Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Prevalence and factors associated with transmission of lymphatic filariasis in South Sudan: a cross-sectional quantitative study

Introduction South Sudan is affected by a high burden of Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs). The country is very vulnerable to NTDs due to its favourable tropical climate and multiple risk factors. However, the distribution of the diseases and the populations at risk for the various NTDs is unknown. This paper describes the distribution of lymphatic filariasis (LF) in 58 counties of South Sudan. Methods a descriptive quantitative cross-sectional study of LF in 58 counties in 8 states of South Sudan recruited adult volunteers aged ≥ 15 years tested for circulating filarial antigens (CFA). A quantitative descriptive statistical was performed to determine the prevalence rates and the endemicity (CFA positivity rate ≥1%) of lymphatic filariasis in 9213 adult individuals from 101 villages. Results the overall prevalence of positive CFA was 1.6%, and the highest state prevalence was reported in the Upper Nile state at 3.4%. Based on the prevalence of positive CFA 64% of the surveyed counties are endemic to lymphatic filariasis. The endemicity ranged from 1-11.1% positive CFA. The highest prevalence of positive CAF was observed in the >50 years old age group (2.7%), followed by the 46-50 age group (2.3%). Males tested more positive than females (52.4% Vs 47.6%). Participants were three times more likely to test positive for CFA on filarial test strips (FTS) compared to immunochromatographic test (ICT). There was a statistically significant difference in the prevalence of positive CFA among the two tests (P=.002). Conclusion the distribution of LF is widespread, with varying transmission risks. The produced prevalence maps of infection provided evidence on the areas for targeted interventions in the national NTD program in South Sudan. An increased number of positive CFA were identified using FTS than ICT; hence, it is advisable to use FTS in the future transmission survey.
Etude asymptotique des algorithmes de recuit simule

Les algorithmes de recuit simule sont une methode d'optimisation approchee ou l'espace des etats est explore par une chaine de markov inhomogene. Nous etudions la dynamique de metropolis sur un espace fini par des methodes de grandes deviations. Une decomposition de l'espace en cycles, suivant wentzell et freidlin, conduit a estimer la loi du temps et du point d'entree dans un ensemble pour les trajectoires demeurees dans un autre ensemble donne. La preuve, par recurrence, etablit que les estimations se conservent par composition des lois par produit tensoriel interieur. Suivent des applications: un complement au theoreme de hajek sur les conditions necessaires et suffisantes de convergence, une borne superieure pour la vitesse de convergence, des estimees de la loi du systeme pour differentes suites de temperatures. Nous montrons que la suite de temperatures optimale en horizon fini lointain decroit comme l'inverse du logarithme dans sa premiere partie, mais en general pas dans sa partie proche de l'horizon. On obtient par contre un taux de convergence asymptotiquement optimal au sens des equivalents logarithmiques avec des suites de temperatures geometriques dont le taux est convenablement adapte a l'horizon
Effective permittivity of finite inhomogeneous objects

A generalization of the S-parameter retrieval method for finite three-dimensional inhomogeneous objects under arbitrary illumination and observation conditions is presented. The effective permittivity of such objects may be rigorously defined as a solution of a nonlinear inverse scattering problem. We confirm analytically and observe numerically effects that were previously reported in the one-dimensional strongly inhomogeneous slabs: the nonuniqueness of the effective permittivity and its dependence on the illumination and observation conditions, and the geometry of the object. Moreover, we show that, although the S-parameter retrieval of the effective permittivity is scale free at the level of problem statement, the exact solution of this problem either does not exist or is not unique. Using the results from the spectral analysis we describe the set of values of the effective permittivity for which the scattering problem is ill-posed. Unfortunately, real nonpositive values, important for negative refraction and invisibility, belong to this set. We illustrate our conclusions using a numerical reduced-order inverse scattering algorithm specifically designed for the effective permittivity problem.
Sexual minority young adults’ perspectives on how minority stress and other factors negatively affect self-esteem: a qualitative interview study

Abstract Sexual minority young adults (lesbian, gay and bisexual), are at increased risk of experiencing mental health problems than their heterosexual peers. On average they also have lower self-esteem which may contribute to the development or maintenance of mental illnesses. Interventions to improve self-esteem could improve well-being and reduce mental ill-health risk in sexual minority young adults. It is important to understand the processes that contribute to lower self-esteem in this population. The present study aimed to explore these processes. Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with a sample of 20 sexual minority young adults (age 16–24 years) with a range of self-esteem levels. Using thematic analysis, three overarching areas were idenitified: ’Negative social evaluations and reduced belonging’, ‘Striving and failing to meet standards’, and ‘Negative sexual orientation processes’. These findings have theoretical implications for minority stress models of mental health inequalities, highlighting the potential interaction between minority-specific and more general risk factors for mental health problems. Findings also have clinical implications for the development of tailored interventions to help improve low self-esteem in sexual minority young adults.
Global Optimization: Deterministic Approaches

This study develops a unifying approach to constrained global optimization. It provides insight into the underlying concepts and properties of diverse techniques recently proposed to solve a wide variety of problems encountered in the decision sciences, engineering, operations research and other disciplines. As well as a coherent view of the field, new material is presented. The exposition focuses on: minimization of concave functions subject to linear and convex constraints; minimization over the intersection of convex sets and complements of convex sets; global optimization of functions that can be expressed as a difference of two convex functions; Lipschitz and continuous optimization, and systems of equations/inequalities. Additional details on specially structured problems include decomposition of large scale optimization, projection, quadratic, bilinear and biconvex programming, complementarity, separability, parametric approaches, network problems and design centering.
Characterizing the Uptake of Newly Opened Health Centers by Individuals Dually Enrolled in Medicare and Medicaid

Federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) increasingly provide high-quality, cost-effective primary care to individuals dually enrolled in Medicare and Medicaid. However, not everyone can access an FQHC. We used 2012 to 2018 Medicare claims and federally collected FQHC data to examine communities where an FQHC first opened and determine which dual eligibles used it. Overall uptake was 10%, ranging from 6.6% among age-eligible urban residents to 14.8% among disability-eligible rural residents. Community-level uptake ranged from 0% to 76.4% (median = 5.5%; interquartile range = 2.8%-11.3%). Certain subpopulations of dual eligibles are significantly more likely to use FQHCs. Our findings should inform the targeting of future FQHC expansions.
Pupil Dilation Reflects Emotional Arousal Via Poetic Language

We investigated pupillary responses to the world’s shortest fixed verses, Japanese haiku as aesthetic poetry (AP) and senryu as comic poetry (CP), in comparison with non-poetry control stimuli (NP) comprised of slogans that had the same rhythm patterns. Native Japanese speakers without literary training listened to these stimuli while we recorded their pupil diameters. We found that participants’ pupils were significantly dilated for CP compared to NP in an early time window. While AP also evoked larger dilations than NP, the latency for AP-related pupil dilation was relatively long. Thus, lay people experience quick and intense arousal in response to funny and humorous words, while aesthetic properties of words may also elicit intense but slower changes in listeners’ arousal levels, presumably because they evoke more implicit and subtle emotional effects. This study is the first to provide evidence that poetic language elicits human pupillary dilation. A better understanding of the cognitive and neural substrates for the sensitive awareness of pleasures expressed via poetic language will provide insights for improving mental and physical health. Hence, pupillometry can act as a useful convenient measurement to delineate the sympathetic activation of emotional contexts via language.
Zebrafish as a Mainstream Model for In Vivo Systems Pharmacology and Toxicology.

Pharmacology and toxicology are part of a much broader effort to understand the relationship between chemistry and biology. While biomedicine has necessarily focused on specific cases, typically of direct human relevance, there are real advantages in pursuing more systematic approaches to characterizing how health and disease are influenced by small molecules and other interventions. In this context, the zebrafish is now established as the representative screenable vertebrate and, through ongoing advances in the available scale of genome editing and automated phenotyping, is beginning to address systems-level solutions to some biomedical problems. The addition of broader efforts to integrate information content across preclinical model organisms and the incorporation of rigorous analytics, including closed-loop deep learning, will facilitate efforts to create systems pharmacology and toxicology with the ability to continuously optimize chemical biological interactions around societal needs. In this review, we outline progress toward this goal. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Volume 63 is January 2023. Please see http://www.annualreviews. org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
Surgeon‐performed ultrasound changes surgical management in patients with thyroid cancer

A comprehensive neck ultrasound (US) is essential in the operative planning of patients with thyroid disease. Recent literature has shown surgeon‐performed US (SUS) can be more accurate than radiology‐performed US for the purpose of surgical planning. Missed findings on radiology‐performed ultrasound may lead to inadequate surgical management.
Key factors for improving adenoma detection rate

ABSTRACT Introduction Colonoscopy is a fundamental tool in colorectal cancer (CRC) prevention. Nevertheless, one-fourth of colorectal neoplasms are still missed during colonoscopy, potentially being the main reason for post-colonoscopy colorectal cancer (PCCRC). Adenoma detection rate (ADR) is currently known as the best quality indicator correlating with PCCRC incidence. Areas covered We performed a literature review in order to summarize evidences investigating key factors affecting ADR: endoscopists education and training, patient management, endoscopic techniques, improved navigation (exposition defect), and enhanced lesions recognition (vision defect) were considered. Expert opinion ‘Traditional’ factors, such as split dose bowel preparation, adequate withdrawal time, and right colon second view, held a significant impact on ADR. Several devices and technologies have been developed to promote high-quality colonoscopy, however artificial intelligence may be considered the most promising tool for ADR improvement, provided that endoscopists education and recording are guaranteed.
The Extreme Distortion of Black Holes due to Matter

A highly accurate computer program is used to study axially symmetric and stationary spacetimes containing a Black Hole surrounded by a ring of matter. It is shown that the matter ring affects the properties of the Black Hole drastically. In particular, the absolute value of the ratio of the Black Hole's angular momentum to the square of its mass not only exceeds one, but can be greater than ten thousand (|J|/M^2 > 10^4). Indeed, the numerical evidence suggests that this quantity is unbounded.
Related amyloid burden and cortical atrophy in individuals with subtle cognitive decline

Subtle cognitive decline represents a stage of cognitive deterioration in which pathological biomarkers may be present, including early cortical atrophy and amyloid deposition. Using individual items from the Montreal Cognitive Assessment and k‐modes cluster analysis, we previously identified three clusters of individuals without overt cognitive impairment: (1) High Performing (no deficits in performance), (2) Memory Deficits (lower memory performance), and (3) Compound Deficits (lower memory and executive function performance). In this study, we sought to understand the relationships found in our clusters between cortical atrophy on MR and amyloid burden on PET.
Staphylococcus aureus bacteraemia and mortality: a population-based study in Olmsted County, Minnesota, from 2006 to 2020

Abstract Objectives To provide an evaluation of predictors of 6-month mortality in incident Staphylococcus aureus bacteraemia cases. Methods A retrospective population-based study of 541 adult residents of Olmsted County, MN with monomicrobial S. aureus bacteraemia from 1 January 2006 through 31 December 2020. Multivariable Cox regression was used to investigate risk factors of 6-month mortality. Results The median (interquartile range [IQR]) age of 541 patients with S. aureus bacteraemia was 66.8 (54.4–78.5) years and 39.6% were female. The median (IQR) Charlson Comorbidity Index was 6 (3–9). Overall, 144 patients died during the six-month period following their initial episode (30-day and 6-month mortality = 16.5% and 26.7%, respectively). In a multivariable analysis, older age, ICU admission, and unknown source of infection were significant predictors of increased 6-month mortality. In contrast, having an infectious diseases (ID) consultation was associated with reduced mortality in the first 2 weeks of follow-up. Secondary analyses revealed an early benefit of ID consultation during the first 30 days of follow-up and that infective endocarditis was an additional predictor of 6-month mortality. Conclusions To our knowledge, this investigation represents the only US population-based study evaluating predictors of mortality in patients with S. aureus bacteraemia. The finding of a short-term survival benefit associated with early ID consultation may be due to more extensive diagnostic efforts.
Promoting weight‐loss maintenance among Black women primary care patients: A cluster RCT of a culturally sensitive versus standard behavioural approach

The prevalence of obesity is higher among Black women (56.6%) compared to Hispanic women (50%) and non‐Hispanic White women (42%). Notably, interventions to reduce obesity typically result in initial weight loss that is not maintained. This study tested (a) the effectiveness of a 6‐month Health‐Smart Weight Loss (HSWL) Program for Black women patients with obesity implemented by community health workers (CHWs) within primary care clinics and (b) the comparative effectiveness of two 12‐month physician‐implemented weight loss maintenance programs—a Patient‐Centred Culturally Sensitive Weight Loss Maintenance Program (PCCS‐WLM Program) and a Standard Behavioural Weight Loss Maintenance Program (SB‐WLM Program). Black women patients (N = 683) with obesity from 20 community primary care clinics participated in the HSWL Program and were then randomized to either maintenance program. The HSWL Program led to significant weight loss (i.e., 2.7 pounds, 1.22 kg, p < .01, −1.1%) among the participants. Participants in both the PCCS‐WLM Program and the SB‐WLM Program maintained their weight loss; however, at month 18, participants in the PCCS‐WLM Program had a significantly lower weight than those in the SB‐WLM (i.e., 231.9 vs. 239.4 pounds or 105.19 vs. 108.59 kg). This study suggests that (a) the HSWL Program can produce significant weight loss among Black women patients with obesity when implemented in primary care clinics by CHWs, and (b) primary care physicians can be trained to successfully promote weight loss maintenance among their Black women patients.
Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers for Convolutive Non-Negative Matrix Factorization

Non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) has become a popular method for learning interpretable patterns from data. As one of the variants of standard NMF, convolutive NMF (CNMF) incorporates an extra time dimension to each basis, known as convolutive bases, which is well suited for representing sequential patterns. Previously proposed algorithms for solving CNMF use multiplicative updates which can be derived by either heuristic or majorization–minimization (MM) methods. However, these algorithms suffer from problems, such as low convergence rates, difficulty to reach exact zeroes during iterations and prone to poor local optima. Inspired by the success of alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMMs) on solving NMF, we explore variable splitting (i.e., the core idea of ADMM) for CNMF in this article. New closed-form algorithms of CNMF are derived with the commonly used $\beta $ -divergences as optimization objectives. Experimental results have demonstrated the efficacy of the proposed algorithms on their faster convergence, better optima, and sparser results than state-of-the-art baselines.
Gentamycin-loaded halloysite-based hydrogel nanocomposites for bone tissue regeneration: fabrication, evaluation of the antibacterial activity and cell response

Biocompatible hydrogels are promising approaches for bone repair and engineering. A novel therapeutic nanocomposite hydrogel was designed based on triblock copolymer poly e-caprolactone (PCL)-polyethylene glycol-PCL and natural gelatin (PCEC/GEL) and reinforced with halloysite nanotube (HNT). Gentamicin (GM) loaded HNT was immobilized in polymeric hydrogel matrix to fabricate scaffolds using the freeze-drying method. Scaffolds were characterized via Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR), x-ray powder diffraction, and scanning electron microscope (SEM) methods. The swelling ratio, density, porosity, degradation, and mechanical behavior were evaluated to investigate the effects of HNT on the physicochemical properties of the composite. Cell viability and cell attachment were investigated by microculture tetrazolium (MTT) assay and SEM. Cell proliferation was observed without any cytotoxicity effect on human dental pulp-derived mesenchymal stem cells (h-DPSCs). Alizarin red staining and real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (QRT-PCR) assay were carried out to monitor the osteoconductivity of scaffolds on h-DPSCs which were seeded drop wise onto the top of scaffolds. The quantification of the messenger RNA (mRNA) expression of osteogenic marker genes, bone morphogenetic protein 2, SPARK, bone gamma-carboxyglutamate protein and runt-related transcription factor 2 over a period of 21 d of cell seeding, demonstrated that cell-encapsulating PCEC/GEL/HNT-GM hydrogel scaffolds supported osteoblast differentiation of h-DPSCs into osteogenic cells through the up-regulation of related genes along with moderate effects on cell viability. Moreover, the antibiotics loading reduced bacterial growth while maintaining the osteogenic properties of the scaffold. Therefore, the bactericidal PCEC/GEL/HNT-GM hydrogel nanocomposite, with enhanced durability, maintenance the functionality of seeded cells in vitro that can be a remarkable dual-functional candidate for hard tissue reconstruction and customized bone implants fabrication via the direct incorporation of bactericidal drug to prevent infection.
Problem with geometric discord

We argue that the geometric discord introduced in [B. Dakic, V. Vedral, and C. Brukner, Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 190502 (2010)] is not a good measure for the quantumness of correlations, as it can increase even under trivial local reversible operations of the party whose classicality/non-classicality is not tested. On the other hand it is known that the standard, mutual-information based discord does not suffer this problem; a simplified proof of such a fact is given.
IRP commission: sexual minorities and mental health: global perspectives

Abstract Sexual orientation is a key determinant of the identity of human beings. It has also been seen as a social determinant of health. People whose sexual orientation is non-heterosexual or sexual minorities or sexually diverse are included in the broad umbrella term LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender) which is a commonly used acronym in activism, social policy, and subsequently cultural literature. For this reason, this Commission focuses primarily on sexual orientation i.e. lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) groups. We have used terms non-heterosexual, sexual minorities or sexual variation interchangeably. We have not considered asexual individuals as research in the field is too limited. We are cognisant of the fact that topics relating to mental health and sexual orientation discussed in this Commission will intersect with other issues of personal, cultural and social identity, and will thus be relevant to individuals including many transgender individuals. The inclusion of mental health issues relevant to gender-diverse individuals as well as gender identity is important and deserves its own separate detailed discussion. The exact number of sexually diverse individuals in a population is often difficult to estimate but is likely to be somewhere around 5% of the population. Rates of various psychiatry disorders and suicidal ideation and acts of suicide in LGB populations are higher than general population and these have been attributed to minority stress hypothesis. Elimination of inequality in law can lead to reduction in psychiatric morbidity in these groups. However, these are all diverse groups but even within each group there is diversity and each individual has a distinct and unique experiences, upbringing, responses to their own sexual orientation, and generating varying responses from families, peers and friends as well as communities (including healthcare professionals). The mental healthcare needs of sexual minority individuals vary and these variations must be taken into account in design, development and delivery of healthcare and policies. Improving access to services will help engagement and outcomes and also reduce stigma. The commission recommends that there is no role for so-called conversion therapies and other recommendations are made for clinicians, researchers and policymakers.