Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Older Women's Experience of Spirituality: Crafting the Quilt

Originating as a Ph.D. dissertation for the U. of Colorado in 1993, this study (revised and with a new preface and index) investigates the older women's experience of spirituality and spiritual caring through in-depth interviews with eight women over 70 years of age. The volume provides a review of
A developmentally regulated blood‐cerebrospinal fluid transfer mechanism for albumin in immature rats.

1. The transfer of albumin between the blood and the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) has been investigated in neonatal (3 days old) and juvenile (20 days old) rats. At both stages of postnatal development, all of the albumin present in the CSF can be accounted for by transfer from the blood. Thus it is unlikely that in situ synthesis of albumin contributes to the naturally high levels of albumin in CSF in the developing brain. 2. The high concentration of albumin in CSF of the neonatal rat brain cannot be accounted for solely by diffusion from the blood. In the 3‐day‐old rat, only about one quarter of the albumin in CSF enters by diffusion from the blood, whilst the remainder appears to be transported into the CSF by a specific mechanism which can discriminate between different species of albumin. The specific transport component of albumin transfer between the blood and the CSF appears to be developmentally regulated and is not apparent in 20‐day‐old rats. 3. Chemical modification of albumin resulting in either an increase or a decrease in electrophoretic mobility (at pH 7.4), significantly reduces blood‐CSF transfer of albumin in 3‐day‐old rats, but has little effect in the 20‐day‐old rat. Thus overall molecular charge does not appear to be an important feature of the species‐specific blood‐CSF albumin transport mechanism in neonatal rats.
MEERA: cross-layer methodology for energy efficient resource allocation in wireless networks

In many portable devices, wireless network interfaces consume upwards of 30% of scarce system energy. Reducing the transceiver's power consumption to extend the system lifetime has therefore become a design goal. Our work is targeted at this goal and is based on the following two observations. First, conventional energy management approaches have focused independently on minimizing the fixed energy cost (by shutdown) and on scalable energy costs (by leveraging, for example, the modulation, code-rate and transmission power). These two energy management approaches present a tradeoff. For example, lower modulation rates and transmission power minimize the variable energy component, but this shortens the sleep duration thereby increasing fixed energy consumption. Second, in order to meet the quality of service (QoS) timeliness requirements for multiple users, we need to determine to what extent each system in the network may sleep and scale. Therefore, we propose a two-phase methodology that resolves the sleep-scaling tradeoff across the physical, communications and link layers at design time and schedules nodes at runtime with near optimal energy-efficient configurations in the solution space. As a result, we are able to achieve very low run-time overheads. Our methodology is applied to a case study on delivering a guaranteed QoS for multiple users with MPEG-4 video over a slow-fading channel. By exploiting runtime controllable parameters of actual RF components and a modified 802.11 medium access controller, system lifetime is increased by a factor of 3-to-10 in comparison with conventional techniques
Comparative life cycle assessment of insulating concrete forms with traditional residential wall sections

Sustainable building materials offer energy efficiency and environmental performance. One possible sustainable building product is insulating concrete forms (ICF). An ICF wall section consists of expanded polystyrene and concrete with polyethylene ties. One difference between a “normal” construction and ICF construction is that the forms stay in place after concrete has cured. The forms and concrete act as insulation material and have the potential for reducing energy consumption in buildings. The goal of this research is to conduct a comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) of the wall sections comprised of ICF and traditional wood-framed for the life cycle phases of raw materials, manufacturing, construction, use and end of life. Preliminary results comparing ICF and wood frame in the manufacturing phase for above grade construction are presented. To investigate the use phase, an energy modeling tool eQuest will be utilized, along with discussing the development of the LCA residential model.
Determinants of atypical antipsychotic use among antipsychotic users in community-dwelling elderly, 1996–2004

ABSTRACT Objectives: This study examined the determinants of atypical antipsychotic use among antipsychotic users in community-dwelling elderly in the United States. Methods: The study involved analysis of household and prescription files of the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) data from 1996 to 2004. The analysis focused on the use of six atypical antipsychotic agents namely, clozapine, olanzapine, risperidone, quetiapine, ziprasidone, and aripiprazole among the elderly of 60 years or older. Multiple logistic regression analysis within the conceptual framework of Andersen's Behavioral Model was used to examine the determinants of atypical antipsychotic use among antipsychotic users in community-dwelling elderly. Results: An average of 0.62 million elderly received antipsychotic agents annually during the study period. A majority of the elderly using antipsychotic agents were female (70%), white (86%), non-Hispanic (95%), and living in metropolitan statistical areas (79%). Frequently reported diagnoses among the elderly taking antipsychotic agents were dementia (26.12%), anxiety (20.42%), and schizophrenia (6.62%). Of the elderly receiving antipsychotic agents, 50.39% received atypical agents and 51.88% received typical agents during the study period. The most frequently used atypical agents were risperidone, olanzapine, and quetiapine. Multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed that need (perceived mental health, p < 0.01) and enabling (time, p < 0.01) factors were significantly associated with atypical antipsychotic use after controlling for predisposing factors. The study found that elderly patients with relatively poor perception of mental health (need) and utilization of antipsychotic agents after 1998 (enabling) were more likely to involve the use of atypical agents. Limitations: This study was limited to the use of antipsychotic agents in community settings and cannot be extrapolated to other settings. Correlates examined in this study were limited to variables available from the data source and those used by previous researchers. Conclusions: Need and enabling factors play a vital role in the use of atypical agents in the elderly. The findings have important implications in understanding the use and outcomes of atypical agents in the elderly. Future pharmacoepidemiological research can use these variables to control for confounding and selection bias when evaluating health care outcomes in observational studies.
Challenges and recent advancements in infectious laryngotracheitis virus vaccines

Over the past 80 years, biosecurity measures and vaccines have been used to prevent the occurrence of outbreaks of infectious laryngotracheitis (ILT). Despite these control strategies, ILT continues to have an impact on intensive poultry industries. Attenuated vaccines, particularly those derived by passage in chicken embryos, have been associated with a number of side effects, including residual virulence, transmission to naïve birds, establishment of latent infections with subsequent reactivation and shedding of virus, and reversion to virulence after in vivo passage. Most recently, recombination between attenuated ILT vaccines in the field has been shown to be responsible for the emergence of new virulent viruses that have caused widespread disease. To address some of these issues, new-generation virally vectored recombinant vaccines have been developed and recently released in some countries. In addition, recombinant deletion mutants of ILT virus have been proposed as vaccine candidates. In this review, recent advances in the understanding of the epidemiology of traditionally attenuated ILT vaccines as well as in the development and use of new generation vaccines are examined. Next-generation vaccines, along with more appropriate immunological screening strategies, are identified as particularly promising options to enhance ILT control in the future.
Extracting PDTB Discourse Relations from Student Essays

We investigate the manual and automatic annotation of PDTB discourse relations in student essays, a novel domain that is not only learning-based and argumentative, but also noisy with surface errors and deeper coherency issues. We discuss methodological complexities it poses for the task. We present descriptive statistics and compare relation distributions in re-lated corpora. We compare automatic discourse parsing performance to prior work.
A Comprehensive Investigation of Comorbidities, Mechanisms, Injury Patterns, and Outcomes in Geriatric Blunt Trauma Patients

The geriatric population is growing and trauma providers are often tasked with caring for injuries in the elderly. There is limited information regarding injury patterns in geriatric trauma patients stratified by mechanism of injury. This study intends to investigate the comorbidities, mechanisms, injury patterns, and outcomes in geriatric blunt trauma patients. A retrospective study of the 2012 National Trauma Databank was performed. Adult blunt trauma patients were identified; geriatric (>/=65) patients were compared with younger (<65) patients regarding admission demographics and vital signs, mechanism and severity of injury, and comorbidities. The primary outcome was injuries sustained and secondary outcomes included mortality, length of stay in the intensive care unit and hospital, and ventilator days. There were 589,830 blunt trauma patients who met the inclusion criteria, including 183,209 (31%) geriatric and 406,621 (69%) nongeriatric patients. Falls were more common in geriatric patients (79 vs 29%, P < 0.0001). Geriatric patients less often had an Injury Severity Score >/=16 (18 vs 20%, P < 0.0001) but more often a head Abbreviated Injury Scale >/=3 (24 vs 18%, P < 0.0001) and lower extremity Abbreviated Injury Scale >/=3 (24% vs 8%, P < 0.0001). After logistic regression older age was an independent risk factor for mortality for the overall population and across all mechanisms. Falls are the most common mechanism for geriatric trauma patients. Geriatric patients overall present with a lower Injury Severity Score, but more often sustain severe injuries to the head and lower extremities. Injury patterns vary significantly between older and younger patients when stratified by mechanism. Mortality is significantly higher for geriatric trauma patients and older age is independently associated with mortality across all mechanisms.
Citizenship In Modern Britain

Citizenship in Modern Britain is a highly versatile book. For those who do not go on to sit an AS Level examination in Citizenship, it will provide valuable support to Government and Politics courses. As a valuable resource for students of sociology, it will help in the development of a 'sociological imagination' - the key element in the transformation from student to sociologist. For the student of citizenship Citizenship in Modern Britain is a readable text that examines citizenship from a social science perspective. It will provide you with a full coverage of the body of knowledge that constitutes citizenship and encourage you to develop your evaluative skills. You will be encouraged to adopt a questioning and critical approach to those social processes, social structures and institutions that have an impact upon your experience and opportunities in life. Once you have been empowered by your citizenship knowledge, you can reflect upon your many contrasting roles within your community, enhancing your potential for effective and responsible participation as a citizen. For the teacher of citizenship This book is an invaluable classroom resource. The subject matter has been divided into three sections, corresponding to each of the AQA AS Level modules. The text also provides all the necessary academic material required for examinable citizenship courses, supported and developed by a series of research, practical and discursive activities. These activities have been designed to not only extend students' knowledge of the subject, but also to encourage thought, debate and evaluation. They will provide teachers with many opportunities for the integration of a range of key skills into Citizenship courses.
The relevance of timing, pauses and overlaps in dialogues: detecting topic changes in scenario based meetings

We present an investigation of the relevance of simple conversational features as indicators of topic shifts in small-group meetings. Three proposals for representation of dialogue data are described, and their effectiveness assessed at detecting topic boundaries on a large section of the Augmented Multi-Party Interaction (AMI) corpus. These proposals consist in representing a speech event through combinations of features such as the lengths of vocalisations, pauses and speech overlaps in the immediate temporal context of the event. Results show that timing of vocalisations alone, within a 7-vocalisation window (3 on each side of the vocalisation under consideration), can be an effective predictor of topic boundaries, outperforming topic segmentation methods based on lexical features. Pause and overlap information on their own also yield comparably good segmentation accuracy, suggesting that simple methods could complement or even serve as alternatives to methods which require more demanding speech processing for meeting browsing.
Spatio-Temporal Analysis of Reverted Wikipedia Edits

Little is known about what causes anti-social behavior online. The paper at hand analyzes vandalism and damage in Wikipedia with regard to the time it is conducted and the country it originates from. First, we identify vandalism and damaging edits via ex post facto evidence by mining Wikipedia’s revert graph. Second, we geolocate the cohort of edits from anonymous Wikipedia editors using their associated IP addresses and edit times, showing the feasibility of reliable historic geolocation with respect to country and time zone, even under limited geolocation data. Third, we conduct the first spatio-temporal analysis of vandalism on Wikipedia. Our analysis reveals significant differences for vandalism activities during the day, and for different days of the week, seasons, countries of origin, as well as Wikipedia’s languages. For the analyzed countries, the ratio is typically highest at non-summer workday mornings, with additional peaks after break times. We hence assume that Wikipedia vandalism is linked to labor, perhaps serving as relief from stress or boredom, whereas cultural differences have a large effect. Our results open up avenues for new research on collaborative writing at scale, and advanced technologies to identify and handle antisocial behavior in online communities.
Antiphospholipid Syndrome: Endocrinologic Manifestations and Organ Involvement

APS, antiphospholipid syndrome, antiphospholipid antibodies, anticardiolipin antibodies, lupus anticoagulant, anti β-2 glycoprotein I, pituitary, adrenal, thyroid, parathyroid, ovary, testes, diabetes mellitus, diabetes insipidus.
Analysis of the suitability of 'video-visits' for palliative home care: implications for practice

We conducted a retrospective chart review to estimate the extent to which palliative home care visits could be carried out using videophones and to explore factors that might inform the eligibility criteria for video-visits. Four hundred palliative home care health records of deceased clients from 2002 were randomly selected from the Health Records Office in one Canadian health region. One visit was randomly selected from each of these health records. Three hundred and fifty-four visits were coded, and based on professional nursing judgment, the coder estimated whether video-visits could have been carried out. Approximately 43% of the visits were considered appropriate for video-visits. The results suggest that four factors may inform eligibility and decisions about a client's suitability for video-visits: diagnosis (cancer versus non-cancer), low Edmonton Symptom Assessment System (ESAS) score, no care-giver present, number and types of interventions required. Patients with a cancer diagnosis were more likely to be suitable for video-visits, which suggests that disease trajectory, rather than diagnosis of 'palliative', may be more influential in determining the care required and appropriateness of videophone use.
Effects of elevated atmospheric CO(2) on phenology, growth and crown structure of Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) seedlings after two years of exposure in the field.

Three-year-old Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) seedlings were grown for two years in the ground in open-top chambers supplied with either an ambient or elevated (ambient + 400 &mgr;mol mol(-1)) CO(2) concentration. Phenological observations and measurements of height and stem diameter growth, absolute and relative growth rates, starch and soluble carbohydrate concentrations of the needles, and crown structure and needle properties were made at frequent intervals throughout the two growing seasons. Elevated CO(2) significantly advanced the date of bud burst in both years. The increase in total needle area in response to elevated CO(2) was accounted for by longer shoots and an increase in individual needle area in the first year, and by an increase in the number and length of shoots in the second year. Stem diameter and tree height were enhanced more by the elevated CO(2) treatment in the first year than in the second, indicating a decreased effect of CO(2) on growth over time. This was confirmed by a study of absolute and relative growth rates of leader shoots. During the first growing season of CO(2) enrichment, mean weekly relative growth rates over the growing season (RGR(m)) were significantly enhanced. During the second year, RGR(m) in ambient CO(2) closely matched that in elevated CO(2).
Photosynthesis, respiration, and net primary production of sunflower stands in ambient and elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations: an invariant NPP:GPP ratio?

The effect of elevated CO2 on photosynthesis, respiration, and growth efficiency of sunflower plants at the whole‐stand level was investigated using a whole‐system gas exchange facility (the EcoCELLs at the Desert Research Institute) and a 13C natural tracer method. Total daily photosynthesis (GPP), net primary production (NPP), and respiration under the elevated CO2 treatment were consistently higher than under the ambient CO2 treatment. The overall level of enhancement due to elevated CO2 was consistent with published results for a typical C3 plant species. The patterns of daily GPP and NPP through time approximated logistic curves under both CO2 treatments. Regression analysis indicated that both the rate of increase (the parameter ‘r’) and the maximum value (the parameter ‘k’) of daily GPP and NPP under the elevated CO2 treatment were significantly higher than under the ambient CO2 treatment. The percentage increase in daily GPP due to elevated CO2 varied systematically through time according to the logistic equations used for the two treatments. The GPP increase due to elevated CO2 ranged from approximately 10% initially to 73% at the peak, while declining to about 33%, as predicted by the ratio of the two maximum values. Different values of percentage increase in GPP and NPP were obtained at different sampling times. This result demonstrated that one‐time measurements of percentage increases due to elevated CO2 could be misleading, thereby making interpretation difficult. Although rhizosphere respiration was substantially enhanced by elevated CO2, no effect of elevated CO2 on R:P (respiration:photosynthesis) was found, suggesting an invariant NPP:GPP ratio during the entire experiment. Further validation of the notion of an invariant NPP:GPP ratio may significantly simplify the process of quantifying terrestrial carbon sequestration by directly relating total photosynthesis to net primary production.
Toxicity of Naphthalene and Benzene on Tribollium castaneum Herbst

Naphthalene and benzene are widely-used volatile organic compounds. The aim of this research was to examine the toxicological effects of naphthalene and benzene against Tribolium castaneum as an animal model. Adult insects were exposed to these aromatic compounds to assess mortality after 4–48 h of exposure. The lethal concentration 50 (LC50) for naphthalene, naphthalin, and benzene were 63.6 µL/L, 20.0 µL/L, and 115.9 µL/L in air, respectively. Real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) analysis revealed expression changes in genes related to oxidative stress and metabolism [Glutathione S-Transferase (Gst), and Cytochrome P450 6BQ8 (Cyp6bq8)]; reproduction and metamorphosis [Hormone receptor in 39-like protein (Hr39), Ecdysone receptor: (Ecr), and Chitin synthase 2 (Chs2)]; and neurotransmission [Histamine-gated chloride channel 2 (Hiscl2)] in insects exposed for 4 h to 70.2 µL/L naphthalene. Adults exposed to benzene (80 µL/L; 4 h) overexpressed genes related to neurotransmission [GABA-gated anion channel (Rdl), Hiscl2, and GABA-gated ion channel (Grd)]; reproduction and metamorphosis [Ultraspiracle nuclear receptor (USP), Ecr; and Hr39]; and development (Chs2). The data presented here provides evidence that naphthalene and benzene inhalation are able to induce alterations on reproduction, development, metamorphosis, oxidative stress, metabolism, neurotransmission, and death of the insect.
A Markov reward model checker

This short tool paper introduces MRMC, a model checker for discrete-time and continuous-time Markov reward models. It supports reward extensions of PCTL and CSL, and allows for the automated verification of properties concerning long-run and instantaneous rewards as well as cumulative rewards. In particular it supports to check the reachability of a set of goal states (by only visiting legal states before) under a time and an accumulated reward constraint. Several numerical algorithms and extensions thereof are included in MRMC.
LSTM can Solve Hard Long Time Lag Problems

Standard recurrent nets cannot deal with long minimal time lags between relevant signals. Several recent NIPS papers propose alternative methods. We first show: problems used to promote various previous algorithms can be solved more quickly by random weight guessing than by the proposed algorithms. We then use LSTM, our own recent algorithm, to solve a hard problem that can neither be quickly solved by random search nor by any other recurrent net algorithm we are aware of.
Gender Differences in Aspirations and Attainment: The life course consequences of single-sex and co-educational schooling

This chapter reports on a study examining whether attending single-sex rather than coeducational secondary schools made a difference to the lives of a cohort of men and women born in Britain in 1958. The project aimed to assess the impact of single-sex secondary schooling, not just on short term and narrowly academic outcomes, but also on longer term social, psychological and economic outcomes. In a generally gendered environment for adults, did it make any difference to have been to a gender segregated school, and in what way? This chapter provides an overview of our findings, and a discussion of the implications for policy and for future research.