Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Screening of Children with Upper Respiratory Tract Infection for Otitis Media with Effusion

Objective: To determine the recurrence rate of Otitis Media with Effusion (OME) among children without hearing loss, in relation to different upper respiratory tract infections. Methodology: This cross-sectional study was conducted at the Shifa Foundation Community Health Centre (SFCHC) in Islamabad from February 2020 to February 2021, this study involved otoscopic examinations by a blinded team member. Tympanometry was performed on patients displaying OME signs. Both the examiner and performer were unaware of the child's study status to minimize bias. Results: The study included children with a mean age of 7.35 ± 2.30 years, predominantly males (59.4%). Common symptoms were nasal obstruction (98%), mouth breathing (97%), and sore throat (98%). Physical examination revealed no Deviated Nasal Septum (DNS), nasal polyps, or tender sinuses. Mucopurulent nasal discharge (94.1%), adenoid hypertrophy (98%), and congested tonsils (96%) were prevalent. Dull/opaque tympanic membranes were present in 22.8% of children, while 74.3% displayed a light reflex, and 26.7% had a prominent short process of malleus. Conclusion: Otitis media with effusion is frequent in children with recurrent upper respiratory tract infections, non-specific ear symptoms, and poor school performance. Although typically benign with a high rate of spontaneous resolution, it often leads to parental anxiety, unnecessary investigations, and sometimes unwarranted medication. Key Words: Otitis Media with Effusion, Recurrent Upper Respiratory Tract Infection, Hearing Loss.
OBJECT-BASED APPROACH FOR CROP ROW CHARACTERIZATION IN UAV IMAGES FOR SITE-SPECIFIC WEED MANAGEMENT

A list of color-infrared images captured from the new generation of remote platforms known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), specifically a quadrotor, was tested for site-specific weed management applications. The aim was to identify and classify the crop rows within a maize crop-field, with the ultimate objective of distinguishing small weed seedlings at early stages for in-season site- specific herbicide treatment. An object-based image analysis (OBIA) procedure was developed by combining several scene, contextual, hierarchical and object-based features in a looping structure. The procedure integrates several features from the crop-field patterns: 1) field structure, such as field limits and row length, 2) crop patterns, such as row orientation and inter-row distance, and 3) plant (crop and weeds) characteristics, such as spectral properties (NDVI values) and plant dimensions; as well as 4) hierarchical relationships based on different segmentation scales, and 5) neighboring relationships based on distance, position and angle between objects. The algorithm identified and counted the rows with 100% accuracy in most of the images and the definition of the longitudinal border of the crop rows was successful with 90% of overall accuracy, comparing to on-ground measures of weed emergence.
Taurus MM: bringing multi-master to the cloud

A single-master database has limited update capacity because a single node handles all updates. A multi-master database potentially has higher update capacity because the load is spread across multiple nodes. However, the need to coordinate updates and ensure durability can generate high network traffic. Reducing network load is particularly important in a cloud environment where the network infrastructure is shared among thousands of tenants. In this paper, we present Taurus MM, a shared-storage multi-master database optimized for cloud environments. It implements two novel algorithms aimed at reducing network traffic plus a number of additional optimizations. The first algorithm is a new type of distributed clock that combines the small size of Lamport clocks with the effective support of distributed snapshots of vector clocks. The second algorithm is a new hybrid page and row locking protocol that significantly reduces the number of lock requests sent over the network. Experimental results on a cluster with up to eight masters demonstrate superior performance compared to Aurora multi-master and CockroachDB.
International Journal of Information Technology and Management

The study at hand explores the role of IT on customer retention practices adopted by the retailers in the city of Aurangabad (MS), India. The study is based on both secondary and primary data. For the primary data, an empirical study was conducted amongst the customers and employees of the five chosen retailers. The content analysis of the qualitative data was done through a combination of all three methodologies, conventional, summative and directed. For quantitative analysis, the researcher has considered SPSS analysis, descriptive analysis and the inferential analysis. The key findings of the study were that IT has played a vital role in bridging the communication gap between the customers and the brands and companies and also promote a two-way communication which helps the companies to understand the customers, their characteristics, consumer behavior and buying patterns more comprehensively and thus can derive more effectual customer retention strategies. The study has also paved way for further study in regards to other industries, geographical locations or one particular company. Also, the efficiency of different IT tools and CRM can be analyzed in context of the above mentioned frameworks. The findings of the study holds a lot of relevance even for other sectors as it is about customer retention and each company is struggling to device strategies to attract and retain customers for long-term sustainability and profitability.
The Relationship between Pain Catastrophizing and Cognitive Function in Chronic Musculoskeletal Pain: A Scoping Review

Objective Chronic musculoskeletal pain (CMP) poses a considerable threat to physical, mental, and financial health worldwide. Beyond physical difficulties, CMP has a pronounced impact on pain behaviors and cognitive function. The purpose of this scoping review was to examine the relationship between pain catastrophizing (PC) and cognitive function in CMP, identify gaps in the literature, and provide future directions for research on the topic. Methods Search strings were entered in the following databases: PubMed, CINAHL, Nursing and Allied Health, Ovid Emcare, PsycInfo, and Scopus. Data from the included articles were extracted thematically based on diagnostic classification and included author(s), year of publication, country, aim, sample, methods, intervention (if applicable), and key findings. Results 30 articles were included after screening. The studied populations included patients with fibromyalgia, chronic low back pain, and CMP. Two studies were designed to assess the relationship between PC and cognition as the primary aim. The included studies demonstrated variable evidence regarding the relationship between PC and cognition. Only four studies included clinically relevant PC populations (i.e., Pain Catastrophizing Scale score >30), and all found significant correlations. Conclusion Although evidence exists for the relationship between cognitive function and PC, there is a lack of rigorous research to indicate the strength of this relationship and the specific cognitive functions affected. The literature lacks appropriate populations needed to investigate clinically relevant PC and is limited by heterogeneous neuropsychological test batteries. Future research should include populations demonstrating the behaviors being studied, intentional analysis of outcomes, and appropriate cognitive tests.
Leaf nitrogen affects photosynthesis and water use efficiency similarly in nitrogen‐fixing and non‐fixing trees

Nitrogen (N)‐fixing trees are thought to break a basic rule of leaf economics: higher leaf N concentrations do not translate into higher rates of carbon assimilation. Understanding how leaf N affects photosynthesis and water use efficiency (WUE) in this ecologically important group is critical. We grew six N‐fixing and four non‐fixing tree species for 4–5 years at four fertilization treatments in field experiments in temperate and tropical regions to assess how functional type (N fixer vs. non‐fixer) and N limitation affected leaf N and how leaf N affected light‐saturated photosynthesis (Asat), stomatal conductance (gsw) and WUE (WUEi and δ13C). Asat, WUEi and δ13C, but not gsw, increased with higher leaf N. Surprisingly, N‐fixing and non‐fixing trees displayed similar scaling between leaf N and these physiological variables, and this finding was supported by reanalysis of a global dataset. N fixers generally had higher leaf N than non‐fixers, even when non‐fixers were not N‐limited at the leaf level. Leaf‐level N limitation did not alter the relationship of Asat, gsw, WUEi and δ13C with leaf N, although it did affect the photosynthetic N use efficiency. Higher WUE was associated with higher productivity, whereas higher Asat was not. Synthesis: The ecological success of N‐fixing trees depends on the effect of leaf N on carbon gain and water loss. Using a field fertilization experiment and reanalysis of a global dataset, we show that high leaf‐level photosynthesis and WUE in N fixers stems from their higher average leaf N, rather than a difference between N fixers and non‐fixers in the scaling of photosynthesis and WUE with leaf N. By clarifying the mechanism by which N fixers achieve and benefit from high WUE, our results further the understanding of global N fixer distributions.
Thermal Management for 3D-Stacked Systems via Unified Core-Memory Power Regulation

3D-stacked processor-memory systems stack memory (DRAM banks) directly on top of logic (CPU cores) using chiplet-on-chiplet packaging technology to provide the next-level computing performance in embedded platforms. Stacking, however, severely increases the system’s power density without any accompanying increase in the heat dissipation capacity. Consequently, 3D-stacked processor-memory systems suffer more severe thermal issues than their non-stacked counterparts. Nevertheless, 3D-stacked processor-memory systems do inherit power (thermal) management knobs from their non-stacked predecessors - namely Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling (DVFS) for cores and Low Power Mode (LPM) for memory banks. In the context of 3D-stacked processor-memory systems, DVFS and LPM are performance- and power-wise deeply intertwined. Their non-unified independent use on 3D-stacked processor-memory systems results in sub-optimal thermal management. The unified use of DVFS and LPM for thermal management for 3D-stacked processor-memory systems remains unexplored. The lack of implementation of LPM in thermal simulators for 3D-stacked processor-memory systems hinders real-world representative evaluation for a unified approach. We extend the state-of-the-art interval thermal simulator for 3D-stacked processor-memory systems CoMeT with an LPM power management knob for memory banks. We also propose a learning-based thermal management technique for 3D-stacked processor-memory systems that employ DVFS and LPM in a unified manner. Detailed interval thermal simulations with the extended CoMeT framework show a 10.15% average response time improvement with the PARSEC and SPLASH-2 benchmark suites, along with widely-used Deep Neural Network (DNN) workloads against a state-of-the-art thermal management technique for 2.5D processor-memory systems (ported directly to 3D-stacked processor-memory systems) that also proposes unified use of DVFS and LPM.
Essential fatty acid absorption and metabolism in hepatic disorders

Background: Essential fatty acid (EFA) deficiency during cholestasis is mainly due to malabsorption of dietary EFA. Theoretically, dietary phospholipids (PL) may have a higher bioavailability than dietary triglycerides (TG) during cholestasis. We developed murine models for EFA deficiency with and without extrahepatic cholestasis, and compared the efficacy of oral supplementation of EFA as PL or TG. Methods: EFA deficiency was induced in mice by feeding a high-fat EFA-deficient (EFAD) diet. After three weeks on this diet, bile duct ligation (BDL) was performed in a subgroup of mice to establish extrahepatic cholestasis. Cholestatic and noncholestatic EFA-deficient mice continued on the EFAD diet (controls), or were supplemented for three weeks with EFA-rich TG or EFA-rich PL. Fatty acid composition was determined in plasma, erythrocytes, liver and brain. Results: After four weeks of EFAD diet, induction of EFA deficiency was confirmed by a six-fold increased triene/tetraene ratio (T/T-ratio) in erythrocytes of non-cholestatic and cholestatic mice (p<0.001). EFA-rich TG and EFA-rich PL were equally effective in preventing further increase of the erythrocyte T/T-ratio, which was observed in cholestatic and non-cholestatic non-supplemented mice (12and 16-fold the initial value, respectively). In cholestatic mice, EFA-rich PL was superior to EFA-rich TG in decreasing T/T-ratios of liver triglycerides and phospholipids (each p<0.05), and in increasing brain phospholipid concentrations of the long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LCPUFA) docosahexaenoic acid and arachidonic acid (each p<0.05). Conclusions: Oral EFA supplementation in the form of PL is more effective than in the form of TG in increasing LCPUFA concentrations in liver and brain of cholestatic EFA-deficient mice. 112 Chapter 6 proefschrift_def_v010605def. qxp 2-6-2005 1:20 Pagina 112
ASER: Adapted squared error relevance for rare cases prediction in imbalanced regression

Many real‐world data mining applications involve using imbalanced datasets to obtain predictive models. Imbalanced data can hinder the model performance of learning algorithms in rare cases. Although there are many well‐researched classification task solutions, most of them cannot be directly applied to regression task. One of the challenges in imbalanced regression is to find a suitable evaluation and optimization standard that can improve the predictive ability of the model without severe model bias. Based on the importance of rare cases, this study proposes a new evaluation metric called adapted squared error relevance (ASER) by defining new relevance function and weighting functions. This metric weights data points by defining the importance of rare cases and assigns different weights to losses of the same size at different rare cases, thus enabling the model selected by this evaluation metric to better predict rare cases. ASER is compared with SER on 32 real datasets and 9 simulated datasets to verify the predictive performance of the selected model at rare cases. The experimental results show that the new evaluation metric ASER can obtain a high prediction performance at rare cases, while also not losing too much prediction accuracy in common cases.
Pétrogenèse des komatiites de Barberton (Afrique du Sud)

Les komatiites sont des roches volcaniques ultrabasiques caracteristiques de l'Archeen et du Proterozoique. Nous presentons ici une etude de la petrogenese des komatiites de la ceinture de Barberton en Afrique du Sud. Celle-ci comprend un modele de fusion original bâti a partir de la constatation experimentale qu'a tres forte profondeur (P>13GPa), les liquides komatiitiques sont plus denses que la peridotite solide et donc ne peuvent pas s'echapper de leur source. Nous proposons que la fusion des sources des komatiites de Barberton ait commencee a une pression superieure a 13GPa dans le manteau mais que les liquides produits soient restes retenus dans les sources jusqu'a ce que celles-ci n'aient depasse, au cours de leur remonte, la limite de densite a laquelle le liquide devient moins dense que le residu solide (a ~13GPa). Alors, les liquides auraient commence a quitter leur source, d'abord doucement, puis de plus en plus vite alors que la difference de densite entre le liquide et le residu solide s'accroissait. Les komatiites appauvries en Al, qui sont les plus abondantes a Barberton, auraient ete produites par les premiers liquides qui ont quitte la source peu apres le franchissement de la limite de densite. Les liquides qui quitterent ensuite cette meme source a moins forte pression, auraient forme les komatiites enrichies en Al. Les komatiites non-appauvries en Al auraient ete produites par le meme mecanisme mais par des sources de temperature potentielle plus forte. Une etude parallele des trois systemes isotopiques Sm-Nd, Lu-Hf et Re-Os nous a permis de contraindre l'histoire chimique des sources de komatiites de Barberton. Les systemes Sm-Nd et Lu-Hf indiquent des sources appauvries et le systeme Re-Os une source chondritique. Nous proposons que les sources des komatiites aient ete appauvries par l'extraction de croute, mais qu'ensuite, leur composition en Re et Os aient ete ramenees a leur valeur chondritique par le dernier episode massif d‟accretion de la Terre : « le vernis tardif ».
Apoptotic abnormal lymphocytes as a possible early indicator of clinical response in patients with ATL

A 63-year-old man was referred to our hospital with acute-type adult T-cell leukemia-lymphoma (ATL). The blood smear showed typical abnormal lymphocytes (Figure 1A). He received conventional induction chemotherapy. However, before the neutrophil count recovered, hehadasignificantincreaseinabnormallymphocytesintheperipheral blood(PB). Astherewasinsufficientrecoveryofnormalhematopoiesis to use conventional salvage chemotherapy, we started the Enhancer of zeste homolog (EZH)1/2 inhibitor valemetostat. Even after the introduction of valemetostat, the absolute number of abnormal
The Early Modern Human from Tianyuan Cave, China

For more than a century, scientists have returned time and again to the issue of modern human emergence-the when and where of the evolutionary process and the human behavioral and biological dynamics involved The 2003 discovery of a human partial skeleton at Tianyuandong (Tianyuan Cave) excited worldwide interest. The first human skeleton from the region to be directly radiocarbon-dated (to 40,000 years before present), its geological age places it close to the time period during which modern humans became permanently established across the Old World (between 50,000 and 35,000 years ago). Through detailed description and interpretation of the most complete early modern human skeleton from eastern Asia, The Early Modern Human from Tianyan Cave, China, addresses long-term questions about the ancestry of modern humans in eastern Asia and the nature of the changes in human behavior with the emergence of modern human biology. This book is a detailed, paleontological and paleobiological presentation of this skeleton, its context, and its implications. By providing basic information for this important human fossil, offering inferences concerning the population processes involved in modern human emergence in eastern Eurasia, and by raising questions concerning the adaptations of these early modern human hunter-gatherers, The Early Modern Human from Tianyuan Cave, China will take its place as a core contribution to the study of modern human emergence.
Stochastic Linear Programming: Variance

13 This paper focuses on algorithms for multi-stage stochastic linear 14 programming (MSLP). We propose an ensemble method named the 15 “compromise policy”, which not only reduces the variance of the func16 tion approximation but also reduces the bias of the estimated optimal 17 value. It provides a tight lower bound estimate with a confidence inter18 val. By exploiting parallel computing, the compromise policy provides 19 demonstrable advantages in performance and stability with marginally 20 extra computational time. We further propose a meta-algorithm to solve 21 the MSLP problems based on the in-sample and out-of-sample opti22 mality tests. Our meta-algorithm is incorporated within an SDDP-type 23 algorithm for MSLP and significantly improves the reliability of the 24 decisions suggested by SDDP. These advantages are demonstrated via 25 extensive computations, which show the effectiveness of our approach. 26
KIVR: Context-Committing Authenticated Encryption Using Plaintext Redundancy and Application to GCM and Variants

Committing security of authenticated encryption (AE) is an emerging area of research motivated by real-world attacks. In particular, constructing AEs satisfying CMT-4, a security notion considering an adversary who generates multiple inputs for encryption that result in the same ciphertext, is an ongoing research challenge. In this paper, we pro-pose a new mode KIVR , which transforms existing AEs to have CMT-4 security without increasing the ciphertext size by exploiting plaintext redundancy found in practical use cases. KIVR uses a collision-resistant hash to convert a tuple of key, nonce, and associated data into a temporary key, an initial value (or nonce), and a masking value applied to redundant data used by an underlying AE. Unlike the conventional HtE and CTX conversions limited by the birthday bounds of the key and tag sizes, the security of KIVR linearly increases with the number of redundant bits r and can achieve the beyond-birthday-bound (BBB) security. Combined with GCM , KIVR ’s security becomes r 2 bits. In practical use cases with a sufficiently large r , KIVR salvages GCM for BBB security while preserving the ciphertext size and respecting GCM ’s interface. Furthermore, if we can use modified AEs, KIVR combined with CAU - SIV - C1 (a variant of GCM - SIV for committing security) achieves r 2 + 64 bits, enabling higher security with fewer redundant bits.
Ganos Aero: A Cloud-Native System for Big Raster Data Management and Processing

The development of Earth Observation technology contributes to the production of massive raster data. It is vital to manage and conduct analytical tasks on the raster data. Existing solutions employ dedicated systems for the raster data management and processing, respectively, incurring problems such as data redundancy, difficulty in updating, expensive data transferring and transformation, etc. To cope with these limitations, this demonstration presents Ganos Aero, a cloud-native system for big raster data management and processing. Ganos Aero proposes a unified raster data model for both the data management and processing, which stores a single copy of the raster data and without performing an expensive tiling procedure, and thus achieves significant improvement in the storage and updating efficiency. To enable efficient query and batch task processing, Ganos Aero implements an on-the-fly tile production mechanism, and optimizes its performance using the cloud features including decoupling compute from storage and pushing costly operations closer to the storage layer. Since deployed in Alibaba Cloud in 2022, Ganos Aero has been playing a critical role in many real applications including the modern agriculture, environment monitoring and protection, et al.