Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Treating Prolonged Grief Disorder: A 2-Year Follow-Up of a Randomized Controlled Trial.

BACKGROUND Prolonged grief disorder (PGD) causes significant impairment in approximately 7% of bereaved people. Although cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) has been shown to effectively treat PGD, there is no evidence of long-term effects of CBT. OBJECTIVE To determine the long-term efficacies of CBT with exposure or CBT without exposure in treating PGD by assessing outcome at 2 years. METHODS A randomized controlled trial of PGD patients (N = 80) attending an outpatient clinic took place between September 2007 and June 2010, and a 2-year follow-up occurred between December 2009 and October 2012. All patients received 10 weekly 2-hour group therapy sessions that comprised CBT techniques. Patients also received 4 individual sessions in which they were randomly allocated to receive exposure therapy (CBT/Exposure) for memories of the death or supportive counseling (CBT). Prolonged grief disorder was assessed by clinical interview using the Complicated Grief Assessment. Severity of PGD, the primary outcome, was assessed using the Inventory of Complicated Grief. RESULTS Intent-to-treat analyses indicated a significant linear time × treatment condition interaction effect at 2 years (B = -0.63; SE = 0.26; t₂₂₅ = -2.44; P = .02; 95% CI, -1.14 to -0.12), indicating that CBT/Exposure led to greater reductions in PGD than CBT. Further, the linear between-group effect size at the 2-year follow-up was 1.15. CONCLUSIONS Exposure therapy in the course of CBT leads to greater reduction in symptoms of PGD than CBT without exposure, and this additive gain extends 2 years after treatment is complete. To achieve optimal treatment gains in patients with PGD, therapists should encourage some form of exposure therapy to memories of the death. TRIAL REGISTRATION Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry identifier: ACTRN12609000229279.
Fast and Accurate Semantic Mapping through Geometric-based Incremental Segmentation

We propose an efficient and scalable method for incrementally building a dense, semantically annotated 3D map in real-time. The proposed method assigns class probabilities to each region, not each element (e.g., surfel and voxel), of the 3D map which is built up through a robust SLAM framework and incrementally segmented with a geometric-based segmentation method. Differently from all other approaches, our method has a capability of running at over 30Hz while performing all processing components, including SLAM, segmentation, 2D recognition, and updating class probabilities of each segmentation label at every incoming frame, thanks to the high efficiency that characterizes the computationally intensive stages of our framework. By utilizing a specifically designed CNN to improve the frame-wise segmentation result, we can also achieve high accuracy. We validate our method on the NYUv2 dataset by comparing with the state of the art in terms of accuracy and computational efficiency, and by means of an analysis in terms of time and space complexity.
WNGrad: Learn the Learning Rate in Gradient Descent

Adjusting the learning rate schedule in stochastic gradient methods is an important unresolved problem which requires tuning in practice. If certain parameters of the loss function such as smoothness or strong convexity constants are known, theoretical learning rate schedules can be applied. However, in practice, such parameters are not known, and the loss function of interest is not convex in any case. The recently proposed batch normalization reparametrization is widely adopted in most neural network architectures today because, among other advantages, it is robust to the choice of Lipschitz constant of the gradient in loss function, allowing one to set a large learning rate without worry. Inspired by batch normalization, we propose a general nonlinear update rule for the learning rate in batch and stochastic gradient descent so that the learning rate can be initialized at a high value, and is subsequently decreased according to gradient observations along the way. The proposed method is shown to achieve robustness to the relationship between the learning rate and the Lipschitz constant, and near-optimal convergence rates in both the batch and stochastic settings ($O(1/T)$ for smooth loss in the batch setting, and $O(1/\sqrt{T})$ for convex loss in the stochastic setting). We also show through numerical evidence that such robustness of the proposed method extends to highly nonconvex and possibly non-smooth loss function in deep learning problems.Our analysis establishes some first theoretical understanding into the observed robustness for batch normalization and weight normalization.
Statistical Power for the Comparative Regression Discontinuity Design With a Nonequivalent Comparison Group

In the “sharp” regression discontinuity design (RD), all units scoring on one side of a designated score on an assignment variable receive treatment, whereas those scoring on the other side become controls. Thus the continuous assignment variable and binary treatment indicator are measured on the same scale. Because each must be in the impact model, the resulting multi-collinearity reduces the efficiency of the RD design. However, untreated comparison data can be added along the assignment variable, and a comparative regression discontinuity design (CRD) is then created. When the untreated data come from a non-equivalent comparison group, we call this CRD-CG. Assuming linear functional forms, we show that power in CRD-CG is (a) greater than in basic RD; (b) less sensitive to the location of the cutoff and the distribution of the assignment variable; and that (c) fewer treated units are needed in the basic RD component within the CRD-CG so that savings can result from having fewer treated cases. The theory we develop is used to make numerical predictions about the efficiency of basic RD and CRD-CG relative to each other and to a randomized control trial. Data from the National Head Start Impact study are used to test these predictions. The obtained estimates are closer to the predicted parameters for CRD-CG than for basic RD and are generally quite close to the parameter predictions, supporting the emerging argument that CRD should be the design of choice in many applications for which basic RD is now used.
An empirical approach to modeling inter-AS traffic matrices

Recently developed techniques have been very successful in accurately estimating intra-Autonomous System (AS) traffic matrices. These techniques rely on link measurements, flow measurements, or routing-related data to infer traffic demand between every pair of ingress-egress points of an AS. They also illustrate an inherent mismatch between data needed (e.g., ingress-egress demand) and data most readily available (e.g., link measurements). This mismatch is exacerbated when we try to estimate inter-AS traffic matrices, i.e., snapshots of Internet-wide traffic behavior over coarse time scale (a week or longer) between ASs. We present a method for modeling inter-AS traffic demand that relies exclusively on publicly available/obtainable measurements. We first perform extensive Internet-wide measurement experiments to infer the "business rationale" of individual ASs. We then use these business profiles to characterize individual ASs, classifying them by their "utility" into ASs providing Web hosting, residential access, and business access. We rank ASs by their utilities which drive our gravity-model based approach for generating inter-AS traffic demand. In a first attempt to validate our methodology, we test our inter-AS traffic generation method on an inferred Internet AS graph and present some preliminary findings about the resulting inter-AS traffic matrices.
Structural and functional analysis of an OB-fold in human Ctc1 implicated in telomere maintenance and bone marrow syndromes

Abstract The human CST (Ctc1, Stn1 and Ten1) complex binds the telomeric overhang and regulates telomere length by promoting C-strand replication and inhibiting telomerase-dependent G-strand synthesis. Structural and biochemical studies on the human Stn1 and Ten1 complex revealed its mechanism of assembly and nucleic acid binding. However, little is known about the structural organization of the multi-domain Ctc1 protein and how each of these domains contribute to telomere length regulation. Here, we report the structure of a central domain of human Ctc1. The structure reveals a canonical OB-fold with the two identified disease mutations (R840W and V871M) contributing to the fold of the protein. In vitro assays suggest that although this domain is not contributing directly to Ctc1’s substrate binding properties, it affects full-length Ctc1 localization to telomeres and Stn1-Ten1 binding. Moreover, functional assays show that deletion of the entire OB-fold domain leads to significant increase in telomere length, frequency of internal single G-strands and fragile telomeres. Our findings demonstrate that a previously unknown OB-fold domain contributes to efficient Ctc1 telomere localization and chromosome end maintenance.
Therapeutic inhibition of miR-375 attenuates post-myocardial infarction inflammatory response and left ventricular dysfunction via PDK-1-AKT signalling axis

Aims Increased miR-375 levels has been implicated in rodent models of myocardial infarction (MI) and with patients with heart failure. However, no prior study had established a therapeutic role of miR-375 in ischemic myocardium. Therefore, we assessed whether inhibition of MI-induced miR-375 by LNA anti-miR-375 can improve recovery after acute MI. Methods and results Ten weeks old mice were treated with either control or LNA anti miR-375 after induction of MI by LAD ligation. The inflammatory response, cardiomyocyte apoptosis, capillary density and left ventricular (LV) functional, and structural remodelling changes were evaluated. Anti-miR-375 therapy significantly decreased inflammatory response and reduced cardiomyocyte apoptosis in the ischemic myocardium and significantly improved LV function and neovascularization and reduced infarct size. Repression of miR-375 led to the activation of 3-phosphoinositide-dependent protein kinase 1 (PDK-1) and increased AKT phosphorylation on Thr-308 in experimental hearts. In corroboration with our in vivo findings, our in vitro studies demonstrated that knockdown of miR-375 in macrophages modulated their phenotype, enhanced PDK-1 levels, and reduced pro-inflammatory cytokines expression following LPS challenge. Further, miR-375 levels were elevated in failing human heart tissue. Conclusion Taken together, our studies demonstrate that anti-miR-375 therapy reduced inflammatory response, decreased cardiomyocyte death, improved LV function, and enhanced angiogenesis by targeting multiple cell types mediated at least in part through PDK-1/AKT signalling mechanisms.
Effects of Strain Variations on Aging Response and Corrosion Properties of Third Generation Al-Li Alloys

iii LIST OF FIGURES . vi LIST OF TABLES . xvii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . xviii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION . 1 CHAPTER 2: BACKGROUND . 5 2.1 Historical Overview . 5 2.2 Microstructural Constituents . 6 2.2.1 Dispersoids . 6 2.2.2 Precipitates and Intermetallics . 7 2.2.3 Impurity Constituent Phases . 10 2.3 Stretch Forming and the Effects of Cold Work Prior to Artificially Aging . 10 2.4 Corrosion. 12 2.4. 1 Pitting Corrosion . 12 2.4. 2 Intergranular and Exfoliation Corrosion . 13 2.5 Characterization . 15 2.5. 1 Electron Backscatter Diffraction (EBSD) . 15 2.5. 2 Digital Image Correlation (DIC) . 16 2.5. 3 Scanning Kelvin Probe Force Microscopy . 17 2.5. 4 In-Situ Tapping Mode AFM . 19 CHAPTER 3: EXPERIMENTAL METHODS . 20 3.1 Primary Experimental Pathway . 20 3.1. 1 Tensile Specimen Preparation . 20 3.1. 2 Final Polishing for Electron Backscatter Diffraction (EBSD) . 23 3.1. 3 Electron Backscatter Diffraction (EBSD) and Marking the Region of Interest . 26 3.1. 4 2D Micro-Digital Image Correlation (DIC) . 27 3.1. 5 Environmental Scanning Electron Microscopy (ESEM): Backscattered Imaging . 31 3.1. 6 Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM): Scanning Kelvin Probe Force Microscopy (SKPFM) 31 3.1. 7 Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM): In-situ Tapping Mode Topography during Corrosion 32 3.2 Additional Experimental Procedures . 34
The Effectiveness of Singing or Playing a Wind Instrument in Improving Respiratory Function in Patients with Long-Term Neurological Conditions: A Systematic Review

Background Many long-term neurological conditions adversely affect respiratory function. Singing and playing wind instruments are relatively inexpensive interventions with potential for improving respiratory function; however, synthesis of current evidence is needed to inform research and clinical use of music in respiratory care. Objective To critically appraise, analyze, and synthesize published evidence on the effectiveness of singing or playing a wind instrument to improve respiratory function in people with long-term neurological conditions. Design Systematic review of published randomized controlled trials and observational studies examining singing or playing wind instruments to improve respiratory function in individuals with long-term neurological conditions. Methods Articles meeting specified inclusion criteria were identified through a search of the Medline, Embase, PsycINFO, Cochrane Library, CINAHL, Web of Science, CAIRSS for Music, WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform Search Portal, and AMED databases as early as 1806 through March 2015. Information on study design, clinical populations, interventions, and outcome measures was extracted and summarized using an electronic standardized coding form. Methodological quality was assessed and summarized across studies descriptively. Results From screening 584 references, 68 full texts were reviewed and five studies included. These concerned 109 participants. The studies were deemed of low quality, due to evidence of bias, in part due to intervention complexity. No adverse effects were reported. Overall, there was a trend toward improved respiratory function, but only one study on Parkinson's disease had significant between-group differences. Conclusions The positive trend in respiratory function in people with long-term neurological conditions following singing or wind instrument therapy is of interest, and warrants further investigation.
Negative Emotions , Mood Disorders , and Income

The frequency with which individuals experience positive or negative emotional states provides a direct measure of the subjective experience of well-being. Further, highly frequent experience of negative emotions are characteristic of mood disorders such as depression. This paper uses individual panel data to assess the causal effect of income on the frequency of negative emotional experience, both on average and at levels characteristic of mood disorders. Income is commonly used as a measure of welfare, and yet it is by and large a means to achieving other ends, one of which is subjective well-being. The relationship between income and such ends informs use about the welfare effects of income. I estimate that the medium-term elasticity of negative emotion to family income is -0.13 using instrumental variables. A sensitivity analysis of the exclusion restriction bounds the elasticity between -0.1 and -0.2. The semi-elasticity of mood disorder is -0.01. The elasticities for both average negative emotion and mood disorder is twice as large for low incomes as high ones, meaning the marginal effect of income on emotional experience is strongly declining in the level of income. JEL Codes: D6,I3,J3
Systematic Assessment of Strategies for Lung-targeted Delivery of MicroRNA Mimics

There is considerable interest in the use of synthetic miRNA mimics (or inhibitors) as potential therapeutic agents in pulmonary vascular disease; however, the optimal delivery method to achieve high efficiency, selective lung targeting has not been determined. Here, we sought to investigate the relative merits of different lung-targeted strategies for delivering miRNA mimics in rats. Methods: Tissue levels of a synthetic miRNA mimic, cel-miR-39-3p (0.5 nmol in 50 µL invivofectamine/PBS vehicle) were compared in male rats (n=3 rats/method) after delivery by commonly used lung-targeting strategies including intratracheal liquid instillation (IT-L), intratracheal aerosolization with (IT-AV) or without ventilator assistance (IT-A), intranasal liquid instillation (IN-L) and intranasal aerosolization (IN-A). Intravenous (IV; via jugular vein), intraperitoneal (IP) and subcutaneous (SC) delivery served as controls. Relative levels of cel-miR-39 were quantified by RT-qPCR. Results: At 2 h post delivery, IT-L showed the highest lung mimic level, which was significantly higher than levels achieved by all other methods (from ~10- to 10,000-fold, p<0.05). Mimic levels remained detectable in the lung 24 h after delivery, but were 10- to 100-fold lower. The intrapulmonary distribution of cel-miR-39 was comparable when delivered as either a liquid or aerosol, with evidence of mimic distribution to both the left and right lung lobes and penetration to distal regions. All lung-targeted strategies showed lung-selective mimic uptake, with mimic levels 10- to 100-fold lower in heart and 100- to 10,000-fold lower in liver, kidney and spleen. In contrast, IV, SC and IP routes showed comparable or higher mimic levels in non-pulmonary tissues. Conclusions: miRNA uptake in the lungs differed markedly by up to 4 orders of magnitude, demonstrating that the choice of delivery strategy could have a significant impact on potential therapeutic outcomes in preclinical investigations of miRNA-based drug candidates.
Workplace learning through collaboration in primary healthcare: A BEME realist review of what works, for whom and in what circumstances: BEME Guide No. 46

Abstract Background: Changes in healthcare practice toward more proactive clinical, organizational and interprofessional working require primary healthcare professionals to learn continuously from each other through collaboration. This systematic review uses realist methodology to consolidate knowledge on the characteristics of workplace learning (WPL) through collaboration by primary healthcare professionals. Methods: Following several scoping searches, five electronic bibliographic databases were searched from January 1990 to December 2015 for relevant gray and published literature written in English, French, German and Dutch. Reviewers worked in pairs to identify relevant articles. A set of statements, based on the findings of our scoping searches, was used as a coding tree to analyze the papers. Interpretation of the results was done in alternating pairs, discussed within the author group and triangulated with stakeholders’ views. Results: Out of 6930 references, we included 42 publications that elucidated who, when, how and what primary healthcare professionals learn through collaboration. Papers were both qualitative and quantitative in design, and focused largely on WPL of collaborating general practitioners and nurses. No striking differences between different professionals within primary healthcare were noted. Professionals were often unaware of the learning that occurs through collaboration. WPL happened predominantly through informal discussions about patient cases and modeling for other professionals. Any professionals could both learn and facilitate others’ learning. Outcomes were diverse, but contextualized knowledge seemed to be important. Discussion/conclusions: Primary care professionals’ WPL is multifaceted. Existing social constructivist and social cognitivist learning theories form a framework from which to interpret these findings. Primary care policy makers and managers should ensure that professionals have access to protected time, earmarked for learning. Time is required for reflection, to learn new ways of interaction and to develop new habits within clinical practice.
Surgical pleth index: prediction of postoperative pain in children?

Background Surgical Pleth Index (SPI) is a non-invasive, dimensionless score (0-100) aimed to allow an estimate of intraoperative nociception. Thus, it may be a useful tool to guide intraoperative analgesia. However, no optimum SPI target range for the use in children has yet been defined. It was the aim of this study to define a clinically appropriate SPI target to predict moderate-severe postoperative pain in children. Methods After ethics approval 105 children (2-16 yr) undergoing elective sevoflurane/opioid-based anaesthesia were included. SPI was recorded directly before the end of surgery and compared with acute postoperative pain (age appropriately assessed on different pain scales in the age groups two to three yr, four to eight yr and nine to16 yr) in the postoperative acute care unit (PACU). Results Data of 93 children were analysed. A significant negative correlation was found between age and SPI (r=-0.43; P=0.03). The SPI cut-off value with the highest sensitivity (76%) and specificity (62%) in all children combined was 40. The negative predictive value for SPI ≤ 40 to predict the absence of moderate-severe pain in PACU was 87.5%. The commonly used SPI cut-off (50) published in all related studies had neither any clinically relevant sensitivity nor specificity to predict the presence or absence of acute pain in PACU. Conclusions The results suggest that a lower (≤ 40) than previously published (50) target for SPI may be more appropriate in studies investigating SPI guided anaesthesia in children, if the avoidance of moderate-severe postoperative pain is the main goal. Clinical trial registration ACTRN12616001139460.
Fast, safe and precise landing of a quadrotor on an oscillating platform

In this paper, we propose a novel control structure that can achieve fast, safe and precise landing of a VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) UAV onto a vertically oscillating landing pad. The control structure consists of three modules to achieve these goals: a motion estimation module, a trajectory generation module and a tracking control module. In the tracking control module, an ARC (Adaptive Robust Controller) is designed to robustly adapt the nonlinear ground effect to enable a quadrotor accurately track a given reference trajectory. In the trajectory generation module, a time-optimal reference trajectory for the quadrotor is generated such that it converges from the initial height precisely to the platform height with zero relative velocity (for smooth landing). The landing time duration is as short as possible, and physical safety constraints (position, velocity, acceleration bounds etc.) are satisfied during the entire landing process. The above two modules use the motion information of the quadrotor and the platform in absolute coordinate system (inertial frame). In the motion estimation module, we estimate the UAV and platform positions online from only the measurement of the relative distance between the UAV and the platform, as well as the inertia measurement of the UAV. An UKF (unscented Kalman Filter) is constructed and the estimated parameters are fed to the other two modules in real time. Comparative simulation and experimental results are presented to validate the performances of the proposed control structure.