Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Choosing the Future for a Child with a Severe Hearing‐Impairment

This study explores the choices made by parents of children who are severely hearing‐impaired or deaf. It also gives ideas how to support these children at school. In a six‐year longitudinal study, eleven families completed the study questionnaire four times. Questions were related to choice of hearing aid, methods of communication and educational settings, as well as the everyday experiences of life with a hearing‐impaired child. Analysis of the results was informed by the work of Bourdieu. The findings indicate that while other ways of communicating were also used, parents preferred to communicate with their child within their own hearing field – that is, by means of speech – and choosing a cochlear implant made this possible. While the preferred educational setting was a regular school, special settings were also chosen, especially for children with multiple disabilities. Parents’ choices commonly entailed hesitation, disagreement and a tendency to move towards hearing culture; in some cases, these choices changed during the study period. The article discusses parents’ choices and their descriptions of daily life with their child who is severely hearing‐impaired or deaf, ranging from wholly ordinary to something quite distinct or different. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Stability of parallel/perpendicular domain boundaries in lamellar block copolymers under oscillatory shear

We introduce a model constitutive law for the dissipative stress tensor of lamellar phases to account for low frequency and long wavelength flows. Given the uniaxial symmetry of these phases, we argue that the dissipative stress tensor must be similar to that of nematics/smectics but with the local variable being the slowly varying lamellar wave vector. This assumption leads to a dependence of the effective dynamic viscosity on orientation of the lamellar phase. We then consider a model configuration comprising a domain boundary separating laterally unbounded domains of so called parallel and perpendicularly oriented lamellae in a uniform, oscillatory, shear flow, and show that the configuration can be hydrodynamically unstable for the constitutive law chosen. It is argued that this instability and the secondary flows it creates can be used to infer a possible mechanism for orientation selection in shear experiments.
ON THE TOTAL CURVATURE OF SEMIALGEBRAIC GRAPHS

We deflne the total curvature of a semialgebraic graph i ‰ R 3 as an integral K(i) = R i d", where " is a certain Borel measure completely determined by the local extrinsic geometry of i. We prove that it satisfles the Chern-Lashof inequality K(i) ‚ b(i), where b(i) = b0(i) +b1(i), and we completely characterize those graphs for which we have equality. We also prove the following unknottedness result: if i ‰ R 3 is homeomorphic to the suspension of an n-point set, and satisfles the inequality K(i) 0 there exists a knotted semialgebraic embedding i of G in R 3 satisfying K(i) < " + b(i).
RADIOGRAPHIC ASSESSMENT IN THE TREATMENT OF SUPRACONDYLAR HUMERUS FRACTURES IN CHILDREN

Introduction: Supracondylar humerus fractures are the most common fractures of the humerus at the elbow in children. The key role belongs to the age and immaturity of the humerus region. Treatment, even today represents the problem of bone and joint surgery. Gartland classification divides these fractures into four types. Analysis of radiographic parameters will serve as an indicator for treatment selection. Goal: To demonstrate the role of radiographic evaluation by measurement of default radiographic parameters and indicate the choice of treatment for supracondylar fractures of type I and II by Gartland. Material and methods: The study included 60 children aged 4-14 years, divided into two groups, first with initial radiographic analysis and the second one without radiographic analysis. All were treated at the Primary Health Care Center Novi Travnik and Nova Bila Hospital from 2009 to 2011. Analysis was performed using methods of descriptive statistics to calculate the mean and standard deviation, Student’s t-test and Chi-square test. Results: In patients from first group hospitalization, immobilization duration, as well as physical treatment was shorter and more frequently surgical treatment was applied (manual reduction with K-wire fixation) with statistically significant difference (p = 0.042). Conclusion: Radiographic evaluation is one way to choose methods of fracture treatment. The incidence of complications is low, with excellent outcome of treatment and a faster return of children to their daily activities.
Does using a smartphone for work purposes “ruin” your leisure? Examining the role of smartphone use in work–leisure conflict and life satisfaction

Abstract This study examined a model centered on the concept of work-leisure conflict that included three antecedents (daily smartphone use, work overload due to smartphone use, and segmentation culture) and two consequences (work stress and life satisfaction). In all, 462 workers aged 19–55 years completed the survey instruments. Of 13 hypotheses, 10 were supported in the bivariate analyses, and the final structural model of significant factors demonstrated a good fit. Smartphone-based work overload (+) and segmentation culture (-) were associated with time- (T-WIL) and strain-based (S-WIL) work interference with leisure. These, in turn, were directly (S-WIL) and indirectly (T-WIL and S-WIL) associated with lower levels of life satisfaction. This study provides a model of smartphone use and its relationships to work–leisure conflict and related factors. These findings have implications for policy and practice related to work-based smartphone usage and highlight the possible detrimental and positive effects of technology on leisure.
Encapsulating Peritoneal Sclerosis – A rare and serious complication of peritoneal dialysis: Case series

Introduction. Encapsulating peritoneal sclerosis is a pathological entity mainly associated with peritoneal dialysis (PD). The clinical syndrome is characterized by various degrees of intestinal obstruction due to thickening, sclerosis and calcification of peritoneum resulting in the encapsulation and cocooning of the bowel. It is a rare but potentially devastating complication associated with a considerable morbidity and mortality. Materials and methods. Cases of encapsulating peritoneal sclerosis (EPS), diagnosed in the Surgical Clinic of “Cantacuzino” Hospital, between 2007 and 2014 were retrospectively reviewed. During this interval, 432 surgical interventions related to peritoneal dialysis were performed: 306 peritoneal access interventions and 124 complications, of which 15 patients with EPS. Results. In all but two cases, the EPS diagnostic was established at the time of the surgical intervention addressed to other complication or pathology. Moreover, in 2 of the 15 patients the diagnostic was established approximately 5 months after PD was discontinued, and, in one of these patients at the time of the extraction of the dialysis catheter. 12 of 15 patients were diabetic. Most patients had a history of multiple peritonitis episodes. All the patients required the passing from peritoneal dialysis to hemodialysis. There were 4 deaths (26,6%) of which one was around two months from the diagnosis. Conclusions. The timely diagnosis of the condition and the appropriate phase-specific treatment is of utmost importance in EPS. In advanced stages, the surgical intervention performed by a well-trained team could achieve good long-term results.
Few gender differences in Swedish medical students ’ specialty preferences A Study of Motivational Factors and their Impact on Last-Year Students ’ Specialty Preferences

2. The methods seem appropriate and are well described. I only have a few questions: The first is, does the specialty “psychiatry” also include child-psychiatry? The second concerns the group named “uncertain” which also included those who opted for two or more specialties. Was there any pattern in their choice of specialties, and were there more women than men who opted for more than one specialty?
Approximation Error Estimates and Inverse Inequalities for B-Splines of Maximum Smoothness

In this paper, we will give approximation error estimates as well as corresponding inverse inequalities for B-splines of maximum smoothness, where both the function to be approximated and the approximation error are measured in standard Sobolev norms and semi-norms. The presented approximation error estimates do not depend on the polynomial degree of the splines but only on the mesh size. We will see that the approximation lives in a subspace of the classical Bspline space. We show that for this subspace, there is an inverse inequality which is also independent of the polynomial degree. As the approximation error estimate and the inverse inequality show complementary behavior, the results shown in this paper can be used to construct fast iterative methods for solving problems arising from isogeometric discretizations of partial differential equations.
The Role of Flexibility in Structure-Based Acceleration for Online Convex Optimization

Online convex optimization (OCO) has seen much success for its ability to handle decisionmaking in dynamic, uncertain, or even adversarial environments. We examine the implications of introducing flexibility to OCO framework via three simple modifications to its standard assumptions: we introduce two new concepts of weighted regret and online saddle point problems and study the possibility of making lookahead decisions. We adapt two commonly used offline first-order convex optimization algorithms, namely Mirror Descent and Mirror Prox, to an online setting and demonstrate how these new flexibilities are instrumental in exploiting structural properties of functions which results in improved convergence rates. In particular, relaxing the usual OCO assumption of uniform weights (anticipatory decisions) allows us to utilize algorithms that can significantly speed up the convergence and go beyond the established lower bounds on regret for strongly convex (smooth) loss functions.
High-Mass Star Formation. I. The Mass Distribution of Submillimeter Clumps in NGC 7538

We present submillimeter continuum maps at 450 and 850 μm of a 12′ × 8′ region of the NGC 7538 high-mass star-forming region, made using the Submillimeter Common-User Bolometer Array (SCUBA) on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope. We used an automated clump-finding algorithm to identify 67 clumps in the 450 μm image and 77 in the 850 μm image. Contrary to previous studies, we find a positive correlation between high spectral index, α, and high submillimeter flux, with the difference being accounted for by different treatments of the error beam. We interpret the higher spectral index at submillimeter peaks as a reflection of elevated dust temperature, particularly when there is an embedded infrared source, although it may also reflect changing dust properties. The clump mass-radius relationship is well fitted by a power law of the form M ∝ R-x with x = 1.5-2.1, consistent with theories of turbulently supported clumps. According to our most reliable analysis, the high-mass end (~100-2700 M☉) of the submillimeter clump mass function in NGC 7538 follows a Salpeter-like power law with index 2.0 ± 0.3. This result agrees well with similar studies of lower mass regions ρ Oph and Orion B. We interpret the apparent invariance of the shape of the clump mass function over a broad range of parent cloud masses as evidence for the self-similarity of the physical processes that determine it. This result is consistent with models that suggest that turbulent fragmentation, acting at early times, is sufficient to set the clump mass function.
The Case for Exchange Rate Flexibility in Oil-Exporting Economies

High oil prices are again transforming oil-exporting countries. With oil trading at $90 a barrel, government coffers in these countries are overflowing with the oil windfall, and stock markets there are booming. However, one feature of these oil exporters has not changed: their propensity to peg to the dollar. Large oil-exporting economies that border the Persian Gulf peg to the dollar even more tightly than China does while some others peg to a basket of currencies of oil-importing countries--mainly the dollar and the euro. These economies are making a policy mistake. They would be better served by a currency regime that assures their currencies depreciate when the price of oil falls and appreciate when the price of oil rises. Those that lack the institutions to conduct an autonomous monetary policy should peg to a basket that includes the price of oil. Exchange rate flexibility would reduce the need for domestic prices in the oil-exporting economies to rise and fall along with the price of oil, create additional room for monetary policy to reflect domestic conditions, and help oil-exporting economies manage the large swings in government revenue that accompany large swings in the oil price. The time has come to decouple the currencies of large oil-exporting economies from the dollar.
Health-related quality of life, anxiety, and depressive symptoms in children with primary immunodeficiencies

Introduction The aims of this study were to evaluate levels of health-related quality of life (HRQOL) and the presence of anxiety and depressive symptoms in children with primary immunodeficiency disease (PID) in Serbia. Materials and methods Self- and parent-rated data from 25 children with PID were available. As controls, data from 50 children with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) and 89 healthy children were included. The Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory was used for HRQOL assessments. Anxiety symptoms were identified using the Screen for Child Anxiety-Related Emotional Disorders questionnaire, while depressive symptoms were identified using the Mood and Feeling Questionnaire. Results Children with PID had significantly lower Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory total scores compared to children with JIA and healthy children as child-rated (P=0.02) and parent-rated (P<0.001). Specifically, they had significantly lowered emotional functioning compared to children with JIA, and social functioning compared to both children with JIA and healthy children. School functioning was significantly lower among children with PID (parent-rated only). By parent-rated responses, six (24%) out of 25 children with PID had significant anxiety symptoms, while five (20%) children had significant depressive symptoms, which was statistically higher than among children with JIA and healthy controls (P=0.05). Conclusion HRQOL could be significantly compromised in children with PID, particularly across such psychosocial domains as emotional, social, and school. These children were also found to be at an increased risk for suffering significant anxiety and depressive symptoms.
Sport cooperation in divided Korea: an overstated role of sport diplomacy in South Korea

Abstract Sport, widely believed to have a positive utility in the diplomatic arena, has been adopted by the North and South Korean governments from the early 1960s onwards. However, sport exchanges on the divided peninsula functioned as a social agent only when political reconciliation and cooperation prevailed already. Thus, the aim of this article is to understand the relationship between sport and international relations with particular reference to the cases of Korea and Germany. It seeks to critically explore the role of sport as a diplomatic vehicle in inter-Korean relations from a historical and political context, while focusing on the integration theories. This article also uses the German case to highlight how sport has played a role in the process of German reunification. Then this paper argues that sport has not been a crucial factor in promoting either reconciliation or unification, and the utmost efforts to institutionalize sport exchanges are essential.
Data-free Parameter Pruning for Deep Neural Networks

Deep Neural nets (NNs) with millions of parameters are at the heart of many state-of-the-art computer vision systems today. However, recent works have shown that much smaller models can achieve similar levels of performance. In this work, we address the problem of pruning parameters in a trained NN model. Instead of removing individual weights one at a time as done in previous works, we remove one neuron at a time. We show how similar neurons are redundant, and propose a systematic way to remove them. Our experiments in pruning the densely connected layers show that we can remove upto 85\% of the total parameters in an MNIST-trained network, and about 35\% for AlexNet without significantly affecting performance. Our method can be applied on top of most networks with a fully connected layer to give a smaller network.
Dynamic load balancing and efficient load estimators for asynchronous iterative algorithms

In a previous paper, we have shown the very high power of asynchronism for parallel iterative algorithms in a global context of grid computing. In this article, we study the interest of coupling load balancing with asynchronism in such algorithms. After proposing a noncentralized version of dynamic load balancing which is best suited to asynchronism, we verify its efficiency by some experiments on a general partial differential equation (PDE) problem. Finally, we give some general conditions for the use of load balancing to obtain good results with this kind of algorithm and discuss the choice of the residual as an efficient load estimator.
Conjugated equine estrogens and global cognitive function in postmenopausal women: Women's Health Initiative Memory Study.

CONTEXT The Women's Health Initiative Memory Study (WHIMS) previously reported that estrogen plus progestin therapy does not protect cognition among women aged 65 years or older. The effect of estrogen-alone therapy, also evaluated in WHIMS, on cognition has not been established for this population. OBJECTIVES To determine whether conjugated equine estrogen (CEE) alters global cognitive function in older women and to compare its effect with CEE plus medroxyprogesterone acetate (CEE plus MPA). DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled ancillary study of the Women's Health Initiative (WHI), WHIMS evaluated the effect of CEE on incidence of probable dementia among community-dwelling women aged 65 to 79 years with prior hysterectomy from 39 US academic centers that started in June 1995. Of 3200 eligible women free of probable dementia enrolled in the WHI, 2947 (92.1%) were enrolled in WHIMS. Analyses were conducted on the 2808 women (95.3%) with a baseline and at least 1 follow-up measure of global cognitive function before the trial's termination on February 29, 2004. INTERVENTIONS Participants received 1 daily tablet containing either 0.625 mg of CEE (n = 1387) or matching placebo (n = 1421). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE Global cognitive function measured annually with the Modified Mini-Mental State Examination (3MSE). RESULTS During a mean follow-up of 5.4 years, mean (SE) 3MSE scores were 0.26 (0.13) units lower than among women assigned to CEE compared with placebo (P =.04). For pooled hormone therapy (CEE combined with CEE plus MPA), the mean (SE) decrease was 0.21 (0.08; P =.006). Removing women with dementia, mild cognitive impairment, or stroke from the analyses lessened these differences. The adverse effect of hormone therapy was more pronounced among women with lower cognitive function at baseline (all P<.01). For women assigned to CEE compared with placebo, the relative risk of having a 10-unit decrease in 3MSE scores (>2 SDs) was estimated to be 1.47 (95% confidence interval, 1.04-2.07). CONCLUSION For women aged 65 years or older, hormone therapy had an adverse effect on cognition, which was greater among women with lower cognitive function at initiation of treatment.
An Evaluation of Staff Preference for Graphic Characteristics

ABSTRACT The purpose of the current study was to assess staff preference for how data were displayed on graphs. Specifically, preference for line versus bar graphs was assessed, as well as preference for data displayed as one date in time versus multiple dates showing performance trends. A secondary purpose of the study was to assess staff comprehension of the data presented across different graphic displays. Participants included 60 entry-level direct care staff and 25 seasoned therapists. Therapists had more advanced training in applied behavior analysis than the direct care staff. The vast majority of direct care staff preferred data depicted as a bar graph versus data depicted as a line graph, even preferring a single bar graph over a time-series line graph. The therapists preferred time-series line graphs to bar graphs. Most staff demonstrated understanding of the data, regardless of how it was depicted.
Recommendation via user's personality and social contextual

With the advent and popularity of social network, more and more users like to share their experiences, such as ratings, reviews, and blogs. The new factors of social network like interpersonal influence and interest based on circles of friends bring opportunities and challenges for recommender system (RS) to solve the cold start and sparsity problem of datasets. Some of the social factors have been used in RS, but have not been fully considered. In this paper, three social factors, personal interest, interpersonal interest similarity and interpersonal influence, fuse into a unified personalized recommendation model based on probabilistic matrix factorization. The factor of personal interest can make the RS recommend items to meet users' individualities, especially for experienced users. Moreover, for cold start users, the interpersonal interest similarity and interpersonal influence can enhance the intrinsic link among features in the latent space. We conduct a series of experiments on real rating datasets. Experimental results show the proposed approach outperforms the existing RS approaches .
Transient fields produced by a cylindrical electron beam flowing through a plasma

The out-of-equilibrium situation in which an initially sharp-edged cylindrical electron beam, that could e.g. model electrons flowing within a wire, is injected into a plasma is considered. A detailed computation of the subsequently produced magnetic field is presented. The control parameter of the problem is shown to be the ratio of the beam radius to the electron skin depth. Two alternative ways to address analytically the problem are considered: one uses the usual Laplace transform approach, the other one involves Riemann’s method in which causality conditions manifest through some integrals of triple products of Bessel functions.
Self-tuning network support for MANETs

Rapid and unpredictable topology changes and resource constraints make delivering packets in a MANET (mobile ad hoc network) a challenging task. Routing information has to be updated to reflect the topology changes and maintain the correctness of route selection. On the other hand, the dissemination of control messages has to be optimised for efficient resource usage and to alleviate channel contention problems. To solve this problem, this dissertation focuses on how to automatically tune routing performance for MANETs in terms of packet delivery ratio and control overhead. The impacts of soft state signalling, especially the refresh intervals, are studied under various scenarios. A variety of topology advertisement strategies are presented. Two self-tuning neighbour detection schemes are proposed, the dynamic timer algorithm and the fast neighbour handshake algorithm, in order to enhance routing performance.