bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Prevalence of nonsuppressed viral load and associated factors among HIV‐positive adults receiving antiretroviral therapy in Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe (2015 to 2017): results from population‐based nationally representative surveys
Authors: Haas Andreas D , Radin Elizabeth , Hakim Avi J , Jahn Andreas , Philip Neena M , Jonnalagadda Sasi , Saito Suzue , Low Andrea , Patel Hetal , Schwitters Amee M , Rogers John H , Frederix Koen , Kim Evelyn , Bello George , Williams Daniel B , Parekh Bharat , Sachathep Karampreet , Barradas Danielle T , Kalua Thokozani , Birhanu Sehin , Musuka Godfrey , Mugurungi Owen , Tippett Barr Beth A , Sleeman Katrina , Mulenga Lloyd B , Thin Kyaw , Ao Trong T , Brown Kristin , Voetsch Andrew C , Justman Jessica E 
Published: November 2020

AbstractIntroductionThe global target for 2020 is that ≥90% of people living with HIV (PLHIV) receiving antiretroviral therapy (ART) will achieve viral load suppression (VLS). We examined VLS and its determinants among adults receiving ART for at least four months.MethodsWe analysed data from the population‐based HIV impact assessment (PHIA) surveys in Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe (2015 to 2017). PHIA surveys are nationally representative, cross‐sectional household surveys. Data collection included structured interviews, home‐based HIV testing and laboratory testing. Blood samples from PLHIV were analysed for HIV RNA, CD4 counts and recent exposure to antiretroviral drugs (ARVs). We calculated representative estimates for the prevalence of VLS (viral load <1000 copies/mL), nonsuppressed viral load (NVL; viral load ≥1000 copies/mL), virologic failure (VF; ARVs present and viral load ≥1000 copies/mL), interrupted ART (ARVs absent and viral load ≥1000 copies/mL) and rates of switching to second‐line ART (protease inhibitors present) among PLHIV aged 15 to 59 years who participated in the PHIA surveys in Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe, initiated ART at least four months before the survey and were receiving ART at the time of the survey (according to self‐report or ARV testing). We calculated odds ratios and incidence rate ratios for factors associated with NVL, VF, interrupted ART, and switching to second‐line ART.ResultsWe included 9200 adults receiving ART of whom 88.8% had VLS and 11.2% had NVL including 8.2% who experienced VF and 3.0% who interrupted ART. Younger age, male sex, less education, suboptimal adherence, receiving nevirapine, HIV non‐disclosure, never having married and residing in Zimbabwe, Lesotho or Zambia were associated with higher odds of NVL. Among people with NVL, marriage, female sex, shorter ART duration, higher CD4 count and alcohol use were associated with lower odds for VF and higher odds for interrupted ART. Many people with VF (44.8%) had CD4 counts <200 cells/µL, but few (0.31% per year) switched to second‐line ART.ConclusionsCountries are approaching global VLS targets for adults. Treatment support, in particular for younger adults, and people with higher CD4 counts, and switching of people to protease inhibitor‐ or integrase inhibitor‐based regimens may further reduce NVL prevalence.
Combination of Surfactant Action with Peroxide Activation for Room‐Temperature Cleaning of Textiles
Authors: Shao Dongyan , Liu Gansheng , Chen Hao , Xu Changhai , Du Jinmei 
Published: November 2020

AbstractRoom‐temperature cleaning of textiles is commonly practiced in many countries for energy saving as well as custom in daily life, but not very effective for removing colored contaminants. In this work, it was proposed to combine surfactant action (SA) with peroxide activation (PA) in a peroxide activator to enable cleaning of textiles at room temperature. N‐[4‐(alkyldimethylammoniomethyl)benzoyl]lactam chloride was designed and synthesized as a prototype of the proposed peroxide activator, in which the alkyl chain with a carbon atom number of n was responsible for surfactant action and the N‐benzoyllactam with a carbon atom number of m in the lactam ring was responsible for peroxide activation. Such a peroxide activator was hereby referred to as SAPAm‐n. The room‐temperature cleaning performance of SAPAm‐n was examined by cotton fabrics contaminated with morin and waste engine oil, respectively. It was found that SAPAm‐n was able to activate hydrogen peroxide released from sodium perborate so as to effectively bleach the morin‐contaminated cotton fabric at room temperature. Though extending the alkyl chain length of SAPAm‐n resulted in no apparent effect on the room‐temperature bleaching performance, it enhanced the surfactant action which contributed to removing oily contaminants from textiles. Color‐safe performance of SAPAm‐n was evaluated by cleaning a dyed cotton fabric at room temperature. It was found that the peroxide bleach activated by SAPAm‐n resulted in no apparent color change of the dyed cotton fabric. The results of this study provide new insights on textile cleaning at room temperature for the purpose of energy saving.
Enhanced Light‐Driven Antimicrobial Activity of Cationic Poly(oxanorbornene)s by Phthalocyanine Incorporation into Polymer as Pendants
Authors: Ahmetali Erem , Sen Pinar , Süer N. Ceren , Aksu Burak , Nyokong Tebello , Eren Tarik , Şener M. Kasım 
Published: November 2020

AbstractAmphiphilic poly(oxanorbornene)s are promising synthetic polymers that mimic the structural properties and antimicrobial functions of naturally occurring antimicrobial peptides. Here, poly(oxanorbornene)s bearing pendant zinc(II) phthalocyanine and triphenyl(ethyl) phosphonium functionalities are synthesized by ring‐opening metathesis polymerization (ROMP). Fluorescence, singlet oxygen and triplet quantum yields of polymers are measured in dimethyl sulfoxide and aqueous medium. The singlet oxygen quantum yields of copolymers with the highest triphenyl and triethyl phosphonium content are found to be 0.29 and 0.41, respectively. Then, antimicrobial activities of polymers against Escherichia coli (E. coli) and Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) are investigated under both dark and light conditions. Synergistic effect of zinc(II) phthalocyanine and phosphonium‐containing poly(oxanorbornene) is observed that the conjugate possessing the most triphenyl phosphonium side chains has the highest activity under light against both gram‐positive and gram‐negative bacterial strains after 80 min irradiation, reducing the survival of E. coli or S. aureus by 99.9999%. Hemolytic concentrations of the copolymers are found between 8 and 512 µg mL−1. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) proves that the bacteria membrane deforms after contacting with the biocidal polymer.
Does Depression Contribute to the Bladder and Bowel Complaint in Parkinson's Disease Patients?
Authors: Sakakibara Ryuji , Ogata Tsuyoshi , Aiba Yosuke , Tateno Fuyuki , Uchiyama Tomoyuki , Yamamoto Tatsuya 
Published: November 2020

AbstractBackgroundThe question of whether depression contributes to the bladder and bowel complaint in Parkinson's disease (PD) has not been addressed.ObjectivesWe studied bladder, bowel and sexual symptoms in PD patients with/without depression.MethodsWe had 267 referred PD patients: age 68.3 ± 7.7 years, 150 men, 117 women. We divided them into those with/without depression and performed the pelvic function questionnaires including bladder, bowel and sexual items; for example, OABSS, IPSS, and a pelvic organ questionnaire).ResultsThe patient age, sex ratio, disease duration, Hoehn‐Yahr motor grade, and cognitive score were not significantly different between the PD with depression (n = 35, 13.1%) and PD without depression (n = 232, 86.9%) groups. Regarding bladder, bowel and sexual complaints, significant difference was noted in constipation (P = 0.000854) and sensation of residual urine (P = 0.04820) items.ConclusionsOur PD patients with depression showed significantly more common constipation and sensation of residual urine compared to the patients with PD alone, suggesting that depression contributes to the bladder and bowel complaint in PD patients.
ChemBoost: A Chemical Language Based Approach for Protein – Ligand Binding Affinity Prediction
Authors: Özçelik Rıza , Öztürk Hakime , Özgür Arzucan , Ozkirimli Elif 
Published: November 2020

AbstractIdentification of high affinity drug‐target interactions is a major research question in drug discovery. Proteins are generally represented by their structures or sequences. However, structures are available only for a small subset of biomolecules and sequence similarity is not always correlated with functional similarity. We propose ChemBoost, a chemical language based approach for affinity prediction using SMILES syntax. We hypothesize that SMILES is a codified language and ligands are documents composed of chemical words. These documents can be used to learn chemical word vectors that represent words in similar contexts with similar vectors. In ChemBoost, the ligands are represented via chemical word embeddings, while the proteins are represented through sequence‐based features and/or chemical words of their ligands. Our aim is to process the patterns in SMILES as a language to predict protein‐ligand affinity, even when we cannot infer the function from the sequence. We used eXtreme Gradient Boosting to predict protein‐ligand affinities in KIBA and BindingDB data sets. ChemBoost was able to predict drug‐target binding affinity as well as or better than state‐of‐the‐art machine learning systems. When powered with ligand‐centric representations, ChemBoost was more robust to the changes in protein sequence similarity and successfully captured the interactions between a protein and a ligand, even if the protein has low sequence similarity to the known targets of the ligand.
Application layer classification of Internet traffic using ensemble learning models
Authors: Arfeen Asad , Ul Haq Khizar , Yasir Syed Muhammad 
Published: November 2020

SummaryAccurate application layer classification of Internet traffic has been a necessary requirement for various regulatory, control, and operational purposes of Internet service provider (ISP). Due to the dynamic and ever evolving nature of Internet applications generating a diverse mixture of Internet traffic, it has been necessary to apply deep packet inspection (DPI) techniques for traffic classification. DPI methods offer accuracy but degrade overall network throughput and thus cause problems in ensuring quality of service (QoS) and maintaining service‐level agreements. Moreover, Internet traffic is mostly end to end encrypted. This in turn limits the applicability of DPI techniques and renders them useless, unless the encryption tunnel is broken by the service provider which would risk violating user privacy. To address these trade‐offs between classification accuracy, performance, and user privacy, we resort to machine learning (ML)‐based algorithms. In this article, we apply three ensemble ML algorithms and report their performance metrics in the application layer classification of Internet traffic.
Practical finite‐time sampled‐data output consensus for a class of nonlinear multiagent systems via output feedback
Authors: Mao Jun , Huang Shipei , Xiang Zhengrong , Wang Ying , Zheng Di 
Published: November 2020

AbstractThis article devotes a practical finite‐time sampled‐data output consensus investigation for a class of nonlinear multiagent systems with unavailable velocities and undirected topology via output feedback. Noticing that the focused multiagent system features nonlinearities with non‐Lipschitz restriction, and the outputs of the agents are detectable only at the sampling instants, a reduced‐order observer with the sampled output measurement is established for each follower to evaluate the unavailable velocity, and the distributed finite‐time sampled‐data consensus protocols, which are constructed by the established reduced‐order observer as well as the sampled output measurement of the agents, are developed by combining the techniques of adding a power integral and backstepping. By selecting a suitable Lyapunov function candidate, we can verify that the developed sampled‐data consensus protocols which work under the allowable sampling period and the appropriate design parameters can solve the considered practical finite‐time output consensus problem. Finally, two simulation examples, include a numerical and an engineering simulations, are provided to reveal the effectiveness and availability of the proposed consensus scheme.
Composting as a Municipal Solid Waste Management Strategy: Lessons Learned from Cajicá, Colombia
Authors: Machado Cristian Rivera , Hettiarachchi Hiroshan 
Published: November 2020

AbstractMunicipal solid waste (MSW) generated in developing countries usually contains a high percentage of organic material. When not properly managed, organic waste is known for creating many environmental issues. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, soil and water contamination, and air pollution are a few examples. On the other hand, proper and sustainable management of organic waste can not only bring economic gains but also reduce the waste volume that is sent for final disposal. Composting is one such recovery method, in which the end product – compost – eventually helps the agricultural industry, and other sectors, making the process an excellent example of nexus thinking in integrated management of environmental resources. The aim of this chapter is to discuss how Cajicá, a small city in Colombia, approached this issue in a methodical way to eventually became one of the leading organic waste composting examples in the whole world, as recognised by the United Nations Environment Programme in 2017. Cajicá launched a source separation and composting initiative called Green Containers Program (GCP) in 2008, based on a successful pilot project conducted in 2005. The organic waste separated at source collected from households, commercial entities, schools, and universities are brought to a privately operated composting plant chosen by the city to produce compost. The compost plant sells compost to the agricultural sector. The participants in the GCP could also receive a bag of compost every 2 months as a token of appreciation. The Cajicá case presents us with many lessons of good practice, not only in the sustainable management of waste but also in stakeholder engagement. It specifically shows how stakeholders should be brought together for long-lasting collaboration and the benefits to society. Finding the correct business model for the project, efforts made in educating the future generation, and technology adaptation to local conditions are also seen as positive experiences that others can learn from in the case of Cajicá’s GCP. Some of the concerns and potential threats observed include the high dependency GCP has on two institutions: the programme financially depends completely on the municipality, and the composting operation depends completely on one private facility. GCP will benefit from having contingency plans to reduce the risk of having these high dependencies.
Composting in Sri Lanka: Policies, Practices, Challenges, and Emerging Concerns
Authors: Dandeniya Warshi S. , Caucci Serena 
Published: November 2020

AbstractCompost is a widely accepted organic fertiliser throughout the world. It is being produced using a wide variety of source materials at household to commercial scale. With the increased population and changes in food consumption pattern tending towards a vegetable- and meat-rich diet, the amount of organic waste generated in urban and peri-urban settings has increased. Many governments promote composting as a process that helps them to reduce the volume of organic waste and recycle nutrients back to croplands. Some examples of organic waste accumulated in large scale include household waste from urban and peri-urban settings, sewage, animal farm waste, agricultural waste from large-scale markets, food debris, and kitchen waste from hotels. The composition of compost varies in a wide range depending on the nature of materials used to produce it. The safety concerns related to compost also vary along the same line. The quality of compost has become a subjective term that means different aspects to different bodies due to a lack of commonly agreed standards to regulate the composting process and the final product itself. Recent research findings indicate that compost can serve as a carrier of potentially toxic trace elements, organic pollutants, and determinants of antimicrobial resistance to the environment and along the food chain. Producing good-quality compost safe to human health and the environment at large has become a challenge that should be addressed at various levels: from production to policymaking. This chapter discusses some of the major challenges faced in Sri Lanka with compost making. To prepare the background for this discussion, information on the policies and current practices of nutrient management in Sri Lanka is also presented. The context may be applicable to many other developing countries in the tropics.
Co-composting: An Opportunity to Produce Compost with Designated Tailor-Made Properties
Authors: Giagnoni Laura , Martellini Tania , Scodellini Roberto , Cincinelli Alessandra , Renella Giancarlo 
Published: November 2020

AbstractCo-composting is a technique that allows the aerobic degradation of organic waste mixtures, primarily aiming at obtaining compost that can be used as fertiliser or soil amendment. As compared to the typical composting activity, the main difference is not merely the use of more than one feedstock to start and sustain the biodegradation process, but also the possibility of combining various kinds of waste to obtain ‘tailored’ products with designed properties, or to reclaim and valorise natural resources, such as degraded soils or polluted soils and sediments. Set up of appropriate co-composting protocols can be a way to optimise the management of waste produced by different sectors of agriculture and industry and also from human settlements. Different formulations can not only optimise the biodegradation process through the adjustment of nutrient ratios, but also lead to the formation of products with innovative properties. Moreover, co-composting can be a technique of choice for the reclamation of soils degraded by intensive agriculture or contaminated soils and sediments. In fact, an appropriate mix of organic waste and soils can restore the soil structure and induce fertility in nutrient-depleted soils, and also remediate polluted soils and sediments through degradation of organic pollutants and stabilisation of heavy metals. While the selection of different mixes of organic waste may lead to the design of composts with specific properties and the potential valorisation of selected waste materials, there are still several factors that hamper the development of co-composting platforms, mainly insufficient knowledge of some chemical and microbiological processes, but also some legislative aspects. This chapter illustrates the progress achieved in co-composting technology worldwide, some key legislative aspects related to the co-composting process, the main scientific and technical aspects that deserve research attention to further develop co-composting technology, and successful applications of co-composting for the reclamation of soils and sediments, allowing their use for cultivation or as growing media in plant nurseries. A specific case study of the production of fertile plant-growing media from sediment co-composting with green waste is also illustrated.
United States: The Uphill Schools’ Struggle
Authors: Hanushek Eric A. 
Published: November 2020

AbstractThe United States has seen generally flat performance on both international and national tests. Moreover, the achievement gaps between disadvantaged and more advantaged students have been large and constant for a half century. The remarkable aspect of these outcomes is that federal and state programs have changed significantly—considerably greater resources, added school choice, test-based accountability, and school desegregation. Because of the importance of skills for the economy, it is important that the schools improve, but there is no indication of finding the set of policies that will do this.
Assessment Background: What PISA Measures and How
Authors: Araújo Luisa , Costa Patrícia , Crato Nuno 
Published: November 2020

AbstractThis chapter provides a short description of what the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) measures and how it measures it. First, it details the concepts associated with the measurement of student performance and the concepts associated with capturing student and school characteristics and explains how they compare with some other International Large-Scale Assessments (ILSA). Second, it provides information on the assessment of reading, the main domain in PISA 2018. Third, it provides information on the technical aspects of the measurements in PISA. Lastly, it offers specific examples of PISA 2018 cognitive items, corresponding domains (mathematics, science, and reading), and related performance levels.
Chile: The Challenge of Providing Relevant Information from ILSA Studies for the Improvement of Educational Quality
Authors: Lagos Ema 
Published: November 2020

AbstractChile has a consolidated culture of evaluation in its educational system because, for more than three decades, first the Ministry of Education and currently the National Agency for Educational Quality have implemented national census tests every year to monitor the established curricula’ learning. International Large-scale Students Assessment (ILSA) studies have substantially contributed to this monitoring since the late 1990s. Both, the definition of the disciplines and domains evaluated and the results obtained, have motivated curricular reforms to adapt what is taught to children and young people to prepare them for a globalized world, with a strong presence of information and communication technology. The Chilean students’ results have impacted the system, especially by highlighting its weaknesses, related to little improvement over decades, differences in learning achieved by different groups of students, and performance below than expected in the most economically and culturally advantaged sectors. To accomplish these challenges, the system has changed its organization and developed diverse strategies. Data provided by ILSA studies have been used to promote policies and programs for the improvement and strengthening of the most vulnerable groups and a general approach that promotes gender equality in education, politics, and labor. ILSA studies have also been a reference for innovation in educational assessments, allowing the country to evaluate and explore innovative learning areas such as digital and financial competences.
Poland: Polish Education Reforms and Evidence from International Assessments
Authors: Jakubowski Maciej 
Published: November 2020

AbstractOver the last two decades, the Polish education system has been reformed several times, with the comprehensive structural reform in 1999, curriculum and evaluation reform in 2007, and early education reform introduced gradually until 2014. Student outcomes, as documented by PISA, but also other international assessments, largely improved over the last 20 years. Poland moved from below the OECD average to a group of top-performing countries in Europe. This chapter describes the reforms and research on their effects. It also discusses how it was possible to find political support for the reversal of changes that seemed to be highly successful. It provides three lessons from the Polish experience. First, the evidence should be widely disseminated among all stakeholders to sustain reforms. Second, the sole reliance on international studies is not sufficient. Additional investment into secondary analyses and national studies is necessary to develop evidence for better-informed political discussions. Third, some positive changes are more difficult to reverse. In Poland, increased school autonomy, but also external examinations, broader access to preschool and higher education, are among the changes that the new government could not alter.