Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Long-Term Classroom Functioning and Its Association With Neuropsychological and Academic Performance Following Traumatic Brain Injury During Early Childhood

Objective: The present study utilized ecobehavioral assessment to examine classroom functioning several years following early childhood traumatic brain injury (TBI) or orthopedic injury (OI) and its association with injury factors, neuropsychological abilities, and academic performance. Method: Participants included 39 children with moderate to severe TBI and 51 children with OI sustained between ages 3 and 7 years. At 7.2 (± 1.3) years post injury, ecobehavioral assessment was used to examine classroom functioning. Additional outcomes included neuropsychological tests, parent and teacher ratings of dysexecutive behavior, and teacher ratings of academic performance. Groups were compared on measures controlling for demographic characteristics, and associations among outcomes were examined using linear regression. Results: Children with TBI showed lower academic engagement relative to children with OI, as well as more frequent individual teacher attention for children with more severe injuries. For children with TBI, difficulties in classroom functioning were associated with lower cognitive flexibility and higher parent and teacher ratings of dysexecutive behavior. Lower scores on a test of fluid reasoning and a greater frequency of individual teacher attention were also associated with lower academic performance in children with TBI. Conclusions: Difficulties in classroom functioning are evident several years after early childhood TBI and were associated with greater injury severity, neuropsychological weaknesses, and poorer academic performance. Children with impaired cognitive flexibility and fluid reasoning skills were at greatest risk for these difficulties and associated weaknesses in academic performance. Instructional interactions may be a potential target for intervention to promote academic progress in at-risk children.
Security Versus Reliability Analysis of Opportunistic Relaying

Physical-layer security is emerging as a promising paradigm of securing wireless communications against eavesdropping between legitimate users, when the main link spanning from a source to a destination has better propagation conditions than the wiretap link from a source to an eavesdropper. In this paper, we identify and analyze the tradeoffs between the security and reliability of wireless communications in the presence of eavesdropping attacks. Typically, the reliability of the main link can be improved by increasing the source's transmit power (or decreasing its date rate) to reduce the outage probability (OP), which unfortunately increases the risk that an eavesdropper succeeds in intercepting the source message through the wiretap link, since the OP of the wiretap link also decreases when a higher transmit power (or lower date rate) is used. We characterize the security-reliability tradeoffs (SRT) of conventional direct transmission from the source to the destination in the presence of an eavesdropper, where the security and reliability are quantified in terms of the intercept probability (IP) by an eavesdropper and the OP experienced at the destination, respectively. To improve the SRT, we then propose opportunistic relay selection (ORS) and quantify the attainable SRT improvement upon increasing the number of relays. It is shown that given the maximum tolerable IP, the OP of our ORS scheme approaches zero for N → ∞, where N is the number of relays. Conversely, given the maximum tolerable OP, the IP of our ORS scheme tends to zero for N → ∞.
Interviews with smokers about smokeless tobacco products, risk messages and news articles

Background Smokeless tobacco (SLT) products and their communication have been topics of discussion in harm reduction debates, but little is known about smokers’ perceptions of existing SLT risk messages. This study aimed to explore smokers’ perceptions of SLT and snus products and news stories with different risk messages about them. Methods We conducted interviews with 30 smokers assigned to read 1 of 3 constructed news stories about SLT and snus with different messages about their risks relative to cigarettes: (1) a ‘favourable’ version (describing SLT/snus as a ‘safer’ smoking alternative); (2) a ‘cautious’ version (describing SLT/snus as having various risks); and (3) a ‘mixed’ version (both stating SLT risks and potential reduced-risk benefits). Results Smokers felt somewhat more informed about snus after article reading and largely found quoted sources to be credible. Though some exposed to favourable SLT/snus messages appeared to modify their beliefs about the products’ acceptability and risks, many were left unchanged given pre-existing SLT risk perceptions influenced by prior SLT warnings, observed effects in known users, and concerns about SLT's mode of use. Willingness to use/not use snus in the future was also influenced by non-risk-related factors (eg, preference for smoking rituals). Many referenced e-cigarettes as being safer and more attractive smoking alternatives. Conclusions Exposure to reduced-risk SLT information may have some impact on smokers’ SLT perceptions and interest, but this might be limited by a variety of negative SLT beliefs and growth of other smoking alternatives. Future research should explore SLT risk message effects with larger samples and different study designs.
The relationship between disease severity, disability and psychological distress in patients undergoing PUVA treatment for psoriasis.

BACKGROUND Patients suffering from severe psoriasis report high levels of personal distress and disability as a result of their disease. OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between disease severity, personal distress and disability. METHODS Twenty-two patients provided a self-rating of disease severity and completed the Psoriasis Disability Index (PDI) and the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ). A dermatologist provided a clinical assessment from the case notes. RESULTS Although the clinical assessment was not related to patient ratings, patient-rated severity scores, GHQ and PDI were correlated with each other. GHQ could only be predicted by disease severity when it was mediated by PDI scores. CONCLUSIONS These results indicated that psoriasis affects psychological distress through its effects on the patients' everyday lives.
Infection Versus Hematoma Following Surgical Treatment of Proximal Femoral Fractures in Geriatric Patients

Introduction: The surgical treatment of proximal femoral fractures predominantly involves geriatric patients and is associated with high morbidity and mortality. However, analyses on postoperative infections or hematoma are rare. Methods: Patients requiring surgical revision due to infection (n = 90) or hematoma (n = 77) in the postoperative phase were identified from an electronic database of 2000 consecutive patients surgically treated for proximal femoral fractures between 2006 and 2014. Demographic and clinical data were retrieved, including information on the pathogens in patients with infection. A follow-up on morbidity and mortality was conducted via telephone for at least 2 years postsurgery. Results: The follow-up rate was 100%, and the mean age was 81.9 years. The incidence rate of infection was 4.1% (90/2000), and women were commonly affected. Staphylococcus aureus and Staphylococcus epidermidis were the most commonly detected pathogens (35.5% and 25.5%, respectively). Mixed infections were observed in 15 patients, and Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infections were observed in only 4 patients. A total of 77 (85.6%) infections occurred within 30 days postsurgery. The implant was preserved in 76 (84.4%) patients, and resection arthroplasty was required in 14 patients. Dementia and pertrochanteric fractures were significantly more common in the infection than in the hematoma group. Although infections were associated with high mortality rates for up to 2 years postsurgery, the rates did not significantly differ from those in the hematoma control group. Conclusion: One of every 2 patients who developed an infection following the surgical treatment of a proximal femoral fracture died within 2 years postsurgery. In addition, infections were significantly associated with dementia. Avoiding postoperative infection should be a high priority in the surgical treatment of proximal femoral fractures.
Oxidative stress impairs myocyte autophagy, resulting in myocyte hypertrophy

What is the central question of this study? Does oxidative stress induce impairment of autophagy that results in myocyte hypertrophy early after pressure overload? What is the main finding and its importance? In cultured myocytes, hydrogen peroxide decreased autophagy and increased hypertrophy, and inhibition of autophagy enhanced myocyte hypertrophy. In rats with early myocardial hypertrophy after pressure overload, myocyte autophagy was progressively decreased. The antioxidant N‐acetyl‐cysteine or the superoxide dismutase mimic tempol prevented the decrease of myocyte autophagy and attenuated myocyte hypertrophy early after pressure overload. These findings suggest that oxidative stress impairs myocyte autophagy that results in myocyte hypertrophy.
Left ventricular diastolic filling properties in diabetic patients during isometric exercise.

Left ventricular diastolic filling properties during isometric handgrip exercise were measured by pulsed Doppler echocardiography in 33 noninsulin-dependent diabetic patients with a normal ejection fraction and 15 control subjects. Diabetic patients were subdivided into two groups according to their resting left ventricular filling pattern (A/E): 18 patients were in group DM-1 (A/E < or = 1.1) and 15 patients were in group DM-2 (A/E > 1.1). At rest, A/E ratio and A wave were higher, and deceleration half-time was longer in group DM-2 than in normal subjects and group DM-1, but there was no significant difference between normal subjects and group DM-1. The A/E ratio increased significantly in all three groups during isometric handgrip exercise. However, the change in A/E from rest to peak exercise in group DM-1 (0.29 +/- 0.20) was significantly greater than in normal subjects (0.09 +/- 0.07). These results suggest that diabetes mellitus patients with normal resting left ventricular (LV) filling pattern (group DM-1) had LV diastolic filling abnormalities with isometric handgrip exercise. Doppler echocardiography with isometric handgrip exercise is useful in identifying underlying left ventricular diastolic dysfunction in diabetic patients.
Sharp Connection: Linking Competitive Intelligence and Intranets

Assessing the value of ICT to support Competitive Intelligence presumes an understanding of the relationship between the two. The chapter argues that starting from either the ICT or CI side to this relationship and linking to the other, as most studies do, cannot secure a fully adequate conception of ICT’s value to CI. Instead, the challenge is to find an appropriate foundation in the relationship itself and use it as a stepping stone for developing an understanding of both ICT and CI. The chapter proposes to use and develop the concept of acceptability to provide that foundation. Acceptability offers a natural connection between the technology and CI sides. An object—e.g., a technology—cannot be acceptable in a void, but presumes a relation to a context or a subject—e.g., the CI function—to be considered acceptable or unacceptable. The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Task-Technology Fit model (TTF) provide useful elements to develop this approach further. The chapter presents the case of an intranet to support CI, called IntraTel, to illustrate the argument.
Prescribing Pattern and Antibiotic Use for Hospitalized Children in a Northern Nigerian Teaching Hospital

Background: Assessment of patterns of drug to detect performance problems and compliance with standards facilitates objective comparisons and impact evaluation. Children are at higher risk of consequences of irrational prescribing and antibiotic misuse. Objective: The objective of the study was to evaluate the prescribing pattern and utilization of antibiotics for children using standard prescribing indicators and indices of rational drug prescribing. Materials and Methods: This was a retrospective study of prescriptions for pediatric inpatients at a teaching hospital in Northern Nigeria. Information was obtained from eligible prescriptions received over 24-month period using a modified WHO prescribing indicator form. The WHO prescribing indicators and the Index of Rational Drug Prescribing (IRDP) were used to evaluate prescriptions. Data were analyzed and presented as proportions, means, tables, and charts, comparing with WHO standards and with findings of similar studies. Results: There were 3908 eligible prescription orders, with a mean patient age of 3.1 (±2.7) years. With an average of 2.1 drugs per prescription, 66.8% were written with generic names, whereas a single antibiotic was included among 63% of prescriptions with antibiotics. Antibiotics and injections were contained in 49.5% and 67.7% of prescriptions, respectively. Medications were available in the Essential Medicines List in 95.5% of cases. The IRDP obtained is 2.99, against a standard of 5. Aminoglycosides, cephalosporins, and penicillins were the most common choices, whereas ampicillin/cloxacillin was the most common combination. Conclusion: Drug prescribing and antibiotic use were generally inappropriate compared with ideal standards. Continuous training/retraining on rational drug use, periodic monitoring, and use of treatment protocols in tertiary hospitals are recommended.
The Good, the Bad, and the Angry: An experimental study on the heterogeneity of people's (dis)honest behavior

Dishonesty has a negative impact on government, companies, and our personal lives. Previous experiments explored which conditions favor or disfavor the emergence of dishonesty. However, all these studies are static: subjects are either fully aware of the consequences of all available actions, or they are uncertain, but the uncertainty cannot be cleared. On the contrary, many real interactions are dynamic: people know that they will have a chance to lie, but they do not initially know the exact consequences of the available actions. And they have to invest resources (e.g., time) to find them out. Here we capture the essence of this type of interactions by means of a novel decision problem. We study the distribution of choices, the effect of response time and time pressure on dishonesty. We report numerous findings, the most intriguing of which is that, in our setting, people can be divided in three types: Good people, who act honestly without even looking at the payoffs associated with lying versus telling the truth; Angry people, who first look at the payoff corresponding to telling the truth and then lie only if this payoff is low; Bad people, who maximize their payoff without even checking the payoff corresponding to telling the truth. The first two classes are large, whereas only few people (less than 16%) appear to belong to the third class.
Effect of pile fiber cross section shape on compression properties of polypropylene carpets

Fiber cross section shapes, which have a direct influence on the physical properties of textile surfaces, are becoming more and more complex recently. There are also many important properties of the carpets such as luster, resilience, abrasion resistance which are impacted by the shape of the fiber cross sections. In this present paper, the influence of pile fiber cross section shape on compression properties of carpets was experimentally investigated under short and long-term static loadings. The material used was polypropylene carpets having two different pile fiber shapes: trilobal and hollow. The experimental results indicate that percentage thickness loss of carpets having hollow piles is slightly higher than carpets with trilobal piles in both short- and long-term static loadings. However, in the case of percentage recovery, similar values were obtained for the samples used in this study.
Mapping Double and Single Crop Paddy Rice With Sentinel-1A at Varying Spatial Scales and Polarizations in Hanoi, Vietnam

Paddy Rice is the prevalent land cover in the mosaicked landscape of the Hanoi Capital Region, Vietnam. In this study, we map double and single crop rice in Hanoi using a random forest algorithm and a time-series of Sentinel-1 SAR imagery at 10 and 20 m resolution using VV-only, VH-only, and both polarizations. We compare spatial and areal variation and quantify input band importance, estimate crop growth stages, estimate rice field/collective metrics using Fragstats with image segmentation, and highlight the importance of the results for land use and land cover. Results suggest double crop rice ranged from 208 000 to 220 000 ha with 20-m resolution imagery accounting for the most area in all polarizations. Based on accuracy assessment, we found 10 m data for VV/VH to have highest overall accuracy (93.5%, ±1.33%), while VV at 10 and 20 m had lowest overall accuracies (90.9%, ±1.57; 91.0%, ±2.75). Mean decrease in accuracy suggests for all but VV at 10 m, data from harvest and flooding stages are most critical for classification. Results suggest 20 m data for both VV and VH overestimates rice land cover, however 20 m data may be indicative of rice land use. Analysis of growing season suggests average estimated length of 93–104 days for each season. Commune-level results suggest up to 20% coefficient of variation between VV10m and VH10m with significant spatial variation in rice area. Landscape metrics show rice fields are typically planted in groups of 3–4 fields with over 796 000 collectives and 2.69 million fields estimated in the study area.
Study on Thermoplastic Elastomers (TPEs) of Waste Polypropylene/Waste Ground Rubber Tire Powder

Recycling represents a valid alternative to the disposal of postconsumer materials if it is possible to obtain new materials with good properties. In this work the possibility to produce secondary materials by blending waste polypropylene (WPP) and waste ground rubber tire powder (WGRT) was studied. Several comparative experiments were made to evaluate the influence of bitumen content and different compatibilizers on the properties of WPP/WGRT blends using a universal testing machine (UTM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), and capillary rheometry. The results suggested that the properties of WPP/WGRT blends were dependent on the content of bitumen and the kind of compatibilizer.
Vegetarian diet reduces the risk of hypertension independent of abdominal obesity and inflammation: a prospective study

Objectives: A vegetarian diet may prevent elevation of blood pressures and lower the risk for hypertension through lower degrees of obesity, inflammation, and insulin resistance. This study investigated the association between a vegetarian diet and hypertension incidence in a cohort of Taiwanese adult nonsmokers and examined whether this association was mediated through inflammation, abdominal obesity, or insulin resistance (using fasting glucose as a proxy). Methods: This matched cohort study was from the 1994–2008 MJ Health Screening Database. Each vegetarian was matched with five nonvegetarians by age, sex, and study site. The analysis included 4109 nonsmokers (3423 nonvegetarians and 686 vegetarians), followed for a median of 1.61 years. The outcome includes hypertension incidence, as well as SBP and DBP levels. Regression analysis was performed to assess the association between vegetarian diet and hypertension incidence or future blood pressure levels in the presence/absence of potential mediators. Results: Vegetarians had a 34% lower risk for hypertension, adjusting for age and sex (odds ratio: 0.66, 95% confidence interval: 0.50–0.87; SBP: −3.3 mmHg, P < 0.001; DBP: −1.5 mmHg, P < 0.001). The results stay statistically significant after further adjustment for C-reactive protein, waist circumference, and fasting glucose (odds ratio: 0.72, 95% confidence interval: 0.55–0.86; SBP: −2.4 mmHg, P < 0.05; DBP: −1.1 mmHg, P < 0.05). The protective association between vegetarian diet and hypertension appeared to be consistent across age groups. Conclusion: Taiwanese vegetarians had lower incidence of hypertension than nonvegetarians. Vegetarian diets may protect against hypertension beyond lower abdominal obesity, inflammation, and insulin resistance.
Performance Evaluation of Cryptographic Algorithms over IoT Platforms and Operating Systems

The deployment of security services over Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) and IoT devices brings significant processing and energy consumption overheads. These overheads are mainly determined by algorithmic efficiency, quality of implementation, and operating system. Benchmarks of symmetric primitives exist in the literature for WSN platforms but they are mostly focused on single platforms or single operating systems. Moreover, they are not up to date with respect to implementations and/or operating systems versions which had significant progress. Herein, we provide time and energy benchmarks of reference implementations for different platforms and operating systems and analyze their impact. Moreover, we not only give the first benchmark results of symmetric cryptography for the Intel Edison IoT platform but also describe a methodology of how to measure energy consumption on that platform.
12-Port 5G Massive MIMO Antenna Array in Sub-6GHz Mobile Handset for LTE Bands 42/43/46 Applications

A 12-port antenna array operating in the long term evolution (LTE) band 42 (3400–3600 MHz), LTE band 43 (3600–3800 MHz), and LTE band 46 (5150–5925 MHz) for 5G massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) applications in mobile handsets is presented. The proposed MIMO antenna is composed of three different antenna element types, namely, inverted <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\pi $ </tex-math></inline-formula>-shaped antenna, longer inverted L-shaped open slot antenna, and shorter inverted L-shaped open slot antenna. In total, eight antenna elements are used for the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$8 \times 8$ </tex-math></inline-formula> MIMO in LTE bands 42/43, and six antenna elements are designed for the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$6 \times 6$ </tex-math></inline-formula> MIMO in LTE band 46. The proposed antenna was simulated, and a prototype was fabricated and tested. The measured results show that the LTE bands 42/43/46 are satisfied with reflection coefficient better than −6 dB, isolation lower than −12 dB, and total efficiencies of higher than 40%. In addition to that, the proposed antenna array has also shown good MIMO performances with an envelope correlation coefficient lower than 0.15, and ergodic channel capacities higher than 34 and 26.5 b/s/Hz in the LTE bands 42/43 and LTE band 46, respectively. The hand phantom effects are also investigated, and the results show that the proposed antenna array can still exhibit good radiation and MIMO performances when operating under data mode and read mode conditions.