ahmedabdelwahed/Medical_papers_title_and_abstract_NLP_dataset huggingface dataset:
Short interval intracortical inhibition: Variability of amplitude and threshold-tracking measurements with 6 or 10 stimuli per point

Reduced short-interval intracortical inhibition (SICI) in motor neuron disease has been demonstrated by amplitude changes (A-SICI) and threshold-tracking (T-SICI) using 10 stimuli per inter-stimulus interval (ISI). To test whether fewer stimuli would suffice, A-SICI and T-SICI were recorded twice from 30 healthy subjects using 6 and 10 stimuli per ISI. Using fewer stimuli increased mean A-SICI variances by 23.8% but the 7.3% increase in T-SICI variance was not significant. We conclude that our new parallel threshold-tracking SICI protocol, with 6 stimuli per ISI, can reduce time and stimulus numbers by 40% without appreciable loss of accuracy.
Epidemiological Aspects and Psychological Reactions to COVID-19 of Dental Practitioners in the Northern Italy Districts of Modena and Reggio Emilia

The outbreak and diffusion of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-Coronavirus-2 (Sars-CoV-2) and COronaVIrus Disease 19 (COVID-19) have caused an emergency status in the health system, including in the dentistry environment. Italy registered the third highest number of COVID-19 cases in the world and the second highest in Europe. An anonymous online survey composed of 40 questions has been sent to dentists practicing in the area of Modena and Reggio Emilia, one of the areas in Italy most affected by COVID-19. The survey was aimed at highlighting the practical and emotional consequences of COVID-19 emergence on daily clinical practice. Specifically, it assessed dentists' behavioral responses, emotions and concerns following the Sars-CoV-2 pandemic restrictive measures introduced by the Italian national administrative order of 10 March 2020 (DM-10M20), as well as the dentists' perception of infection likelihood for themselves and patients. Furthermore, the psychological impact of COVID-19 was assessed by means of the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 test (GAD-7), that measures the presence and severity of anxiety symptoms. Using local dental associations (ANDI-Associazione Nazionale Dentisti Italiani, CAO-Commissione Albo Odontoiatri) lists, the survey was sent by email to all dentists in the district of Modena and Reggio Emilia (874 practitioners) and was completed by 356 of them (40%). All dental practitioners closed or reduced their activity to urgent procedures, 38.2% prior to and 61.8% after the DM-10M20. All reported a routinely use of the most common protective personal equipment (PPE), but also admitted that the use of PPE had to be modified during COVID-19 pandemic. A high percentage of patients canceled their previous appointments after the DM-10M20. Almost 85% of the dentists reported being worried of contracting the infection during clinical activity. The results of the GAD-7 (General Anxiety Disorder-7) evaluation showed that 9% of respondents reported a severe anxiety. To conclude, the COVID-19 emergency is having a highly negative impact on the activity of dentists practicing in the area of Modena and Reggio Emilia. All respondents reported practice closure or strong activity reduction. The perception of this negative impact was accompanied by feelings of concern (70.2%), anxiety (46.4%) and fear (42.4%). The majority of them (89.6%) reported concerns about their professional future and the hope for economic measures to help dental practitioners.
Task demands moderate the effect of emotion on attentional capture

The current experiment examined the effect of task demands on attention to emotional images. Eighty participants viewed pairs of images, with each pair consisting of an emotional (negative or positive) and a neutral image, or two neutral images. Participants' eye movements were recorded during picture viewing, and participants were either asked (1) which picture contains more colour? (colour task), (2) are the images equally pleasant? (pleasantness task), (3) which picture do you prefer? (preference task), or (4) were given no task instructions (control task). Although the results did not suggest that emotional images strongly captured attention, emotional images were looked at earlier than neutral images. Importantly, the pattern of results was dependent on the task instructions; while the preference and colour task conditions showed early attentional biases to emotional images, only positive images were looked at earlier in the pleasantness task condition, and no early attentional biases were observed in the control task. Moreover, total fixation duration was increased for positive images in the preference task condition, but not in the other task conditions. It was concluded that attention to emotional stimuli can be modified by the demands of the task during viewing. However, further research should consider additional factors, such as the cognitive load of the viewing tasks and the content of the images used.
Ensemble learning-based structural health monitoring by Mahalanobis distance metrics

Environmental variability is still a major challenge in structural health monitoring. Due to the similarity of changes caused by environmental variations to damage, false positive and false negative errors are prevalent in detecting damage that cause serious economic and safety issues. To address this challenge and its disadvantages, this article proposes a novel ensemble learning-based method in a nongenerative sequential algorithm for structural health monitoring under varying environmental conditions by three kinds of Mahalanobis distance metrics in three main levels. At each level, one attempts to find a few and adequate nearest neighbors of each feature to remove environmental variability via an innovative approach. The major contribution of this article is to develop a novel data-based method by the concepts of ensemble learning and unsupervised learning. The great advantages of the proposed method include developing a nonparametric data-based framework without estimating any unknown parameter, dealing with the negative effects of environmental variability, improving the performance of Mahalanobis distance, and increasing damage detectability. The performance and effectiveness of this method are validated by modal features of two real bridge structures along with several comparisons. Results demonstrate that the proposed ensemble learning-based method highly succeeds in detecting damage under environmental variability, and it is superior to some state-of-the-art techniques.
Giant Multilocular Prostatic Cystadenoma in a 14-Year-Old Male: A Case Report of a Pediatric Pelvic Mass

Giant multilocular prostatic cystadenoma (GMC) is an extremely rare, benign tumor seen in both adult and pediatric males. The neoplasm originates from prostatic tissue and is typically found within the rectovesical pouch, varying in both size and morphology. Microscopically, GMC contains both glandular and cystic prostatic tissue lined by cuboidal and columnar epithelium. Symptoms often arise once the pelvic mass begins to obstruct the surrounding structures and organs, although invasion into surrounding tissue is unlikely. Common symptoms include abdominal pain, urinary retention, and dysuria. The standard treatment for GMC is surgical removal of the mass with good outcomes and only 1 known case of recurrence. Here we present the case of a 14-year-old male with GMC-the youngest patient reported to date-who presented with abdominal pain, difficulty voiding, and hydroureteronephrosis.
Supply chain resilience in the UK during the coronavirus pandemic: A resource orchestration perspective

The COVID-19 pandemic caused significant disruptions to global operations and supply chains. While the huge impact of the pandemic has nurtured important literature over the last couple of years, little is being said about the role of resource orchestration in supporting resilience in highly disruptive contexts. Thus, this study aims to this knowledge gap by proposing an original model to explore supply chain resilience (SCRE) antecedents, considering supply chain alertness (SCAL) as a central point to support resilience. This study focuses on the resource orchestration theory (ROT) to design a conceptual model. The partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) served to validate the model, exploring data from the UK supply chain decision-makers. The study reveals a number of both expected and unexpected findings. These include the evidence that supply chain disruption orientation (SCDO) has a strong positive effect on the SCAL. In addition, SCAL plays a strong positive effect in resource reconfiguration (RREC), supply chain efficiency (SCEF) and SCRE. We further identified a partial mediation effect of RREC on the relationship between SCAL and SCRE. Surprisingly, it appeared that SCAL strongly influences SCEF, while SCEF itself does not create any significant effect on SCRE. For managers and practitioners, the importance of resource orchestration as a decisive approach to adequately respond to huge disruptions is clearly highlighted by our results. Finally, this paper helps to grasp better how important resource orchestration in operations and supply chains remains for appropriate responses to high disruptions such as the COVID-19 impacts.
Exploring the nonlinear association between environmental regulation and carbon intensity in China: The mediating effect of green technology

Environmental regulation and green technology are important to mitigate global warming, whereas few studies explored the role of green technology in environmental regulation on carbon intensity. This paper systematically reviews the literature on the relationship among environmental regulation, green technology, and carbon intensity, and assumes that green technology is a potential mediator of the impact of environmental regulation on carbon intensity. The advanced SBM model and the factor analysis method were performed to measure the relationships. To explore the mediating effect of green technology, the two-step econometric model and the nonlinear mediating effect model were applied to a panel dataset of 30 provinces in China spanning the period 2005-2016. The results show that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between environmental regulation and green technology, and a U-shaped relationship between environmental regulation and carbon intensity. Green technology has a significant negative impact on carbon intensity. This proves that green technology is an important mediating variable on the relationship between environmental regulation and carbon intensity. Moreover, the current environmental regulation intensity lies before the inflection point of both the inverted Ushaped and the U-shaped curves. The effects of environmental regulation on green technology and carbon intensity in developed and developing regions follow an inverted U-shaped, and a U-shaped curve, respectively. Furthermore, the mediating effect in developing regions is significantly larger than that in developed regions. Finally, policy implications are given to reduce carbon intensity.
Application of life cycle analysis to assess environmental sustainability of wheat cultivation in the west of Iran

Today, intensive use of energy sources leads to environmental damages such as global warming and resources depletion. Hence, this study provided energy, environmental and economic overview of wheat cultivation in Hamedan province, Iran. The initial data were collected from 75 wheat farms applying face-to-face interview technique. The prepared data related to the 2017-2018 production cycle. The energy analysis results demonstrated that the total energy consumption and output energy in wheat cultivation were 43054.63 MJ ha(-1) and 117407.13 MJ ha(-1), respectively. Energy productivity, energy use efficiency and net energy gain were computed as 0.12 kg MJ(-1), 2.73 and 74352.50 MJ ha(-1), respectively. Economic analysis showed that total value and cost of wheat production were 854.86 $ ha(-1) and 366.57 $ ha(-1), respectively. Net return was 488.29 $ ha(-1) and benefit to cost ratio computed as 2.33 in the investigated region. Wheat environmental impacts were evaluated by applying life cycle assessment methodology. Results of environmental impacts showed the largest emissions were related to marine aquatic ecotoxicity (319757.6377 kg 1,4-DB (eq).), abiotic depletion (fossil fuels) (6673.1319 MJ) and global warming potential (624.2944 kg CO2 (eq).). Electricity was a hotspot in abiotic depletion (fossil fuels), global warming potential, freshwater aquatic ecotoxicity, ozone layer depletion and photochemical oxidation impact categories. Cumulative exergy demand results indicated that the rates of non-renewable fossil (7088.05 MJ ha(-1)) for wheat farms mainly resulted from electricity and nitrogen fertilizer. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Distribution of COVID-19 Morbidity Rate in Association with Social and Economic Factors in Wuhan, China: Implications for Urban Development

Social and economic factors relate to the prevention and control of infectious diseases. The purpose of this paper was to assess the distribution of COVID-19 morbidity rate in association with social and economic factors and discuss the implications for urban development that help to control infectious diseases. This study was a cross-sectional study. In this study, social and economic factors were classified into three dimensions: built environment, economic activities, and public service status. The method applied in this study was the spatial regression analysis. In the 13 districts in Wuhan, the spatial regression analysis was applied. The results showed that: 1) increasing population density, construction land area proportion, value-added of tertiary industry per unit of land area, total retail sales of consumer goods per unit of land area, public green space density, aged population density were associated with an increased COVID-19 morbidity rate due to the positive characteristics of estimated coefficients of these variables. 2) increasing average building scale, GDP per unit of land area, and hospital density were associated with a decreased COVID-19 morbidity rate due to the negative characteristics of estimated coefficients of these variables. It was concluded that it is possible to control infectious diseases, such as COVID-19, by adjusting social and economic factors. We should guide urban development to improve human health.
Comparative economic and life cycle assessment of solar-based hydrogen production for oil and gas industries

Hydrogen is used in the petroleum industry to upgrade crude oil in refineries or as a chemical agent to produce ammonia, methanol and other products. It is mainly supplied by conventional production methods based on fossil fuels. Solar-based hydrogen production is a potentially advantageous option to the problems of climate change and depletion of conventional fuel supplies. Four hydrogen production pathways including steam methane reforming, coal gasification, photovoltaic and solar thermal electrolysis are considered in this study. This paper investigates solar hydrogen potential in terms of cost and emissions as a replacement for conventional methods to provide the hydrogen required in oil and gas industries. GHG abatement costs are evaluated to compare the proposed methods with a reference method. As steam methane reforming is the most common method used in the petroleum industry, it is considered as the reference method in this study. Our results show that the GHG abatement costs are $0.786/kg CO2 and $1.37/kg CO2 for PV and solar thermal electrolysis, respectively. An uncertainty analysis is also conducted to assess the effects of variations of different parameters on the results. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Quantifying the green view indicator for assessing urban greening quality: An analysis based on Internet-crawling street view data

The quality and aesthetic ecosystem services of urban green spaces can be assessed by green view (GV), which is an indicator to quantify the percentage of green area visually sensed by human eyes. There are several case studies on estimating GV at city-scale, however, the relationship between GV values and socio-economic & morphologic profiles of cities was rarely discussed. In this work, we analyzed the GV values and their potentially influential factors by adopting an internet data crawling approach, obtaining 36,654 panoramic Street View images from Baidu Map, in the urban zones at the Pearl River Delta Urban Agglomeration (PRDUA), China. We calculated the GV value of each panoramic image using MATLAB 2015a, extracting the value of the hue channel from the digital image and then calculating pixel ratio according the color spectrum. Results show that: (1) The overall GV in PRDUA is 11.3 +/- 7.5%, lower than the cases of the developed countries; (2) More green could be sensed on the streets at the old central districts and the central business district in the cities in PRDUA; (3) The GV value is positively affected by public revenue per unit area, but is uncorrelated to green space coverage ratio, at the district-level. It indicates that an improved design and increasing monetary investment of urban green space may obtain higher people-oriented green quantity in cities. These findings can be useful for drafting more appropriate urban green space planning policies regarding the green view.
The BCH message banking process™, voice banking, and double-dipping™

Significant advances have been made in interventions to maintain communication and personhood for individuals with neurodegenerative conditions. One innovation is Message Banking, a clinical approach first developed at Boston Children's Hospital (BCH). This paper outlines the Message Banking process as implemented at BCH, which includes the option of "Double Dipping," where banked messages are mined to develop personalized synthesized voices. More than a decade of experience has led to the evolution of six core principles underpinning the BCH process, resulting in a structured introduction of the associated concepts and practices with people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and their families. These principles highlight the importance of assigning ownership and control of the process to individuals with ALS and their families, ensuring that as a tool it is empowering and offers hope. Changes have been driven by feedback from individuals who have participated in the BCH process over many years. The success of the process has recently been extended through partnerships that allow the recorded messages to be used to develop individual personalized synthetic voices to complement banked messages. While the process of banking messages is technically relatively simple, the full value of the process should be underpinned by the values and principles outlined in this tutorial.
Sesamol prevents mitochondrial impairment and pro-inflammatory alterations in the human neuroblastoma SH-SY5Y cells: role for Nrf2

Mitochondria are a primary source and a target of reactive oxygen species (ROS). Increased mitochondrial production of ROS is associated with bioenergetics decline, cell death, and inflammation. Here we investigated whether a pretreatment (for 24 h) with sesamol (SES; at 12.5-50 µM) would be efficient in preventing the mitochondrial collapse induced by hydrogen peroxide (H2O2, at 300 µM) in the human neuroblastoma SH-SY5Y cell line. We have found that a pretreatment with SES at 25 µM decreased the effects of H2O2 on lipid peroxidation, protein carbonylation, and protein nitration in membranes obtained from the mitochondria isolated from the SH-SY5Y cells. In this regard, SES pretreatment decreased the production of superoxide anion radical (O2-•) by the mitochondria of H2O2-treated cells. SES also prevented the mitochondrial dysfunction induced by H2O2, as assessed by analyzing the activity of the complexes I and V. The H2O2-induced reduction in the production of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) was also prevented by SES. The levels of the pro-inflammatory cytokines interleukin-1β (IL-1β) and tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), as well as the activity of the transcription factor nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) were downregulated by the SES pretreatment in the H2O2-challenged cells. Silencing of the nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor 2 (Nrf2) transcription factor abolished the protection induced by SES regarding mitochondrial function and inflammation. Thus, SES depends on Nrf2 to promote mitochondrial protection in cells facing redox impairment.
Preventive and therapeutic aspects of fermented foods

In recent times, the status of some fermented foods which are considered as functional foods that confer health benefits in certain disease conditions has grown rapidly. The health benefits of fermented foods are due to the presence of probiotic microbes and the bioactive compounds formed during fermentation. Microbes involved and metabolites produced by them are highly species specific and contribute to the authenticity of the fermented foods. Several studies pertaining to the effect of fermented foods on various disease conditions have been conducted in recent years using both animal models and clinical trials on humans. This review focuses on the impact of fermented foods on conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity, gastrointestinal disorder, cancer and neurodegenerative disorders.
Geothermal driven micro-CCHP for domestic application - Exergy, economic and sustainability analysis

Geothermal energy is going to play a key role in future smart energy systems. Geothermal-driven domestic energy systems, specifically, will largely contribute to the baseload supply of heating and cooling demand of societies. A low-temperature geothermal resource is considered to drive a domestic-scaled multi-generation system supplying power, heating, and cooling. The proposed cogeneration system includes a small-scale organic Rankine cycle (ORC), a single effect LiBr-H2O absorption chiller, and heat exchangers to supply domestic space heating and hot water. The waste heat of the ORC is harvested, also, to be used in space heating. Energy, exergy, economic, and sustainability principles are applied to the system to evaluate the system thermodynamic and thermos-economic performance. Results associated with the exergy destruction are obtained and effects on the system performance of chiller supply are investigated. Besides, the thermodynamic performance of the system is evaluated under the summer-time and wintertime conditions. Under the base condition, the generator employed in the absorption chiller is found to be the most exergy destructive unit followed by the evaporator utilized in the ORC. Furthermore, results revealed that by increasing the chiller supply rate, the system sustainability index enhances from 1.6 to 2.5 while the system's first law efficiency reduces. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.