Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Well Integrity Mechanism, Failure, and Testing in Shallow Marine Sediments.

The leak-off test (LOT) is an in-situ method for testing casing shoe integrity in a well. It is used to evaluate the cement and formation integrity relative to the well plan specifications. The results determine whether any remedial cementing or corrective actions are required and are a basis for planning future wells in the area. Typical analysis of LOTs assumes an elastic wellbore and involves identification of linear trends on the recorded plots. However, LOTs recorded in shallow marine sediments (SMS) are inherently nonlinear and their analysis is a problem. Starting from the analyses of shallow soil properties, LOT plots, and leak-off pressure data, the dissertation presents the results of a theoretical study (analytical and numerical-finite element analysis) into potential for damage to cement integrity at the casing shoe resulting from leak-off test in SMS. Stress, strain and displacement around the open hole are analyzed before and during LOT. Three types of possible failures from LOTs were considered: vertical fracture, horizontal fracture, and cement parting. It is proved that vertical fracture is the most unlikely failure of the three. Although horizontal fractures are initiated at low pressure in the plastic zone around the wellbore, they cannot propagate beyond the plastic zone until wellbore pressures exceed overburden pressures. Cement parting, on the other hand, may propagate upwards at pressures lower than overburden pressure. The study identifies two factors, related directly to drilling technology, that control critical pressure of cement parting: contact stress and drilling fluid penetration. It is shown in the study that changes in cementing and drilling practices can improve casing shoe integrity and reduce the need for remedial cement squeezes.
Towards an Understanding of the Business Value of Business Process Standardization - A Case Study Approach

What is the business value of process standardization? Alongside the development of industrial engineering of information technology and of business process redesign studied by Davenport and Short (1990), and Davenport’s approach defining business processes (Davenport, 2005), other researchers offer initial insights into business process standardization research opportunities (Venkatesh, 2006). Based on this new thinking about business process standardization, this paper presents a step towards understanding the business value of business process standardization. A single case study with a global operating company was conducted to show how a successful standardized business process and a supporting information system can impact the process performance in terms of cost, time and quality. The process studied within the case study is the company-wide recruiting process. As the results indicate, the company has improved the overall process performance. The results provide an initial insight into an understanding of the business value of process standardization.
Successful Pregnancy after Treatment with Ulipristal Acetate for Uterine Fibroids

This case report presents a clinical pregnancy after ulipristal acetate (UA) to decrease uterine fibroid size. A 37-year-old patient, gravida 1, abortus 1, with uterine fibroids was treated with 5 mg of UA daily for 13 weeks starting eight months after a multiple laparotomic myomectomy. Fibroid shrinkage and restoration of the morphology of endometrial cavity were evaluated in order to allow a subsequent pregnancy. A decrease of the uterine fibroids and a normal morphology of the endometrial cavity were noted by transvaginal ultrasound after treatment. An endometrial biopsy excluded histologic endometrial changes. Three months after the end of UA the patient reported amenorrhea for 5 weeks and a clinical pregnancy was confirmed with transvaginal ultrasound. She underwent a subsequent uneventful pregnancy. Thus, the spontaneous pregnancy after UA to reduce fibroid size may support the potential clinical utility of this selective progesterone receptor modulator in the management of women with pregnancy desire and uterine fibroids after a prior myomectomy. Patients who refuse a new surgical procedure and/or those who are going to undergo assisted reproductive techniques would benefit from UA. It effectively shrinks fibroids, avoids risks of a new surgical procedure, and allows an immediate attempt at conception after the end of treatment.
Robust and Consistent Sampling

We address a sampling problem in which the goal is to approximate a signal from its nonideal (generalized) samples. The reconstruction is constrained to lie in a subspace, and to be consistent with the measured samples. It is well known how to obtain a consistent approximation, if the sampling and reconstruction spaces satisfy a certain direct sum condition. Here we show when consistency can be achieved without the need for this condition. The proposed solution provides geometrical insight into the structure of the problem and extends previous treatments by finding a consistent and simultaneously robust approximation of the signal from its samples.
Callosal fiber length and interhemispheric connectivity in adults with autism: Brain overgrowth and underconnectivity

Typical adults show an inverse relation between callosal fiber length and degree of interhemispheric connectivity. This has been hypothesized to be a consequence of the influence of conduction delays and cellular costs during development on axonal pruning, both of which increase with fiber length. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) provides a test of this hypothesis: Children with ASD are known to have enlarged brains; thus, adults with ASD should show reductions in interhemispheric connectivity proportional to their degree of brain overgrowth during development. This prediction was tested by assessing the relation between both the size and structure of the corpus callosum and callosal fiber length, adjusting for intracranial volume, which is thought to reflect maximum brain size achieved during development. Using tractography to estimate the length of callosal fibers emanating from all areas of cortex, and through which region of the corpus callosum they pass, we show that adults with ASD show an inverse relation between callosal fiber length, adjusted for intracranial volume, and callosum size, and a positive relation between adjusted callosal fiber length and radial diffusivity. The results provide support for the hypothesized impact of fiber length during development. Hum Brain Mapp, 2013. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
The Australian National Survey of Mental Health and Well-Being. Common psychological symptoms and disablement.

BACKGROUND The mental health of populations can be represented by case prevalence rates and by symptom scales. Scales have the advantage of identifying sub-syndromal levels of distress, which may be common and associated with considerable disability. AIMS To examine the distribution of common psychological symptoms and associated disablement in the Australian population. METHOD A household sample of 10,641 individuals representative of the adult population of Australia was interviewed using the Composite International Diagnostic Interview and completed scales measuring recent symptoms and disablement. RESULTS Symptom scales showed similar associations with socio-economic variables as did diagnoses, although only a small amount of variance in symptom levels was explained by these variables. Considerable disablement was associated with symptom levels indicating distress but not reaching levels for formal diagnoses of anxiety or depression. CONCLUSIONS Symptom scales provide parsimonious measures of psychological distress and are appropriate for use in large-scale surveys of mental health and disablement.
A critical review of interfaces with the peripheral nervous system for the control of neuroprostheses and hybrid bionic systems

Abstract Considerable scientific and technological efforts have been devoted to develop neuroprostheses and hybrid bionic systems that link the human nervous system with electronic or robotic prostheses, with the main aim of restoring motor and sensory functions in disabled patients. A number of neuroprostheses use interfaces with peripheral nerves or muscles for neuromuscular stimulation and signal recording. Herein, we provide a critical overview of the peripheral interfaces available and trace their use from research to clinical application in controlling artificial and robotic prostheses. The first section reviews the different types of non‐invasive and invasive electrodes, which include surface and muscular electrodes that can record EMG signals from and stimulate the underlying or implanted muscles. Extraneural electrodes, such as cuff and epineurial electrodes, provide simultaneous interface with many axons in the nerve, whereas intrafascicular, penetrating, and regenerative electrodes may contact small groups of axons within a nerve fascicle. Biological, technological, and material science issues are also reviewed relative to the problems of electrode design and tissue injury. The last section reviews different strategies for the use of information recorded from peripheral interfaces and the current state of control neuroprostheses and hybrid bionic systems.
Privacy-Related Context Information for Ubiquitous Health

Background Ubiquitous health has been defined as a dynamic network of interconnected systems. A system is composed of one or more information systems, their stakeholders, and the environment. These systems offer health services to individuals and thus implement ubiquitous computing. Privacy is the key challenge for ubiquitous health because of autonomous processing, rich contextual metadata, lack of predefined trust among participants, and the business objectives. Additionally, regulations and policies of stakeholders may be unknown to the individual. Context-sensitive privacy policies are needed to regulate information processing. Objective Our goal was to analyze privacy-related context information and to define the corresponding components and their properties that support privacy management in ubiquitous health. These properties should describe the privacy issues of information processing. With components and their properties, individuals can define context-aware privacy policies and set their privacy preferences that can change in different information-processing situations. Methods Scenarios and user stories are used to analyze typical activities in ubiquitous health to identify main actors, goals, tasks, and stakeholders. Context arises from an activity and, therefore, we can determine different situations, services, and systems to identify properties for privacy-related context information in information-processing situations. Results Privacy-related context information components are situation, environment, individual, information technology system, service, and stakeholder. Combining our analyses and previously identified characteristics of ubiquitous health, more detailed properties for the components are defined. Properties define explicitly what context information for different components is needed to create context-aware privacy policies that can control, limit, and constrain information processing. With properties, we can define, for example, how data can be processed or how components are regulated or in what kind of environment data can be processed. Conclusions This study added to the vision of ubiquitous health by analyzing information processing from the viewpoint of an individual’s privacy. We learned that health and wellness-related activities may happen in several environments and situations with multiple stakeholders, services, and systems. We have provided new knowledge regarding privacy-related context information and corresponding components by analyzing typical activities in ubiquitous health. With the identified components and their properties, individuals can define their personal preferences on information processing based on situational information, and privacy services can capture privacy-related context of the information-processing situation.
A service broker and business model for saas applications

Enterprise software is being transformed from an installed product to a hosted service whereby customers pay a subscription fee to access functionality using a web browser or other clients. The service-oriented architecture (SOA) and web services will play a key role in driving the vision of software as a service (SaaS). As the number of services and users grow, there is a need for a trusted service broker to manage services offered by service providers and subscribed customers. In this paper we propose a trusted service broker for SaaS applications. In addition to a business model, one of the novel features of this broker is an environment for an Internet desktop that allows users to login and use the applications at anytime from anywhere as long as they have a computer and an Internet connection. This model has a very close resemblance to the old thin client model and the old mainframe setups where the terminals really didn't need to have any special CPU power or mass storage capacity. A proof of concept implementation is discussed; it enables users to have an integrated set of applications that closely reflect their business process or the tasks they are trying to accomplish.
Reduced arterial distensibility is a predictor of cardiovascular disease in patients after renal transplantation

Objective Arterial distensibility is reduced in end-stage renal failure and also after renal transplantation. The aim of the present study was to test the hypothesis that reduced carotid artery distensibility is a predictor of cardiovascular disease in patients after renal transplantation. Subjects and methods Sixty-eight asymptomatic renal transplant recipients were studied between March 1990 and December 1992, 3–6 months after transplantation. The mean duration of follow-up was 95 ± 2 months (mean ± SEM). At entry, vessel wall movements of the common carotid artery were recorded using a pulsed multigate Doppler system; blood pressure was measured by sphygmomanometry. Results Nineteen cardiovascular events (CVE) occurred during follow-up, leading to death in six cases. The distensibility coefficient of the common carotid artery was significantly lower in patients with CVE than in those without CVE (12.2 ± 1.0 10−3/kPa versus 16.8 ± 0.7 10−3/kPa, P < 0.005). Logistic regression analysis showed that the occurrence of cardiovascular disease during follow-up was related to carotid artery distensibility (P < 0.05), independent of sex, age, smoking habits, carotid artery end-diastolic diameter, systolic and diastolic blood pressure levels, heart rate, serum creatinine, cholesterol and haemoglobin levels. Patients with a distensibility coefficient above the age-adjusted mean had a significantly longer interval free of cardiovascular disease than patients with a distensibility coefficient below the age-adjusted mean (P < 0.01). Conclusions The distensibility of the common carotid artery is an independent predictor of cardiovascular disease in renal transplant recipients.
Comparing patient reports about hospital care across a Canadian-US border.

OBJECTIVE To compare patient reports about hospital care between western New York State and southern Ontario using a random intercept model. METHOD Cross-sectional survey of 3923 patients who received medical or surgical care between August and October 2004 at 28 hospitals (14 hospitals per jurisdiction). Thirty-five questions were combined to calculate eight indicators with scores ranging from 0 to 100 (best care experience). For each indicator, a model was built where the region (western New York vs. southern Ontario) was included as a fixed effect with hospital as random within region. A number of patient characteristics were also included as fixed effects. RESULTS The effect of the region was statistically significant (P < 0.05) only for the models predicting the 'continuity and transition', 'involvement of family' and 'physical comfort' indicator scores. The differences were 10.66, 4.05 and -3.23 points, respectively. In all three models, the random intercepts were not statistically significant, indicating that the differences above did not vary by hospitals. The model predicting 'overall impression' scores, however, showed a random intercept statistically significant (P = 0.026). The individual-level explained proportion of variance ranged from 5.68 to 11.22%, and the hospital-within-region-level explained proportion of variance ranged from 2.19 to 52.28%. CONCLUSION The difference observed on the 'continuity and transition' indicator might be the only one somewhat meaningful, and might be explained by health maintenance organization reimbursements' mechanisms and hospital quality improvement initiatives available in western New York, as well as by the fact that occupancy rates in western New York border the 60% compared with the 95% in southern Ontario.
Pregnancy and Contraceptive Use Among Women Participating in the FEM-PrEP Trial

Background:Pregnancy among study participants remains a challenge for trials of new HIV prevention agents despite promotion and provision of contraception. We evaluated contraceptive use, pregnancy incidence, and study drug adherence by contraceptive method among women enrolled in the FEM-PrEP trial of once-daily oral tenofovir disoproxil fumarate and emtricitabine (TDF–FTC) for HIV prevention. Methods:We required women to be using effective non-barrier contraception at enrollment. At each monthly follow-up visit, women were counseled on contraceptive use and tested for pregnancy. TDF–FTC adherence was determined by measuring plasma drug concentrations at 4-week intervals. We used Cox proportional hazards models to assess factors associated with incident pregnancy and multivariate logistic regression to examine the relationship between contraceptive method used at enrollment and TDF–FTC adherence. Results:More than half of women were not using effective contraception before enrollment. Ninety-eight percent of these women adopted either injectable (55%) or oral (43%) contraceptives. The overall pregnancy rate was 9.6 per 100 woman-years. Among injectable users and new users of combined oral contraceptives (COCs), the rates were 1.6 and 35.1, respectively. New users of injectables had significantly greater odds of adhering to TDF–FTC than new COC users [odds ratio (95% confidence interval): 4.4 (1.7 to 11.6), P = 0.002], existing COC users [3.1 (1.3 to 7.3), P = 0.01], and existing injectable users [2.4 (1.1 to 5.6), P = 0.04]. Conclusions:Women using COCs during FEM-PrEP, particularly new adopters, were more likely to become pregnant and less likely to adhere to study product than injectable users. HIV prevention trials should consider requiring long-acting methods, including injectables, for study participation.
Serum mucosa‐associated epithelial chemokine (MEC/CCL28) in atopic dermatitis: a specific marker for severity

Background Mucosa‐associated epithelial chemokine (MEC; CCL28) is considered to be pivotal in mediating the migration of CC chemokine receptor 3‐ and 10‐ (CCR3‐ and CCR10)‐expressing, skin‐homing, memory, cutaneous lymphocyte‐associated antigen‐positive (CLA+) T cells. CCL28 is selectively and continuously expressed by epidermal keratinocytes, but highly upregulated in inflammatory skin diseases, such as atopic dermatitis (AD).
When More Heads Are Better than One? Understanding and Improving Collaborative Identification of Code Smells

Code smells are program structures that often indicate software design problems. Their efficient identification is required in order to ensure software longevity. However, the identification of code smells often cannot be performed in isolation by a single developer. This task might require the knowledge of various program parts, which are better understood by different developers. However, there is little guidance to support software teams on efficient identification of code smells. In this research, we investigate how to improve efficiency on the collaborative identification of code smells. Our investigation is based on a set of controlled experiments conducted with more than 58 novice and professional developers. Our preliminary results suggest the use of collaborative practices significantly increases the efficiency of code smell identification. We also compiled a set of guidelines and heuristics to support an effective collaborative strategy for code smell identification.
Prevalence of helminth parasites in sheep (Ovis aries) in Tangail district, Bangladesh

Prevalence of helminths of sheep in relation to age, sex, nutritional status, management system and flock size was studied at Tangail district, Bangladesh from July to December 2010 by fecal examination. A total of 190 sheep were examined of which 154 (81.1%) were positive for one or more species of helminth parasites. Seven species of helminths were identified, of them three species were trematodes, namely, Fasciola gigantica (8.4%), Paramphistomum spp. (44.2%) and Schistosoma indicum (3.7%); four species were nematodes, namely, Bunostomum sp (19.0%), Trichuris spp. (2.1%), Strongyles (62.6%) and Strongyloides spp. (9.5%). No cestodes were identified. Prevalence of helminths was significantly (p 1-2 year (92.7%) than adult aged > 2 years (83.3%) and lamb aged ≤ 1 year (63.6%). Higher prevalence was recorded in female than in male sheep. In relation to nutritional status and flock size, prevalence of helminths were significantly (p<0.01) higher in poor health and large flock sized animals. It is suggested that helminth infection is widely prevalent in sheep in Tangail district of Bangladesh
The transcription factor Swi5 regulates expression of the cyclin kinase inhibitor p40SIC1

DNA replication in budding yeast cells depends on the activation of the Cdc28 kinase (Cdk1 of Saccharomyces cerevisiae) associated with B-type cyclins Clb1 to Clb6. Activation of the kinase depends on proteolysis of the Cdk inhibitor p40SIC1 in late G1, which is mediated by the ubiquitin-conjugating enzyme Cdc34 and two other proteins, Cdc4 and Cdc53. Inactivation of any one of these three proteins prevents p40SIC1 degradation and causes cells to arrest in G1 with active Cln kinases but no Clb-associated Cdc28 kinase activity. Deletion of SIC1 allows these mutants to replicate. p40SIC1 disappears at the G1/S transition and reappears only after nuclear division. Cell cycle-regulated proteolysis seems largely responsible for this pattern, but transcriptional control could also contribute; SIC1 RNA accumulates to high levels as cells exit M phase. To identify additional factors necessary for the inhibition of the Cdk1/Cdc28 kinase in G1, we isolated mutants that can replicate DNA in the absence of Cdc4 function. Mutations in three loci (SIC1, SWI5, and RIC3) were identified. We have shown that high SIC1 transcript levels at late M phase depend on Swi5. Swi5 accumulates in the cytoplasm during S, G2, and M phases of the cell cycle but enters the nuclei at late anaphase. Our data suggest that cell cycle-regulated nuclear accumulation of Swi5 is responsible for the burst of SIC1 transcription at the end of anaphase. This transcriptional control may be important for inactivation of the Clb/Cdk1 kinase in G2/M transition and during the subsequent G1 period.