Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evidence-based medicine: discrepancy between perceived competence and actual performance among graduating medical students

Since at the time of graduation from medical school physicians are expected to demonstrate adequate professional competence including mastery of critical appraisal skills, we conducted a preliminary, cross-sectional, web-based study to examine the extent to which fourth year medical students in the US are competent in core areas of evidence-based medicine (EBM). Using self-assessment instruments, subjects (n = 150) were asked to demonstrate their ability to understand the practical meaning of key methodological and data analysis constructs as they relate to patient care, to rate their perceived competence in core areas of EBM and to disclose their attitudes toward critical appraisal of the literature and EBM. The mean score in our cohort was 55% suggesting that students may have knowledge gaps that interfere with their ability to critically appraise the medical literature. There was an apparent chasm between subjects’ perceived competence and their actual performance on the assessment instrument. These findings, if corroborated in larger studies, (1) suggest that better education in EBM is needed so as to avoid the possibility that patient care may inadvertently be jeopardized; and (2) cast doubt on the use of self-assessed knowledge as a proxy for actual skills with respect to EBM and medical decision-making.
Unpaid caring within and outside the carers home in England and Wales

Unpaid caring is defined as any help or support provided to family members, friends, neighbours, or others because of their long-term physical or mental health or disability, or problems related to old age. It is estimated that there are over 5.2 million unpaid carers in England and Wales (2001 Census). Using the Small Area Microdata from the 2001 Census Samples of Anonymised Records, we examine geographic and socio-demographic variations in unpaid caring across England and Wales at local authority level with a particular focus on carers aged 40 years and older, comparing those who provide unpaid care within their own household and outside their household. The distinction between care within and outside the household is based on whether or not the carer lived with a co-resident reporting a limiting long-term illness. We find a strong geographical relationship between levels of illness and of unpaid care. However, when this is disaggregated by whether the care is provided within or outside the household, we find that care away from the home is likely to be outside the geographical area in which the carer lives. Our individual level analyses suggest associations between rates of unpaid caring and a person's age, gender, ethnicity, social class, and the carer's own health status. Moreover, these relationships are different for people who provide care within or outside their own household. Our findings have important implications for our understanding of the dynamics of caring and for service providers at a national and local level and also for government focus on independent living for people with social care needs and those in later old age. Unpaid carers who do not live with people they care for are likely to face different demands. Support is needed both for themselves and for the people whom they care. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Automated, Elastic Resource Provisioning for NoSQL Clusters Using TIRAMOLA

This work presents TIRAMOLA, a cloud-enabled, open-source framework to perform automatic resizing of NoSQL clusters according to user-defined policies. Decisions on adding or removing worker VMs from a cluster are modeled as a Markov Decision Process and taken in real-time. The system automatically decides on the most advantageous cluster size according to user-defined policies, it then proceeds on requesting/releasing VM resources from the provider and orchestrating them inside a NoSQL cluster. TIRAMOLA's modular architecture and standard API support allows interaction with most current IaaS platforms and increased customization. An extensive experimental evaluation on an HBase cluster confirms our assertions: The system resizes clusters in real-time and adapts its performance through different optimization strategies, different permissible actions, different input and training loads. Besides the automation of the process, it exhibits a learning feature which allows it to make very close to optimal decisions even with input loads 130% larger or alternating 10 times faster compared to the accumulated information.
High Serum Levels of Advanced Glycation End Products Predict Increased Coronary Heart Disease Mortality in Nondiabetic Women but not in Nondiabetic Men: A Population-Based 18-Year Follow-Up Study

Background—Advanced glycation end products (AGEs), modification products of glycation or glycoxidation of proteins and lipids, have been linked to premature atherosclerosis in patients with diabetes as well as in nondiabetic subjects. Methods and Results—Serum levels of AGEs were measured with an immunoassay in samples obtained at baseline examination of a random sample of 1141 nondiabetic individuals (535 men and 606 women), aged 45 to 64 years, living in Kuopio, East Finland, or Turku, West Finland in 1982 to 1984. After 18 years of follow-up, all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease (CVD), and coronary heart disease (CHD) mortality were registered on the basis of copies of death certificates. Multivariate Cox regression model showed a significant association of serum AGEs with all-cause (P=0.012), CVD (P=0.018), and CHD (P=0.008) mortality in women but not in men. Fasting serum AGEs in the highest quartile were an independent risk factor for all-cause (hazards ratio [HR], 1.90; 95% CI, 1.16 to 3.11; P=0.011) and CHD (HR, 6.51; 95% CI, 1.78 to 23.79; P=0.005) mortality in women, even after the adjustment for confounding factors, including highly sensitive C-reactive protein. Conclusions—The present study is the first to show that serum levels of AGEs can predict total, CVD, and CHD mortality in nondiabetic women.
Distribution of Interstitial Cells and Differentiating Nematocytes in Nests in Hydra attenuata

We have used tissue maceration to quantitate interstitial cell nests in Hydra attenuata and thiolacetic acid-lead nitrate staining to quantitate differentiating nematocytes. Most I-cell nests have 2, 4, 8, or 16 cells. Differentiating nematocytes occur in nests of 4, 8, 16, and 32. All classes of I-cell nests and nests of dilferentiating nematocytes are abundant in the gastric region. In contrast, the hypostome, basal disk and the regions immediately adjacent to them have no nests of differentiating nematocytes, virtually no nests of 4, 8, or 16 I-cells and reduced numbers of 1 and 2 I-cell nesls. Since nests of 4 or more I-cells are found only where nematocyte differentiation takes place, these nest classes are probably nematocyte precursors. Since differentiation of nerves occurs in the hypostome and basal disk where only single or paired I-cells are found, these size classes include nerve precursors. The disproportionately large number of I-cell nests of 2 suggests that these include the autoreproductive stem cells responsible for maintaining the populations of I-cell derivatives in growing hydra.
Damping Characteristics of Ti50Ni50−xCux (x = 0~30 at.%) Shape Memory Alloys at a Low Frequency

The damping characteristics of Ti50Ni50−xCux (x = 0~30 at.%) shape memory alloys (SMAs) at a low frequency have been studied using a dynamic mechanical analyzer. The magnitude of the tan δ value and the values of the storage modulus (E0) softening/hardening and the strain variation exhibited in B2↔B19 transformation are all higher than those in B2↔B19’ transformation. The larger E0 softening/hardening in B2↔B19 can induce higher strain variation in this transformation. It is suggested that the greater mobility of the twin boundaries and the larger magnitude of the strain variation both cause the higher tan δ value exhibited in B2↔B19 transformation, as compared with B2↔B19’ transformation. In comparison with that in B19’ martensite, the E0 value in B19 martensite is low and not affected so greatly by changes in temperature. Relaxation peaks are observed in B19’ martensite, but not in B19 martensite, because the latter has rare twinned variants. The activation energy of the relaxation peak is calculated and found to increase as the Cu-content increases in these SMAs.
The Abundance Spread in the Boötes I Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy

We present medium-resolution spectra of 16 radial velocity red-giant members of the low-luminosity Boötes I dwarf spheroidal (dSph) galaxy that have sufficient S/N for abundance determination, based on the strength of the Ca II K line. Assuming [Ca/Fe] ~ 0.3, the abundance range in the sample is Δ[Fe/H] ~ 1.7 dex, with one star having [Fe/H] = –3.4. The dispersion is σ([Fe/H]) = 0.45 ± 0.08—similar to those of the Galaxy’s more luminous dSph systems and ω Centauri. This suggests that the large mass (≳107 M☉) normally assumed to foster self-enrichment and the production of chemical abundance spreads was provided by the nonbaryonic material in Boötes I.
A mathematical model of serotype replacement in pneumococcal carriage following vaccination

A number of childhood vaccination programmes have recently introduced vaccination against Streptococcus pneumoniae, the pneumococcus, a major cause of pneumonia and meningitis. The pneumococcal conjugate vaccines (PCVs) that are currently in use only protect against some serotypes of the bacterium, and there is now strong evidence that those serotypes not included in the vaccine increase in prevalence among most vaccinated populations. We present a mathematical model for the dynamics of nasopharyngeal carriage of S. pneumoniae that allows for carriage with multiple serotypes. The model is used to predict the prevalence of vaccine type (VT) and non-VT (NVT) serotypes following the introduction of PCV. Parameter estimates for the model are obtained by maximum likelihood using pre-vaccination data from The Gambia. The model predicts that low (1, 6A and 9V) and medium (4, 5, 7F, 14, 18C, 19A and 19F) prevalence serotypes can be eliminated through vaccination, but that the overall prevalence of carriage will be reduced only slightly because of an increase in the prevalence of NVT serotypes. Serotype replacement will be sequential, with high and medium prevalence NVT serotypes dominating initially, followed by an increase of serotypes of low prevalence. We examine the impact of a hypothetical vaccine that provides partial protection against all serotypes, and find that this reduces overall carriage, but is unable to eliminate low or medium prevalence serotypes.
TACC3–ch-TOG track the growing tips of microtubules independently of clathrin and Aurora-A phosphorylation

ABSTRACT The interaction between TACC3 (transforming acidic coiled coil protein 3) and the microtubule polymerase ch-TOG (colonic, hepatic tumor overexpressed gene) is evolutionarily conserved. Loading of TACC3–ch-TOG onto mitotic spindle microtubules requires the phosphorylation of TACC3 by Aurora-A kinase and the subsequent interaction of TACC3 with clathrin to form a microtubule-binding surface. Recent work indicates that TACC3 can track the plus-ends of microtubules and modulate microtubule dynamics in non-dividing cells via its interaction with ch-TOG. Whether there is a pool of TACC3–ch-TOG that is independent of clathrin in human cells, and what is the function of this pool, are open questions. Here, we describe the molecular interaction between TACC3 and ch-TOG that permits TACC3 recruitment to the plus-ends of microtubules. This TACC3–ch-TOG pool is independent of EB1, EB3, Aurora-A phosphorylation and binding to clathrin. We also describe the distinct combinatorial subcellular pools of TACC3, ch-TOG and clathrin. TACC3 is often described as a centrosomal protein, but we show that there is no significant population of TACC3 at centrosomes. The delineation of distinct protein pools reveals a simplified view of how these proteins are organized and controlled by post-translational modification.
Rounding the line : Delivering sustainability therapy in sustainable development projects

This paper explores the apparent contradiction between the ‘linearity’ of most Sustainable Development projects, with time-bound and defined outputs achieved at a fixed cost, and an implied ‘circularity’ of the theory whereby there is no ‘end’. Projects usually have clear parameters within which they are implemented, and the inclusion of elements such as the need for accountability, measurable impact and ‘value for money’ have grown in importance. It could be argued that we live in a ‘projectified’ and therefore linear world. The paper explores the potential contradiction between ‘linearity’ and ‘circularity’, and suggests that one way around this is to frame the project within a form of the Kolb Learning Cycle heuristic. This will facilitate a rationalisation from those implementing the sustainable development project as to why decisions are being made and for whom. If these questions are opened up to the project stakeholders, including beneficiaries, then the Kolb cycle could encourage learning and understanding by all involved. It could also provide Sustainability Therapy to those trapped in processes which they find orthogonal to their own perceptions. It is suggested that such learning, therapy and reflective practice should be a valid output of the sustainable development project, although typically the focus is only upon the final outputs and how they feed into policy. Ironically funders would be well advised to take a broader perspective in order to achieve true ‘value for money’ within such projects, even if learning is not an easily measurable or tangible outcome. These points are explored within the context of the wider literature and experience with a sustainable development project undertaken in Malta.
OX1 Orexin/Hypocretin Receptor Signaling through Arachidonic Acid and Endocannabinoid Release

We showed previously that OX1 orexin receptor stimulation produced a strong 3H overflow response from [3H]arachidonic acid (AA)-labeled cells. Here we addressed this issue with a novel set of tools and methods, to distinguish the enzyme pathways responsible for this response. CHO-K1 cells heterologously expressing human OX1 receptors were used as a model system. By using selective pharmacological inhibitors, we showed that, in orexin-A-stimulated cells, the AA-derived radioactivity was released as two distinct components, i.e., free AA and the endocannabinoid 2-arachidonoyl glycerol (2-AG). Two orexin-activated enzymatic cascades are responsible for this response: cytosolic phospholipase A2 (cPLA2) and diacylglycerol lipase; the former cascade is responsible for part of the AA release, whereas the latter is responsible for all of the 2-AG release and part of the AA release. Essentially only diacylglycerol released by phospholipase C but not by phospholipase D was implicated as a substrate for 2-AG production, although both phospholipases were strongly activated. The 2-AG released acted as a potent paracrine messenger through cannabinoid CB1 receptors in an artificial cell-cell communication assay that was developed. The cPLA2 cascade, in contrast, was involved in the activation of orexin receptor-operated Ca2+ influx. 2-AG was also released upon OX1 receptor stimulation in recombinant HEK-293 and neuro-2a cells. The results directly show, for the first time, that orexin receptors are able to generate potent endocannabinoid signals in addition to arachidonic acid signals, which may explain the proposed orexin-cannabinoid interactions (e.g., in neurons).
A Structured Model of Video Reproduces Primary Visual Cortical Organisation

The visual system must learn to infer the presence of objects and features in the world from the images it encounters, and as such it must, either implicitly or explicitly, model the way these elements interact to create the image. Do the response properties of cells in the mammalian visual system reflect this constraint? To address this question, we constructed a probabilistic model in which the identity and attributes of simple visual elements were represented explicitly and learnt the parameters of this model from unparsed, natural video sequences. After learning, the behaviour and grouping of variables in the probabilistic model corresponded closely to functional and anatomical properties of simple and complex cells in the primary visual cortex (V1). In particular, feature identity variables were activated in a way that resembled the activity of complex cells, while feature attribute variables responded much like simple cells. Furthermore, the grouping of the attributes within the model closely parallelled the reported anatomical grouping of simple cells in cat V1. Thus, this generative model makes explicit an interpretation of complex and simple cells as elements in the segmentation of a visual scene into basic independent features, along with a parametrisation of their moment-by-moment appearances. We speculate that such a segmentation may form the initial stage of a hierarchical system that progressively separates the identity and appearance of more articulated visual elements, culminating in view-invariant object recognition.
Personalized power saving profiles generation analyzing smart device usage patterns

Despite much advancement in mobile computing technologies, the smart devices still suffer from battery limitations. The power consumption largely depends on how the end-users interact with their smart devices. Continuous usage of exotic hardware, inbuilt sensors, network and bright colorful display shorten battery life significantly. Thus the key to develop power saving solutions is to understand the user interactions of smart devices. This paper describes a client-server architecture that proposes personalized power saving profiles by analyzing individual usage patterns. The client is an Android app named “Power Monitor” running on the Android devices. It periodically records usage information from the devices and communicates them to a remote server after a week of monitoring. The server applies an algorithm to generate the usage pattern for each user. Further processing of the patterns provides to power saving profiles and they are sent back to the smart devices. These profiles are highly personalized since they are developed by analyzing individual usage patterns. The profiles will automatically evolve if the usage patterns change over time. We also present two real-life usage patterns and the respective power saving profiles to demonstrate the efficiency of the architecture. The battery level gain using Power Monitor is compared with two popular power saving Android applications. It is shown that Power Monitor can increase the battery life by almost 90 percent. Some related privacy issues are also addressed and privacy preserving usage pattern generation is also discussed.
Stimulation of carbon dioxide fixation in isolated pea chloroplasts by catalytic amounts of adenine nucleotides.

Carbon dioxide-dependent O(2) evolution by isolated pea (Pisum sativum var. Massey Gem) chloroplasts was increased two to 12 times by the addition of ATP. O(2) evolution was also stimulated by ADP and to a lesser extent by AMP. The ATP effects were not due to broken chloroplasts present in the preparations nor was ATP acting as a phosphate source. We concluded that the adenine nucleotides were acting catalytically. The concentration of ATP required for half-maximum rate of O(2) evolution was 16 to 25 mum. The degree to which ATP stimulated O(2) evolution depended on the age of pea plants from which the chloroplasts were isolated. Spinach (Spinacia oleracea var. True Hybrid 102) chloroplasts did not show a consistent stimulation of O(2) evolution by adenine nucleotides.The adenine nucleotide content of pea chloroplasts was not lower than that of spinach chloroplasts, but pea chloroplasts which showed a large stimulation of O(2) evolution by ATP contained an ATP-hydrolyzing reaction with rates of 10 to 50 mumol ATP hydrolyzed mg chlorophyll(-1) hour(-1). The rate of the ATP-consuming reaction was much lower in spinach chloroplasts and in chloroplasts from older pea plants which did not show large stimulation of O(2) evolution by ATP. We propose that the ATP-consuming reaction, with a high affinity for ATP, decreased the effective size of the ATP pool available for CO(2) fixation. Added adenine nucleotides could be transported into the chloroplasts increasing the concentration of internal nucleotides. Calculations showed that the adenine nucleotide transporter on the outer chloroplast membranes could operate at a sufficient rate to produce such an effect.
Management of thoracolumbar spine trauma: An overview

Thoracolumbar spine fractures are common injuries that can result in significant disability, deformity and neurological deficit. Controversies exist regarding the appropriate radiological investigations, the indications for surgical management and the timing, approach and type of surgery. This review provides an overview of the epidemiology, biomechanical principles, radiological and clinical evaluation, classification and management principles. Literature review of all relevant articles published in PubMed covering thoracolumbar spine fractures with or without neurologic deficit was performed. The search terms used were thoracolumbar, thoracic, lumbar, fracture, trauma and management. All relevant articles and abstracts covering thoracolumbar spine fractures with and without neurologic deficit were reviewed. Biomechanically the thoracolumbar spine is predisposed to a higher incidence of spinal injuries. Computed tomography provides adequate bony detail for assessing spinal stability while magnetic resonance imaging shows injuries to soft tissues (posterior ligamentous complex [PLC]) and neurological structures. Different classification systems exist and the most recent is the AO spine knowledge forum classification of thoracolumbar trauma. Treatment includes both nonoperative and operative methods and selected based on the degree of bony injury, neurological involvement, presence of associated injuries and the integrity of the PLC. Significant advances in imaging have helped in the better understanding of thoracolumbar fractures, including information on canal morphology and injury to soft tissue structures. The ideal classification that is simple, comprehensive and guides management is still elusive. Involvement of three columns, progressive neurological deficit, significant kyphosis and canal compromise with neurological deficit are accepted indications for surgical stabilization through anterior, posterior or combined approaches.
Implementing Secure P2P-ONS

Name Services for the Internet of Things (specifically, the EPCglobal Network) are distributed systems that serve the following fundamental lookup function: Given an identifier for a real-world object, e.g., an Electronic Product Code (EPC), they return a list of Internet addresses of services, which offer additional information about this object. Without name services acting as a broker between items and their information sources, the Internet of Things could not achieve the flexibility and global scalability necessary to live up to its vision. The currently specified Object Naming Service (ONS) for the EPCglobal Network has severe security drawbacks in its architecture and design. In this paper, we present the implementation of a Peer-to-Peer name service architecture based on Distributed Hash Tables (DHT) on the research platform PlanetLab. This alternative ONS architecture named OIDA, if deployed as an infrastructure network, offers enhanced overall multilateral security compared to ONS, combined with potentially better functionality, scalability, and roughly equivalent performance.