Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Development and validation of a clinical index to predict survival after cardiac resynchronisation therapy

Objective: To develop and validate a prognostic risk index of cardiovascular mortality after cardiac resynchronisation therapy (CRT). Design: Prospective cohort study. Setting: District general hospital. Patients: 148 patients with heart failure (mean age 66.7 (SD 10.4) years), New York Heart Association class III or IV, LVEF <35%) who underwent CRT. Interventions: CRT device implantation. Main outcome measures: Value of a composite index in predicting cardiovascular mortality, validated internally by bootstrapping. The predictive value of the index was compared to factors that are known to predict mortality in patients with heart failure. Results: All patients underwent assessment of 16 prognostic risk factors, including cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) measures of myocardial scarring (gadolinium-hyperenhancement) and dyssynchrony, before implantation. Clinical events were assessed after a median follow-up of 913 (interquartile range 967) days. At follow-up, 37/148 (25%) of patients died from cardiovascular causes. In Cox proportional hazards analyses, (DSC) Dyssynchrony, posterolateral Scar location (both p<0.0001) and Creatinine (p = 0.0046) emerged as independent predictors of cardiovascular mortality. The DSC index, derived from these variables combined, emerged as a powerful predictor of cardiovascular mortality. Compared to patients with a DSC <3, cardiovascular mortality in patients in the intermediate DSC index (3–5; HR: 11.1 (95% confidence interval (CI) 3.00 to 41.1), p = 0.0003) and high DSC index (⩾5; HR: 30.5 (95% CI 9.15 to 101.8), p<0.0001) were higher. Bootstrap validation confirmed excellent calibration and internal validity of the prediction model. Conclusion: The DSC index, derived from a standard CMR scan and plasma creatinine before implantation, is a powerful predictor of cardiovascular mortality after CRT.
Beyond Economic Man

The existence and prevalence of behavior inconsistent with economists' definition of self-interest is measured in an experimental context. Experimental situations involving choices with monetary payoffs are designed to induce preferences. The subjects' behaviors are used to measure the existence and intensity of various forms of motivation based on “interactive preference functions. ” Explicitly, we test for altruistic, egalitarian, and difference maximizing behaviors. Attempts to explain the nonself-interested choices by psychological and ideological constructs are not successful but statistical relationships between these choices and partisan political preferences are found.
Role of ultrasonography in blunt abdominal trauma: a prospective study.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the role of ultrasonography in screening for blunt abdominal trauma in a general hospital. DESIGN Prospective study. SETTING University hospital, Kuwait. SUBJECTS 53 patients (44 male and nine female) with suspected blunt abdominal trauma or decreased consciousness were studied in the period between March 92 and April 93. INTERVENTIONS Real time ultrasonography of the abdomen during resuscitation. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES The sensitivity and specificity of ultrasonography as an investigative tool and predictor of clinical outcome. RESULTS Ultrasonography was 85% sensitive, 100% specific, and 96% accurate. The positive predictive value was 100% and the negative predictive value was 95%. The sensitivity was less in the hands of the surgeon than the radiologist (67% compared with 90%). CONCLUSION Ultrasonography is an accurate, safe method for screening patients with blunt abdominal trauma even in general hospitals.
Efficacy and safety of alirocumab in reducing lipids and cardiovascular events.

BACKGROUND Alirocumab, a monoclonal antibody that inhibits proprotein convertase subtilisin-kexin type 9 (PCSK9), has been shown to reduce low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol levels in patients who are receiving statin therapy. Larger and longer-term studies are needed to establish safety and efficacy. METHODS We conducted a randomized trial involving 2341 patients at high risk for cardiovascular events who had LDL cholesterol levels of 70 mg per deciliter (1.8 mmol per liter) or more and were receiving treatment with statins at the maximum tolerated dose (the highest dose associated with an acceptable side-effect profile), with or without other lipid-lowering therapy. Patients were randomly assigned in a 2:1 ratio to receive alirocumab (150 mg) or placebo as a 1-ml subcutaneous injection every 2 weeks for 78 weeks. The primary efficacy end point was the percentage change in calculated LDL cholesterol level from baseline to week 24. RESULTS At week 24, the difference between the alirocumab and placebo groups in the mean percentage change from baseline in calculated LDL cholesterol level was -62 percentage points (P<0.001); the treatment effect remained consistent over a period of 78 weeks. The alirocumab group, as compared with the placebo group, had higher rates of injection-site reactions (5.9% vs. 4.2%), myalgia (5.4% vs. 2.9%), neurocognitive events (1.2% vs. 0.5%), and ophthalmologic events (2.9% vs. 1.9%). In a post hoc analysis, the rate of major adverse cardiovascular events (death from coronary heart disease, nonfatal myocardial infarction, fatal or nonfatal ischemic stroke, or unstable angina requiring hospitalization) was lower with alirocumab than with placebo (1.7% vs. 3.3%; hazard ratio, 0.52; 95% confidence interval, 0.31 to 0.90; nominal P=0.02). CONCLUSIONS Over a period of 78 weeks, alirocumab, when added to statin therapy at the maximum tolerated dose, significantly reduced LDL cholesterol levels. In a post hoc analysis, there was evidence of a reduction in the rate of cardiovascular events with alirocumab. (Funded by Sanofi and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals; ODYSSEY LONG TERM ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT01507831.).
Evaluation eines videobasierten Trainingsseminars zur Förderung der professionellen Wahrnehmung von Klassenführung im Grundschulunterricht

Zur erfolgreichen Gestaltung einer angemessenen Lernumgebung gehort eine effiziente Klassenfuhrung. Eine wesentliche Voraussetzung dafur ist die Fahigkeit, klassenfuhrungsrelevante Ereignisse im Unterricht erkennen, angemessen einschatzen und mogliche Handlungsalternativen benennen zu konnen. In der vorliegenden Evaluationsstudie wird untersucht, inwiefern sich solch eine professionelle Wahrnehmung in der universitaren Lehramtsausbildung anhand der angeleiteten Analyse von Unterrichtsvideos vermitteln lasst. In Lehrseminaren trainierten Studierende im Umfang von 60 Stunden in Partnerarbeit die Analyse ausgewahlter Unterrichtsausschnitte hinsichtlich der Klassenfuhrungsdimensionen Allgegenwartigkeit, Strukturierung des Unterrichtsverlaufs und Gruppenfokus. Es nahmen insgesamt 120 Studierende an der Studie mit einem Pra-Post-Kontrollgruppendesign teil. In Kovarianzanalysen zeigten sich signifikante Effekte der Gruppe in der erwarteten Richtung, wobei sich fur die Facette Strukturierung des Unterrichtsverlau.
Bloom's taxonomy : a forty-year retrospective

Reflections on the development and use of the taxonomy / Benjamin S. Bloom -- Excerpts from the "Taxonomy of educational objectives . handbook 1: Cognitive domain" / Benjamin S. Bloom et al. -- Bloom's taxonomy / Edward J. Furst -- Psychological perspectives /William D. Rohwer, Jr. and Kathryn Sloane -- Empirical investigations of the hierarchical structure of the taxonomy / Amelia E. Kreitzer and George F. Madaus -- The impact of the taxonomy on testing and evaluation / Peter Airasian -- The taxonomy, curriculum, and their relations / Lauren A. Sosniak -- Research on teaching and teacher education / Lorin W. Anderson -- The taxonomy of educational objectives in continental Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East / Arieh Lewy and Zoltan Bathory -- The taxonomy in the Republic of Korea / Bom Mo Chung -- Validity vs. utility / T. Neville Postlethwaite --Reflections on the taxonomy / David R. Krathwohl.
The Welfare State and Equality: Structural and Ideological Roots of Public Expenditures

during the 196os and that the only reason for such interest was its own balance-of-payments problems. Problem III deals with efforts to reform the international monetary system from the late 196os up until the publication of the Committee of Twenty's "First Outline of Reform" in Nairobi in September 1973. Here the emphasis on the exchange-rate regime is somewhat exaggerated. Although the background materials on the issue of exchange-rate flexibility are well presented, the fact is that the exchange-rate regime itself was not discussed extensively by the Committee of Twenty. This portion also suffers from an associated failure to present the "European view" of the reform negotiations-a view which emphasized the importance to the Europeans partly for political reasons of convertibility, or settlement, arrangements that would establish constraints on United States economic policies. Most of my objections concern the organization of the book; but these defects are not sufficiently important to detract substantially from its overall usefulness. As long as a teacher using it in a course on international politics or economics is able to supply his own framework for the discussion and his own questions-the questions provided by Meier often have little direct relation to the text material-the book should be very useful to students. It does contain a few flaws-the confidence problem is mentioned (p. 14) but is not immediately defined; it is not made clear (p. 28) that the prohibition in the IMF Articles of Agreement on controls applies primarily to current account transactions; and no definition of the United States "persistent deficit" in its international transactions from 1950 to 1971 is provided (p. 98); but such flaws are minor. This is a very useful and well-written book. It would be even more valuable if it had an index and if all the references to source materials were collected in one place.
Assessing Organizational Efforts to Mobilize Research Knowledge in Education

This paper presents a framework for evaluating efforts by organizations to share research as exemplified on their websites, then reports the result of an evaluation of these efforts in 100 organizations. The result shows that the overall research sharing efforts of these organizations are modest and not well aligned to evidence on effective practice in this area. Organizations tend to devote more efforts to making products available while interpersonal strategies, though more effective, are less used. Most efforts involve one way communication to potential users. The paper concludes with suggestions for practice and for further research.
On the use of term trees for effective and efficient test pattern generation

The aim of the structural automatic test pattern generation (ATPG) is to efficiently construct a compact set of test patterns that are able do discover faults from a given structural fault model. The paper focuses on the usage for ATPG of a new data representation, called term trees. We designed and implemented a new term tree based ATPG algorithm with the following features: (1) 100% coverage of all nonredundant faults of the fault model; (2) a (near) minimal test set; (3) detection of circuit redundancy that disables testing for some faults; (4) a practical ATPG time and memory usage. We introduce the term trees and their structural fault model, show how to use them for effective and efficient test pattern generation and discuss some ATPG results. We also propose an effective, efficient and flexible term tree minimization algorithm and discuss some benchmark results. The term trees can be applied for many other purposes in logic design and other areas.
Technologically Assisted Instruction and Student Mastery, Motivation, and Matriculation

Computer-based teaching methods can improve the transfer of information, increase instructional focus on conceptual and methodological skills, enhance motivation, and stimulate the development of expressive skills. After reviewing a number of studies of computer-based applications, we report a correlational study of psychology students' attitudes and achievement in a technologically enhanced classroom. The results indicated that (a) students rated the computer-based instructional components positively, (b) those with weak academic backgrounds who consistently used the technology achieved higher test scores than weak students who did not use the technology, and (c) students who dropped out of college the following semester tended to be low users of technology. We also discuss the implications of computer technology for teaching.
Multiantenna Bidirectional Broadcast Channels— Optimal Transmit Strategies

We consider a three-node network where a relay node establishes a bidirectional communication between the two other nodes using a spectrally efficient decode-and-forward protocol. In the first phase we have the classical multiple-access channel where both nodes transmit a message to the relay node, which then decodes the messages. In the second phase the relay broadcasts a re-encoded composition of them based on the network coding idea. This means that each receiving node uses the same data stream to infer on its intended message. We characterize the optimal transmit strategy for the broadcast phase where either the relay node or the two other nodes are equipped with multiple antennas. Our main result shows that beamforming into the subspace spanned by the channels is always an optimal transmit strategy for the multiple-input single-output bidirectional broadcast channel. Thereby, it shows that correlation between the channels is advantageous. Moreover, this leads to a parametrization of the optimal transmit strategy which specifies the whole capacity region. In retrospect the results are intuitively clear since the single-beam transmit strategy reflects the single stream processing due to the network coding approach.
Revisiting Burnout Among Special Education Teachers: Do Age, Experience, and Preparation Still Matter?

A study of special education teacher burnout conducted nearly 20 years ago was replicated with a sample of 300 current teachers to examine changes that may have occurred due to evolution of the field. Specifically, the relationships of participants' age, amount of regular and special education teaching experience, certification status, and amount of professional preparation to three dimensions of burnout—emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment—were examined. Results of the current study are reported, analyzed, and compared to those of the earlier study. A major finding is that teachers' age, amount of special education experience, and amount of preparation have markedly increased in the 20 years between the two studies. A second major finding is that age, experience, certification status, and preparation are not as significantly related to the experience of professional burnout as in the past, although older, more experienced teachers do appear to find more personal accomplishment in their work. Interpretations related to changes in the delivery of special education services, increased preparation to reduce stress and ameliorate burnout, and greater availability of collegial support are identified as possible influential factors. Implications of these findings for pre-service and in-service preparation, support and mentoring, and the supply of special educators are suggested.
Multistate point-prevalence survey of health care-associated infections.

BACKGROUND Currently, no single U.S. surveillance system can provide estimates of the burden of all types of health care-associated infections across acute care patient populations. We conducted a prevalence survey in 10 geographically diverse states to determine the prevalence of health care-associated infections in acute care hospitals and generate updated estimates of the national burden of such infections. METHODS We defined health care-associated infections with the use of National Healthcare Safety Network criteria. One-day surveys of randomly selected inpatients were performed in participating hospitals. Hospital personnel collected demographic and limited clinical data. Trained data collectors reviewed medical records retrospectively to identify health care-associated infections active at the time of the survey. Survey data and 2010 Nationwide Inpatient Sample data, stratified according to patient age and length of hospital stay, were used to estimate the total numbers of health care-associated infections and of inpatients with such infections in U.S. acute care hospitals in 2011. RESULTS Surveys were conducted in 183 hospitals. Of 11,282 patients, 452 had 1 or more health care-associated infections (4.0%; 95% confidence interval, 3.7 to 4.4). Of 504 such infections, the most common types were pneumonia (21.8%), surgical-site infections (21.8%), and gastrointestinal infections (17.1%). Clostridium difficile was the most commonly reported pathogen (causing 12.1% of health care-associated infections). Device-associated infections (i.e., central-catheter-associated bloodstream infection, catheter-associated urinary tract infection, and ventilator-associated pneumonia), which have traditionally been the focus of programs to prevent health care-associated infections, accounted for 25.6% of such infections. We estimated that there were 648,000 patients with 721,800 health care-associated infections in U.S. acute care hospitals in 2011. CONCLUSIONS Results of this multistate prevalence survey of health care-associated infections indicate that public health surveillance and prevention activities should continue to address C. difficile infections. As device- and procedure-associated infections decrease, consideration should be given to expanding surveillance and prevention activities to include other health care-associated infections.
Cultural and social factors affecting women's physical activity participation in Taiwan

The world is becoming a global village and within many professions, including physical education and sport, individuals have multiple opportunities to work and socialize with people from different ethnic backgrounds, cultures, lifestyles, religions, etc. Due to the increasing cultural diversity, it is important for physical education and sport professionals to understand how cultural and social factors of different ethnic groups and countries may influence a person from participating in physical activity. The aim of this paper was to examine some of the traditional and recent cultural and social factors that have an impact on women's participation in physical activities in Taiwan. Factors such as changes within the family structure, equal education opportunities, and the growing attention from the government toward physical activity for all have motivated and encouraged women in Taiwan to participate in physical activity. The other aim of this paper was to emphasize the importance of Taiwanese women's physical activity participation and to encourage continued involvement in physical activities.
A holistic client‐centred program for vulnerable frequent hospital attenders: cost efficiencies and changed practices

Objective: A small percentage of Australians frequently attend hospital emergency departments (ED) with potentially avoidable health crises. These individuals are termed ‘vulnerable’ due to their complex health and social needs. When these needs are unmanaged, unnecessary ED and hospital‐admission costs are incurred. A holistic community‐based program was developed to engage a cohort of vulnerable individuals in strategies to improve their health and health behaviours, and health service use.
Environmental Chemical Contributions to ADHD and the Externalising Disorders of Childhood - A Review of Epidemiological Evidence

externalising disorders of childhood, Attention Deficit hyperactivity Disorder (ADhD), conduct Disorder and Oppositional Defiant Disorder are leading causes of childhood morbidity. Aetiology is poorly understood but includes both genetic and environmental factors. here we review the observational evidence for an association between environmental chemical exposures and increased externalising behaviour in childhood. With respect to AD hD, we additionally consider whether there is evidence that exposures are associated with impairments in information processing skills characteristic of AD hD. We conclude that large, well designed, prospective studies combining behavioural and cognitive outcomes now provide strong evidence for an association between environmental lead exposure and the externalising disorders of childhood, as well as evidence for an association between prenatal exposure to environmental methylmercury and difficulties associated with ADhD. Existing epidemiological research on polychlorinated biphenyls is however inconclusive and we discuss evidence that the association between environmental tobacco smoke and externalising disorders may not be causal in nature. Finally modern environmental chemicals are reviewed where early studies have observed an association between increased exposure and externalising disorders, externalising behaviours, or information processing difficulties associated with AD hD, but where further replication is required. Implications for future research are discussed.
Improvement in the Undertreatment of Osteoporosis Following Hip Fracture

Background: Osteoporosis is a common disease characterized by decreased bone mass and increased fracture risk in postmenopausal women and the elderly. Hip fractures are among the most common consequences of osteoporosis and unfortunately usually occur late in the course of the disease. When a patient is admitted to the hospital with a fragility hip fracture, a unique opportunity for diagnosis and treatment presents itself. Fortunately, several medications have proven to be effective in lowering the risk of future fractures. The purposes of the present study were to test the hypothesis that most fragility hip fractures go untreated and to determine whether educational efforts to raise physician awareness have led to an improvement in osteoporosis treatment rates.Methods: A retrospective cohort study was performed with use of the patient databases at two university medical centers and one university-affiliated community hospital. The charts of 300 randomly selected patients were sorted with use of ICD-9 (International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision) codes for femoral neck fractures. There were 100 patients from each center, with twenty-five patients from each year between 1997 and 2000. The admitting diagnosis, mechanism of injury, admission medications, procedures performed during hospitalization, and discharge medications were then extracted and analyzed. During this period, the National Osteoporosis Foundation established guiding principles for the treatment of fragility fractures.Results: Of the seventy-five patients from all centers for each year from 1997 to 2000, 11%, 13%, 24%, and 29%, respectively, were discharged with a prescription for some medication targeting osteopenia, either supplemental calcium or an antiosteoporotic medication (estrogen, calcitonin, a bisphosphonate, or raloxifene). A trended chi-square analysis of this increase revealed a p value of <0.001, indicating that this improvement in treatment was unlikely due to chance alone. Fifty-eight (19.3%) of the 300 patients in the study received a prescription at the time of discharge. However, forty of these patients (13.3% of the overall group) received calcium and only eighteen (6.0% of the overall group) received a medication to actively prevent bone resorption and treat osteoporosis. In addition, no patient underwent a bone density scan while in the hospital.Conclusions: Elderly patients and postmenopausal women who are admitted to the hospital and diagnosed with a low-energy femoral neck fracture have been undertreated for osteoporosis. However, over the four years of the present study, there was a significant increase in the rate of treatment. It is hoped that treatment rates will continue to increase in the future with continued educational efforts.