Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Capability beliefs on, and use of evidence-based practice among four health professional and student groups in geriatric care: A cross sectional study

Implementation of evidence-based practice (EBP) is a complex task. This study, conducted in an acute geriatric setting, aims to compare self-reported capability beliefs on EBP between health professionals and students, and to compare the use of EBP between health professional groups. Occupational therapists, physicians, physiotherapists and registered nurses with three or more months’ employment, and all students from the occupational therapy, medical, physiotherapy and nursing programs, who had conducted workplace learning at the department, were invited. Data on capability beliefs and use of EBP were collected using the Evidence-based Practice Capabilities Beliefs Scale assessing six activities of EBP: formulate questions; search databases; search other sources; appraise research reports; participate in implementation in practice; and participate in evaluation. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used. Capability beliefs on EBP: The health professionals (n = 101; response rate 80%) reported high on search other sources but less on appraise research reports. The students (n = 124; response rate 73%) reported high on all EBP activities. The health professionals reported significantly higher on search other sources than the students. The students reported significantly higher on formulate questions and appraise research reports than the health professionals. No significant differences were identified between the health professional groups or between the student groups. Use of EBP: Health professionals reported wide-ranging use from several times each month to once every six months. The physicians reported significantly more frequent use than registered nurses and occupational therapists. Health professionals supervising students reported more frequent use of appraise research reports than the non-supervising group. There is a need for improving the use of EBP, particularly among registered nurses and occupational therapists. Supervision of students might enhance the motivation among staff to increase the use of EBP and students’ high EBP capability beliefs might inspire staff in this matter.
Searching for solar-like oscillations in the δ Scuti star ρ Puppis

Despite the shallow convective envelopes of delta Scuti pulsators, solar-like oscillations are theoretically predicted to be excited in those stars as well. To search for such stochastic oscillations we organised a spectroscopic multi-site campaign for the bright, metal-rich delta Sct star rho Puppis. We obtained a total of 2763 high-resolution spectra using four telescopes. We discuss the reduction and analysis with the iodine cell technique, developed for searching for low-amplitude radial velocity variations, in the presence of high-amplitude variability. Furthermore, we have determined the angular diameter of rho Puppis to be 1.68 \pm 0.03 mas, translating into a radius of 3.52 \pm 0.07Rsun. Using this value, the frequency of maximum power of possible solar-like oscillations, is expected at ~43 \pm 2 c/d (498 \pm 23 muHz). The dominant delta Scuti-type pulsation mode of rho Puppis is known to be the radial fundamental mode which allows us to determine the mean density of the star, and therefore an expected large frequency separation of 2.73 c/d (31.6 muHz). We conclude that 1) the radial velocity amplitudes of the delta Scuti pulsations are different for different spectral lines; 2) we can exclude solar-like oscillations to be present in rho Puppis with an amplitude per radial mode larger than 0.5 m/s.
Novel Insights into Complex Cardiovascular Pathologies using 4D Flow Analysis by Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance Imaging.

BACKGROUND Blood flow assessment is essential to fully understand cardiovascular function in disease pathologies and for identification of individuals at long-term risk of cardiovascular disease development. Qualitative and quantitative assessments of blood flow by imaging modalities have been limited, and much of the accurate quantification has relied on invasive measures. METHODS This review discusses how four-dimensional velocity cardiovascular magnetic resonance (4D flow CMR) offers increasing potential for the non-invasive assessment of blood flow in the heart and major blood vessels such as the aorta. 4D flow CMR refers to phase contrast CMR with flow encoding in all three spatial directions that is resolved relative to all three dimensions of space and to the dimension of time throughout the cardiac cycle. RESULTS It has been demonstrated that 4D flow CMR can be used to assess parameters such as flow, pressure, velocity, wall shear stress and turbulent kinetic energy throughout the heart and major vessels of the cardiovascular system. It has been possible to gain new insights into cardiovascular pathologies such as, but not limited to, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, dilated cardiomyopathy, Marfan syndrome and aortic bicuspid valve disease. CONCLUSION Future work to standardize 4D flow CMR scan acquisition parameters is required. Furthermore, the development of automated analysis tools and standardized reporting of quantitative metrics are needed to increase capacity for larger studies and for translation to clinical practice. In doing so, the potential for 4D flow CMR to disentangle complex questions related to cardiovascular function will be maximized.
Approximate Scalable Bounded Space Sketch for Large Data NLP

We exploit sketch techniques, especially the Count-Min sketch, a memory, and time efficient framework which approximates the frequency of a word pair in the corpus without explicitly storing the word pair itself. These methods use hashing to deal with massive amounts of streaming text. We apply Count-Min sketch to approximate word pair counts and exhibit their effectiveness on three important NLP tasks. Our experiments demonstrate that on all of the three tasks, we get performance comparable to Exact word pair counts setting and state-of-the-art system. Our method scales to 49 GB of unzipped web data using bounded space of 2 billion counters (8 GB memory).
Wideband Noise Measurement Technique in Duplex Systems for RF Interference

A wideband noise measurement technique with improved isolation is demonstrated for a practical mobile phone. The liquid crystal display (LCD) baseband noise modulated with a transmitted radio frequency (RF) signal interferes with the received RF signal, resulting in an RF desensitization problem. A wideband and simple measurement setup based on a 180° hybrid coupler is proposed and demonstrated to characterize the modulation and its coupling behaviors in duplex systems. This setup overcomes the frequency limitation of a duplexer-based measurement setting. In addition, signal-to-noise ratio improvement in the proposed measurement technique is quantitatively analyzed.
Accuracy of transthoracic echocardiography in the assessment of proximal aortic diameter in hypertensive patients: comparison with cardiac magnetic resonance

Background: Accurate and reproducible measurements of proximal thoracic aorta diameters are essential in the diagnosis and follow-up of patients with aortic dilatation, a condition particularly common in hypertensive patients. Aim: to evaluate the accuracy of transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) in comparison with cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) for the assessment of proximal thoracic aorta diameters in a cohort of hypertensive patients. Methods: A total of 75 essential hypertensive outpatients previously evaluated by TTE and than by CMR were included in the study. We specifically compared the two techniques at the level of sinuses of Valsalva (SoV) and ascending aorta (Asc) diameter. For the TTE images, the inner edge-to-inner edge and leading edge-to-leading edge conventions were compared. Results: TTE and CMR diameters were significantly related (SoV: r 0.931, P < 0.001; Asc: r 0.949, P < 0.001) when the leading edge-to-leading edge convention was used. Mean difference between CMR and TTE diameters was 2.49 ± 2.01 mm at the level of SoV and 1.13 ± 1.77 mm at the level of Asc. Correlation was good also for the TEE diameters measured by inner edge-to-inner edge convention (SoV: r 0.936, P < 0.001; Asc: r 0.947, P < 0.001). Comparing the two approaches in the evaluation of Asc, inner edge-to-inner edge showed a trend to a better correlation with CMR measurements than leading edge-to-leading edge, with a good interobserver and intraobserver agreement. Conclusion: The results of the current study suggest that TTE could be a reliable tool to assess proximal aorta diameters in hypertensive patients.
Requirement of the Yersinia pseudotuberculosis Effectors YopH and YopE in Colonization and Persistence in Intestinal and Lymph Tissues

ABSTRACT The gram-negative enteric pathogen Yersinia pseudotuberculosis employs a type III secretion system and effector Yop proteins that are required for virulence. Mutations in the type III secretion-translocation apparatus have been shown to cause defects in colonization of the murine cecum, suggesting roles for one or more effector Yops in the intestinal tract. To investigate this possibility, isogenic yop mutant strains were tested for their ability to colonize and persist in intestinal and associated lymph tissues of the mouse following orogastric inoculation. In single-strain infections, a yopHEMOJ mutant strain was unable to colonize, replicate, or persist in intestinal and lymph tissues. A yopH mutant strain specifically fails to colonize the mesenteric lymph nodes, but yopE and yopO mutant strains showed only minor defects in persistence in intestinal and lymph tissues. While no single Yop was found to be essential for colonization or persistence in intestinal tissues in single-strain infections, the absence of both YopH and YopE together almost eliminated colonization of all tissues, indicating either that these two Yops have some redundant functions or that Y. pseudotuberculosis employs multiple strategies for colonization. In competition infections with wild-type Y. pseudotuberculosis, the presence of wild-type bacteria severely hindered the ability of the yopH, yopE, and yopO mutants to persist in many tissues, suggesting that the wild-type bacteria either fills colonization niches or elicits host responses that the yop mutants are unable to withstand.
Multi-Observation Regression

Recent work introduced loss functions which measure the error of a prediction based on multiple simultaneous observations or outcomes. In this paper, we explore the theoretical and practical questions that arise when using such multi-observation losses for regression on data sets of $(x,y)$ pairs. When a loss depends on only one observation, the average empirical loss decomposes by applying the loss to each pair, but for the multi-observation case, empirical loss is not even well-defined, and the possibility of statistical guarantees is unclear without several $(x,y)$ pairs with exactly the same $x$ value. We propose four algorithms formalizing the concept of empirical risk minimization for this problem, two of which have statistical guarantees in settings allowing both slow and fast convergence rates, but which are out-performed empirically by the other two. Empirical results demonstrate practicality of these algorithms in low-dimensional settings, while lower bounds demonstrate intrinsic difficulty in higher dimensions. Finally, we demonstrate the potential benefit of the algorithms over natural baselines that use traditional single-observation losses via both lower bounds and simulations.
A Study of Deep CNN-Based Classification of Open and Closed Eyes Using a Visible Light Camera Sensor

The necessity for the classification of open and closed eyes is increasing in various fields, including analysis of eye fatigue in 3D TVs, analysis of the psychological states of test subjects, and eye status tracking-based driver drowsiness detection. Previous studies have used various methods to distinguish between open and closed eyes, such as classifiers based on the features obtained from image binarization, edge operators, or texture analysis. However, when it comes to eye images with different lighting conditions and resolutions, it can be difficult to find an optimal threshold for image binarization or optimal filters for edge and texture extraction. In order to address this issue, we propose a method to classify open and closed eye images with different conditions, acquired by a visible light camera, using a deep residual convolutional neural network. After conducting performance analysis on both self-collected and open databases, we have determined that the classification accuracy of the proposed method is superior to that of existing methods.
A Survey of the Publication History of Randomly Selected IADR/AADR Abstracts Presented in 1983 and 1984

IADR/AADR abstracts of research projects to be presented at the Annual Meeting are published each year in the Journal of Dental Research. An assumption often made is that the material in these abstracts is subsequently published as journal articles. The validity of this assumption was assessed in this study. Following a review of the literature to establish study criteria, the specific objectives of this study were to determine: (1) the percentage of IADR/AADR abstracts subsequently published as articles, (2) the length of time from abstract to publication, and (3) the amount of discrepancy between abstract and article. Ten percent of the IADR/AADR abstracts from the years 1983 (n = 125) and 1984 (n = 150) were randomly selected and surveyed for their publication history. Major reference sources were checked for determination of whether articles had resulted from the abstracts. Of the 1983-1984 abstracts surveyed, the results indicated that more abstracts were not published (78.5% in 1983/76.0% in 1984) than were published (21.6% in 1983/24.0% in 1984). Of those articles previously published as abstracts, the greatest number (44.4% in 1983/ 47.2% in 1984) were published within ten to 21 months following presentation. The greatest amount of discrepancy between the abstract and the article involved names and numbers of authors, titles, purpose statements, and results/conclusions. In other health disciplines, the percentage of abstracts subsequently published as articles ranged from 31.1% to 53.9%. Since a smaller percentage of the IADR/AADR abstracts surveyed in this study were ultimately published (21.6% to 24%), IADR/AADR should consider various strategies to improve the quality of abstracts and their accessibility.
Orexin Impairs the Phagocytosis and Degradation of Amyloid-β Fibrils by Microglial Cells.

BACKGROUND Intracranial accumulation of amyloid-β (Aβ) is a characteristic finding of Alzheimer's disease (AD). It is thought to be the result of Aβ overproduction by neurons and impaired clearance by several systems, including degradation by microglia. Sleep disturbance is now considered a risk factor for AD, but studies focusing on how sleep modulates microglial handling of Aβ have been scarce. OBJECTIVE To determine whether phagocytosis and degradation of extracellular Aβ fibrils by BV2 microglial cells were impaired by treatment with orexin-A/B, a major modulator of the sleep-wake cycle, which may mimic sleep deprivation conditions. METHODS BV2 cells were treated with orexin and Aβ for various durations and phagocytic and autophagic processes for degradation of extracellular Aβ were examined. RESULTS After treatment with orexin, the formation of actin filaments around Aβ fibrils, which is needed for phagocytosis, was impaired, and phagocytosis regulating molecules such as PI3K, Akt, and p38-MAPK were downregulated in BV2 cells. Orexin also suppressed autophagic flux, through disruption of the autophagosome-lysosome fusion process, resulting in impaired Aβ degradation in BV2 cells. CONCLUSIONS Our results demonstrate that orexin can hinder clearance of Aβ through the suppression of phagocytosis and autophagic flux in microglia. This is a novel mechanism linking AD and sleep, and suggests that attenuated microglial function, due to sleep deprivation, may increase Aβ accumulation in the brain.
Effects of Long-term Storage on the Mechanical Characteristics of Wood Plastic Composites Produced from Thermally Modified Wood Fibers

In order to study possible changes in the mechanical properties of wood plastic composites produced from thermally modified wood fibers as reinforcement material (60%) and polypropylene (40%) after long-term storage under constant conditions, tensile and flexural specimens were tested in the years 2004 and 2009 after storage at 20°C and 65% humidity. Increased tensile strength, Young’s modulus (tensile test) as well as modulus of elasticity (flexural test) were observed for the long-term stored samples indicating a positive effect of the storage conditions on the mechanical properties of the samples.
Identification and Expression Patterns of Anoplophora chinensis (Forster) Chemosensory Receptor Genes from the Antennal Transcriptome

The citrus long-horned beetle (CLB), Anoplophora chinensis (Forster) is a destructive native pest in China. Chemosensory receptors including odorant receptors (ORs), gustatory receptors (GRs), and ionotropic receptors (IRs) function to interface the insect with its chemical environment. In the current study, we assembled the antennal transcriptome of A. chinensis by next-generation sequencing. We assembled 44,938 unigenes from 64,787,784 clean reads and annotated their putative gene functions based on gene ontology (GO) and Clusters of Orthologous Groups of proteins (COG). Overall, 74 putative receptor genes from chemosensory receptor gene families, including 53 ORs, 17 GRs, and 4 IRs were identified. Expression patterns of these receptors on the antennae, maxillary and labial palps, and remaining body segments of both male and female A. chinensis were performed using quantitative real time-PCR (RT-qPCR). The results revealed that 23 ORs, 6 GRs, and 1 IR showed male-biased expression profiles, suggesting that they may play a significant role in sensing female-produced sex pheromones; whereas 8 ORs, 5 GRs, and 1 IR showed female-biased expression profiles, indicating that these receptors may be involved in some female-specific behaviors such as oviposition site seeking. These results lay a solid foundation for deeply understanding CLB olfactory processing mechanisms. Moreover, by comparing our results with those from chemosensory receptor studies in other cerambycid species, several highly probable pheromone receptor candidates were highlighted, which may facilitate the identification of additional pheromone and/or host attractants in CLB.
Development of an inducible and reversible mouse model of podocyte effacement

DEVELOPMENT OF AN INDUCIBLE AND REVERSIBLE MOUSE MODEL OF PODOCYTE EFFACEMENT Colin D.M. Stringer Advisor: University of Guelph, 2011 Dr. Nina Jones Podocytes are specialized epithelial cells which wrap glomerular capillaries with numerous interdigitating foot processes (FP). Between adjacent FPs a unique junction, the slit diaphragm (SD), functions as the final blood filtration barrier. Actin organization is critical for maintaining FP structure and SD function, and the adaptor protein Nck can bind an intracellular SD component to couple it with actin regulators. Podocyte-specific deletion of Nck in mice results in proteinuria and FP effacement. To better understand FP remodelling, we have pursued a transgenic mouse model utilizing an inducible and reversible dominant negative Nck (DN-Nck) to prevent signalling to actin regulators, exclusively in podocytes. Effects of DN-Nck were first confirmed in vitro, and transgenic mice were then generated and induced to express DN-Nck. Despite obtaining several mice which exhibited a mild renal phenotype, transgene expression appeared to be lost in successive generations. Full in vivo analysis awaits generation of additional transgenic
GNSS-R Altimetry Performance Analysis for the GEROS Experiment on Board the International Space Station

The GEROS-ISS (GNSS rEflectometry, Radio Occultation and Scatterometry onboard International Space Station) is an innovative experiment for climate research, proposed in 2011 within a call of the European Space Agency (ESA). This proposal was the only one selected for further studies by ESA out of ~25 ones that were submitted. In this work, the instrument performance for the near-nadir altimetry (GNSS-R) mode is assessed, including the effects of multi-path in the ISS structure, the electromagnetic-bias, and the orbital height decay. In the absence of ionospheric scintillations, the altimetry rms error is <50 cm for a swath <~250 km and for U10 <10 m/s. If the transmitted power is 3 dB higher (likely to happen at beginning of life of the GNSS spacecrafts), mission requirements (rms error is <50 cm) are met for all ISS heights and for U10 up to 15 m/s. However, around 1.5 GHz, the ionosphere can induce significant fading, from 2 to >20 dB at equatorial regions, mainly after sunset, which will seriously degrade the altimetry and the scatterometry performances of the instrument.
Prevalence of sexually transmitted infections and bacterial vaginosis among women in sub-Saharan Africa: An individual participant data meta-analysis of 18 HIV prevention studies

Background Estimates of sexually transmitted infection (STI) prevalence are essential for efforts to prevent and control STIs. Few large STI prevalence studies exist, especially for low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Our primary objective was to estimate the prevalence of chlamydia, gonorrhea, trichomoniasis, syphilis, herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2), and bacterial vaginosis (BV) among women in sub-Saharan Africa by age, region, and population type. Methods and findings We analyzed individual-level data from 18 HIV prevention studies (cohort studies and randomized controlled trials; conducted during 1993–2011), representing >37,000 women, that tested participants for ≥1 selected STIs or BV at baseline. We used a 2-stage meta-analysis to combine data. After calculating the proportion of participants with each infection and standard error by study, we used a random-effects model to obtain a summary mean prevalence of each infection and 95% confidence interval (CI) across ages, regions, and population types. Despite substantial study heterogeneity for some STIs/populations, several patterns emerged. Across the three primary region/population groups (South Africa community-based, Southern/Eastern Africa community-based, and Eastern Africa higher-risk), prevalence was higher among 15–24-year-old than 25–49-year-old women for all STIs except HSV-2. In general, higher-risk populations had greater prevalence of gonorrhea and syphilis than clinic/community-based populations. For chlamydia, prevalence among 15–24-year-olds was 10.3% (95% CI: 7.4%, 14.1%; I2 = 75.7%) among women specifically recruited from higher-risk settings for HIV in Eastern Africa and was 15.1% (95% CI: 12.7%, 17.8%; I2 = 82.3%) in South African clinic/community-based populations. Among clinic/community-based populations, prevalence was generally greater in South Africa than in Southern/Eastern Africa for most STIs; for gonorrhea, prevalence among 15–24-year-olds was 4.6% (95% CI: 3.3%, 6.4%; I2 = 82.8%) in South Africa and was 1.7% (95% CI: 1.2%, 2.6%; I2 = 55.2%) in Southern/Eastern Africa. Across the three primary region/population groups, HSV-2 and BV prevalence was high among 25–49-year-olds (ranging from 70% to 83% and 33% to 44%, respectively). The main study limitation is that the data are not from random samples of the target populations. Conclusions Combining data from 18 HIV prevention studies, our findings highlight important features of STI/BV epidemiology among sub-Saharan African women. This methodology can be used where routine STI surveillance is limited and offers a new approach to obtaining critical information on STI and BV prevalence in LMICs.