ahmedabdelwahed/Medical_papers_title_and_abstract_NLP_dataset huggingface dataset:
Fast and accurate line detection with GPU-based least median of squares

We propose an accurate and efficient 2D line detection technique based on the standard Hough transform (SHT) and least median of squares (LMS). We prove our method to be very accurate and robust to noise and occlusions by comparing it with state-of-the-art line detection methods using both qualitative and quantitative experiments. LMS is known as being very robust but also as having high computation complexity. To make our method practical for real-time applications, we propose a parallel algorithm for LMS computation which is based on point-line duality. We also offer a very efficient implementation of this algorithm for GPU on CUDA architecture. Despite many years since LMS methods have first been described and the widespread use of GPU technology in computer vision and image-processing systems, we are unaware of previous work reporting the use of GPUs for LMS and line detection. We measure the computation time of our GPU-accelerated algorithm and prove it is suitable for real-time applications. Our accelerated LMS algorithm is up to 40 times faster than the fastest single-threaded CPU-based implementation of the state-of-the-art sequential algorithm.
Photobiomodulation in Pain Control in Diseases of the Oral Cavity: Overview (Evidence Map) and Its Implementation in Integrative Complementary Medicine

Objective: To assess the evidence available and knowledge gaps in photobiomodulation (PBM) for oral facial pain. Background data: Effective identification of a noninvasive resource for oral facial pain such as PBM may mitigate the risks of invasive therapeutic resources. Methods: Nine electronic databases were searched for systematic reviews reporting oral facial pain outcome for PBM. The 3iE (International Initiative for Impact Evaluation) evidence gap map methodology with the tableau was used to graphically display the parameters analyzed in the research. Results: Several wavelengths within the range of infrared were used in 37.6% of the studies, accompanied by the 32.4% in the red range. The quality of the effect was positive in 61.4% of the studies, whereas the impact degree was low, according to the measurement tool used to assess systematic reviews 2 (AMSTAR 2), in 60.2%. Conclusions: Despite the positive potential of PBM in the treatment and control of pain in diseases of the oral cavity, complete information on dosimetry in published studies with PBM is still lacking, making it difficult to reproduce the results found.
Combined dendrochronological and radiocarbon dating of three Russian icons from the 15th-17th century

Dendrochronology is usually the only method of precise dating of unsigned art objects made on or of wood. It has a long history of application in Europe, however in Russia such an approach is still at an infant stage, despite its cultural importance. Here we present the results of dendrochronological and radiocarbon accelerated mass spectrometry (AMS) dating of three medieval icons from the 15th-17th century that originate from the North of European Russia and are painted on wooden panels made from Scots pines. For each icon the wooden panels were dendrochronologically studied and five to six AMS dates were made. Two icons were successfully dendro-dated whereas one failed to be reliably cross-dated with the existing master tree-ring chronologies, but was dated by radiocarbon wiggle-matching. Wiggle matching of radiocarbon dates is the most promising method for dating Russian icons in the absence of a dense dendrochronological network. However, for this case uncertainties connected with the radiocarbon method have to be taken into account and further studies of these uncertainties must be undertaken by comparing dendro-dated and radiocarbon-dated wooden works of art. Our results, moreover, showed that in two cases art-historical dates were by five to ten decades older than the earliest possible time of the creation of the icons, based on dendrochronology. (C) 2015 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.
Apparent Defective Abduction Without Diplopia

Sixth nerve palsies present with horizontal diplopia and typically have a neurological or neurovascular aetiology. They can be confirmed by clinically evaluating the velocity of the abducting saccade, which is slowed. Three cases are presented in which the patients had apparent defective abduction of one eye, resulting from not only neurological causes but also orbital causes. Clinicians should have a high index of suspicion in patients with defective abduction without diplopia and should include apparent defective abduction without diplopia (ADAD) in the list of potential differential diagnoses, considering not only neurological involvement but also orbital involvement.
Evaluation of Community-Based, Mobile HIV-Care, Peer-Delivered Linkage Case Management in Manzini Region, Eswatini

The success of antiretroviral therapy (ART) requires continuous engagement in care and optimal levels of adherence to achieve sustained HIV viral suppression. We evaluated HIV-care cascade costs and outcomes of a community-based, mobile HIV-care, peer-delivered linkage case-management program (CommLink) implemented in Manzini region, Eswatini. Abstraction teams visited referral facilities during July 2019-April 2020 to locate, match, and abstract the clinical data of CommLink clients diagnosed between March 2016 and March 2018. An ingredients-based costing approach was used to assess economic costs associated with CommLink. The estimated total CommLink costs were $2 million. Personnel costs were the dominant component, followed by travel, commodities and supplies, and training. Costs per client tested positive were $499. Costs per client initiated on ART within 7, 30, and 90 days of diagnosis were $2114, $1634, and $1480, respectively. Costs per client initiated and retained on ART 6, 12, and 18 months after diagnosis were $2343, $2378, and $2462, respectively. CommLink outcomes and costs can help inform community-based HIV testing, linkage, and retention programs in other settings to strengthen effectiveness and improve efficiency.
Regularized LTI system identification in the presence of outliers: A variational EM approach

Regularized system identification of linear time invariant systems in the presence of outliers is investigated. The finite impulse response (FIR) model and the Gaussian scale mixture are chosen to be the system model and the noise model, respectively. Two special cases of the noise model are considered: the well-known Student's t distribution and a proposed G-confluent distribution. Both the FIR model parameter and the latent variables in the noise model are treated as parameters of our statistical model and moreover, the scale of the noise variance is treated as a hyper-parameter besides the hyper-parameters used to parameterize the priors of the impulse response and the latent variables. Then a variational expectation-maximization algorithm is proposed for inference of the parameters and hyper-parameters of the statistical model, and the algorithm is guaranteed to converge to a stationary point. Monte Carlo numerical simulations show that when the relative size of outliers is small, the proposed approach performs comparably to a state-of-the-art method and when the relative size of outliers and/or the occurrence probability of outliers is large, the proposed approach outperforms the state-of-the-art method. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Arts-Aided Recognition of Citizens' Perceptions for Urban Open Space Management

Urban open spaces of local natural environments can promote the health and well-being of both ecosystems and humans, and the management of the urban spaces can benefit from knowledge of individuals'/citizens' perceptions of such environments. However, such knowledge is scarce and contemporary inquiries are often limited to cognitive observations and focused on built environmental elements rather than encouraged to recognize and communicate comprehensive perceptions. This paper investigates whether arts-based methods can facilitate recognition and understanding perceptions of urban open spaces. Two arts-based methods were used to capture perceptions: drifting, which is a walking method, and theatrical images, which is a still image method and three reflective methods to recognize and communicate the perceptions. The results show related sensations and perceptions enabled by arts-based methods comparing them to a sticker map method. The main findings were perceptions, which included information about human-environment interaction, about relations to other people and about 'sense of place' in urban open spaces. The hitherto unidentified perceptions about urban open space were associations, metaphors and memories. The methods used offer initial practical implications for future use.
Associations between breast milk intake volume, macronutrient intake, and infant growth in a longitudinal birth cohort: the Cambridge Baby Growth and Breastfeeding Study (CBGS-BF)

Growth patterns of breastfed infants, while widely considered to be optimal, show substantial inter-individual differences, partly influenced by breast milk (BM) nutritional composition. However, BM nutritional composition does not accurately indicate BM nutrient intakes. This study aimed to examine the associations between both BM intake volumes and macronutrient intakes with infant growth and adiposity. Mother-infant dyads (N=94) were recruited into the Cambridge Baby Growth and Breastfeeding Study (CBGS-BF) from a single maternity hospital at birth; all infants were vaginally delivered and received exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) for at least 6 weeks. Infant weight, length, and skinfolds thicknesses (reflecting adiposity) were repeatedly measured from birth to 12 months. Post-feed BM samples were collected at 6 weeks to measure triglycerides (fat), lactose (carbohydrate) (both by 1H-NMR) and protein concentrations (DUMAS method). BM intake volume was estimated from 70 infants between 4-6 weeks using dose-to-the-mother deuterium-oxide (2H2O) turnover. In the full cohort and among 60 infants who received EBF for 3+ months, higher BM intake at 6 weeks was associated with initial faster growth between 0-6 weeks (B±SE 3.58±0.47 for weight and 4.53±0.6 for adiposity gains, both p<0.0001) but subsequent slower growth between 3-12 months (B±SE -2.27±0.7 for weight and -2.65±0.69 for adiposity gains, both p<0.005). BM carbohydrate and protein intakes at 4-6 weeks were positively associated with early (0-6 weeks) but tended to be negatively related with later (3-12 months) adiposity gains, while BM fat intake showed no association, suggesting that carbohydrate and protein intakes may have more functional relevance to later infant growth and adiposity.
Weakly-Supervised Learning With Complementary Heatmap for Retinal Disease Detection

There are many types of retinal disease, and accurately detecting these diseases is crucial for proper diagnosis. Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) typically perform well on detection tasks, and the attention module of CNNs can generate heatmaps as visual explanations of the model. However, the generated heatmap can only detect the most discriminative part, which is problematic because many object regions may exist in the region beside the heatmap in an area known as a complementary heatmap. In this study, we developed a method specifically designed multi-retinal diseases detection from fundus images with the complementary heatmap. The proposed CAM-based method is designed for 2D color images of the retina, rather than MRI images or other forms of data. Moreover, unlike other visual images for disease detection, fundus images of multiple retinal diseases have features such as distinguishable lesion region boundaries, overlapped lesion regions between diseases, and specific pathological structures (e.g. scattered blood spots) that lead to mis-classifications. Based on these considerations, we designed two new loss functions, attention-explore loss and attention-refine loss, to generate accurate heatmaps. We select both "bad" and "good" heatmaps based on the prediction score of ground truth and train them with the two loss functions. When the detection accuracy increases, the classification performance of the model is also improved. Experiments on a dataset consisting of five diseases showed that our approach improved both the detection accuracy and the classification accuracy, and the improved heatmaps were closer to the lesion regions than those of current state-of-the-art methods.
Exploring canyons in glassy energy landscapes using metadynamics

The complex physics of glass-forming systems is controlled by the structure of the low-energy portions of their potential energy landscapes. Here we report that a modified metadynamics algorithm efficiently explores and samples low-energy regions of such high-dimensional landscapes. In the energy landscape for a model foam, our algorithm finds and descends meandering canyons in the landscape, which contain dense clusters of energy minima along their floors. Similar canyon structures in the energy landscapes of two model glass formers-hard sphere fluids and the Kob-Andersen glass-allow us to reach high densities and low energies, respectively. In the hard sphere system, fluid configurations are found to form continuous regions that cover the canyon floors up to densities well above the jamming transition. For the Kob-Andersen glass former, our technique samples low-energy states with modest computational effort, with the lowest energies found approaching the predicted Kauzmann limit.
Image-dependent shape coding and representation

We present a new shape-coding algorithm to support object-based representation, which differs from previous algorithms in that it encodes shape as dependent meta data for image description. Therefore, both the shape-coding and decoding processes of this algorithm are designed to be dependent on the underlying image in which the object (described by the shape) is contained. This way, the correlation between image and shape is effectively removed and the shape-coding efficiency is improved on average by three times over the state-of-the-art algorithms. To facilitate comparison, a generalized "contour-generating" framework is introduced to formulate the shape-coding problem. From this framework we derive both the proposed algorithm and a number of state-of-the-art algorithms, and show that the rate-distortion (RD) criterion can be studied in a uniform way under this framework. Specifically, a dynamic-programming-based algorithm is designed to find the RD optimal coding result for the proposed algorithm. As an extension, we also discuss the complexity and scalability issues related to the application design of the proposed algorithm.
Clonal Spread of pESI-Positive Multidrug-Resistant ST32 Salmonella enterica Serovar Infantis Isolates among Broilers and Humans in Slovenia

Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica serovar Infantis is the most prevalent serovar found in broilers and broiler meat and is among the top five serovars responsible for human infections in Europe. In 2008, a multidrug-resistant S. Infantis isolate emerged in Israel with a mosaic megaplasmid named pESI, associated with increased virulence, biofilm formation, and multidrug resistance. Since then, S. Infantis clones with pESI-like plasmids have been reported worldwide, replacing pESI-free clones. Here, we typed 161 S. Infantis isolates of poultry (n = 133) and human clinical (n = 28) origin using whole-genome sequencing. The isolates were collected between 2007 and 2021. In addition, we performed PacBio/Illumina sequencing for two representative pESI-like plasmids and compared them with publicly available sequences. All isolates belonged to sequence type 32 (ST32), except for one isolate that represented a novel single-locus variant of ST32. Core genome MLST (cgMLST) analysis revealed 14 clusters of genetically closely related isolates, of which four suggested broiler-to-human transmission of S. Infantis. pESI-like plasmids were present in 148/161 (91.9%) isolates; all were highly similar to the publicly available pESI-like sequences but lacked extended-spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL) genes. PacBio/Illumina hybrid assembly allowed the reconstruction of two novel complete pESI variants. The present study revealed that the multidrug-resistant, pESI-positive S. Infantis clone became the predominant S. Infantis clone in Slovenian broilers and humans during the last decade. Continued surveillance of resistant S. Infantis clones along the food chain is needed to guide public health efforts. IMPORTANCE Salmonella Infantis clones with pESI-like plasmids harboring several virulence and resistance genes have been reported worldwide. In the present study, we compared the population structure of 161 Salmonella Infantis isolates obtained from humans and broilers in Slovenia from 2007 to 2021. Whole-genome sequencing showed that most human isolates clustered apart from broiler isolates, suggesting an alternative source of infection. Most isolates were multidrug resistant due to the presence of pESI-like plasmids, of which two variants (pS89 and pS19) were fully reconstructed using long-read sequencing. Both exhibited high similarity with the original Israeli pESI plasmid and German p2747 plasmid. The prototype plasmid pS89 harbored the typical pESI-associated resistance genes aadA1, qacEΔ1, sul1, and tet(A), which were absent in the truncated plasmid pS19.
Artificial nerve graft constructed by coculture of activated Schwann cells and human hair keratin for repair of peripheral nerve defects

Studies have shown that human hair keratin (HHK) has no antigenicity and excellent mechanical properties. Schwann cells, as unique glial cells in the peripheral nervous system, can be induced by interleukin-1β to secrete nerve growth factor, which promotes neural regeneration. Therefore, HHK with Schwann cells may be a more effective approach to repair nerve defects than HHK without Schwann cells. In this study, we established an artificial nerve graft by loading an HHK skeleton with activated Schwann cells. We found that the longitudinal HHK microfilament structure provided adhesion medium, space and direction for Schwann cells, and promoted Schwann cell growth and nerve fiber regeneration. In addition, interleukin-1β not only activates Schwann cells, but also strengthens their activity and increases the expression of nerve growth factors. Activated Schwann cells activate macrophages, and activated macrophages secrete interleukin-1β, which maintains the activity of Schwann cells. Thus, a beneficial cycle forms and promotes nerve repair. Furthermore, our studies have found that the newly constructed artificial nerve graft promotes the improvements in nerve conduction function and motor function in rats with sciatic nerve injury, and increases the expression of nerve injury repair factors fibroblast growth factor 2 and human transforming growth factor B receptor 2. These findings suggest that this artificial nerve graft effectively repairs peripheral nerve injury.
Causal involvement of the left angular gyrus in higher functions as revealed by transcranial magnetic stimulation: a systematic review

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a non-invasive technique that can transiently interfere with local cortical functioning, thus enabling inferences of causal left AG involvement in higher functions from experimentation with healthy participants. Here, we examine 35 studies that measure behavioural outcomes soon after or during targeting TMS to the left AG, by design and as documented by individual magnetic resonance images, in healthy adult participants. The reviewed evidence suggests a specific causal involvement of the left AG in a wide range of tasks involving language, memory, number processing, visuospatial attention, body awareness and motor planning functions. These core findings are particularly valuable to inform theoretical models of the left AG role(s) in higher functions, due to the anatomical specificity afforded by the selected studies and the complementarity of TMS to different methods of investigation. In particular, the variety of the operations within and between functions in which the left AG appears to be causally involved poses a formidable challenge to any attempts to identify a single computational process subserved by the left AG (as opposed to just outlining a broad type of functional contribution) that could apply across thematic areas. We conclude by highlighting directions for improvement in future experimentation with TMS, in order to strengthen the available evidence, while taking into account the anatomical heterogeneity of this brain region.
Application of preconditioned alternating direction method of multipliers in depth from focal stack

Postcapture refocusing effect in smartphone cameras is achievable using focal stacks. However, the accuracy of this effect is totally dependent on the combination of the depth layers in the stack. The accuracy of the extended depth of field effect in this application can be improved significantly by computing an accurate depth map, which has been an open issue for decades. To tackle this issue, a framework is proposed based on a preconditioned alternating direction method of multipliers for depth from the focal stack and synthetic defocus application. In addition to its ability to provide high structural accuracy, the optimization function of the proposed framework can, in fact, converge faster and better than state-of-the-art methods. The qualitative evaluation has been done on 21 sets of focal stacks and the optimization function has been compared against five other methods. Later, 10 light field image sets have been transformed into focal stacks for quantitative evaluation purposes. Preliminary results indicate that the proposed framework has a better performance in terms of structural accuracy and optimization in comparison to the current state-of-the-art methods. (C) 2018 SPIE and IS&T
Intra-Household Decision-Making and their Effects on Women Dietary Diversity: Evidence from Ethiopia

This paper attempts to analyze the status of women in household decision-making processes and their effects on dietary diversity in Ethiopia. The results indicate that men and women do not have equal decision-making authority within a household when it comes, particularly to decisions on food crop production, proportion of produced crop consumed at home and to be sold out in the market, and income generating activities. The results show variations in minimum dietary diversity for women across regions in Ethiopia. Therefore, more emphasis needed to empower women to improve their benefit from agricultural production and other income generating activities in Ethiopia.
Head Trauma Exposure in Mixed Martial Arts

Combat sports training involves a high risk of head injury. Previously published research on head trauma exposure in MMA evaluated only the knockouts (KO), without calculating all head strikes. The aim of the research was to evaluate the total head trauma exposure during MMA competitions among male and female fighters. Two thousand four hundred and eighty-eight MMA fights from all numbered UFC events between 2000 and 2021 were analyzed. A database containing the results from officially published scorecards with information such as the outcome of a fight, its duration, number of strikes (significant and total amount of hits) depending on location and knockdowns was created. Additional video verification of the knockout technique was carried out. The athletes received an average of 2.41 significant head strikes out of a total of 6.30 head strikes per minute. Head strikes were more common in female fights than in male. Women executed more total and significant head strikes per minute than men. Head trauma caused the ending of 31.6% of all fights-more often in male fights (32.2%) than female (23.1%). It was the most common cause of knockouts-88.1%. Professional fights in mixed martial arts involve high exposure to head trauma. A careful evaluation of the risk involved in training in such a discipline is necessary to provide adequate prevention methods.