Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Antimicrobial Stewardship at a Large Tertiary Care Academic Medical Center: Cost Analysis Before, During, and After a 7-Year Program

Background. An antimicrobial stewardship program was fully implemented at the University of Maryland Medical Center in July 2001 (beginning of fiscal year [FY] 2002). Essential to the program was an antimicrobial monitoring team (AMT) consisting of an infectious diseases-trained clinical pharmacist and a part-time infectious diseases physician that provided real-time monitoring of antimicrobial orders and active intervention and education when necessary. The program continued for 7 years and was terminated in order to use the resources to increase infectious diseases consults throughout the medical center as an alternative mode of stewardship. Design. A descriptive cost analysis before, during, and after the program. Patients/Setting. A large tertiary care teaching medical center. Methods. Monitoring the utilization (dispensing) costs of the antimicrobial agents quarterly for each FY. Results. The utilization costs decreased from $44,181 per 1,000 patient-days at baseline prior to the full implementation of the program (FY 2001) to $23,933 (a 45.8% decrease) by the end of the program (FY 2008). There was a reduction of approximately $3 million within the first 3 years, much of which was the result of a decrease in the use of antifungal agents in the cancer center. After the program was discontinued at the end of FY 2008, antimicrobial costs increased from $23,933 to $31,653 per 1,000 patient-days, a 32.3% increase within 2 years that is equivalent to a $2 million increase for the medical center, mostly in the antibacterial category. Conclusions. The antimicrobial stewardship program, using an antimicrobial monitoring team, was extremely cost effective over this 7-year period.
Performance comparison of cooperative and non-cooperative relaying mechanisms in wireless networks

Relaying is a known method for increasing coverage in wireless communication systems. In addition to coverage increase, new cooperative relaying methods have been proposed that may increase the wireless system capacity by taking advantage of higher data rates in intermediate cooperating relaying nodes. This paper investigates the performance of several of these relaying methods in terms of maximum achievable throughput at MAC service access point for single-frequency wireless ad-hoc networks. The simulation framework used is described, and the performance limitations of the relaying methods are analysed. We find that relaying, cooperative or not, does not significantly increase maximum achievable throughput for line-of-sight (LOS) propagation environments. The achievable throughput can be significantly increased for non-line of sight (NLOS) environments under specific conditions for source/destination and intermediate relaying nodes
Crazing in semicrystalline thermoplastics

Abstract The deformation processes in crystalline polymers have been studie ever since the discovery of chain folding in 1957. Since then, scientists have been intrigued by the different steps of the transformation of the folded-chain lamellar structure of single crystals or of macroscopically isotropic, often spherulitic, polymers into fibrous morphologies (see Refs. 1 and 2 for early reviews). The importance of molecular tilt, of inter- and intralamellar slip, and of micronecking were rapidly recognized [1–4]. In this paper, we discuss the analogies and differences with respect to crazing of glassy amorphous polymers. Obviously, there is an extensive body of literature on the micromechanics of crazing (see the reviews in Refs. 5–9). On the basis of these studies, it has been established that crazes in amorphous polymers are well-defined regions with approximately planar boundaries that extend perpendicular to the direction of maximum principal tensile stress and that contain highly stretched and voided .
The effect of CYP2C19 gene polymorphisms on the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of prasugrel 5-mg, prasugrel 10-mg and clopidogrel 75-mg in patients with coronary artery disease

Summary CYP2C19 genotype has been shown to impact response to clopidogrel 75-mg but not prasugrel 10-mg. Here, we assessed effects of CYP2C19 metaboliser status on pharmacokinetics (PK) and pharmacodynamic (PD) responses to prasugrel 5-mg and 10-mg and clopidogrel 75-mg using data from two PK/PD studies in stable coronary artery disease (CAD) patients (GENERATIONS and FEATHER). Active metabolite concentrations (area under the curve, AUC[0-tlast]), maximum platelet aggregation (MPA) measured by light transmission aggregometry, vasodilator- stimulated phosphoprotein platelet reactivity index, and VerifyNow P2Y12-platelet reaction units (VN-PRU) were analysed by CYP2C19-predicted phenotype (extensive metaboliser [EM; N=154], *2-*8 non-carriers, vs reduced metaboliser [RM; N=41],*2-*8 carriers/* 17 non-carriers). AUC(0-tlast) was unaffected by metaboliser status for prasugrel 5-mg and 10-mg (geometric mean EM/RM ratios 1.00, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.86,1.17, p>0.99; and 0.97, 95% CI:0.85,1.12, p=0.71, respectively), but was lower among RMs receiving clopidogrel 75-mg (1.37, 95% CI:1.14,1.65, p<0.001). Platelet reactivity was not significantly affected by CYP2C19 metaboliser status for prasugrel 5-mg, or for prasugrel 10-mg by MPA and VNPRU, but for clopidogrel 75-mg was significantly higher in reduced metabolisers (all measures p<0.01). Prasugrel 10-mg showed greater antiplatelet effects vs clopidogrel 75-mg (all comparisons p<0.001). Prasugrel 5-mg showed greater antiplatelet effects vs clopidogrel 75-mg in RMs (all p<0.001), and comparable effects in EMs (all p≥0.37). In contrast to clopidogrel, prasugrel active metabolite PK was not influenced by CYP2C19 genotype. Antiplatelet effect for prasugrel 10-mg was greater irrespective of metaboliser status and for prasugrel 5-mg was greater for RMs and comparable for EMs as compared to clopidogrel 75-mg.
The Experience of Caring for a Spouse Undergoing Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation: Opening Pandora’s Box

Background: Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) is a major treatment option for patients with hematological malignancies. Spouses are frequently asked to provide physical, psychological, and emotional support in both the acute care and outpatient settings, yet few studies have explored the nature and implications of their caring work beyond the acute care phase. Objective: The aims of this exploratory study were to (1) highlight the effect of caregiving on the psychosocial health and well-being of spouses of HSCT recipients; (2) highlight the level of caregiver burden, depression, and/or secondary trauma experienced by spousal caregivers of HSCT recipients; and (3) identify when spouses are most vulnerable to caregiver burden, depression, and/or secondary trauma. Method/Methodological Approach: A mixed-method exploratory study was undertaken. Participants were followed over 1 year from immediately before transplantation to 1 year after transplantation. Descriptive statistics and thematic analysis highlighted the effect of spousal caregiving on psychosocial health and well-being. Results: Eleven spouses participated in the study. Caregivers experienced caregiver burden, psychological distress (depression), and risk for secondary traumatic stress at 3 points in time over 1 year from before transplantation to 1 year after transplantation. Conclusions: Findings suggest that spouses may be at risk for adverse psychological effects as a result of their role in providing care for a partner undergoing HSCT. Implications for Practice: Nurses need to integrate regular psychosocial assessments of caregivers to recognize the early signs of distress and intervene to support and promote psychosocial health and well-being.
Impact of GPUs Parallelism Management on Safety-Critical and HPC Applications Reliability

Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) offer high computational power but require high scheduling strain to manage parallel processes, which increases the GPU cross section. The results of extensive neutron radiation experiments performed on NVIDIA GPUs confirm this hypothesis. Reducing the application Degree Of Parallelism (DOP) reduces the scheduling strain but also modifies the GPU parallelism management, including memory latency, thread registers number, and the processors occupancy, which influence the sensitivity of the parallel application. An analysis on the overall GPU radiation sensitivity dependence on the code DOP is provided and the most reliable configuration is experimentally detected. Finally, modifying the parallel management affects the GPU cross section but also the code execution time and, thus, the exposure to radiation required to complete computation. The Mean Workload and Executions Between Failures metrics are introduced to evaluate the workload or the number of executions computed correctly by the GPU on a realistic application.
Dense Message Passing for Sparse Principal Component Analysis

We describe a novel inference algorithm for sparse Bayesian PCA with a zero-norm prior on the model parameters. Bayesian inference is very challenging in probabilistic models of this type. MCMC procedures are too slow to be practical in a very high-dimensional setting and standard mean-field variational Bayes algorithms are ineffective. We adopt a dense message passing algorithm similar to algorithms developed in the statistical physics community and previously applied to inference problems in coding and sparse classification. The algorithm achieves nearoptimal performance on synthetic data for which a statistical mechanics theory of optimal learning can be derived. We also study two gene expression datasets used in previous studies of sparse PCA. We find our method performs better than one published algorithm and comparably to a second.
Strategic objectives for improving understanding of informant discrepancies in developmental psychopathology research

Abstract Developmental psychopathology researchers and practitioners commonly conduct behavioral assessments using multiple informants' reports (e.g., parents, teachers, practitioners, children, and laboratory observers). These assessments often yield inconsistent conclusions about important questions in developmental psychopathology research, depending on the informant (e.g., psychiatric diagnoses and risk factors of disorder). Researchers have theorized why informant discrepancies exist and advanced methodological models of informant discrepancies. However, over 50 years of empirical data has uncovered little knowledge about these discrepancies beyond that they exist, complicate interpretations of research findings and assessment outcomes in practice, and correlate with some characteristics of the informants providing reports (e.g., demographics and mood levels). Further, recent studies often yield take-home messages about the importance of taking a multi-informant approach to clinical and developmental assessments. Researchers draw these conclusions from their work, despite multi-informant approaches to assessment long being a part of best practices in clinical and developmental assessments. Consequently, developmental psychopathology researchers and practitioners are in dire need of a focused set of research priorities with the key goal of rapidly advancing knowledge about informant discrepancies. In this paper, I discuss these research priorities, review work indicating the feasibility of conducting research addressing these priorities, and specify what researchers and practitioners would gain from studies advancing knowledge about informant discrepancies in developmental psychopathology research.
User experience over time

The way we experience and evaluate interactive products develops over time. An exploratory study aimed at understanding how users form evaluative judgments during the first experiences with a product as well as after four weeks of use. Goodness, an evaluative judgment related to the overall satisfaction with the product, was largely formed on the basis of pragmatic aspects (i.e. utility and usability) during the first experiences; after four weeks of use identification (i.e. what the products expresses about its owner) became a dominant aspect of how good a product is. Surprisingly, beauty judgments were largely affected by stimulation (e.g. novelty) during the first experiences. Over time stimulation lost its power to make the product beautiful in the users' eyes.
A Fit-Fat Index for Predicting Incident Diabetes in Apparently Healthy Men: A Prospective Cohort Study

Background The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of combined cardiorespiratory fitness and waist-to-height ratio in the form of a fit-fat index on incident diabetes risk. Additionally, the independent predictive performance of cardiorespiratory fitness, waist-to-height ratio, and body mass index also were estimated and compared. Methods This was a prospective cohort study of 10,381 men who had a normal electrocardiogram and no history of major chronic disease at baseline from 1979 to 2005. Random survival forest models and traditional Cox proportional hazards models were used to predict diabetes at 5-, 10-, and 15-year incidence horizons. Results Overall, 4.8% of the participants developed diabetes. Receiver operating characteristic curve analyses for incidence risk demonstrated good discrimination using random survival forest models across fitness and fatness measures; Cox models were poor to fair. The differences between fitness and fatness measures across horizons were clinically negligible. Smoothed random survival forest estimates demonstrated the impact of each fitness and fatness measure on incident diabetes was intuitive and graded. Conclusions Although fitness and fatness measures showed a similar discriminative ability in predicting incident diabetes, unique to the study was the ability of the fit-fat index to demonstrate a better indication of incident risk when compared to fitness or fatness alone. A single index combining cardiorespiratory fitness and waist-to-height ratio may be more useful because it can indicate improvements in either or both of the measures.
Test-architecture optimization for TSV-based 3D stacked ICs

Testing of 3D stacked ICs (SICs) is becoming increasingly important in the semiconductor industry. In this paper, we address the problem of test architecture optimization for 3D stacked ICs implemented using Through-Silicon Vias (TSVs) technology. We consider 3D-SICs with both fixed given and yet-to-be-designed test architectures on each die and show that both corresponding problem variants are N P-hard. We next present mathematical programming techniques to derive optimal solutions for these problems. Experimental results for three handcrafted 3D-SICs of various SOCs from the ITC'02 SOC test benchmarks show that compared to the baseline method of sequentially testing all dies in a stack, the proposed solutions can achieve up to a 57% reduction in test time. We also show that increasing the number of test pins provides a greater reduction in test time compared to an increase in the number of TSVs. Furthermore, it is shown that 3D stacks with large and complex dies at lower layers require less test time than stacks with complex dies at higher layers.
Approximation Algorithms for 2-stage and Multi-stage Stochastic Optimization

Stochastic optimization problems attempt to model uncertainty in the data by assuming that (part of) the input is specified by a probability distribution. We consider the well-studied paradigm of stochastic recourse models, where the uncertainty evolves through a series of stages and one can take decisions in each stage in response to the new information learned. We obtain the first approximation algorithms for a variety of 2-stage and k-stage stochastic integer optimization problems where the underlying random data is given by a "black box" and no restrictions are placed on the costs of the two stages: one can merely sample data from this distribution, but no direct information about the distributions is given. Our results are based on two principal components. First, we show that for a broad class of 2-stage and k-stage linear programs, where k is not part of the input, given only a "black box" to draw independent samples from the distribution, one can, for any \epsilon>0, compute a solution of cost guaranteed to be within a (1+\epsilon) factor of the optimum, in time polynomial in 1/\epsilon, the size of the input, and a parameter \lambda that is the ratio of the cost of the same action in successive stages which is a lower bound on the sample complexity in the "black-box" model. This is based on reformulating the stochastic linear program, which has both an exponential number of variables and an exponential number of constraints, as a compact convex program, and adapting tools from convex optimization to solve the resulting program to near optimality. In doing so, a significant difficulty that we must overcome is that even evaluating the objective function of this convex program at a given point may be quite difficult and provably hard. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first such result for multi-stage stochastic programs. Second, we give a rounding approach for stochastic integer programs that shows that approximation algorithms for a deterministic analogue yields, with a small constant-factor loss, provably near-optimal solutions for the stochastic generalization. Thus we obtain approximation algorithms for several stochastic problems, including the stochastic versions of the set cover, vertex cover, facility location, multicut (on trees) and multicommodity flow problems.
The Behaviour of 1D CuI Crystal@SWNT Nanocomposite under Electron Irradiation

Nanocomposite 1D CuI crystal@SWNT was obtained by the growth of CuI nanocrystals inside single walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) using the capillary technique. High resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) investigation of the atomic structure of 1D CuI crystals revealed two types of 1D CuI crystals: with growth direction and relative to the bulk hexagonal CuI stucture. EM images were recorded and atomic models of the structure were proposed. According to the proposed models and image simulations, the main contrast in the 1D crystal images arises from the iodine atoms. In this paper the 1D CuI crystal@SWNT nanocomposite behavior determined mainly by the influence of the electron beam was investigated and it is shown that the 1D CuI nanocrystals can oscillate and rotate inside the nanotube channel under a 100kV electron beam. The oscillations occur within an exposure time of 25 s. With longer exposure time of ∼90 s, the 1D crystal gradually decreases in length, sometimes moving inside.
On Phase Transition of Compressed Sensing in the Complex Domain

The phase transition is a performance measure of the sparsity-undersampling tradeoff in compressed sensing (CS). This letter reports our first observation and evaluation of an empirical phase transition of the l1 minimization approach to the complex valued CS (CVCS), which is positioned well above the known phase transition of the real valued CS in the phase plane. This result can be considered as an extension of the existing phase transition theory of the block-sparse CS (BSCS) based on the universality argument, since the CVCS problem does not meet the condition required by the phase transition theory of BSCS but its observed phase transition coincides with that of BSCS. Our result is obtained by applying the recently developed ONE-L1 algorithms to the empirical evaluation of the phase transition of CVCS.
Host influence on the characteristics of Venezuelan equine encephalomyelitis virus.

Heydrick, Fred P. (Fort Detrick, Frederick, Md.), Ralph F. Wachter, and Henry J. Hearn, Jr. Host influence on the characteristics of Venezuelan equine encephalomyelitis virus. J. Bacteriol. 91:2343-2348. 1966. -Alterations in plaque size, virulence, and lipid content of Venezuelan equine encephalomyelitis (VEE) virus were examined for possible interrelationships among these properties during 10 serial passages in embryonated eggs, suckling mice, chick embryo fibroblasts, and L cells. The chick embryo host maintained the same large-plaque and virulence properties of the virus through 10 passages as seen in the original seed. Passage of virus in either L cells or chick fibroblasts rapidly produced populations that were, in the main, intermediate with respect to plaque size and virulence. Passage of virus in suckling mouse brain yielded populations that were intermediate with respect to plaque size only. The nature of the lipid of the virus, in terms of the ratio of petroleum ether-soluble to -insoluble lipid, changed after only one passage in all systems except in chick embryos. Nine additional serial passages failed to enhance these changes in viral lipid, suggesting that the decrease in the large-plaque and virulence properties was not directly associated with changes in lipid content.
Opium addiction in patients with coronary artery disease: a grounded theory study

Background: There are widespread misconceptions about the positive effects of opium on coronary artery disease (CAD). Thus, we performed a study to explore the opium addiction process contributing factors among CAD patients using a grounded theory approach. Methods: The sample comprised 30 addicted CAD patients and their family members, physicians, nurses and friends. Purposive and theoretical sampling was employed; semi-structured interviews were conducted. Coding and constant comparative analysis techniques were as proposed by Strauss and Corbin (1998). Results: The core category was ‘Fighting for Survival’, comprising three main themes, namely, ‘the gateway’, ‘blowing into the fire’ and ‘getting stuck in the mud’. Conclusion: Increasing knowledge about the adverse effects of opium on the cardiovascular system would reinforce prevention and rehabilitation measures. Involving patients’ family-members in addiction prevention and rehabilitation programs and referring patients to specialized rehabilitation centres could help patients quit opium. Healthcare providers (HCPs) should notice to the effects of opium consumption among CAD patients; nursing care must be holistic in nature. Although opium is stigmatised in Iran, HCPs must treat addicted CAD patients similar to other patients. Nursing students’ must be aware of the negative effects of illegal drugs on CAD patients and the misconceptions regarding the positive effects thereof. Any misconceptions must be probed and clarified. Rehabilitation centres must be supervised by cardiologists and HCPs.