Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Three-dimensional shear-driven dynamics of polydomain textures and disclination loops in liquid crystalline polymers

We report the first numerical investigation of the coupling between flow and microstructure evolution in a full three-dimensional simulation of a model nematic liquid crystalline polymer (LCP), including both viscoelasticity and gradient elasticity, in a planar shear cell. We employ the molecular-based Doi–Marrucci–Greco theory to gain insight into the nature and dynamics of the complex, birefringent polydomain texture exhibited by LCPs and to provide a detailed description of the disclination loops that comprise the so-called worm texture. We solve the coupled equations of motion and evolution equation for the polymer configuration using a parallel implementation of a hybrid spectral/finite-difference algorithm. For an initial director orientation along the vorticity axis, the model predicts a streamwise-oriented striped texture in accordance with previous experimental and theoretical studies. Subsequent refinement of the texture is accompanied by the formation and development of one-half-strength, twist.
A Cross-Sectional Study of Perceived Stress, Mindfulness, Emotional Self-Regulation, and Self-Care Habits in Registered Nurses at a Tertiary Care Medical Center

Introduction Workplace stress and burnout may influence nurses’ physical and emotional well-being, which can impact the quality of care patients receive and their overall satisfaction with their hospitalization. Objectives The objectives of the study were to evaluate whether there are significant statistical relationships between nurses’ perceived stress, frequency of stressors, mindfulness, emotional self-regulation, self-care habits, and patient satisfaction scores. Methods The study took place over the course of 4 weeks. In this study, 340 nurse participants were surveyed using cross-sectional voluntary sampling design. The survey included previously developed and validated instruments. SAS v. 9.4 was used for statistical analysis. Results Significant differences were noted in average patient satisfaction scores by perceived stress; major nursing units in the Death and Dying, Conflict with Physicians, Lack of Support, and Work Load subscales of the Nursing Stress Scale; and major nursing units and dispositional mindfulness. Conclusions Hospital administrators can use this information in their organizations and set priorities and tailor mindfulness-based stress-reduction interventions for nursing professionals.
Quantum-to-classical rate distortion coding

We establish a theory of quantum-to-classical rate distortion coding. In this setting, a sender Alice has many copies of a quantum information source. Her goal is to transmit a classical description of the source, obtained by performing a measurement on it, to a receiver Bob, up to some specified level of distortion. We derive a single-letter formula for the minimum rate of classical communication needed for this task. We also evaluate this rate in the case in which Bob has some quantum side information about the source. Our results imply that, in general, Alice's best strategy is a non-classical one, in which she performs a collective measurement on successive outputs of the source.
2D numerical study of the radiation influence on shock structure relevant to laboratory astrophysics

Context. Radiative shocks are found in various astrophysical objects and particularly at different stages of stellar evolution. Studying radiative shocks, their topology, and thermodynamical properties is therefore a starting point to understanding their physical properties. This study has become possible with the development of large laser facilities, which has provided fresh impulse to laboratory astrophysics. Aims. We present the main characteristics of radiative shocks modeled using cylindrical simulations. We focus our discussion on the importance of multi-dimensional radiative-transfer effects on the shock topology and dynamics. Methods. We present results obtained with our code HERACLES for conditions corresponding to experiments already performed on laser installations. The multi-dimensional hydrodynamic code HERACLES is specially adapted to laboratory astrophysics experiments and to astrophysical situations where radiation and hydrodynamics are coupled. Results. The importance of the ratio of the photon mean free path to the transverse extension of the shock is emphasized. We present how it is possible to achieve the stationary limit of these shocks in the laboratory and analyze the angular distribution of the radiative flux that may emerge from the walls of the shock tube. Conclusions. Implications of these studies for stellar accretion shocks are presented.
Identification of Chemokines Associated with the Recruitment of Decidual Leukocytes in Human Labour: Potential Novel Targets for Preterm Labour

Current therapies for preterm labour (PTL) focus on arresting myometrial contractions but are largely ineffective, thus alternative therapeutic targets need to be identified. Leukocytes infiltrate the uterus around the time of labour, and are in particularly abundant in decidua (maternal-fetal interface). Moreover, decidual inflammation precedes labour in rat pregnancies and thus may contribute to initiation of labour. We hypothesized that chemokines mediate decidual leukocyte trafficking during preterm labour (PTL) and term labour (TL), thus representing potential targets for preventing PTL. Women were recruited into 4 groups: TL, term not in labour (TNL), idiopathic PTL and PTL with infection (PTLI). Choriodecidual RNA was subjected to a pathway-specific PCR array for chemokines. Differential expression of 12 candidate chemokines was validated by real time RT-PCR and Bioplex assay, with immunohistochemistry to confirm cellular origin. 25 chemokines were upregulated in choriodecidua from TL compared to TNL. A similar pattern was detected in PTL, however a distinct profile was observed in PTLI consistent with differences in leukocyte infiltration. Upregulation of CCL2, CCL4, CCL5, CXCL8 and CXCL10 mRNA and protein was confirmed in TL, with CCL8 upregulated in PTL. Significant correlations were detected between these chemokines and decidual leukocyte abundance previously assessed by immunohistochemical and image analysis. Chemokines were primarily expressed by decidual stromal cells. In addition, CXCL8 and CCL5 were significantly elevated in maternal plasma during labour, suggesting chemokines contribute to peripheral inflammatory events during labour. Differences in chemokine expression patterns between TL and idiopathic PTL may be attributable to suppression of chemokine expression by betamethasone administered to women in PTL; this was supported by in vitro evidence of chemokine downregulation by clinically relevant concentrations of the steroid. The current study provides compelling evidence that chemokines regulate decidual leukocyte recruitment during labour. The 6 chemokines identified represent potential novel therapeutic targets to block PTL.
An Investigation of the Impact of the Knowledge Sharing and the Characteristics of Learning Organization on Employees’ Organizational Intelligence

The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of the knowledge sharing and the characteristics of learning organization on employees’ organizational intelligence in Red Crescent Society of Ardabil Province. The present study was a descriptive correlational research in terms of method and a survey research in terms of data collection. The population for the study consisted of the entire staff of Crescent Society of Ardabil Province which was equal to 210 individuals. Due to the limited statistical population, instead of sampling, all 210 employees were selected as the sample. Among 210 questionnaires, a total of 190 questionnaires were returned and entered the analysis. In this research, the data gathering tools were the learning organization questionnaire by Mahmoodzadeh (2005), Albrecht’s (2003) organizational intelligence questionnaire, and Pai’s knowledge sharing questionnaire (2006). In order to analyze the collected data, SPSS software was conducted and to analyze the hypotheses, simple and multiple regressions were used. Results indicated that the knowledge sharing and its components had a positive and significant impact on organizational intelligence of the employees of Red Crescent Society of Ardabil province. Moreover, the characteristics of learning organization and its components had a positive and significant impact on organizational intelligence of the employees of Red Crescent Society of Ardabil Province.
Jar Decoding: Non-Asymptotic Converse Coding Theorems, Taylor-Type Expansion, and Optimality

Recently, a new decoding rule called jar decoding was proposed; under jar decoding, a non-asymptotic achievable tradeoff between the coding rate and word error probability was also established for any discrete input memoryless channel with discrete or continuous output (DIMC). Along the path of non-asymptotic analysis, in this paper, it is further shown that jar decoding is actually optimal up to the second order coding performance by establishing new non-asymptotic converse coding theorems, and determining the Taylor expansion of the (best) coding rate $R_n (\epsilon)$ of finite block length for any block length $n$ and word error probability $\epsilon$ up to the second order. Finally, based on the Taylor-type expansion and the new converses, two approximation formulas for $R_n (\epsilon)$ (dubbed "SO" and "NEP") are provided; they are further evaluated and compared against some of the best bounds known so far, as well as the normal approximation of $R_n (\epsilon)$ revisited recently in the literature. It turns out that while the normal approximation is all over the map, i.e. sometime below achievable bounds and sometime above converse bounds, the SO approximation is much more reliable as it is always below converses; in the meantime, the NEP approximation is the best among the three and always provides an accurate estimation for $R_n (\epsilon)$. An important implication arising from the Taylor-type expansion of $R_n (\epsilon)$ is that in the practical non-asymptotic regime, the optimal marginal codeword symbol distribution is not necessarily a capacity achieving distribution.
News recommendation based on Web usage and Web content mining

In the last decade, online newspapers have become a viable alternative to conventional hardcopy papers. Many studies have shown that digital media have increased their share of Internet audience. In this study, we use Web usage and Web content mining techniques to recommend news articles to users. We are using Web server logs from a Malaysian newspaper, Berita Harian that will be combined with the Web content pages to discover the web users' navigational patterns. We plan to improve existing Web usage mining techniques in deriving user profiles and find a novel way to combine the user profiles with Web content pages.
Prognostic and predictive role of ESR1 status for postmenopausal patients with endocrine-responsive early breast cancer in the Danish cohort of the BIG 1-98 trial.

BACKGROUND Estrogen Receptor 1 (ESR1) aberrations may be associated with expression of estrogen receptor (ER) or progesterone receptor (PgR), human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 (HER2) or Ki-67 labeling index and prognosis. PATIENTS AND METHODS ESR1 was assessed in 1129 (81%) of 1396 postmenopausal Danish women with early breast cancer randomly assigned to receive 5 years of letrozole, tamoxifen or a sequence of these agents in the Breast International Group 1-98 trial and who had ER ≥ 1% after central review. RESULTS By FISH, 13.6% of patients had an ESR1-to-Centromere-6 (CEN-6) ratio ≥ 2 (amplified), and 4.2% had ESR1-to-CEN-6 ratio <0.8 (deleted). Deletion of ESR1 was associated with significantly lower levels of ER (P < 0.0001) and PgR (P = 0.02) and more frequent HER2 amplification. ESR1 deletion or amplification was associated with higher-Ki-67 than ESR1-normal tumors. Overall, there was no evidence of heterogeneity of disease-free survival (DFS) or in treatment effect according to ESR1 status. However, significant differences in DFS were observed for subsets based on a combination of ESR1 and HER2 status (P = 0.02). CONCLUSIONS ESR1 aberrations were associated with HER2 status, Ki-67 labeling index and ER and PgR levels. When combined with HER2, ESR1 may be prognostic but should not be used for endocrine treatment selection in postmenopausal women with endocrine-responsive early breast cancer.
State-dependent parallel Gaussian channels with a common helper in high power regime

The state-dependent parallel Gaussian channel with a common helper is investigated, in which transmitters 1 and 2 transmit two messages respectively to receivers 1 and 2 over the parallel channel. Furthermore, both parallel subchannels can be corrupted by independent state sequences, respectively, which are unknown to both transmitters and receivers. There is a common helper that knows the states noncausally and assists communication between transmitters and receivers. Our focus is on the high state power regime, i.e., the state power goes to infinity. Two Gaussian models are studied with model I having only receiver 1 interfered by the state and with model II having both receivers interfered by independent states. Each model has its unique challenge to address. For both models, inner and outer bounds on the capacity region are derived, and comparison of the two bounds leads to capacity results under certain channel parameters.
Prevalence and Correlation between TMD Based on RDC/TMD Diagnoses, Oral Parafunctions and Psychoemotional Stress in Polish University Students

The aim of the study was to assess the prevalence of temporomandibular disorders (TMD) and oral parafunctions, as well as their correlation with psychoemotional factors in Polish university students. The research was conducted in a group of 456 students (N = 456). The examination form comprised of two parts: survey and clinical examination. The research diagnostic criteria for temporomandibular disorders (RDC/TMD) was used in order to assess TMD. Symptoms of TMD were observed in 246 (54%) students after clinical examination. The largest group involved students with disc displacement (women: 132, 29%; men: 70, 15%). Women (164; 36%) suffered more frequently than men (82; 18%) from problems related to the stomatognathic system (P < 0.05), described themselves as easily excitable and emotionally burdened, and reported symptoms as tightness of the facial and neck muscles (P < 0.05). In 289 (64%) students intraoral symptoms concerning occlusal parafunctions were observed. In 404 (89%) examined students, nonocclusal parafunctions were recorded. A significant correlation between TMD and psychoemotional problems could be detected. TMD symptoms more often concern women. Emotional burden and excitability are factors predisposing muscular disorders.
Test report prioritization to assist crowdsourced testing

In crowdsourced testing, users can be incentivized to perform testing tasks and report their results, and because crowdsourced workers are often paid per task, there is a financial incentive to complete tasks quickly rather than well. These reports of the crowdsourced testing tasks are called "test reports" and are composed of simple natural language and screenshots. Back at the software-development organization, developers must manually inspect the test reports to judge their value for revealing faults. Due to the nature of crowdsourced work, the number of test reports are often difficult to comprehensively inspect and process. In order to help with this daunting task, we created the first technique of its kind, to the best of our knowledge, to prioritize test reports for manual inspection. Our technique utilizes two key strategies: (1) a diversity strategy to help developers inspect a wide variety of test reports and to avoid duplicates and wasted effort on falsely classified faulty behavior, and (2) a risk strategy to help developers identify test reports that may be more likely to be fault-revealing based on past observations. Together, these strategies form our DivRisk strategy to prioritize test reports in crowd- sourced testing. Three industrial projects have been used to evaluate the effectiveness of test report prioritization methods. The results of the empirical study show that: (1) DivRisk can significantly outperform random prioritization; (2) DivRisk can approximate the best theoretical result for a real-world industrial mobile application. In addition, we provide some practical guidelines of test report prioritization for crowdsourced testing based on the empirical study and our experiences.
Health care-associated Clostridium difficile infection in Canada: patient age and infecting strain type are highly predictive of severe outcome and mortality.

BACKGROUND C. difficile infection (CDI) has become an important and frequent nosocomial infection, often resulting in severe morbidity or death. Severe CDI is more frequently seen among individuals infected with the emerging NAP1/027/BI (NAP1) strain and in the elderly population, but the relative importance of these 2 factors remains unclear. We used a large Canadian database of patients with CDI to explore the interaction between these 2 variables. METHODS The Canada-wide CDI study, performed in 2005 by the Canadian Nosocomial Infection Surveillance Program (CNISP), was used to analyze the role of infecting strain type and patient age on the severity of CDI. A severe outcome was defined as CDI requiring intensive care unit care, colectomy, or causing death (directly or indirectly) within 30 days after diagnosis. RESULTS A total of 1008 patients in the CNISP database had both complete clinical data and infecting strain analysis documented. A total of 311 patients (31%) were infected with the NAP1 strain, 83 (28%) were infected with the NAP2/J strain, and the rest were infected with various other types. The proportion of NAP1 infections correlated with the incidence and the severity of CDI when analyzed by province. Thirty-nine (12.5%) of the infections due to the NAP1 strain resulted in a severe outcome, compared with only 41 (5.9%) of infections due to the other types (P < .001). The patient's age was strongly associated with a severe outcome, and patients 60-90 years of age were approximately twice as likely to experience a severe outcome if the infection was due to NAP1, compared with infections due to other types. CONCLUSIONS Our study confirms the strong age association with infection due to the NAP1 strain and severe CDI. In addition, patients 60-90 years of age infected with NAP1 are approximately twice as likely to die or to experience a severe CDI-related outcome, compared with those with non-NAP1 infections. Patients >90 years of age experience high rates of severe CDI, regardless of strain type.
Keratinocyte growth factor modulates alveolar epithelial cell phenotype in vitro: expression of aquaporin 5.

We investigated the role of keratinocyte growth factor (KGF) in regulation of alveolar epithelial cell (AEC) phenotype in vitro. Effects of KGF on cell morphology, expression of surfactant apoproteins A, B, and C (SP-A, -B, and -C), and expression of aquaporin 5 (AQP5), a water channel present in situ on the apical surface of alveolar type I (AT1) cells but not expressed in alveolar type II (AT2) cells, were evaluated in AECs grown in primary culture. Observations were made on AEC monolayers grown in serum-free medium without KGF (control) or grown continuously in the presence of KGF (10 ng/ml) from either Day 0 (i.e., the time of plating) or Day 4 or 6 through Day 8 in culture. AECs monolayers express AQP5 only on their apical surfaces as determined by cell surface biotinylation studies. Control AECs grown in the absence of KGF through Day 8 express increasing levels of AQP5, consistent with transition toward the AT1 cell phenotype. Exposure of AECs to KGF from Day 0 results in decreased AQP5 expression, retention of a cuboidal morphology, and greater numbers of lamellar bodies relative to control on Day 8 in culture. AECs treated with KGF from Day 4 or 6 exhibit a decrease in AQP5 expression through subsequent days in culture, as well as an increase in expression of surfactant apoproteins. These data, showing that KGF both prevents and reverses the increase in AQP5 (and decrease in surfactant apoprotein) expression that accompanies progression of the AT2 toward the AT1 cell phenotype, support the concepts that transdifferentiation between AT2 and AT1 cell phenotypes is at least partially reversible and that KGF may play a major role in modulating AEC phenotype.
Bond angle distribution in amorphous germania and silica

The distribution of Ge-O-Ge and Si-O-Si bond angles α in amorphous germania and silica is re-determined on the basis of diffraction experiments. The bond angle α joining adjacent tetrahedra is the central parameter of any continuous random network description (CRN) of these glasses. New high energy photon diffraction experiments on amorphous germania (at photon energies of 97 and 149 keV) are presented, covering the momentum transfer 0.6-33. 5Å . In photon diffraction experiments on GeO2 the contribution of the OO pairs is very small. To obtain a similar information for amorphous SiO2, high energy photon diffraction experiments [1] have been combined with neutron diffraction data [2, 3] on amorphous silica in order to eliminate the OOpartial structure factor. With this technique it is shown that the Si-O-Si angle distribution is fairly narrow (σ = 7.5) and in fact comparable in width to the Ge-O-Ge angle distribution (σ = 8.3), a result which differs from current opinion. The narrower distribution found in this study are in much better agreement to the determinations based on Si-MAS-NMR. Among the various models relating the chemical shift to the bond angle, best agreement is found with those models based on the secant model. Sharp components in the bond angle distribution can be excluded within the reached real space resolution of 0. 09Å.
Hedonic Motivation and Social Influence on Behavioral Intention of E-Money: The Role of Payment Habit as a Mediator

E-money service as a new alternative for micro digital payment in Indonesia is growing in recent years. In fact, e-money service usage is limited only certain users, and also it is not as a priority for the micro-payment transaction. Therefore, this study examines the relationship between hedonic motivations, social influence on the behavioral intention of using e-money by payment habit as a mediator. This study is a survey study of 249 e-money users in Indonesia. The data were analyzed using Partial Least Square Structural Equation Model (PLS-SEM). The empirical findings revealed that hedonic motivation and social influence have a significant impact on payment habit. Interestingly, we also found that hedonic motivation and social influence have a significant effect on behavioral intention through payment habit as a mediator. This research is a cross-sectional study. Hence, it will have a limitation in generalizability. Besides, this study only focused on Indonesia context. For future research, it can be expanded to a longitudinal study and extended to some Southeast Asia countries. This study has contributed to the mediating effect of payment habit on the link between hedonic motivation, social influence and behavioral intention of e-money usage using UTAUT2. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this link has been neglected in the previous studies.