Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Effect of Concept Maps on Undergraduate Nursing Students’ Critical Thinking

AIM The aim of the study was to evaluate the effect of using concept maps as a teaching and learning strategy on students' critical thinking abilities and examine students' perceptions toward concept maps utilizing the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines. BACKGROUND Researchers have found that almost two thirds of nurse graduates do not have adequate critical thinking skills for a beginner nurse. Critical thinking skills are required for safe practice and mandated by accrediting organizations. Nursing educators should consider teaching and learning strategies that promote the development of critical thinking skills. METHOD A literature review was conducted using “concept maps, nursing education, and critical thinking” as the combined search terms. Inclusion criteria were studies that measured the effects of concept mapping on critical thinking in nursing students. RESULTS Seventeen articles were identified. CONCLUSION Concept maps may be useful tools to promote critical thinking in nursing education and for applying theory to practice.
Biological Activities of Heteropyxis natalensis Against Micro-Organisms Involved in Oral Infections

The use of complementary and alternative medicine from plants in South Africa, as in the rest of the world, continues to increase. Heteropyxis natalensis, known as the Lavender tree, is indigenous to South Africa and is traditionally used for oral care. The ethanolic extract, of the leaves and twigs, of H. natalensis was investigated for antimicrobial activity against selected oral microorganisms. Actinomyces israelii was found to be the most sensitive oral microorganism to the extract, with a minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of 0.88 mg/ml and an MIC of 2.6 mg/ml against Streptococcus mutans. Five known compounds were identified from the ethanolic extract of H. natalensis. The compounds were identified as aurentiacin A (1), cardamomin (2), 5-hydroxy-7-methoxy-6-methylflavanone (3), quercetin (4) and 3,5,7-trihydroxyflavan (5). The MICs of the compounds 1 and 4 were found to be 0.06 mg/ml and 1 mg/ml, respectively, against A. israelii. The cytotoxicity, acute and sub-acute toxicity in pre-clinical studies were also determined for H. natalensis. The extract showed moderate cytotoxicity (35.56 ± 0.16 μg/ml) on human monocyte cells. The acute and sub-acute toxicity analysis of H. natalensis indicated the NOEL (no-observed-effect level) at 200 mg/kg. Interleukin-8 (IL-8) is a chemokine that stimulates the recruitment of leukocytes. A significant reduction of IL-8 production by macrophage cells was observed when exposed to the extract of H. natalensis. It is possible that H. natalensis can prevent excessive tissue damage in periodontal diseases through its reduction of inflammation. Enzymatic bioanalysis of lactic and acetic acid production from Streptococcus mutans and Lactobacillus paracasei was done. A reduction in the acid production from each bacterium was observed on exposure to the extract of H. natalensis. Consequently, this increased the pH, which could possibly reduce the demineralization of enamel which may help prevent the formation of dental caries. In addition the extract may be considered for preventing periodontal diseases.
Condom Use at Last Sexual Intercourse and Its Correlates among Males and Females Aged 15–49 Years in Nepal

This study aimed to assess the prevalence and correlates of condom use at last sexual intercourse among people aged 15–49 years in Nepal. Secondary data analysis was performed using the Nepal Demographic and Health Survey 2011. The study was restricted to the respondents who reported ever having had sexual intercourse; 9843 females and 3017 males were included. Condom use was assessed by asking if respondents used condoms in their most recent sexual intercourse. Chi-square test and multivariate logistic regression analysis were performed using Complex Sample Analysis Procedure to adjust for sample weight and multistage sampling design. Overall, 7.6% of total, and 16.3% of males and 6.2% of females reported using condoms in their last sexual intercourse. Living in Far-Western region, age and wealth quintile were positively associated with condom use in both males and females. Being unmarried was the most important predictor of condom use among males. Higher education was associated with increased likelihood of condom use in females. However, mobility, having multiple sexual partners, and HIV knowledge were not significant correlates of condom use in both sexes. A big difference was observed in the variance accounted for males and females; indicating use of condoms is poorly predicted by the variables included in the study among females. Condom use was more associated with sociodemographic factors than with sexual behavior and HIV knowledge.
Liquid Film Formation by an Impinging Jet in a High- Velocity Air Stream

The impingement of a liquid jet on a solid surface, and the development of a shear-driven liquid film is characterized in a planar experiment. Weber number and momentum-flux ratios were chosen to be representative of gas turbine fuel injector operations. High-speed digital imaging was used to visualize the formation of the liquid film from impinging droplets and the development of a continuous, wavy film. Film thickness measurements indicated growth of the film along the length of the impinging surface (streamwise direction), and reduction in the film thickness in the crossstream direction. In general, film thicknesses increased with increasing momentum flux ratio, as more liquid drops reached the filmer surface. Three different mechanisms of atomization from the liquid film were identified.namely droplet splashing, film surface atomization via aerodynamic instability and film breakup at channel exit.
Mental Imagery Induces Cross-Modal Sensory Plasticity and Changes Future Auditory Perception

Can what we imagine in our minds change how we perceive the world in the future? A continuous process of multisensory integration and recalibration is responsible for maintaining a correspondence between the senses (e.g., vision, touch, audition) and, ultimately, a stable and coherent perception of our environment. This process depends on the plasticity of our sensory systems. The so-called ventriloquism aftereffect—a shift in the perceived localization of sounds presented alone after repeated exposure to spatially mismatched auditory and visual stimuli—is a clear example of this type of plasticity in the audiovisual domain. In a series of six studies with 24 participants each, we investigated an imagery-induced ventriloquism aftereffect in which imagining a visual stimulus elicits the same frequency-specific auditory aftereffect as actually seeing one. These results demonstrate that mental imagery can recalibrate the senses and induce the same cross-modal sensory plasticity as real sensory stimuli.
Microfluidic enrichment of plasma cells improves treatment of multiple myeloma

Cytogenetic alterations form the basis for risk stratification for multiple myeloma (MM) and guide the selection of therapy; however, current pathology assays performed on bone marrow samples can produce false‐negatives due to the unpredictable distribution and rarity of MM cells. Here, we report on a microfluidic device used to facilitate CD45 depletion to enhance the detection of cytogenetic alterations in plasma cells (PCs). Bone marrow samples from 48 patients with MM were each divided into two aliquots. One aliquot was subjected to classic flow cytometry and fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH). The other first went through CD45+ cell depletion, further enriched by microfluidic size selection. The enriched samples were then analyzed using flow cytometry and FISH and compared to those analyzed using the classic method only. Unlike the traditional method, the microfluidic device removed the CD45+ leukocytes and specifically selected PCs from the remaining white blood cells. Therefore, the microfluidic method (MF‐CD45‐TACs) significantly increased the percentage of CD38+/CD138+ cells to 37.7 ± 20.4% (P < 0.001) from 10.3 ± 8.5% in bone marrow. After the MF‐CD45‐TAC enrichment, the detection rate of IgH rearrangement, del(13q14), del(17p), and 1q21 gains, rose to 56.3% (P < 0.001), 37.5% (P < 0.001), 22.9% (P < 0.001), and 41.7% (P = 0.001), respectively; all rates of detection were significantly increased compared to the classically analyzed samples. In this clinical trial, this microfluidic‐assisted assay provided a precise detection of cytogenetic alterations in PCs and improved clinical outcomes.
Preparation of Sound‐Insulating Lightweight Ceramics from Aluminosilicate Rocks with High CaCO3 Content

A sound-insulating lightweight ceramics with “pseudo-open” porosity was obtained from calcite-zeolite rock using energy-saving procedure. A thorough analysis of chemical processes occurring during material preparation revealed that decomposition of CaCO3 with extensive gas release destroys cellular structure of thermally softened material. The latter, however, can be overpassed by proper alkali activation, which leads to transformation of CaCO3 into sodium carbonates (like trona and thermonatrite) with lower decomposition temperature. The reported results suggest that quality lightweight ceramics with sound-insulating properties can be obtained even from poorly zeolitized rocks with high CaCO3 content previously treated as unsuitable for such application.
PreFix

In modern datacenter networks (DCNs), failures of network devices are the norm rather than the exception, and many research efforts have focused on dealing with failures after they happen. In this paper, we take a different approach by predicting failures, thus the operators can intervene and "fix" the potential failures before they happen. Specifically, in our proposed system, named PreFix, we aim to determine during runtime whether a switch failure will happen in the near future. The prediction is based on the measurements of the current switch system status and historical switch hardware failure cases that have been carefully labelled by network operators. Our key observation is that failures of the same switch model share some common syslog patterns before failures occur, and we can apply machine learning methods to extract the common patterns for predicting switch failures. Our novel set of features (message template sequence, frequency, seasonality and surge) for machine learning can efficiently deal with the challenges of noises, sample imbalance, and computation overhead. We evaluated PreFix on a data set collected from 9397 switches (3 different switch models) deployed in more than 20 datacenters owned by a top global search engine in a 2-year period. PreFix achieved an average of 61.81% recall and 1.84 * 10^-5 false positive ratio. It outperforms the other failure prediction methods for computers and ISP devices.
Perineural Versus Systemic Dexamethasone in Front-Foot Surgery Under Ankle Block: A Randomized Double-Blind Study

Background and Objectives Among the different adjuvants, dexamethasone is one of the most accepted to prolong the effect of local anesthetics. This study aims to determine the superiority of perineural over systemic dexamethasone administration after a single-shot ankle block in metatarsal osteotomy. Methods We performed a prospective, double-blind, randomized study. A total of 100 patients presenting for metatarsal osteotomy with an ankle block were randomized into 2 groups: 30 mL ropivacaine 0.375% + perineural dexamethasone 4 mg (1 mL) + 2.5 mL of systemic saline solution (PNDex group, n = 50) and 30 mL ropivacaine 0.375% + 1 mL of perineural saline solution + intravenous dexamethasone 10 mg (2.5 mL) (IVDex group, n = 50). The primary end point was the duration of analgesia defined as the time between the performance of the ankle block and the first administration of rescue analgesia with tramadol. Results Time period to first rescue analgesia with tramadol was similar in the IVDex group and the PNDex group. Data are expressed as mean (SD) or median (range). Duration of analgesia was 23.2 (9.5) hours in the IVDex group and 19 (8.2) hours in the PNDex group (P = 0.4). Consumption of tramadol during the first 48 hours was 0 mg (0–150 mg) in the IVDex group versus 0 mg (0–250 mg) in the PNDex group (P = 0.59). Four (8%) and 12 (24%) patients reported nausea or vomiting in the IVDex group and the PNDex group, respectively (P = 0.03). Conclusions In front-foot surgery, perineural and systemic administrations of dexamethasone are equivalent for postoperative pain relief when used as an adjuvant to ropivacaine ankle block. Clinical Trial Registration This study was registered at ClinicalTrials.gov, identifier NCT02904538.
Degradation of HIF-1alpha under Hypoxia Combined with Induction of Hsp90 Polyubiquitination in Cancer Cells by Hypericin: a Unique Cancer Therapy

The perihydroxylated perylene quinone hypericin has been reported to possess potent anti-metastatic and antiangiogenic activities, generated by targeting diverse crossroads of cancer-promoting processes via unique mechanisms. Hypericin is the only known exogenous reagent that can induce forced poly-ubiquitination and accelerated degradation of heat shock protein 90 (Hsp90) in cancer cells. Hsp90 client proteins are thereby destabilized and rapidly degraded. Hsp70 client proteins may potentially be also affected via preventing formation of hsp90-hsp70 intermediate complexes. We show here that hypericin also induces enhanced degradation of hypoxia-inducible factor 1α (HIF-1α) in two human tumor cell lines, U87-MG glioblastoma and RCC-C2VHL−/− renal cell carcinoma and in the non-malignant ARPE19 retinal pigment epithelial cell line. The hypericin-accelerated turnover of HIF-1α, the regulatory precursor of the HIF-1 transcription factor which promotes hypoxic stress and angiogenic responses, overcomes the physiologic HIF-1α protein stabilization which occurs in hypoxic cells. The hypericin effect also eliminates the high HIF-1α levels expressed constitutively in the von-Hippel Lindau protein (pVHL)-deficient RCC-C2VHL−/− renal cell carcinoma cell line. Unlike the normal ubiquitin-proteasome pathway-dependent turnover of HIF-α proteins which occurs in normoxia, the hypericin-induced HIF-1α catabolism can occur independently of cellular oxygen levels or pVHL-promoted ubiquitin ligation of HIF-1α. It is mediated by lysosomal cathepsin-B enzymes with cathepsin-B activity being optimized in the cells through hypericin-mediated reduction in intracellular pH. Our findings suggest that hypericin may potentially be useful in preventing growth of tumors in which HIF-1α plays pivotal roles, and in pVHL ablated tumor cells such as renal cell carcinoma through elimination of elevated HIF-1α contents in these cells, scaling down the excessive angiogenesis which characterizes these tumors.
Left lateralized enhancement of orofacial somatosensory processing due to speech sounds.

PURPOSE Somatosensory information associated with speech articulatory movements affects the perception of speech sounds and vice versa, suggesting an intimate linkage between speech production and perception systems. However, it is unclear which cortical processes are involved in the interaction between speech sounds and orofacial somatosensory inputs. The authors examined whether speech sounds modify orofacial somatosensory cortical potentials that were elicited using facial skin perturbations. METHOD Somatosensory event-related potentials in EEG were recorded in 3 background sound conditions (pink noise, speech sounds, and nonspeech sounds) and also in a silent condition. Facial skin deformations that are similar in timing and duration to those experienced in speech production were used for somatosensory stimulation. RESULTS The authors found that speech sounds reliably enhanced the first negative peak of the somatosensory event-related potential when compared with the other 3 sound conditions. The enhancement was evident at electrode locations above the left motor and premotor area of the orofacial system. The result indicates that speech sounds interact with somatosensory cortical processes that are produced by speech-production-like patterns of facial skin stretch. CONCLUSION Neural circuits in the left hemisphere, presumably in left motor and premotor cortex, may play a prominent role in the interaction between auditory inputs and speech-relevant somatosensory processing.
SDN-Assisted Slow HTTP DDoS Attack Defense Method

A Slow HTTP distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack causes a Web server to be unavailable, but it is difficult to detect in a network, because its traffic patterns are similar to those of legitimate clients. In this letter, we propose a network-based Slow HTTP DDoS attack defense method, which is assisted by a software-defined network that can detect and mitigate Slow HTTP DDoS attacks in the network. Simulation results show that the proposed Slow HTTP DDoS attack defense method successfully protects Web servers against Slow HTTP DDoS attacks.
Deep Faster Detection of Faint Edges in Noisy Images

Detection of faint edges in noisy images is a challenging problem studied in the last decades. A recent study introduced a fast method to detect faint edges in the highest accuracy among all the existing approaches. Their complexity is nearly linear in the image's pixels and their runtime is seconds for a noisy image. Their approach utilizes a multi-scale binary partitioning of the image. By utilizing the multi-scale U-net architecture, we show in this paper that their method can be dramatically improved in both aspects of run time and accuracy. By training the network on a dataset of binary images, we developed an approach for faint edge detection that works in a linear complexity. Our runtime of a noisy image is milliseconds on a GPU. Even though our method is orders of magnitude faster, we still achieve higher accuracy of detection under many challenging scenarios. In addition, we show that our approach to perform multi-scale preprocessing of noisy images using U-net, improves the ability to perform other vision tasks under the presence of noise. We prove it on the problems of noisy objects classification and classical image denoising. We show that multi-scale denoising can be carried out by a novel edge preservation loss. As our experiments show, we achieve high quality results in the three aspects of faint edge detection, noisy image classification and natural image denoising.
PowerHammer: Exfiltrating Data From Air-Gapped Computers Through Power Lines

In this article, we provide an implementation, evaluation, and analysis of PowerHammer - an attack that uses power lines to exfiltrate data from air-gapped computers. A malicious code running on a compromised computer intentionally controls the utilization of the CPU cores. The CPU utilization is electromagnetically conducted and propagated through the power lines in the form of a parasitic signal that is modulated, encoded, and transmitted on top of the current flow fluctuations. This electromagnetic phenomenon is known as ‘conducted emission’. In this attack, the attacker taps the indoor electrical power wiring that is connected to the electrical outlet of the compromised computer. The conducted electromagnetic emission of the compromised computer is analyzed and the exfiltrated data is decoded. The proposed attack is then experimentally evaluated and characterized. The communication performance is discussed and a set of defensive countermeasures is presented. A crucial aspect of the proposed covert communication scheme is that it fully conforms to civilian and military conductive emission standards.
Comparison of the ultrasound-guided tru-cut biopsy with postoperative histopathology results in patients with breast mass.

AIM We aimed to compare the tru-cut biopsy and postoperative pathology results of breast lesions with suspicion of malignancy. Furthermore we aimed to determine the efficacy, specificity and sensitivity of the tru-cut biopsy. METHODOLOGY 140 patients who were operated due to breast mass following tru-cut biopsy were retrospectively evaluated. Patients' demographic characteristics, imaging findings, biopsy and histopathology results were compared. RESULTS The mean age of 140 patients was 51.3 (Ranged: 17-83 ages). Malignancy was statistically more common in patients older than 45 years old. According to tru-cut biopsy results 103 (73.5%) lesions were malign, 32 (23%) benign, and 5 (3,5%) suspicious. Histopathological evaluation established 113 (% 80.7) malign and 27 (19,3%) benign lesions. Tru-cut biopsy had a sensitivity, specifity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value and diagnostic accuracy of 93.5%, 95.4%, 99%, 75% and 80%, respectively in this study. CONCLUSIONS Our findings have confirmed that tru-cut biopsy is an accurate, reliable and as effective as open surgery for breast cancer diagnosis. The higher success rates may achieve by accordance of triple assessment which includes clinical, radiological and pathological evaluation with tru-cut biopsy. KEY WORDS Breast cancer, Core needle biopsy, Preoperative evaluation, Tru-cut biops.
URINARY TOTAL ANTIOXIDANT CAPACITY IN SOCCER PLAYERS

Both aerobic and anaerobic exercise contributes to oxidative stress by generation of free radicals. The human body is well equipped with both enzymatic and non-enzymatic antioxidant defence system. Soccer predominantly involves aerobic exercise with repeated bouts of anaerobic activities. The response of the different antioxidants to exercise might be sports-specific and hence the total antioxidant capacity (TAC) provides a better appraisal of the different antioxidant mechanisms of the body. TAC is the sum of the activities of antioxidants present in the material studied. The objective of the present study was to assess the urinary TAC (uTAC) in professional soccer players in different phases of the playing season and to compare the uTAC between professional, amateur and recreational soccer players. 21 professional, 20 amateur and 18 recreational players participated in the study. Results showed that the uTAC in the professional soccer players during pre-season (phase -1), early in-season (phase -2) and during the start of the end-season (phase 3) was (mean ± SD) 3.13 ± 0.09, 2.73 ± 0.37 and 2.99 ± 0.41 mmol·L-1 respectively. The uTAC of the amateur and the recreational players during the start of end-season phase was 2.89 ± 0.44 and 1.77 ± 0.66 mmol·L-1 respectively. Repeated Measures ANOVA revealed significant difference (p 0.05) in the uTAC between amateur and professional players. In conclusion, the present study found that the uTAC in professional soccer players changes through the course of the competitive season especially at the start of the early in-season period. Further, this study also found that the uTAC in both amateur and professional was higher than in the recreational soccer players. Further research is required to determine the response of the specific antioxidants to soccer training and performance during the different phases of the season and at different levels of participation.