Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Assessing nurses' attitudes toward death and caring for dying patients in a comprehensive cancer center.

PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES To assess how nurses employed in a comprehensive cancer center feel about death and caring for dying patients and examine any relationships between their attitudes and demographic factors. DESIGN Descriptive quantitative. SETTING A 432-bed comprehensive cancer center in New York, NY. SAMPLE A convenience sample of 355 inpatient and outpatient oncology nurses. METHODS Voluntary and anonymous completion of the Frommelt Attitude Toward Care of the Dying (FATCOD), the Death Attitude Profile-Revised (DAP-R), and a demographic questionnaire. MAIN RESEARCH VARIABLES Years of total nursing experience, years employed at the cancer center, previous experience with caring for dying patients, age, gender, and attitudes toward death and caring for dying patients. FINDINGS Statistically significant relationships were noted among age, nursing experience, previous experience with caring for terminally ill patients, and scores on the FATCOD and DAP-R. Nursing experience and age were the variables most likely to predict nurses' attitudes toward death and caring for dying patients. CONCLUSIONS RNs with more work experience tended to have more positive attitudes toward death and caring for dying patients. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING Based on the data collected in the study, less experienced oncology nurses will most likely benefit from increased education, training, and exposure to providing and coping effectively with end-of-life care.
Reconceptualizing the Communicative Action of Publics: Acquisition, Selection, and Transmission of Information in Problematic Situations

This article proposes a new concept about communication behaviors related to problem solving. Communicative action is epiphenomenal to problem solving: As problem solvers, members of a public use communication as an instrument to cope with their problematic life situations. A good theoretical description of the communicative features of problem solving, therefore, is critical to understanding the social phenomena related to the development and behavior of publics. In existing literature, however, communication behaviors are conceptualized mostly as acts of information acquisition with little regard to other communicative actions such as information transmission. In this article, we propose a new model, communicative action in problem solving, which encompasses broader aspects of communication behaviors related to a problematic life situation: information acquisition, information selection, and information transmission. We then test the reliability and validity of the new construct for one personal and two social problems. Finally, we discuss the theoretical and practical implications of the new concept for public relations research and practice.
THE SELF-LOVING SELF-LEADER: AN EXAMINATION OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SELF-LEADERSHIP AND THE DARK TRIAD

Self-leadership should be integrated within a nomological network, and its associations with the Dark Triad of personality comprising narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy, explored. In this self-report study, participants completed measures of self-leadership and the Dark Triad. Narcissism was positively associated with self-leadership scales, whereas Machiavellianism and psychopathy were not. Findings are discussed with respect to narcissism’s role in self-leadership, and future lines of research are proposed.
Measuring Visual Response to Clothing

Two groups of females differing in age, students and nonstudents, were presented with five photographs of clothed bodies. Each subject was asked to respond to each photograph using an instrument made up of 56 semantic scales. The scales were chosen to represent a range of responses encountered in the visual perception of the clothed body. Multivariate analysis methods were used to test for differences among the costumes, the two observer groups, and the observers within the groups. Consistency in response to the costumes was found between the two groups. The residual vectors were analyzed by principal components and word pairs which were rated similarly were grouped and interpreted. The evaluative component which explained the largest variance included words such as like-dislike and fashionable-unfash ionable. The next four components included word pairs relating to uncertainty, complexity, and potency.
Characterization of the Polycaprolactone Melt Crystallization: Complementary Optical Microscopy, DSC, and AFM Studies

The first stages of the crystallization of polycaprolactone (PCL) were studied using several techniques. The crystallization exotherms measured by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) were analyzed and compared with results obtained by polarized optical microscopy (POM), rheology, and atomic force microscope (AFM). The experimental results suggest a strong influence of the observation scale. In particular, the AFM, even if limited on time scale, appears to be the most sensitive technique to detect the first stages of crystallization. On the contrary, at least in the case analysed in this work, rheology appears to be the least sensitive technique. DSC and POM provide closer results. This suggests that the definition of induction time in the polymer crystallization is a vague concept that, in any case, requires the definition of the technique used for its characterization.
The anatomy of the posterior aspect of the knee. An anatomic study.

BACKGROUND The orthopaedic literature contains relatively little quantitative information regarding the anatomy of the posterior aspect of the knee. The purpose of the present study was to provide a detailed description of, and to propose a standard nomenclature for, the anatomy of the posterior aspect of the knee. METHODS Detailed dissection of twenty nonpaired, fresh-frozen knees was performed. Posterior knee structures were measured according to length, width, and/or distance to reproducible osseous landmarks. RESULTS The semimembranosus tendon had eight attachments distal to the main common tendon. The main components were a lateral expansion to the oblique popliteal ligament; a direct arm, which attached to the tibia; and an anterior arm. The oblique popliteal ligament, the largest posterior knee structure, formed a broad fascial sheath over the posterior aspect of the knee and measured 48.0 mm in length and 9.5 mm wide at its medial origin and 16.4 mm wide at its lateral attachment. It had two lateral attachments, one to the meniscofemoral portion of the posterolateral joint capsule and one to the tibia, along the lateral border of the posterior cruciate ligament facet. The semimembranosus also had a distal tibial expansion, which formed a posterior fascial layer over the popliteus muscle. A thickening of the posterior joint capsule, the proximal popliteus capsular expansion, which in this study averaged 40.5 mm in length, connected the posteromedial knee capsule at its attachment at the intercondylar notch to the medial border of the popliteus musculotendinous junction. The plantaris muscle, popliteofibular ligament, fabellofibular ligament, and semimembranosus bursa were present in all specimens. CONCLUSIONS The anatomy of the posterior aspect of the knee is quite complex. This study provides information that can lead to further biomechanical, radiographic imaging, and clinical studies of the importance of these posterior knee structures.
Evidence for Existence of a Nuclear Pore Complex-mediated, Cytosol-independent Pathway of Nuclear Translocation of ERK MAP Kinase in Permeabilized Cells*

The classical mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK, also known as ERK) pathway is widely involved in eukaryotic signal transductions. In response to extracellular stimuli, MAPK becomes activated and translocates from the cytoplasm to the nucleus. At least two pathways for the nuclear import of MAPK are shown to exist; passive diffusion of a monomer and Ran-dependent active transport of a dimer, the detailed molecular mechanism of which is unknown. In this study, we have reconstituted nuclear import of MAPKin vitro by using digitonin-permeabilized cells with GFP-fused MAPK protein (GFP-MAPK), which is too large to pass through the nuclear pore by passive diffusion. GFP-MAPK was able to accumulate in the nucleus irrespective of its phosphorylation state. This import of GFP-MAPK occurred even in the absence of any soluble cytosolic factors or ATP but was inhibited by wheat germ agglutinin or an excess amount of importin-β or at low temperatures. Moreover, MAPK directly bound to an FG repeat region of nucleoporin CAN/Nup214in vitro. Taken together, these results suggest the third pathway for nuclear import of MAPK, in which MAPK passes through the nuclear pore by directly interacting with the nuclear pore complex.
Dimensional Analysis in Case-Based Reasoning

Abstract. Case-based reasoning is a method intended to develop knowledge based systems by imitating the behavior of human experts. Compared to classical rule-based reasoning, case-based reasoning attempts to solve new problems by using previous cases from a case base and adapting the solution of a similar problem according to the parameters of the new situation. In case-based systems, the quality of the solutions depends mainly on the similarity measure that is used to retrieve similar cases and on the adaptation rules to modify a solution of a similar case appropriately if there is no exact case in the case base available. For all case descriptions in physics and engineering consisting of real-valued quantities with physical units, it is shown how the pi-theorem of Buckingham can be used to derive appropriate similarity conditions and to provide an appropriate case adaptation. An application of the case-based reasoning technique based on dimensionless groups is demonstrated and compared to a conventional approach.
Application of Proportional-Integral sliding mode tracking controller to robot manipulators

This paper presents the development of a proportional-integral sliding mode controller for tracking problem of robot manipulators. A robust sliding mode controller is derived so that the actual trajectory tracks the desired trajectory as closely as possible despite the highly nonlinear and coupled dynamics. The proposed controller is designed using the centralized and decentralized approaches. The proportional-integral sliding mode is chosen to ensure the stability of overall dynamics during the entire period, i.e., the reaching phase and the sliding phase. Application to a two-link planar robot manipulator is considered.
Reflection Using an Online Discussion Forum: Impact on Student Learning and Satisfaction

The quasi‐experimental study reported in this paper examined whether students were more satisfied and learned more using an online discussion with peers or a hardcopy reflection with one‐time feedback from the facilitator/instructor. A t‐test was used to measure the difference between an experimental section and a comparison section of the same course on: post‐course ratings of how well the course objectives had been achieved, what students hoped to gain from the course, satisfaction with the course, and student end‐of‐the‐semester grades. Students in the group who participated in the weekly online discussions with peers indicated higher rates of accomplishing what they hoped to gain from the course than those who turned in weekly hardcopy reflections with one‐time feedback from the facilitator/instructor. Students expressed a preference for the method of reflection used in their course section. However, the students' ages emerged as an important variable in their preference for online discussion. There was significant difference between the groups on ratings of how well the course objectives had been achieved, but not in satisfaction with the course, or course grades.
Systematic Review of the profile of emergency contraception users

Abastract Objective: to discern the profile of the Spanish Emergency Contraceptive users (EC). Design: systematic review of contraceptive use in the Spanish population. Data Source: Spanish and international databases, between January 2006 - March 2011. Keywords: Contraceptives, Postcoital pills, emergency contraception, levonorgestrel, data collection. Study selection: original papers, letters to the editor in which stated aims were the description, prediction or measurement of variables related to EC use. Twenty-two papers were retrieved and fourteen were finally selected, all of which were descriptive. Data extraction: manuscripts were evaluated by two independent reviewers. Results: Women requesting EC have ages between 21-24 years, mostly single and university students; declare that they have not previously used EC, and attend an Emergency department, at weekends and within 48 hours following unprotected sexual intercourse. The reason is condom rupture. None of the studies reviewed measured alcohol and other drug consumption, the number of sexual partners, nor any of the studies performed a comparison with a group not using EC. Conclusions: lack of homogeneity and comprehensiveness of studied variables resulted in a limited profile of Spanish EC users. Further studies are needed with a more comprehensive approach if sexual health interventions are to be carried out in possible users.
Localized sensor area coverage with low communication overhead

We propose several localized sensor area coverage protocols, for arbitrary ratio of sensing and transmission radii. Sensors are assumed to be time synchronized, and active sensors are determined at the beginning of each round. The approach has a very small communication overhead since prior knowledge about neighbor existence is not required. Each node selects a random timeout and listens to messages sent by other nodes before the timeout expires. Sensor nodes whose sensing area is not fully covered (or fully covered but with a disconnected set of active sensors) when the deadline expires decide to remain active for the considered round, and transmit a message announcing their activity status. There are four variants in our approach, depending on whether or not negative and retreat messages are transmitted. Experimental results with ideal MAC layer show that, for a similar number of selected active sensors, our methods significantly reduce number of messages to decide activity compared to existing localized protocol, we also consider a MAC layer with collisions, and show that existing compared method, for dense networks, fails to cover the area reasonably. Our methods, however, still remain robust in terms of high area coverage with reasonable amount of active nodes, despite some message collisions
Early Life Predictors of Increased Body Mass Index among Indigenous Australian Children

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians are more likely than non-Indigenous Australians to be obese and experience chronic disease in adulthood—conditions linked to being overweight in childhood. Birthweight and prenatal exposures are associated with increased Body Mass Index (BMI) in other populations, but the relationship is unclear for Indigenous children. The Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children is an ongoing cohort study of up to 1,759 children across Australia. We used a multilevel model to examine the association between children’s birthweight and BMI z-score in 2011, at age 3-9 years, adjusted for sociodemographic and maternal factors. Complete data were available for 682 of the 1,264 children participating in the 2011 survey; we repeated the analyses in the full sample with BMI recorded (n=1,152) after multilevel multiple imputation. One in ten children were born large for gestational age, and 17% were born small for gestational age. Increasing birthweight predicted increasing BMI; a 1-unit increase in birthweight z-score was associated with a 0.22-unit (95% CI:0.13, 0.31) increase in childhood BMI z-score. Maternal smoking during pregnancy was associated with a significant increase (0.25; 95% CI:0.05, 0.45) in BMI z-score. The multiple imputation analysis indicated that our findings were not distorted by biases in the missing data. High birthweight may be a risk indicator for overweight and obesity among Indigenous children. National targets to reduce the incidence of low birthweight which measure progress by an increase in the population’s average birthweight may be ignoring a significant health risk; both ends of the spectrum must be considered. Interventions to improve maternal health during pregnancy are the first step to decreasing the prevalence of high BMI among the next generation of Indigenous children.
Effects of a Multicomponent Literacy Program and of Supplemental Phonological Sessions on At-Risk Kindergartners

In this study, a multicomponent literacy program for kindergarten classrooms was developed, implemented and its impact evaluated from the perspective of preventing reading failure and combining the approaches of emergent literacy and phonological awareness. The utility of adding phonological awareness sessions to the program was also assessed. Six classes composed of French-speaking children and located in a low SES area participated in the study, which included a comparison group. At the end of kindergarten, a significant treatment effect was found on Invented Spelling, Phonological Awareness and Reading Orientation. No significant effects on reading scores in Grade 1 were detected. Phonological sessions did not add to the treatment effect on phonological measures and reading scores. The findings confirm the benefits of emergent literacy programs with at-risk kindergartners and the need to pursue further research into strategies to improve the prevention of school failure.
Effect of Increasing Concentration of Bicarbonate on Plant Growth and Nutrient Uptake by Maize Plants

Increasing concentration of HCO ions in the nutrient medium progressively decreased the growth 3 of maize plants as measured by decrease in shoots and root weight, these effects becoming more distinct with time, particularly at the two higher levels of bicarbonate supply (10 and 20 mM). Various parameter of growth including plant height, root and shoot measurements, nutrient composition of shoots and roots and nutrient uptake were all affected in this manner as was also the appearance of iron chlorosis. In the cation-anion balance data of the roots and shoots, mineral cation totals exceeded anion totals for each HCO treatment and in the 3 same pattern was observed in the roots with high concentration levels, but it was more pronounced in the excess of Ca in the roots. These high Ca values suggest that the Ca may not have been taken up but rather 2+ 2+ 2+ accumulated on the root surface. Therefore, the specific effect on roots and shoots growth as compared with control may be due to inhibited respiration caused by high levels of bicarbonate treatments.
Code Generation for Functional Validation of Pipelined Microprocessors

Functional validation of pipelined microprocessors is a challenging task, as the behavior of a pipeline is determined by a sequence of instructions and by the interaction between their operands. This paper describes an approach to automatic test-program generation based on an evolutionary algorithm. The proposed methodology is able to tackle complex pipelined designs. Human intervention is limited to the formalized listing of the instruction set, and also internal parameters of the test program generator are auto-adapted. A prototype was built and exploited to generate test programs for the DLX/pII, a pipelined microprocessor. For the purpose of these experiments, test programs were devised trying to maximize the RT-level statement coverage. However, the method can be used to generate test programs on different target metrics. Results show the feasibility and effectiveness of the method.
Improvisational International Research: Seeking to Help Children in Ukrainian Orphanages Sooner than Later

Throughout the past decades tumultuous sociopolitical transitions in Ukraine, the number of orphaned children increased dramatically. Ukrainian orphanages commonly provide care for children without parents. While much data exist demonstrating the negative impact of institutional living on child development and functioning in adult life, more limited data reflects the mental status of children while institutionalized. Ascertaining the mental health needs of children in orphanages would inform practitioners and policymakers regarding programmatic interventions needed to mitigate social and emotional challenges in this population. Strategies could then be developed to increase social and emotional skills required for adjustment and adaptation into the larger community upon leaving institutional life. Support for such research and planned interventions seems an appropriate social work endeavor.
Motivated reasoning with stereotypes: Activation, application, and inhibition.

In this article, we review evidence showing that both the activation and the application of stereotypes may be influenced by motivation. When an applicable stereotype supports their desired impression of an individual, motivation can lead people to activate this stereotype, if they have not already activated it spontaneously. Motivation can also lead people to apply this stereotype to individuals to whom they might not have applied it otherwise. On the other hand, when an applicable stereotype casts doubt over their desired impression of an individual, motivation can lead people to inhibit the activation of this stereotype. Even if people are unable to inhibit its activation, motivation may still lead them to inhibit its application to this individual. People pick and choose among the many stereotypes applicable to an individual, activating those that support their desired impression of this individual and inhibiting those that interfere with it.
Connections in Randomly Oriented Graphs

Given an undirected graph G, let us randomly orient G by tossing independent (possibly biased) coins, one for each edge of G. Writing a → b for the event that there exists a directed path from a vertex a to a vertex b in such a random orientation, we prove that for any three vertices s, a and b of G, we have ℙ(s → a ∩ s → b) ⩾ ℙ(s → a) ℙ(s → b).
Liver segmentation based on SKFCM and improved GrowCut for CT images

Accurate liver segmentation is an essential and crucial step for computer-aided liver disease diagnosis and surgical planning. In this paper, a new coarse-to-fine method is proposed to segment liver for abdominal computed tomography (CT) images. This hierarchical framework consists of rough segmentation and refined segmentation. The rough segmentation is implemented based on a kernel fuzzy C-means algorithm with spatial information (SKFCM) algorithm and the refined segmentation is performed based on the proposed improved GrowCut (IGC) algorithm. The SKFCM algorithm introduces a kernel function and spatial constraint based on fuzzy c-means clustering (FCM) algorithm, which can reduce the effect of noise and improve the clustering ability. The IGC algorithm makes good use of the continuity of CT series in space which can automatically generate the seed labels and improve the efficiency of segmentation. The proposed method was applied to segment the liver for the whole dataset of abdominal CT images. The performance evaluation of segmentation results shows that the proposed liver segmentation method is accurate and efficient. Experimental results have been shown visually and achieve reasonable consistency.