Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Oxygen therapy for hypercapnic patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and acute respiratory failure: A randomized, controlled pilot study

Objective To investigate the effect of oxygen therapy on outcome and on symptomatic hypercapnia. Design Randomized, controlled, single-blind study. Setting Multidisciplinary intensive care unit of a university teaching hospital. Patients Patients admitted with a clinical diagnosis of an acute exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and a Pao2 <6.6 kPa (50 mm Hg) and Paco2 >6.6 kPa (50 mm Hg) on air. Interventions Patients received oxygen therapy titrated to increase arterial oxygen tension to >6.6 kPa (50 mm Hg) or >9 kPa (70 mm Hg). Patients in the low-oxygen tension group also received doxapram if they developed an acidosis with pH <7.2, whereas those in the high-oxygen tension group received doxapram if they developed symptomatic acidosis. Bronchodilator, steroid, and antibiotic therapy was standardized. Measurements and Main Results Two patients in the low-oxygen tension group (n = 17) required mechanical ventilation and another one died. No patients in the high-oxygen group (n = 17) had a poor outcome, but this difference was not significant. No patient in either group became comatose or developed an acute cardiac arrhythmia. Conclusions Traditional teaching related to oxygen therapy for hypercapnic patients with an acute exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease may be incorrect. A large randomized, controlled study is required to confirm this impression.
Does Intelligibility Affect Place Legibility? Understanding the Relationship Between Objective and Subjective Evaluations of the Urban Environment

Lynch has defined place legibility as the ease with which people understand the layout of a place. The concept essentially represents the composite mental image of a place. Alternatively, space-syntax literature has objectively defined the concept of intelligibility as the capacity of a space to give clues to the understanding of the system as a whole. This study contributes to understanding space-syntax theory as applied to spatial cognition by examining the effect of spatial configuration, measured by intelligibility, on place legibility, measured by sketch maps, recognition tests, and surveys. The results of the experimental study showed that the intelligibility of neighborhood layout influences place legibility. The findings of this study suggest that the space-syntax methodology could be used by urban designers and policy makers to understand and quantitatively manipulate one aspect of the environment, that is, intelligibility, which contributes to improved legibility.
Effects of CO2-driven ocean acidification on the early developmental stages of invertebrates

CO2 emissions arising from the burning of fossil fuels have altered seawater chemistry far more rapidly than the Earth has previously experienced, and the rate and extent of this change are expected to affect shallow water marine organisms. The increased CO2 diffuses from the atmos- phere into ocean surface waters, resulting in increased partial pressure of CO2, and reduced (CO3 2- ) and pH. The CO2-driven ocean acidification leads to a decrease in calcium carbonate (CaCO3) satu- ration state in the ocean surface waters and has potential impacts on calcifiers. The present study focuses on the effects of ocean acidification on early developmental and reproductive stages of calci- fiers, both of which are believed to be the most vulnerable stages to environmental change within a life cycle. Laboratory experiments revealed that ocean acidification has negative impacts on the fer- tilization, cleavage, larva, settlement and reproductive stages of several marine calcifiers, including echinoderm, bivalve, coral and crustacean species. There appear to be significant ontogenetic impacts and species-specific differences in tolerance to the high CO2 levels. The conclusion is that future changes in ocean acidity will potentially impact the population size and dynamics, as well as the community structure of calcifiers, and will therefore have negative impacts on marine eco- systems. Further studies are needed to evaluate the potential impacts on non-calcifiers, as well as the synergistic impacts of ocean acidification and climate change. Studies should also focus on the adaptive capability of marine organisms, which will be crucial to the ability to forecast how marine organisms and ecosystems will respond to the world's oceans as they warm and acidify.
New insights into bone morphogenetic protein signaling: focus on angiogenesis

Purpose of reviewThe role of bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs) in vasculogenesis is still not well understood, despite many recent developments in this area of research. In this review, we discuss the most recent studies that identify new critical mechanisms through which BMP signaling acts with a focus on angiogenesis. Recent findingsNew evidence brought to light over the last few years suggests that BMP-binding proteins, formerly thought of as antagonists, can also increase BMP activity under certain conditions. It has also recently been determined that components of the extracellular matrix are involved in the BMP signaling pathways that regulate angiogenesis. Through the BMP pathway, myosin-X and cyclooxygenase 2 serve as target genes that have been determined to play a role in blood vessel formation. BMPs also conduct Smad-independent signaling and crosstalk with other pathways. Finally, BMPs have been shown to play an antiangiogenic role in specific settings. SummaryBetter understanding of the BMP signaling pathway and its regulators can have potentially great effects on therapeutic strategies from cardiovascular disease to cancer.
Five-Factor Model of personality and Performance in Jobs Involving Interpersonal Interactions

In this article, the results of a meta-analysis that investigates the degree to which dimensions of the Five-Factor Model (FFM) of personality are related to performance in jobs involving interpersonal interactions are reported. The article also investigates whether the nature of the interactions with others moderates the personality-performance relations. The meta-analysis was based on 11 studies (total N = 1,586). each of which assessed the FFM at the construct level using the Personal Characteristics Inventory. Results support the hypothesis that Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, and Emotional Stability are positively related to performance in jobs involving interpersonal interactions. Results also support the hypothesis that Emotional Stability and Agreeableness are more strongly related to performance in jobs that involve team- work (where employees interact interdependently with coworkers), than in those that involve dyadic interactions with others (where employees provide a direct service to custom.
The effects of interactive staff training on staff programing and patient aggression in a psychiatric inpatient ward

Interactive staff training (IST) uses principles of organizational psychology to help line-level staff members design and implement social learning programs for severely mentally ill inpatients. IST is a training package that includes assessment of staff perceptions regarding programatic needs, selection of appropriate social learning strategies to meet these needs, appointment of a program committee from within the ward to champion development of the social learning strategy, and participative decision making about aspects of the social learning strategy. Staff on an extended care ward at a state hospital participated in IST for 15 months as part of a pilot study of its effects. Ongoing examination of ward programing showed that IST significantly increased staff and patient participation in rehabilitation programing and decreased the rate of physical restraints and aggression-related. Changes in staff attitudes about rehabilitation programing were noted on a subsample of IST participants. Implications for more controlled research into IST are discussed.
HPDA: A hybrid parity-based disk array for enhanced performance and reliability

A single flash-based Solid State Drive (SSD) can not satisfy the capacity, performance and reliability requirements of a modern storage system supporting increasingly demanding data-intensive computing applications. Applying RAID schemes to SSDs to meet these requirements, while a logical and viable solution, faces many challenges. In this paper, we propose a Hybrid Parity-based Disk Array architecture, HPDA, which combines a group of SSDs and two hard disk drives (HDDs) to improve the performance and reliability of SSD-based storage systems. In HPDA, the SSDs (data disks) and part of one HDD (parity disk) compose a RAID4 disk array. Meanwhile, a second HDD and the free space of the parity disk are mirrored to form a RAID1-style write buffer that temporarily absorbs the small write requests and acts as a surrogate set during recovery when a disk fails. The write data is reclaimed back to the data disks during the lightly loaded or idle periods of the system. Reliability analysis shows that the reliability of HPDA, in terms of MTTDL (Mean Time To Data Loss), is better than that of either pure HDD-based or SSD-based disk array. Our prototype implementation of HPDA and performance evaluations show that HPDA significantly outperforms either HDD-based or SSD-based disk array.
Reviewing the Literature on the Student Learning Experience in Higher Education.

This paper reports on the work of a six-month review project commissioned by the Higher Education Academy which aimed at mapping the research base around the student learning experience in higher education (HE). The project aimed to: (1) provide an overview of the ways in which the student learning experience in HE has been and is conceptualised; (2) provide an overview of interventions aimed at producing a more effective learning experience; and (3) review the methodological approaches adopted to investigate the student learning experience. The paper outlines the review approach adopted by this project and presents an analytical map in which reviewed studies are categorised in terms of the methods they adopt and the area of investigation. Selected findings in the areas of inventory-based studies, assessment and feedback and teaching, curriculum and learning environments are discussed. The project identified a large, but broad, heterogeneous and somewhat scattered research base, dominated by a tradition of studies using inventory methods, and otherwise by small and localised studies often conducted by practitioners researching their own subject areas. The paper concludes with a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the project's methods, and recommendations for developing the student learning experience research base in the future.
Anosognosia and extrapersonal neglect as predictors of functional recovery following right hemisphere stroke

Abstract Among the neuropsychological disorders frequently associated with hemiplegia from stroke, neglect is considered to be responsible for the poor motor and functional recovery of left hemiplegics. Within the syndrome of Unilateral Spatial Neglect, we studied the role played by extrapersonal neglect, personal neglect, and anosognosia on recovery from left hemiplegia. Our follow-up study, conducted on left hemiplegic patients with or without neuropsychological disturbances, shows that the presence of anosognosia is the worst prognostic factor for the motor and functional recovery from left hemiplegia due to stroke and that patients with extrapersonal neglect only have the same prognosis as patients without neuropsychological disorders.
The Effects of a Communication Training Program on Communication and Interpersonal Relationships of Nursing Students

Purpose: The present study was to examine the effects of a communication training program on nursing students` interpersonal communication and relationships. Methods: This study was quasi-experimental research using a non-equivalent pre-post design. The subjects were 40 sophomore nursing students who were divided into an experimental group of 20 members and a control group of 20 members. The communication training program consisted of 8 sessions of small group training and each session lasted 120 minutes. A pretest, posttest and follow-up test (6 months after the program was terminated) were conducted to measure Inter-personal Communication Inventory and Relationships Scale. Data was analyzed by -test, independent t-test, paired t-test and Friedman test with SPSS. Results: The communication training program was very effective in enhancing the nursing students` communication and interpersonal abilities. Nursing students` communication ability in the experimental group, however, decreases after 6 months while there is no change in the control group. Nursing students` interpersonal relationships in the experimental group was maintained at the follow-up test. Conclusions: This study supports that a communication training program has a positive effect on improving the nursing students` communication skill and interpersonal relationships.
The swiss reserve market: Stochastic programming in practice

This paper presents the evolution and design of the Swiss reserve market and describes its two-stage stochastic market-clearing model. In Switzerland, the reserve market comprises weekly and daily auctions. The decision-making problem is to determine the amount of reserves that should be procured in each market stage. The stochasticity stems from daily offers which are not available at the beginning of the week, when the first-stage decisions are made. The new market-clearing model minimizes expected procurement costs of reserves, while taking reserve dimensioning criteria and market properties into consideration.
A single bisphosphonate infusion does not accelerate fracture healing in high tibial osteotomies

Background Bisphosphonates increase the callus size and strength in animal fracture studies. In a human non-randomized pilot study of high tibial osteotomies in knee osteoarthritis, using the hemicallotasis (HCO) technique, bisphosphonates shortened the healing time by 12 days. In the present randomized study, we wanted to determine whether a single infusion of zoledronic acid reduces the time to clinical osteotomy healing. Results from the same trial, showing improved pin fixation with zoledronate, have been published separately. Methods 46 consecutive patients (aged 35–65 years) were operated. At 4 weeks postoperatively, the patients were randomized to an intravenous infusion of either zoledronic acid or sodium chloride. Dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) was performed 10 weeks postoperatively. Radiographs were taken at 10 weeks and every second week until there was radiographic and clinical healing. Healing was evaluated blind, with extraction of the external fixator as the endpoint. At 1.5 years, an additional radiograph was taken and the hip-knee-ankle (HKA) angle measured to evaluate whether correction had been retained. Results All osteotomies healed with no difference in healing time between the groups (77 (SD 7) days). Bone mineral density and bone mineral content, as assessed with DEXA, were similar between the groups. Radiographically, both groups had retained the acquired correction at the 1.5-year follow-up. Interpretation In this randomized comparison, a single infusion of zoledronic acid increased the pin fixation of the external frame but did not shorten the healing time. In both groups, the external fixator was extracted almost 2 weeks earlier than in previous studies. The early extraction did not cause a loss of correction in either group.
Relativized Separation of Reversible and Irreversible Space-Time Complexity Classes

Reversible computing can reduce the energy dissipation of computation, which can improve cost-efficiency in some contexts. But the practical applicability of this method depends sensitively on the space and time overhead required by reversible algorithms. Time and space complexity classes for reversible machines match conventional ones, but we conjecture that the joint space-time complexity classes are different, and that a particular reduction by Bennett minimizes the space-time product complexity of general reversible computations. We provide an oracle-relativized proof of the separation, and of a lower bound on space for linear-time reversible simulations. A non-oracle proof applies when a read-only input is omitted from the space accounting. Both constructions model one-way function iteration, conjectured to be a problem for which Bennett's algorithm is optimal.
Prognostic Significance of Histologic Features in Canine Renal Cell Carcinomas

The prognostic significance of histologic and clinical features was evaluated in a retrospective study of 70 dogs treated with nephrectomy for renal cell carcinoma. Dogs presenting with hematuria and cachexia had significantly decreased overall and tumor-specific survival. Mitotic index (MI), nuclear size, nuclear pleomorphism, tumor differentiation, invasiveness, Fuhrman nuclear grade, and clear cell morphology were significantly associated with survival times (overall and tumor specific) in univariate analyses. A multivariate Cox proportional hazards model was constructed using stepwise selection to evaluate potential histologic predictor variables. This multivariate analysis revealed MI, defined as the number of mitotic figures in ten 400× fields, as the sole independent prognostic variable. Median survival for dogs with an MI >30 was 187 days compared with 1184 days for dogs with an MI of <10. Dogs with an intermediate MI of 10 to 30 had a median survival of 452 days. Canine renal carcinomas were categorized into the following subtypes based on histologic features and histochemical and immunohistochemical staining: (1) clear cell, (2) chromophobe, (3) papillary, and (4) multilocular cystic renal cell carcinomas. Clear cell carcinoma was diagnosed in 6 of 70 (9%) canine tumors and was associated with a significantly decreased median survival time. Papillary carcinomas were identified in 15 of 70 tumors (21%), chromophobe in 6 of 70 (9%), and the multilocular cystic variant of canine renal cell carcinoma in 3 of 70 tumors (4%). These findings facilitate uniform categorization of canine renal cell carcinoma and provide veterinary pathologists with criteria to determine prognostic information.
Student variables in the evaluation of mediated learning environments

This paper discusses the results of the student dimension in an evaluation applied to an educational teleconferencing system in a Mexican higher education institution. Traditionally, this institution has gained prestige for its face‐to‐face programs, and students are not used to mediated or distance learning. Courses offered through this system are based on a pedagogical model which emphasises the active role of the learner. Therefore, student variables such as perceptions of the self, and self‐regulatory processes become key components in this learning environment. Conclusions here presented correspond to: (i) students’ expectations; (ii) perceptions of efficacy for self‐regulated learning, and perceptions of the course, and of the teacher's and learner's work. Results indicate students’ expectations focus on ‘learning more than in face‐to‐face situations’, followed by ‘using technology’, and ‘having freedom and initiative’. Perceptions of efficacy for self‐regulated learning were high overall. Nevertheless, analyses of individual items indicate specific areas requiring improvement. Qualitative data on perceptions of the course, and teachers’ and learners’ work suggest that these courses are more demanding than the face‐to‐face ones they are taking. Students’ responses include attitudinal and cognitive adjustments needed for these learning environments. These results have led to improvements, which are presently being applied. The importance of considering these student variables in evaluations of mediated learning environments is discussed.
Association of increasing burn severity in mice with delayed mobilization of circulating angiogenic cells.

OBJECTIVE To perform a systematic exploration of the phenomenon of mobilization of circulating angiogenic cells (CACs) in an animal model. This phenomenon has been observed in patients with cutaneous burn wounds and may be an important mechanism for vasculogenesis in burn wound healing. DESIGN We used a murine model, in which burn depth can be varied precisely, and a validated culture method for quantifying circulating CACs. SETTING Michael D. Hendrix Burn Research Center, Baltimore, Maryland. PARTICIPANTS Male 129S1/SvImJ mice, aged 8 weeks, and 31 patients aged 19-59 years with burn injury on 1% to 64% of the body surface area and evidence of hemodynamic stability. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Burn wound histological features, including immunohistochemistry for blood vessels with CD31 and alpha-smooth muscle actin antibodies, blood flow measured with laser Doppler perfusion imaging, and mobilization of CACs into circulating blood measured with a validated culture technique. RESULTS Increasing burn depth resulted in a progressive delay in the time to mobilization of circulating CACs and reduced mobilization of CACs. This delay and reduction in CAC mobilization was associated with reduced perfusion and vascularization of the burn wound tissue. Analysis of CACs in the peripheral blood of the human patients, using a similar culture assay, confirmed results previously obtained by flow cytometry, that CAC levels peak early after the burn wound. CONCLUSION If CAC mobilization and wound perfusion are important determinants of clinical outcome, then strategies designed to augment angiogenic responses may improve outcome in patients with severe burn wounds.
An examination of the types of leading questions used by investigative interviewers of children

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the nature of leading questions used by a representative sample of investigative interviewers of children. In particular, it examined whether these interviewers use the type of questions that are known to elicit reports of false activities or events among child samples.Design/methodology/approach – A total of 82 police officers who were authorized to conduct interviews with alleged child abuse victims conducted individual mock interviews with children aged 5‐7 years. The focus of the interviews was an event that was staged in the children's school a week earlier. Prior to the interview, each officer was provided with accurate and inaccurate information about the event, including details about an activity that did not occur. The officers' task was to elicit as detailed and accurate account of the event as possible using the techniques they would “normally” use in the field.Findings – Although the officers refrained from using coercive interview techniques, .
Inverse Scattering at a Fixed Quasi-Energy for Potentials Periodic in Time ∗

We prove that the scattering matrix at a fixed quasi-energy determines uniquely a time-periodic potential that decays exponentially at infinity. We consider potentials that for each fixed time belong to L3/2 in space. The exponent 3/2 is critical for the singularities of the potential in space. For this singular class of potentials the result is new even in the time-independent case, where it was only known for bounded exponentially decreasing potentials.