Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Self-esteem and schizophrenia : the relationship with social support, expressed emotion and life events and the clinical relevance of associated cognitions

Self esteem is recognised as a major contributory factor in mental health. Research has focused on the association with depression but there has been relatively little interest in the role of self esteem in schizophrenia. Literature on social and cognitive models of depression together with findings of research into relapse in schizophrenia indicate that self esteem may have an important role in the outcome of schizophrenia. This study investigates this role particularly in relation to factors which have previously been identified as relevant to the course of the illness. Subjects with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, were assessed on levels of self esteem, expressed emotion from a relative/partner, social support and experience of major life events. Data analysis establishes associations between these variables. Associated psychological factors including perceived control and illness attributions are included in the analysis. In addition patients dysfunctional core beliefs about self, others and their illness are identified and examined in relation to the variables measured. The thesis discusses the findings in relation to the existing literature and explores theoretical issues including the place of self esteem within the vulnerability stress model and the likelihood of self esteem as a mediator between expressed emotion and relapse. The potential of cognitive therapy to target self esteem in this population is also discussed. List of Tables and Figures Table 1. Mean Score on Robsons Self-Esteem Questionnaire Table 2. Socio-Demographic and Clinical Data Table 3. Total and Factorial Self-Esteem Scores. Table 4. Perceived Expressed Emotion Total and Factorial Scores Table 5. Perceived Actual and Ideal Social Support Table 6. Scores on the Manchester Scale of Symptomatology Table 7. Pearson Correlation Coefficients for Self-Esteem and Perceived Expressed Emotion Table 8. Pearson Correlation Coefficients for Symptoms and Self-Esteem Table 9. Correlation of Variables Entered in Self-Esteem Regression Equation Table 10. Standard Multiple Regression of Psychosocial Factors and Depression on Self-Esteem Table 11. Standard Multiple Regression of Psychosocial Factors and Depression on Self-Esteem Table 12. Scores for the PBIQ Table 13. Pearson Correlation Coefficients for Self-Esteem and PBIQ Table 14. Standard Multiple Regression of Beliefs about Illness and Depression on Self-Esteem Table 15. Comparison of mean DAS-24 Scores for GP, Depressed and Schizophrenia Patients Table 16. Pearson Correlation Coefficients for DAS-24 and Self-Esteem Figure 1: Normal Q-Q Plot of Total Self-Esteem Score Figure 2: Relationship to Patients of Individuals Named as Most Influential Person on LEE Scale. Figure 3: Normal Q-Q Plot of Perceived Expressed Emotion
New innovations in dementia research: from a new assessment of premorbid functioning to a review of the evidence base for post-diagnostic Cognitive Rehabilitation

Background There is a growing evidence base for non-pharmacological interventions for dementia; however, the evidence base for Cognitive Rehabilitation is particularly limited. Objectives The current review evaluates the effectiveness of Cognitive Rehabilitation for mildmoderate dementia (Alzheimer disease or mixed dementia) in relation to cognitive and functional outcomes. The limited number of RCTs in this field precludes clear conclusions, and so the additional contribution of non-RCTs to the evidence base is also evaluated. Method The CDCIG Specialised Register, ALOIS, was searched in order to identify relevant studies. In addition, previous reviews were searched to identify studies excluded on the basis that they were not an RCT. Results Ten studies were identified; five RCT and five non-RCT. Study quality was assessed using a well-validated quality assessment tool, and indicated large variability. Eight of the ten studies reported a positive effect of the intervention. However, several studies were of poor quality and included aspects of other approaches in their intervention (e.g. CT, CBT). Conclusions This review has exhaustively assessed the literature and found some evidence for the effectiveness of Cognitive Rehabilitation for mild-moderate Alzheimer disease and mixed dementia. Methodological limitations of studies are discussed, and clinical implications are identified.
Prevalent herpes simplex virus type 2 infection is associated with altered vaginal flora and an increased susceptibility to multiple sexually transmitted infections.

BACKGROUND Prevalent herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2) infection increases human immunodeficiency virus acquisition. We hypothesized that HSV-2 infection might also predispose individuals to acquire other common sexually transmitted infections (STIs). METHODS We studied the association between prevalent HSV-2 infection and STI incidence in a prospective, randomized trial of periodic STI therapy among Kenyan female sex workers. Participants were screened monthly for infection with Neisseria gonorrhoeae and Chlamydia trachomatis, and at least every 6 months for bacterial vaginosis (BV) and infection with Treponema pallidum, Trichomonas vaginalis, and/or HSV-2. RESULTS Increased prevalence of HSV-2 infection and increased prevalence of BV were each associated with the other; the direction of causality could not be determined. After stratifying for sexual risk-taking, BV status, and antibiotic use, prevalent HSV-2 infection remained associated with an increased incidence of infection with N. gonorrhoeae (incidence rate ratio [IRR], 4.3 [95% confidence interval {CI}, 1.5-12.2]), T. vaginalis (IRR, 2.3 [95% CI, 1.3-4.2]), and syphilis (IRR, 4.7 [95% CI, 1.1-19.9]). BV was associated with increased rates of infection with C. trachomatis (IRR, 2.1 [95% CI, 1.1-3.8]) and T. vaginalis (IRR, 8.0 [95% CI, 3.2-19.8]). CONCLUSION; Increased prevalences of HSV-2 infection and BV were associated with each other and also associated with enhanced susceptibility to an overlapping spectrum of other STIs. Demonstration of causality will require clinical trials that suppress HSV-2 infection, BV, or both.
Head Pose and Movement Analysis as an Indicator of Depression

Depression is a common and disabling mental health disorder, which impacts not only on the sufferer but also their families, friends and the economy overall. Our ultimate aim is to develop an automatic objective affective sensing system that supports clinicians in their diagnosis and monitoring of clinical depression. Here, we analyse the performance of head pose and movement features extracted from face videos using a 3D face model projected on a 2D Active Appearance Model (AAM). In a binary classification task (depressed vs. non-depressed), we modelled low-level and statistical functional features for an SVM classifier using real-world clinically validated data. Although the head pose and movement would be used as a complementary cue in detecting depression in practice, their recognition rate was impressive on its own, giving 71.2% on average, which illustrates that head pose and movement hold effective cues in diagnosing depression. When expressing positive and negative emotions, recognising depression using positive emotions was more accurate than using negative emotions. We conclude that positive emotions are expressed less in depressed subjects at all times, and that negative emotions have less discriminatory power than positive emotions in detecting depression. Analysing the functional features statistically illustrates several behaviour patterns for depressed subjects: (1) slower head movements, (2) less change of head position, (3) longer duration of looking to the right, (4) longer duration of looking down, which may indicate fatigue and eye contact avoidance. We conclude that head movements are significantly different between depressed patients and healthy subjects, and could be used as a complementary cue.
World Scientific

WIMP scattering in a semiconductor target would produce less ionization per unit deposited energy than gamma rays do. Therefore, discrimination against background gamma rays can be achieved by simultaneously measuring the ioniza-tion and heat produced by scattering events. The Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS) experiment uses germanium and silicon detectors cooled to 20 mK to attempt to detect weakly interacting dark matter. We discuss recent results obtained with NTD thermistor-instrumented germanium detectors. Currently, the background rejection capability of these devices is compromised by poor charge collection at the detector surfaces. Nevertheless, the limits on WIMP interaction rates derived from our measurements are close to the best achieved by other methods, with exciting prospects for improvement in the near future.
Heart Rate Responses During Small-Sided Games and Short Intermittent Running Training in Elite Soccer Players: A Comparative Study

Dellal, A, Chamari, K, Pintus, A, Girard, O, Cotte, T, and Keller, D. Heart rate responses during small-sided games and short intermittent running training in elite soccer players: a comparative study. J Strength Cond Res 22(5): 1449-1457, 2008-The purpose of this study was to compare heart rate (HR) responses within and between physical controlled (short-duration intermittent running) and physical integrated (sided games) training methods in elite soccer players. Ten adult male elite soccer players (age, 26 ± 2.9 years; body mass, 78.3 ± 4.4 kg; maximum HR [HRmax], 195.4 ± 4.9 b·min−1 and velocity at maximal aerobic speed (MAS), 17.1 ± 0.8 km·h−1) performed different short-duration intermittent runs, e.g., 30-30 (30 seconds of exercise interspersed with 30 seconds of recovery) with active recovery, and 30-30, 15-15, 10-10, and 5-20 seconds with passive recovery, and different sided games (1 versus 1, 2 versus 2, 4 versus 4, 8 versus 8 with and without a goalkeeper, and 10 versus 10). In both training methods, HR was measured and expressed as a mean percentage of HR reserve (%HRres). The %HRres in the 30-30-second intermittent run at 100% MAS with active recovery (at 9 km·h−1 with corresponding distance) was significantly higher than that with passive recovery (85.7% versus 77.2% HRres, respectively, p < 0.001) but also higher than the 1 versus 1 (p < 0.01), 4 versus 4 (p ≤ 0.05), 8 versus 8 (p < 0.001), and 10 versus 10 (p < 0.01) small-sided games. The %HRres was 2-fold less homogeneous during the different small-sided games than during the short-duration intermittent running (intersubjects coefficient of variation [CV] = 11.8% versus 5.9%, respectively). During the 8 versus 8 sided game, the presence of goalkeepers induced an ∼11% increase in %HRres and reduced homogeneity when compared to games without goalkeepers (intersubject CV = 15.6% versus 8.8%). In conclusion, these findings showed that some small-sided games allow the HR to increase to the same level as that in short-duration intermittent running. The sided game method can be used to bring more variety during training, mixing physical, technical, and tactical training approaching the intensity of short-duration intermittent running but with higher intersubject variability.
Laparoscopy Combined with Enhanced Recovery Pathway in Ileocecal Resection for Crohn's Disease: A Randomized Study

Background and Aims Laparoscopic approach is recommended as the first-choice option for simple ileocecal resections. However, there are no randomized trials that have focused on patients with Crohn's disease (CD) treated by laparoscopy and enhanced recovery pathway. The aim of the present study is to prospectively evaluate the feasibility, safety, and short-term outcomes of laparoscopy with enhanced recovery pathway for CD patients undergoing ileocecal resection. Methods A consecutive cohort of 32 CD patients who underwent laparoscopic ileocecal resection between December 2015 and December 2016 was randomized to enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS) group or standard care group. Primary outcome was total postoperative hospital stay. Secondary outcomes were time to first flatus and stool, pain scores, morbidity, reoperation rate, readmission rate, and in-hospital costs. Results Compliance with the ERAS was high for all items (≥90%) except the items of abdominal drains and early fluid intake. A significantly earlier return of bowel function was observed in the ERAS group. Compared with the standard care group, patients in the ERAS group had shorter postoperative hospital stay and lower in-hospital costs (5.19 ± 1.28 versus 9.94 ± 3.33 days, P < 0.001; 2.70 ± 0.50 versus 3.73 ± 0.75 ten thousand RMB, P < 0.001, respectively). Other parameters did not show any significant differences between the two groups. Conclusions Laparoscopic approach within an ERAS perioperative care program is a safe and effective treatment combination for CD patients requiring ileocecal resection. This study is registered at ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT02777034).
Gamma-ray background: a review

The gamma-ray background is still a subject under great debate. All phenomena in the universe emitting gamma-rays can contribute directly as diffuse emission or as an isotropic component from unresolved point sources. The question of the origin of the extragalactic component cannot be answered without determining the galactic emission. To discuss in detail all models resulting in gamma-ray background contributions is far beyond the scope of this paper. Therefore the focus will be on recent publications on the extragalactic high energy (>100 MeV) part of the gamma-ray background.
Stochastic Optimization for Unit Commitment—A Review

Optimization models have been widely used in the power industry to aid the decision-making process of scheduling and dispatching electric power generation resources, a process known as unit commitment (UC). Since UC's birth, there have been two major waves of revolution on UC research and real life practice. The first wave has made mixed integer programming stand out from the early solution and modeling approaches for deterministic UC, such as priority list, dynamic programming, and Lagrangian relaxation. With the high penetration of renewable energy, increasing deregulation of the electricity industry, and growing demands on system reliability, the next wave is focused on transitioning from traditional deterministic approaches to stochastic optimization for unit commitment. Since the literature has grown rapidly in the past several years, this paper is to review the works that have contributed to the modeling and computational aspects of stochastic optimization (SO) based UC. Relevant lines of future research are also discussed to help transform research advances into real-world applications.
Associative tag recommendation exploiting multiple textual features

This work addresses the task of recommending relevant tags to a target object by jointly exploiting three dimensions of the problem: (i) term co-occurrence with tags pre-assigned to the target object, (ii) terms extracted from multiple textual features, and (iii) several metrics of tag relevance. In particular, we propose several new heuristic methods, which extend state-of-the-art strategies by including new metrics that try to capture how accurately a candidate term describes the object's content. We also exploit two learning-to-rank (L2R) techniques, namely RankSVM and Genetic Programming, for the task of generating ranking functions that combine multiple metrics to accurately estimate the relevance of a tag to a given object. We evaluate all proposed methods in various scenarios for three popular Web 2.0 applications, namely, LastFM, YouTube and YahooVideo. We found that our new heuristics greatly outperform the methods on which they are based, producing gains in precision of up to 181%, as well as another state-of-the-art technique, with improvements in precision of up to 40% over the best baseline in any scenario. Further improvements can also be achieved with the new L2R strategies, which have the additional advantage of being quite flexible and extensible to exploit other aspects of the tag recommendation problem.
Wavelet Entropy Automatically Detects Episodes of Atrial Fibrillation from Single-Lead Electrocardiograms

This work introduces for the first time the application of wavelet entropy (WE) to detect episodes of the most common cardiac arrhythmia, atrial fibrillation (AF), automatically from the electrocardiogram (ECG). Given that AF is often asymptomatic and usually presents very brief initial episodes, its early automatic detection is clinically relevant to improve AF treatment and prevent risks for the patients. After discarding noisy TQ intervals from the ECG, the WE has been computed over the median TQ segment obtained from the 10 previous noise-free beats under study. In this way, the P-waves or the fibrillatory waves present in the recording were highlighted or attenuated, respectively, thus enabling the patient’s rhythm identification (sinus rhythm or AF). Results provided a discriminant ability of about 95%, which is comparable to previous works. However, in contrast to most of them, which are mainly based on quantifying RR series variability, the proposed algorithm is able to deal with patients under rate-control therapy or with a reduced heart rate variability during AF. Additionally, it also presents interesting properties, such as the lowest delay in detecting AF or sinus rhythm, the ability to detect episodes as brief as five beats in length or its integration facilities under real-time beat-by-beat ECG monitoring systems. Consequently, this tool may help clinicians in the automatic detection of a wide variety of AF episodes, thus gaining further knowledge about the mechanisms initiating this arrhythmia.
The influence of causal knowledge on the willingness to change attitude towards climate change: results from an empirical study

ABSTRACT Climate change is one of the significant global challenges currently facing humanity. Even though its seriousness seems to be common knowledge among the public, the reaction of individuals to it has been slow and uncertain. Many studies assert that simply knowing about climate change is not enough to generate people’s behavioural response. They claim, indeed, that in some cases scientific literacy can even obstruct behavioural response instead. However, recent surveys show a rather poor understanding of climate dynamics and argue that lack of knowledge about causal relationships within climate dynamics can hinder behavioural response, since the individual is not able to understand his/her role as causal agent and therefore doesn’t know how to take proper action. This study starts from the hypothesis that scientific knowledge focused on clarifying climate dynamics can make people understand not only dynamics themselves, but also their interactive relationship with the environment. Teaching materials on climate change based on such considerations were designed and implemented in a course for secondary-school students with the aim of investigating whether this kind of knowledge had an influence on students’ willingness to adopt pro-environmental behaviours. Questionnaires were delivered for testing the effect of the teaching experience on knowledge and behaviour.
Knowledge, attitudes and experiences of dieticians in relation to tuberculosis at the workplace

xvi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background 1 1.1.1 Aetiology, treatment and strategies to improve management 1 1.1.2 Tuberculosis in South Africa: the past 20 years 3 1.1.3 Tuberculosis in health care facilities 5 1.2 Problem statement 7 1.3 Aims and objectives 8 1.4 The role of the researcher 9 1.5 Value of the study 9 1.6 Chapter outline 10 CHAPTER 2: AN OVERVIEW OF TUBERCULOSIS IN SOUTH AFRICA 2.
Improving bug triage with bug tossing graphs

bug report is typically assigned to a single developer who is then responsible for fixing the bug. In Mozilla and Eclipse, between 37%-44% of bug reports are "tossed" (reassigned) to other developers, for example because the bug has been assigned by accident or another developer with additional expertise is needed. In any case, tossing increases the time-to-correction for a bug. In this paper, we introduce a graph model based on Markov chains, which captures bug tossing history. This model has several desirable qualities. First, it reveals developer networks which can be used to discover team structures and to find suitable experts for a new task. Second, it helps to better assign developers to bug reports. In our experiments with 445,000 bug reports, our model reduced tossing events, by up to 72%. In addition, the model increased the prediction accuracy by up to 23 percentage points compared to traditional bug triaging approaches.
Approximation algorithms for directed Steiner problems

We obtain the first non-trivial approximation algorithms for the Steiner Tree problem and the Generalized Steiner Tree problem in general directed graphs. Essentially no approximation algorithms were known for these problems. For the Directed Steiner Tree problem, we design a family of algorithms which achieve an approximation ratio of O(k^\epsilon) in time O(kn^{1/\epsilon}) for any fixed (\epsilon < 0), where k is the number of terminals to be connected. For the Directed Generalized Steiner Tree Problem, we give an algorithm which achieves an approximation ratio of O(k^{2/3}\log^{1/3} k), where k is the number of pairs to be connected. Related problems including the Group Steiner tree problem, the Node Weighted Steiner tree problem and several others can be reduced in an approximation preserving fashion to the problems we solve, giving the first non-trivial approximations to those as well.
Influence of background heterogeneity on traveltime shifts for compacting reservoirs

Compaction induced by pore‐pressure decrease inside a reservoir can be monitored by measuring traveltime shifts of reflection events on time‐lapse seismic data. Recently we introduced a perturbation‐based formalism to describe traveltime shifts caused by the 3D stress‐induced velocity field around a compacting reservoir. Application of this method to homogeneous background models showed that the offset variation of traveltime shifts is controlled primarily by the anisotropic velocity perturbations and can provide valuable information about the shear and deviatoric stresses.
Greater Biosynthetic Liver Dysfunction in Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis Suggests Co-existent or Impending Cholangiocarcinoma

Background and Aim: Patients with primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) who develop cholangiocarcinoma (CCA) have a median survival of less than 6 months. In half of cases, PSC and CCA will be diagnosed either concurrently or within a year of one another. The aim of the present study is to demonstrate that the degree of biochemical liver dysfunction is associated with concomitant or impending CCA. Methods: We did a chart review of patients diagnosed with PSC and CCA up to 18 months from presentation (“CCA” group) as well as patients with PSC that underwent transplantation with no sign of CCA in their explanted liver (“nCCA” group). Along with demographic data and follow-up length, we recorded their presenting liver function tests, including alanine and aspartate aminotransferases (ALT, AST), total bilirubin (TBil), alkaline phosphatase (ALP), international normalization ratio (INR), and serum Ca 19-9 levels. Differences between mean values of the two groups were analyzed with a student’s t-test. Results: Twenty-four patients were included. The “CCA” group consisted of eight patients, and the “non-CCA” group had 16 patients. There was no significant difference between the two groups in their presenting values of ALT, ALP, or serum Ca 19-9. However, the “CCA” group had significantly higher levels of AST, TBil, and INR. Conclusion: Patients with PSC and concurrent or impending CCA appear to exhibit significantly greater biochemical liver dysfunction than those who do not develop CCA. Therefore, newly-diagnosed PSC patients presenting with these findings may warrant more rigorous evaluation.