions of aboveground biomass, N, and P that were allocated to reproduction were lower at the shaded site than at the open site. The annual aboveground shoot ofR. chamaemorus is either single-flowered or nonfloral. Female flowers had a lower dry mass and nutrient content than had male flowers. However, the ripe fruit had a dry mass, and a content of N and P, several times as great as those of male flowers. Fruit production interfered with vegetative growth; fruit-producing female ramets produced smaller leaves, and began producing rhizome branchlets later, than male ramets and than female ramets whose flowers had been excised to prevent fruit development. Fruit-pro- ducing female ramets had a higher mortality, and a lower probability of flowering in the subsequent year, than had male ramets. The sexual differences in vegetative growth and ramet mortality were smaller in the shaded than in the open habitat. In the shaded habitat, - 50% of the ramets on male clones, and - 30% of the ramets on female clones, were floral. The results suggest that male reproductive effort is greater than female up to the time of flowering, but that the total female allocation to reproduction is greater than the total male even at relatively low levels of fruit set. The predominance of R. chamaemorus populations with male-biased floral sex ratios is proposed to be the result of males having both a greater competitive vigor and a higher flowering propensity than females.
Tests of Causality and Exogeneity between Exports and Economic Growth — The Case of Asian NICs

This chapter presents a detailed econometric investigation using Sims’ unidirectional exogeneity test and Granger’s causality test to detect the existence and the directions of causality between exports and GDP for the four rapidly developing Asian newly industrializing countries (NICs): Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan. In general, our analysis shows that the two tests did not yield the same causal implications for each country. The Sims’ test indicates a feedback relationship while the Granger’s test indicates no causal relation between the exports and GDP, except for Hong Kong where both tests indicate a unidirectional causality from GDP to exports without feedback. Thus, our results from Sims’ test strongly indicate that the rapid economic growth of the Asian NICs is not only achieved with the export promotion policy but also derived from the domestic growth of industries and import substitution.
Single-Arm Open-Label Clinical Trial of Two Grams of Aztreonam for the Treatment of Neisseria gonorrhoeae

The threat of ceftriaxone-resistant Neisseria gonorrhoeae necessitates new gonorrhea treatment regimens. Repurposing older antibiotics not routinely used for N. gonorrhoeae may expeditiously identify new therapies. Ideally, all recommended therapies should eradicate gonorrhea at the pharynx. Between April and September 2019, we enrolled men in an open-label, one-arm clinical trial of single-dose intramuscular aztreonam (2 g). Enrollment criterion included (i) nucleic acid amplification test (NAAT)-positive pharyngeal gonorrhea for ≤14 days or (ii) Gram stain-positive gonococcal urethritis plus report of performing oral sex in ≤2 months. ABSTRACT The threat of ceftriaxone-resistant Neisseria gonorrhoeae necessitates new gonorrhea treatment regimens. Repurposing older antibiotics not routinely used for N. gonorrhoeae may expeditiously identify new therapies. Ideally, all recommended therapies should eradicate gonorrhea at the pharynx. Between April and September 2019, we enrolled men in an open-label, one-arm clinical trial of single-dose intramuscular aztreonam (2 g). Enrollment criterion included (i) nucleic acid amplification test (NAAT)-positive pharyngeal gonorrhea for ≤14 days or (ii) Gram stain-positive gonococcal urethritis plus report of performing oral sex in ≤2 months. At enrollment, we collected cultures from NAAT-positive or screening sites, and men returned 3 to 8 days following treatment for a test of cure (TOC) by culture. The per-protocol analysis required men to be culture positive at enrollment and to return for TOC. We calculated efficacy as the number of subjects with negative culture at TOC divided by the number culture positive at enrollment by anatomic site. Thirty-two men enrolled in the study; 21 were pharyngeal NAAT positive, and 11 had gonococcal urethritis. The per-protocol analysis included 17 men, 6 with pharyngeal, 9 with urethral, and 4 with rectal gonococcal infections. Aztreonam cured 2 of 6 pharyngeal infections (33%; 95% confidence interval [CI], 4.3% to 78%) and 3 of 4 rectal infections (75%; 95% CI, 19% to 99%). All 11 men with urethritis were cured (100%; 95% CI, 66% to 100%). The aztreonam MIC90 was 0.5 μg/ml (range, 0.06 to 2.0 μg/ml). All treatment failures occurred at a MIC of ≥0.25 μg/ml. Single-dose aztreonam is not a reliable treatment for gonorrhea at the pharynx but may be useful for men with gonococcal urethritis and beta-lactam allergy. (This study has been registered at ClinicalTrials.gov under identifier NCT03867734.)
Searching PubMed to Retrieve Publications on the COVID-19 Pandemic: Comparative Analysis of Search Strings

Background Since it was declared a pandemic on March 11, 2020, COVID-19 has dominated headlines around the world and researchers have generated thousands of scientific articles about the disease. The fast speed of publication has challenged researchers and other stakeholders to keep up with the volume of published articles. To search the literature effectively, researchers use databases such as PubMed. Objective The aim of this study is to evaluate the performance of different searches for COVID-19 records in PubMed and to assess the complexity of searches required. Methods We tested PubMed searches for COVID-19 to identify which search string performed best according to standard metrics (sensitivity, precision, and F-score). We evaluated the performance of 8 different searches in PubMed during the first 10 weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic to investigate how complex a search string is needed. We also tested omitting hyphens and space characters as well as applying quotation marks. Results The two most comprehensive search strings combining several free-text and indexed search terms performed best in terms of sensitivity (98.4%/98.7%) and F-score (96.5%/95.7%), but the single-term search COVID-19 performed best in terms of precision (95.3%) and well in terms of sensitivity (94.4%) and F-score (94.8%). The term Wuhan virus performed the worst: 7.7% for sensitivity, 78.1% for precision, and 14.0% for F-score. We found that deleting a hyphen or space character could omit a substantial number of records, especially when searching with SARS-CoV-2 as a single term. Conclusions Comprehensive search strings combining free-text and indexed search terms performed better than single-term searches in PubMed, but not by a large margin compared to the single term COVID-19. For everyday searches, certain single-term searches that are entered correctly are probably sufficient, whereas more comprehensive searches should be used for systematic reviews. Still, we suggest additional measures that the US National Library of Medicine could take to support all PubMed users in searching the COVID-19 literature.
Cancer mortality and predictions for 2020 in selected Australasian countries, Russia and Ukraine

Objectives Predicted cancer mortality figures are useful for public health planning. We predicted cancer mortality rates in Israel, Hong Kong, Japan, the Philippines, Korea, Australia, Russia and Ukraine for the year 2020 using the most recent available data. We focused on breast cancer. Methods We obtained cancer death certification and population data from the WHO and the United Nations Population Division databases. We derived figures for 10 major cancer sites and total cancers over 1970–2017. We predicted numbers of deaths and age-standardized mortality rates for 2020 through joinpoint regression models. We calculated the number of avoided deaths from 1994–2020. Results Overall, total cancer mortality is predicted to decline. Russia had the highest all cancers rates in 2020, 151.9/100 000 men and 79.6 women; the Philippines had the lowest rate in men, 78.0/100 000, Korea in women, 47.5. Stomach cancer rates declined over the whole period in all countries considered, colorectal cancer since the late 1990s. Trends for pancreas were inconsistent. Predicted rates for lung and breast cancer were favourable; women from Hong Kong, Korea and Australia had lung cancer death rates higher than breast ones. Predicted rates for uterine, ovarian, prostate and bladder cancers and leukaemias were downward for most countries. Between 1994 and 2020, over 3.3 million cancer deaths were avoided in the considered countries, except for the Philippines where no reduction was observed. Conclusion Predicted cancer rates were lower than in the European Union and the USA, even though falls started later and were less marked.
The Urban Blight Costs in Taiwan

Urban blight is not only an eyesore for city residents, but also a threat to health, psychological well-being, and safety. It not only represents substantial economic decline, but also spreads through urban space. As well as the loss of personal property value, urban blight also harms public interests in the public domain. This study finds that danger and age are the two main factors of urban blight. Ignoring these two factors causes housing prices to fall. The decline in population due to long-term economic stagnation and the exodus of residents and industries, coupled with the long-term decline in income and spending on maintenance of old houses, has led to major visual and physical economic blight. This investigation adopts the hedonic model to analyze the correspondence of house prices with urban blight, based on real estate prices and related township variables announced by the government in Taiwan in 2017, and applies the spatial regression model to investigate the direct and indirect effects of real estate prices. The following conclusions can be drawn from the analytical results. 1. The spatial lag model finds that urban blight has a spatial spillover effect. 2. The government must not disregard the blight, due to its detrimental effect on housing prices and spatial diffusion effect. 3. The factors that affect the blight are age of residents, age of buildings, poverty, and danger.
Bias Polarity‐Induced Transformation of Point Contact Resistive Switching Memory from Single Transparent Conductive Metal Oxide Layer

J.-S. Huang, H. -W. Tsai, W. -C. Yen, C. -W. Chen, Prof. C. -Y. Lee, Prof. Y. -L. Chueh Department of Materials Science and Engineering National Tsing Hua University Hsinchu , 30013 Taiwan , Republic of China E-mail: ylchueh@mx.nthu. edu.tw Dr. Y. -C. Lin National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology Tsukuba , Japan Prof. T. -S. Chin Department of Materials Science and Engineering Feng Chia University Taichung , 40724 Taiwan , Republic of China E-mail: tschin@mx.nthu. edu.tw
In-depth analysis of the Great Firewall of China

Created by the Golden Shield Project, the Great Firewall of China (GFW) is the backbone of world’s largest system of censorship. As an on-path system, the GFW can monitor traffic and inject additional packets, but cannot stop in-flight packets from reaching its destination. It achieves censorship using three main techniques: First, it inspects all Internet traffic between China and the rest of the world, then terminate connections containing censored content by injecting forged TCP Reset packets to both ends. With the advent of HTTPS, which cannot be decrypted by the GFW, TCP RST has seen fewer use in recent years. Second, the GFW blocks access to specific IP addresses through the gateway routers of all Chinese ISPs. Third, it uses DNS tampering to return false IP addresses in response to DNS queries to blocked domains. This affects queries to both domestic and foreign DNS services. IP blocking and DNS tampering together are the bread and butter of GFW, effectively cutting off all access to blocked websites. But, such draconian methods inevitably cause over-censoring and collateral damage to international web traffic flowing through China and innocent websites. The three main ways a user can bypass the GFW are the use of VPNs, Proxies, and Tor. However, GFW can use deep packet inspection and machine learning to shutdown suspected VPN or proxy tunnels, and use an active probing system to shutdown Tor bridge relays. As of today, few commercial VPN services and the latest Tor protocols using Pluggable Transports are viable approaches.
CorrelationWith Disease Activity Score 28 (Das28) With Pulmonary Function Test In Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients

Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) is a chronic in lammatory disease of unknown etiology involving both small and large joints with many extra-articular manifestations. There may be a variety of pulmonary complications associated with RA based on its disease activity and levels of RF and anti-CCP titers. Pulmonary involvement may be seen at different levels of the respiratory system, with infectionbeing themost common cause ofmortality. Our study shows the association and degree of pulmonary involvement in patients with RA based on the pulmonary function test and its correlation with the DAS 28 score. The aim of our study was to assess the prevalence of pulmonary involvement in patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis. The study population was 100 patients with RA diagnosed based on the 2010 ACR/EULAR criteria following all the exclusion. The patientswere subjected to a PFTondiagnosis and repeated at 6 and 18months following treatment. In our study, there is a higher prevalence of pulmonary involvement seen in doing PFT, even in asymptomatic patients with RA when compared to other studies. Pulmonary complications occurring in patientswith Rheumatoid Arthritismay be identi ied on doing a PFT or HRCT thorax. Pulmonary involvement carries signi icant mortality and morbidity. Disease duration and disease activity score 28were found to have a signi icant associationwith pulmonary complications. Althoughour studybrings out the incidence of higher risk of pulmonary involvement in patientswith RA, more studies meta-analysis are required.
The Use of Anti Citrullinated Protein / Peptide Antibody Assay as Diagnostic Test in Patients with Rheumathoid Arthritis

Aim: The aim of this study was to compare the diagnostic values of laboratory variables, to present quantitative evaluations of the anti citrullinated protein/peptide antibody (ACPA), or anti CCP(anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide,anti-CCP2) antibodies in second generation antibody assay diagnostic test with reference to sensitivity and specificity, the predictive value of the positive and negative test and precision of the test for ACPA antibodies, rheumatoid factor-reactive protein and DAS 28 index, in the early diagnosis of untreated rheumatoid arthritis. Material and Methods: 70 participants (35 patients with rheumatoid arthritis not treated, 35 individuals as healthy controls) took part in the study. Their serum was examined using ELISA technology of DIA-STAT TM Anti-CCP (Axis–Shield Diagnostics). Rheumatoid factor was examined with the test for agglutination (Latex RF test). Results: We found the presence of ACPA antibodies (sensitivity of the test 65.71%) in 23 of the 35 examined patients with rheumatoid arthritis while rheumatoid factor appeared in 17 patients (sensitivity of the test 48.57%). Twelve patients were ACPA and rheumatoid factor positive, 11 were ACPA positive, but rheumatoid factor negative. Five patients were ACPA negative and rheumatoid factor positive. In 17 rheumatoid factor positive patients, ACPA antibodies were positive in 12 patients. Of 18 rheumatoid factor negative patients, 11 were ACPA positive. In the healthy control group, 1 patient was anti-CCP 2 positive, while 2 patients were rheumatoid factor positive.
Skazenia mikrobiologiczne surowcow i produktow kosmetycznych

Cosmetics and hygienical products are used world-wide to improve human hygiene, skin condition and body appearance. Their quality is influenced by their chemical composition, active components and the presence of bacteria, protozoa and fungi. To avoid microbiological contamination, strict norms and procedures have been elaborated including Good Manual Practise (GMP) and Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points (HACCP). In spite of them, contamination takes place both, during production and the use of cosmetic products. Bacteria and fungi in cosmetics come from raw materials like water, milk, essential oils and plant tissues or originate from biofilms formed in production lines as re-contamination. The most frequently found microbes are enterobacteria, staphylococci, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and sporeforms of Clostridium spp. and Bacillus spp. These contaminants in high number, noted in mascara, eye-shadows, shampoos or body lotions, could be the reason of corneal ulcer, toxic syndromes and skin infections. Moreover, proliferation of microbes leads to spoilage problems and to the shortening of the best before period. The best way to avoid most of the problems connected with microbiological contamination is proper selection of good-quality raw materials, efficient disinfection and biofilm elimination as well as and applying the GMP procedures and HACCP rules in the factories. Education of consumers and proper storage and use of cosmetic and hygienical products are also very important.
Insights into Innovative Classroom Practices with ICT: Identifying the Impetus for Change

This paper draws on the literature of transformational leadership and learning organisation with a concern to foster innovative changes in classroom practices. Based on the understanding that effective use of ICT has to be construed in the pedagogical and organisational context, this study focuses on the impact of the relevant contextual factors on teaching and learning, and how these factors interact with each other, in particular the relationship between technological innovations and pedagogical innovations. By adopting a qualitative case study approach to examining the impetus for change, four different types of ICT implementation strategies have emerged from a sample of eight schools in Hong Kong and Singapore, the technologically driven type, the pedagogically driven type, the balanced type, and the uncoupled type. Those schools which have realized changes in classroom practices are characterised by ICT-pedagogical innovations. To make this happen, pedagogical innovations must be rooted in teachers' experiences of moving away from a teacher-centred approach to one that is more student-centred. Leadership and the climate for collaboration and experimentation are fundamental to the integration of technology into pedagogical innovations. However, other factors such as region, school level, and type of school do not seem to account for the differences.
Predicting Censorship on Weibo CSE 190 : Assignment 2

1. DATASET The data used for this assignment is taken from the Weiboscope data collection and visualization project developed by the research team at the Journalism and Media Studies Centre, The University of Hong Kong [5]. The dataset consists of weibos (roughly the Chinese equivalent of tweets) collected in the year 2012. The authors created the dataset by first compiling a list of Weibo users with 1,000 or more followers and then getting their timelines, friends, and followers. Within the entire dataset, there are 226,841,122 tweets from 14,387,628 unique users. Of these tweets, 86,083 (about 0.03%) are censored. Figure 1 shows the word clouds for the noncensored tweets (left) and for the censored tweets (right). Some terms are found often in both sets, namely 轉發微博 (retweet), 哈 哈 (haha), 中国人 (Chinese people), and 越来越 (more and more). However, censored tweets tend to be much more political. 钓鱼岛 (Diaoyu Islands) refer to the disputed island chains between China and Japan. 斯巴达 (Sparta) is actually a play on the fact that Sparta in Chinese (sibada) is nearly a homophone for 十八大 (shibada), the 18th National Party Congress where the previous president Hu Jintao stepped down and the current president – Xi Jinping – took his place.1 There tend to be more people names in the censored tweets, such as 毛泽东 (Mao Zedong, former chairman of the Chinese Communist Party), 薄熙来 (Bo Xi-