Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Using the Community Pharmacy to Identify Patients at Risk of Poor Asthma Control and Factors which Contribute to this Poor Control

Background. Although asthma can be well controlled by appropriate medication delivered in an appropriate way at an appropriate time, there is evidence that management is often suboptimal. This results in poor asthma control, poor quality of life, and significant morbidity. Methods. The objective of this study was to describe a population recruited in community pharmacy identified by trained community pharmacists as being at risk for poor asthma outcomes and to identify factors associated with poor asthma control. It used a cross-sectional design in 96 pharmacies in metropolitan and regional New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, and Australian Capital Territory in Australia. Community pharmacists with specialized asthma training enrolled 570 patients aged ≥18 years with doctor-diagnosed asthma who were considered at risk of poor asthma outcomes and then conducted a comprehensive asthma assessment. In this assessment, asthma control was classified using a symptom and activity tool based on self-reported frequency of symptoms during the previous month and categorized as poor, fair, or good. Asthma history was discussed, and lung function and inhaler technique were also assessed by the pharmacist. Medication use/adherence was recorded from both pharmacy records and the Brief Medication Questionnaire (BMQ). Results. The symptom and activity tool identified that 437 (77%) recruited patients had poor asthma control. Of the 570 patients, 117 (21%) smoked, 108 (19%) had an action plan, 372 (69%) used combination of inhaled corticosteroid (ICS)/long-acting β2-agonist (LABA) medications, and only 17–28% (depending on device) used their inhaler device correctly. In terms of adherence, 90% had their ICS or ICS/LABA dispensed <6 times in the previous 6 months, which is inconsistent with regular use; this low adherence was confirmed from the BMQ scores. A logistic regression model showed that patients who smoked had incorrect inhaler technique or low adherence (assessed by either dispensing history or BMQ) and were more likely to have poor control. Conclusion. Community pharmacists were able to identify patients with asthma at risk of suboptimal control, and factors that contributed to this were elicited. This poorly controlled group that was identified may not be visible or accessible to other health-care professionals. There is an opportunity within pharmacies to target poorly controlled asthma and provide timely and tailored interventions.
Environmental sound training in cochlear implant users.

PURPOSE The study investigated the effect of a short computer-based environmental sound training regimen on the perception of environmental sounds and speech in experienced cochlear implant (CI) patients. METHOD Fourteen CI patients with the average of 5 years of CI experience participated. The protocol consisted of 2 pretests, 1 week apart, followed by 4 environmental sound training sessions conducted on separate days in 1 week, and concluded with 2 posttest sessions, separated by another week without training. Each testing session included an environmental sound test, which consisted of 40 familiar everyday sounds, each represented by 4 different tokens, as well as the Consonant Nucleus Consonant (CNC) word test, and Revised Speech Perception in Noise (SPIN-R) sentence test. RESULTS Environmental sounds scores were lower than for either of the speech tests. Following training, there was a significant average improvement of 15.8 points in environmental sound perception, which persisted 1 week later after training was discontinued. No significant improvements were observed for either speech test. CONCLUSIONS The findings demonstrate that environmental sound perception, which remains problematic even for experienced CI patients, can be improved with a home-based computer training regimen. Such computer-based training may thus provide an effective low-cost approach to rehabilitation for CI users, and potentially, other hearing impaired populations.
Mlifdect: Android Malware Detection Based on Parallel Machine Learning and Information Fusion

In recent years, Android malware has continued to grow at an alarming rate. More recent malicious apps’ employing highly sophisticated detection avoidance techniques makes the traditional machine learning based malware detection methods far less effective. More specifically, they cannot cope with various types of Android malware and have limitation in detection by utilizing a single classification algorithm. To address this limitation, we propose a novel approach in this paper that leverages parallel machine learning and information fusion techniques for better Android malware detection, which is named Mlifdect. To implement this approach, we first extract eight types of features from static analysis on Android apps and build two kinds of feature sets after feature selection. Then, a parallel machine learning detection model is developed for speeding up the process of classification. Finally, we investigate the probability analysis based and Dempster-Shafer theory based information fusion approaches which can effectively obtain the detection results. To validate our method, other state-of-the-art detection works are selected for comparison with real-world Android apps. The experimental results demonstrate that Mlifdect is capable of achieving higher detection accuracy as well as a remarkable run-time efficiency compared to the existing malware detection solutions.
Field Strength and Diffusion Encoding Technique Affect the Apparent Diffusion Coefficient Measurements in Diffusion-Weighted Imaging of the Abdomen

Objectives:The purpose of this study is to determine what effects a variety of diffusion encoding techniques at 1.5 T and 3 T have on measured abdominal apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) values obtained in a healthy population. Materials and Methods:Sixteen healthy male volunteers were enrolled in this prospective Institutional Review Board-approved study following written informed consent. Imaging was performed on a 1.5 T and a 3 T magnetic resonance system (Siemens, Erlangen) with several abdominal axial diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) acquisitions: an orthogonal diffusion encoding with b-values of 0/400 seconds/mm2, and a series of four 3-scan trace weighted acquisitions with b-values of 0/50, 0/400, 0/800, 0/50/400/800 seconds/mm2, respectively. The mean ADC values were calculated for 3 regions of interest (ROI) in 5 locations (right hepatic lobe, spleen, pancreatic head, body, and tail). The ADC data were analyzed using a repeated-measures analysis of variance. Results:There was a significant difference between measured ADC values at 1.5 T and 3 T for liver (P < 0.001), but not for pancreas (P = 0.427) or spleen (P = 0.167). There was no significant difference (P > 0.999) in the measured ADC values between the orthogonal encodings and the 3-scan trace weighted encoding with the same b-value. There were significant differences (P < 0.001) between all 4 weighting schemes for the 3-scan trace with the measured ADC decreasing with increasing b-value. Conclusion:Measured abdominal ADC values depend on the exact selection of b-value used for encoding for liver, pancreas, and spleen. In addition, the measured ADC values depend on the field strength of the scanner for liver.
Occurrence and dietary exposure assessment of PFOS and PFOA in cultured Trachinotus ovatus in China

ABSTRACT In this study, investigation was conducted into concentrations of perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) in Chinese farmed Trachinotus ovatus between 2014 and 2015 using a modified QuEChERS (Quick, Easy, Cheap, Effective, Rugged and Safe) and ultra fast liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UFLC-MS/MS) method. The tissue distribution (muscle, skin, liver, kidney and gill) in Trachinotus ovatus was also assessed. The detection frequencies of PFOS and PFOA in fish were 92% and 3%, respectively, and the mean concentrations were 0.392 and 0.015 μg/kg wet weight. The analysis of PFOS distribution in different tissues in Trachinotus ovatus showed the following trend: skin> gill> kidney> liver> flesh. Results revealeded farmed Trachinotus ovatus in China to generally be contaminated with PFOS. Moreover, the average daily intake for Chinese urban residents calculated on the basis of pollution content was 0.268 ng/kg body weight/d (PFOS) and 0.014 ng/kg body weight /d (PFOA), respectively. Both hazard ratio values were less than 1, indicating that exposure levels of PFOS and PFOA through Trachinotus ovatus consumption may not lead to adverse health effects in the Chinese population.
Discovering Hidden Topical Hubs and Authorities in Online Social Networks

Finding influential users in online social networks is an important problem with many possible useful applications. HITS and other link analysis methods, in particular, have been often used to identify hub and authority users in web graphs and online social networks. These works, however, have not considered topical aspect of links in their analysis. A straightforward approach to overcome this limitation is to first apply topic models to learn the user topics before applying the HITS algorithm. In this paper, we instead propose a novel topic model known as Hub and Authority Topic (HAT) model to combine the two process so as to jointly learn the hub, authority and topical interests. We evaluate HAT against several existing state-of-the-art methods in two aspects: (i) modeling of topics, and (ii) link recommendation. We conduct experiments on two real-world datasets from Twitter and Instagram. Our experiment results show that HAT is comparable to state-of-the-art topic models in learning topics and it outperforms the state-of-the-art in link recommendation task.
Evaluation of Short-Term Efficacy of Concurrent Chemoradiotherapy in Primary Fallopian Tube Carcinoma by Diffusion-Weighted Imaging: A Retrospective Study

Background: This study aims to evaluate the short-term efficacy of concurrent chemoradiotherapy (CCRT) in primary fallopian tube carcinoma (PFTC) using magnetic resonance diffusion-weighted imaging (MR-DWI). Patients and Methods: Total abdominal irradiation was performed for 61 PFTC patients after surgery, and paclitaxel and carboplatin were used for CCRT. According to the response evaluation criteria in solid tumors (RECIST1.1), patients were divided into a sensitive (n = 36) and a resistant group (n = 25). Pearson correlation analysis was conducted to assess the correlations of tumor regression rate with apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC)pre, ADCpost, and ∆ADCpost. The efficacy of CCRT in PFTC using MR-DWI was evaluated by ROC curve, logistic regression analysis, Kaplan-Meier survival curve, and Cox regression model. Results: The ADCpre in both the sensitive and the resistant group was negatively associated with the tumor regression rate (r = -0.508), while the ADCpost (r = 0.454) and ∆ADCpost (r = 0.769) were positively associated with the tumor regression rate (all p < 0.05). Histopathological type, FIGO stage, lymphatic metastasis, tumor regression rate, ADCpre, ADCpost, and ∆ADCpost were confirmed as key factors for CCRT in PFTC (all p < 0.05). Conclusion: Our retrospective study demonstrates the predictive value of MR-DWI in CCRT for PFTC patients.
Sex Difference in Patients With Ischemic Heart Failure Undergoing Surgical Revascularization: Results From the STICH Trial (Surgical Treatment for Ischemic Heart Failure)

Background: Female sex is conventionally considered a risk factor for coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) and has been included as a poor prognostic factor in multiple cardiac operative risk evaluation scores. We aimed to investigate the association of sex and the long-term benefit of CABG in patients with ischemic left ventricular dysfunction enrolled in the prospective STICH trial (Surgical Treatment for Ischemic Heart Failure Study). Methods: The STICH trial randomized 1212 patients (148 [12%] women and 1064 [88%] men) with coronary artery disease and left ventricular ejection fraction ⩽35% to CABG+medical therapy (MED) versus MED alone. Long-term (10-year) outcomes with each treatment were compared according to sex. Results: At baseline, women were older (63.4 versus 59.3 years; P=0.016) with higher body mass index (27.9 versus 26.7 kg/m2; P=0.001). Women had more coronary artery disease risk factors (diabetes mellitus, 55.4% versus 37.2%; hypertension, 70.9% versus 58.6%; hyperlipidemia, 70.3% versus 58.9%) except for smoking (13.5% versus 21.8%) and had lower rates of prior CABG (0% versus 3.4%; all P<0.05) than men. Moreover, women had higher New York Heart Association class (class III/IV, 66.2% versus 57.0%), lower 6-minute walk capacity (300 versus 350 m), and lower Kansas City Cardiomyopathy Questionnaire overall summary scores (51 versus 63; all P<0.05). Over 10 years of follow-up, all-cause mortality (49.0% versus 65.8%; adjusted hazard ratio, 0.67; 95% confidence interval, 0.52–0.86; P=0.002) and cardiovascular mortality (34.3% versus 52.3%; adjusted hazard ratio, 0.65; 95% confidence interval, 0.48–0.89; P=0.006) were significantly lower in women compared with men. With randomization to CABG+MED versus MED treatment, there was no significant interaction between sex and treatment group in all-cause mortality, cardiovascular mortality, or the composite of all-cause mortality or cardiovascular hospitalization (all P>0.05). In addition, surgical deaths were not statistically different (1.5% versus 5.1%; P=0.187) between sexes among patients randomized to CABG per protocol as initial treatment. Conclusions: Sex is not associated with the effect of CABG+MED versus MED on all-cause mortality, cardiovascular mortality, the composite of death or cardiovascular hospitalization, or surgical deaths in patients with ischemic left ventricular dysfunction. Thus, sex should not influence treatment decisions about CABG in these patients. Clinical Trial Registration: URL: https://www.clinicaltrials. gov. Unique identifier: NCT00023595.
CAF-derived HGF promotes cell proliferation and drug resistance by up-regulating the c-Met/PI3K/Akt and GRP78 signalling in ovarian cancer cells

The tumour microenvironment is a highly heterogeneous entity that plays crucial roles in cancer progression. As the most prominent stromal cell types, cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) produce a variety of factors into the tumour microenvironment. In the present study, we firstly isolated CAFs from tumour tissues of the patients with ovarian cancer and demonstrated that the hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) was highly expressed in the supernatants of CAFs. CAF-derived HGF or human recombinant HGF promoted cell proliferation in human ovarian cell lines SKOV3 and HO-8910 cells. Western blotting analysis also showed that CAF-derived HGF or recombinant HGF activated c-Met/phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K)/Akt and glucose-regulated protein 78 (GRP78) signalling pathways in ovarian cancer cells, and these effects could be abrogated by anti-HGF and c-Met inhibitor INCB28060. Moreover, HGF in CAF matrix attenuated paclitaxel (PAC)-caused inhibition of cell proliferation and increase in cell apoptosis through activating c-Met/PI3K/Akt and GRP78 pathways in SKOV3 and HO-8910 cells. The results in vitro were further validated in nude mice. These findings suggest that CAF-derived HGF plays crucial roles in cell proliferation and drug resistance in ovarian cancer cells.
A multicentre, randomised, open-label, controlled trial evaluating equivalence of inhalational and intravenous anaesthesia during elective craniotomy

Context A clear preference for intravenous or inhalational anaesthesia has not been established for craniotomy in patients without signs of cerebral hypertension. Objectives The NeuroMorfeo trial was designed to test equivalence of inhalational and intravenous anaesthesia maintenance techniques in the postoperative recovery of patients undergoing elective supratentorial surgery. Design This trial is a multicentre, randomised, open-label, equivalence design. A balanced stratified randomisation scheme was maintained using a centralised randomisation service. Equivalence was tested using the two one-sided tests procedure. Setting Fourteen Italian neuroanaesthesia centres participated in the study from December 2007 to March 2009. Patients Adults, 18 to 75 years old, scheduled for elective supratentorial intracranial surgery under general anaesthesia were eligible for enrolment if they had a normal preoperative level of consciousness and no clinical signs of intracranial hypertension. Interventions Patients were randomised to one of three anaesthesia maintenance protocols to determine if sevoflurane–remifentanil or sevoflurane–fentanyl were equivalent to propofol–remifentanil. Main outcome measures The primary outcome was the time to achieve an Aldrete postanaesthesia score of at least 9 after tracheal extubation. Secondary endpoints included haemodynamic parameters, quality of the surgical field, perioperative neuroendocrine stress responses and routine postoperative assessments. Results Four hundred and eleven patients [51% men, mean age 54.8 (SD 13.3) years] were enrolled. Primary outcome data were available for 380. Median (interquartiles) times to reach an Aldrete score of at least 9 were 3.48 (2.02 to 7.56), 3.25 (1.21 to 6.45) and 3.32 min (1.40 to 8.33) for sevoflurane–fentanyl, sevoflurane–remifentanil and propofol–remifentanil anaesthesia respectively, which confirmed equivalence using the two one-sided tests approach. Between-treatment differences in haemodynamic variables were small and not clinically relevant. Urinary catecholamine and cortisol responses had significantly lower activation with propofol–remifentanil. Postoperative pain and analgesic requirements were significantly higher in the remifentanil groups. Conclusion Equivalence was shown for inhalational and intravenous maintenance anaesthesia in times to reach an Aldrete score of at least 9 after tracheal extubation. Haemodynamic variables, the quality of surgical field and postoperative assessments were also similar. Perioperative endocrine stress responses were significantly blunted with propofol–remifentanil and higher analgesic requirements were recorded in the remifentanil groups. Trial registration: Eudract 2007–005279-32.
17.3 A 60GHz on-chip linear radiator with single-element 27.9dBm Psat and 33.1dBm peak EIRP using multifeed antenna for direct on-antenna power combining

A major challenge for low-cost silicon-based mm-wave wireless links, e.g., for the 5G communication, is to provide large transmitter (Tx) output power (Pout) with high energy efficiency and linearity from a limited supply voltage, so that the high path loss and limited link budget at mm-wave can be compensated. Power combining is often required for high-power mm-wave Tx. The existing power-combining techniques are mainly in two categories. Passive on-chip/on-package networks can combine Pout from multiple power amplifiers (PAs) and feed a single antenna port [1–4]. However, lossy power combiners and large impedance transformation ratios degrade the total Pout delivered to the antenna and lower the Tx efficiency. Alternatively, spatial power combining using antenna array increases the total EIRP but at the expense of a large array-panel size. Moreover, a large antenna array often presents an exceedingly narrow (or even pencil-sharp) beamwidth; this complicates the Tx/Rx alignment and is challenging for dynamic and mobile mm-wave applications, such as 5G links. In addition, adding silicon lens enhances EIRP but increases cost and packaging complexity.
0-1 Quadratic Knapsack Problems: An Exact Approach Based on a t-Linearization

This paper presents an exact solution method based on a new linearization scheme for the 0-1 quadratic knapsack problem, which consists of maximizing a quadratic pseudo-Boolean function with nonnegative coefficients subject to a linear capacity constraint. Contrasting with traditional linearization schemes, our approach adds only one extra variable. The suggested linearization framework provides a tight upper bound, which is used in a branch-and-bound scheme. This upper bound is numerically compared with that of [A. Billionnet, A. Faye, and E. Soutif, European J. Oper. Res., 112 (1999), pp. 664--672], and our branch-and-bound scheme with the exact algorithm of [W. D. Pisinger, A. B. Rasmussen, and R. Sandvik, INFORMS J. Comput. , 19 (2007), pp. 280--290]. The experiments show that our upper bound is quite competitive (less than $1\%$ from the optimum). In addition, the proposed branch-and-bound clearly outperforms the algorithm developed by Pisinger et al. for low density instances ($25\%$) for all instanc.
The structure of lamin filaments in somatic cells as revealed by cryo-electron tomography

ABSTRACT Metazoan nuclei are equipped with nuclear lamina - a thin layer of intermediate filaments (IFs) mostly built of nuclear lamins facing the inner nuclear membrane (INM). The nuclear lamina serves as an interaction hub for INM-proteins, soluble nuclear factors and DNA. It confers structural and mechanical stability to the nucleus, transduces mechanical forces and biochemical signals across the nuclear envelope (NE) and regulates the organization of chromatin. By using cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET), we recently provided an unprecedented view into the 3D organization of lamin filaments within the lamina meshwork in mammalian somatic cells. Through implementation of averaging procedures, we resolved the rod and globular Ig-fold domains of lamin filaments. The density maps suggested that they assemble into 3.5 nm thick filaments. Our analysis revealed interesting structural differences between nucleoplasmic and cytoplasmic intermediate filaments, raising the question of which molecular cues define their assembly modes inside the cell.
Anefficient quadrature demodulator for medical ultrasound imaging

Quadrature demodulation is used in medical ultrasound imaging to derive the envelope and instantaneous phase of the received radio-frequency (RF) signal. In quadrature demodulation, RF signal is multiplied with the sine and cosine wave reference signal and then low-pass filtered to produce the base-band complex signal, which has high computational complexity. In this paper, we propose an efficient quadrature demodulation method for B-mode and color flow imaging, in which the RF signal is demodulated by a pair of finite impulse response filters without mixing with the reference signal, to reduce the computational complexity. The proposed method was evaluated with simulation and in vivo experiments. From the simulation results, the proposed quadrature demodulation method produced similar normalized residual sum of squares (NRSS) and velocity profile compared with the conventional quadrature demodulation method. In the in vivo color flow imaging experiments, the time of the demodulation process was 5.66 ms and 3.36 ms, for the conventional method and the proposed method, respectively. These results indicated that the proposed method can maintain the performance of quadrature demodulation while reducing computational complexity.
“Self” Takes it All in Mental Illness: Examining the Dynamic Role of Health Consciousness, Negative Emotions, and Efficacy in Information Seeking

ABSTRACT Mental illness such as depression, stress, and anxiety disorder is prevalent in our everyday lives. Yet, little is known about how health-related variables operate in the mental illness context. Centering on health consciousness, this study systematically examines how health consciousness affects information seeking and whether negative emotions and efficacy intervene in the relationship in mental illness. The results of the survey (N = 614) suggest that health consciousness relates to fear, anxiety, self-efficacy, and response efficacy but does not relate to information seeking. Interestingly, self-efficacy is the only mediator in the relationship between health consciousness and information seeking on mental illness. Implications are discussed.