Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Implementing a Resident Lifting System in an Extended Care Hospital

1. Implemeting mechanical resident lifting equipment in an extended care facility produced a payback from direct savings alone within 4 years. Payback occurred more quickly when the effect of indirect savings or the trend to rising compensation costs was considered. 2. Combining the observations of the occupational health nurses related to staff well being with relevant cost-benefit data is useful in influencing decision makers and in securing funding for prevention measures. 3. Clear identification of a viewpoint is an important part of an economic evaluation and cost-benefit analysis.
Investigation of non-equilibrium ionization plasma during a giant flare of UX Arietis triggered with MAXI and observed with NICER

We detected a giant X-ray flare from the RS-CVn type binary star UX Ari using MAXI on 2020 August 17 and started a series of NICER observations 89 minutes later. For a week, the entire duration of the flare was covered with 32 snapshot observations including the rising phase. The X-ray luminosity reached 2$\times$10$^{33}$ erg s$^{-1}$ and the entire energy release was $\sim 10^{38}$ erg in the 0.5--8.0~keV band. X-ray spectra characterized by continuum emission with lines of Fe XXV He$\alpha$ and Fe XXVI Ly$\alpha$ were obtained. We found that the temperature peaks before that of the flux, which suggests that the period of plasma formation in the magnetic flare loop was captured. Using the continuum information (temperature, flux, and their delay time), we estimated the flare loop size to be $\sim 3 \times 10^{11}$ cm and the peak electron density to be $\sim 4\times10^{10}$ cm$^{-3}$. Furthermore, using the line ratio of Fe XXV and Fe XXVI, we investigated any potential indications of deviation from collisional ionization equilibrium (CIE). The X-ray spectra were consistent with CIE plasma throughout the flare, but the possibility of an ionizing plasma away from CIE was not rejected in the flux rising phase.
Enhanced insulin-like growth factor binding protein-related protein 2 (Connective tissue growth factor) expression in patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and pulmonary sarcoidosis.

Connective tissue growth factor is a recently described chemoattractant and fibroblast mitogen which, because of sequence homology and weak binding to insulin-like growth factor (IGF)-1, has been proposed as the eighth member of the IGF binding protein (IGFBP) superfamily, named IGFBP-related protein 2 (IGFBP-rP2). Previous studies have implicated IGFBP-rP2 in a number of heterogeneous fibrotic pathologies, including renal fibrosis, dermal scleroderma, and bleomycin-induced pulmonary fibrosis in mice. Because profibrogenic cytokines may be produced by inflammatory cells, we developed a multiplex competitive reverse transcription/polymerase chain reaction to quantify IGFBP-rP2 transcripts in bronchoalveolar lavage cells from healthy subjects and patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) and pulmonary sarcoidosis. IGFBP-rP2 messenger RNA expression was enhanced > 10-fold (P < 0.003) in patients with IPF; > 40-fold (P < 0.006) in stage I/II sarcoidosis patients, and > 90-fold (P < 0.005) in stage III/IV sarcoidosis patients by comparison with healthy nonsmoking control subjects. We suggest these increases are predominantly associated with lymphocyte- and neutrophil-driven IGFBP-rP2 production. These findings, together with previous reports implicating other IGFBPs in the pathogenesis of pulmonary fibrosis, suggest that the complex network of IGFBPs within the human lung is an important determinant of the outcome of the fibroproliferative response to injury.
Key endoscopic ultrasound features of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma smaller than 20 mm

Abstract Background and study aims. Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) has a poor prognosis compared with other solid pancreatic tumors. Diagnosis of PDAC in the earliest possible stage is important to improve the prognosis. Although endoscopic ultrasound-guided fine-needle aspiration (EUS-FNA) has been the gold-standard modality for diagnosing pancreatic lesions, its diagnostic yield is not satisfactory for pancreatic tumors smaller than 20 mm. The purpose of this study was to determine the EUS findings that are useful for differentiating PDAC from other solid pancreatic tumors when the lesions are smaller than 20 mm. Patients and methods. We performed a retrospective review of 126 patients with pancreatic tumors smaller than 20 mm who had undergone EUS. According to the final pathological diagnoses, they were categorized into either the PDAC or non-PDAC group. We, then, compared the EUS findings between the two groups. Results. Among the 126 patients, we diagnosed PDAC in 75 patients and non-PDAC in the remaining patients, including neuroendocrine tumor in 43 patients, intraductal papillary mucinous carcinoma in 3 patients, solid pseudopapillary neoplasm in 2 patients, and inflammatory pseudotumor in 3 patients. Of all EUS findings, three factors were significantly indicative of PDAC: an irregular tumor edge, main pancreatic duct dilation, and tumor location in the pancreatic head. The predicted probability for PDAC was 80%, 92.6%, and 74.1%, respectively. Conclusions. EUS could be a useful modality for differentiating PDAC from other solid pancreatic tumors, when the diagnostic yield of EUS-FNA is unsatisfactory, even for lesions smaller than 20 mm.
Missing the Forest for the Trees

Growing evidence indicates that error-driven associative learning underlies the ability of nonhuman animals to categorize natural images. This study explored whether this form of learning might also be at play when people categorize natural objects in photographs. Two groups of college students (a blocking group and a control group) were trained on a categorization task and then tested with novel photographs from each category; however, only the blocking group received pretraining on a task that required the discrimination of objects from the same category. Because of this earlier noncategorical discrimination learning, the blocking group performed well in the categorization task from the outset, and this strong initial performance reduced the likelihood of category learning driven by error. There was far less transfer of categorical responding during testing in the blocking group than in the control group; this finding suggests that learning the specific properties of each photographic image in pretraining blocked later learning of an open-ended category.
Joint Transceiver and Power Splitting Optimization for Multiuser MIMO SWIPT Under MSE QoS Constraints

This paper studies the joint transceiver design and power splitting (JTDPS) for a downlink multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MU-MIMO) simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) system. Aiming to minimize the transmit power by jointly optimizing the transmitter at a base station, the power splitting (PS) factors, and information decoding receivers at mobile stations (MSs) subject to both the predefined mean-square error (MSE) and the given energy harvesting (EH) constraints. The formulated problem is a nonconvex JTDPS optimization problem, which cannot be solved directly. To solve it, an iterative optimization framework composed of joint transmitter and PS factor optimization (JTxPS) subproblem and a receiver side minimum mean-square error (MMSE) minimization subproblem is proposed. By iteratively solve the two subproblems, the original optimization problem is solved. The sufficient and necessary conditions for the feasibility of the formulated JTDPS and the JTxPS problems are analyzed. Theoretical analysis shows that the JTxPS subproblem is also nonconvex and can be solved by using convex semidefinite programming (SDP). Considering the high computational complexity of the SDP-based scheme, a low-complexity suboptimal scheme based on the traditional MMSE transceiver design is also proposed. Simulations are done to validate the theoretical analysis, and results show the effectiveness of the proposed schemes.
Sexual Surrogate Partner Therapy: Legal and Ethical Issues

The Ben Lewin film The Sessions has drawn attention again to the potential role for sexual surrogate partners and sex workers in enabling persons with disabilities and impairments to give expression to their sexual needs and desires. However, away from the big screen, the ethics of registered health practitioners in themselves engaging in such therapies are highly problematic. Difficult too is the role of such practitioners in being ‘the therapist’ responsible for enabling or brokering sexual contact between their patients and those offering such services for financial reward. In some jurisdictions, arrangements involving sexual surrogate therapy (especially where the therapist benefits from it financially) may not be lawful. Further, in spite of many assertions one way and the other, there are no data enabling evaluation of the success rates of the interventions of sexual surrogates or sex workers. Whether positive outcomes to such interactions are likely in most circumstances, given that the provision of services is predicated upon idealised attachments, is questionable. It is also unclear whether sexual surrogates’ adherence to an ethical code effectively ameliorates the potential for counter-therapeutic consequences from the commodification of intimacy, and it is far from straightforward to identify what steps should be taken by the referring health practitioner to select a suitable provider of sexual services to their patient or client, and then to monitor whether the arrangement is achieving its objectives.
Characterization of Scanner Sensitivity

Color scanners are becoming quite popular as input devices for desktop publishing. In many applications it is desirable to obtain calibrated color from them. In order to properly calibrate the device for a variety of illuminants, it is necessary to estimate the spectral sensitivity of the scanner. This paper describes a set theoretic approach to this problem. This method is shown to have increased accuracy compared to present methods.
Perceptual organization: To reverse back the inverted (upside-down) question of feature binding

In addressing the most fundamental question of “Where visual processing begins”, all theories of perception can be segregated into two contrasting lines of thinking: “early feature-analysis” (i.e., from local to global processing) and “early holistic registration” (i.e., from global to local processing). The problem of feature binding is then essentially a consequence of the particular local-to-global assumption. However, from the global-to-local perspective, the problem of feature binding may be a wrong question to ask to begin with, while the Gestalt concept of perceptual organization serves to reverse this inverted position. Inspired by the analysis of invariants over transformations, particularly shape-changing transformations, a topological approach has been proposed to describe precisely the nature and rules of perceptual organization. Evidence supporting topological perception will be illustrated in topics of visual sensitivity, apparent motion, illusory conjunctions, and the relative salience of different geometric invariants.
On the effects of L2 perception and of individual differences in L1 production on L2 pronunciation

The speech of late second language (L2) learners is generally marked by an accent. The dominant theoretical perspective attributes accents to deficient L2 perception arising from a transfer of L1 phonology, which is thought to influence L2 perception and production. In this study we evaluate the explanatory role of L2 perception in L2 production and explore alternative explanations arising from the L1 phonological system, such as for example, the role of L1 production. Specifically we examine the role of an individual’s L1 productions in the production of L2 vowel contrasts. Fourteen Spanish adolescents studying French at school were assessed on their perception and production of the mid-close/mid-open contrasts, /ø-œ/ and /e-ε/, which are, respectively, acoustically distinct from Spanish sounds, or similar to them. The participants’ native productions were explored to assess (1) the variability in the production of native vowels (i.e., the compactness of vowel categories in F1/F2 acoustic space), and (2) the position of the vowels in the acoustic space. The results revealed that although poorly perceived contrasts were generally produced poorly, there was no correlation between individual performance in perception and production, and no effect of L2 perception on L2 production in mixed-effects regression analyses. This result is consistent with a growing body of psycholinguistic and neuroimaging research that suggest partial dissociations between L2 perception and production. In contrast, individual differences in the compactness and position of native vowels predicted L2 production accuracy. These results point to existence of surface transfer of individual L1 phonetic realizations to L2 space and demonstrate that pre-existing features of the native space in production partly determine how new sounds can be accommodated in that space.
Gender, ethnic, and body type biases: The generality of prejudice in childhood.

From a very young age, children show signs of prejudice. However, it is not clear whether those who are the most biased in one domain (e.g., gender) are also the most biased in other domains (e.g., ethnicity). This study addressed the issue using multiple measures of prejudice (negative bias) in 3 domains: gender (male, female), ethnicity-language (French Canadian, English Canadian), and body type (overweight, normal weight). The flexibility of attitudes (i.e., the belief that people from different categories can possess similar traits) was also assessed. A total of 254 children (127 boys, 127 girls) in kindergarten to Grade 6 participated. Children demonstrated clear biases against groups to which they did not belong, although attitudes became more flexible and prejudice declined somewhat with age. There was little predictive power across domains; that is, there was no evidence that prejudice represents a general characteristic that differentiates children.
A correlated topic model of Science

Topic models, such as latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA), can be useful tools for the statistical analysis of document collections and other discrete data. The LDA model assumes that the words of each document arise from a mixture of topics, each of which is a distribution over the vocabulary. A limitation of LDA is the inability to model topic correlation even though, for example, a document about genetics is more likely to also be about disease than X-ray astronomy. This limitation stems from the use of the Dirichlet distribution to model the variability among the topic proportions. In this paper we develop the correlated topic model (CTM), where the topic proportions exhibit correlation via the logistic normal distribution [J. Roy. Statist. Soc. Ser. B 44 (1982) 139--177]. We derive a fast variational inference algorithm for approximate posterior inference in this model, which is complicated by the fact that the logistic normal is not conjugate to the multinomial. We apply the CTM to the articles from Science published from 1990--1999, a data set that comprises 57M words. The CTM gives a better fit of the data than LDA, and we demonstrate its use as an exploratory tool of large document collections.
Secret key management and dynamic security coding system

Digital information transmission systems must satisfy two requirements: reliability and confidentiality. In terms of reliability we tend nowadays to the Shannon's capacity, i.e. the limit of errorless data rate. Concerning the confidentiality of transmissions, a perfect secrecy limit was also defined by Shannon but this aspect of the Shannon's work was less adressed. Nevertheless, in order to enhance the security of transmissions, especially with wireless systems, an encryption is often used. In this contribution, we present an encryption scheme that jointly protect the exchange of information against eavesdropper as well as errors due to the propagation channel. The key controlling the encryption scheme is dynamically generated and propagation measurements will be used to illustrate the importance of the key length.
Jumping Hurdles: the myriad of issues and barriers for incarcerated mothers to regain custody of children

This paper describes the myriad of issues and barriers that mothers face on exiting prison in their attempts to regain parental responsibility of their children. Interviews with professionals and stakeholders in Victoria, Australia who support these mothers, reported that these issues include lack of housing, obtaining a secure job and overcoming drug and alcohol addictions. Women coming out of prison have few organizational skills, as many have become institutionalized whilst in prison. They have poor time management, poor self-discipline, a poor work history and often battle anxiety and depression. Further, they need to prove that they are addressing the issues that caused them to be incarcerated and that they are able to care for their children in order to regain custody of them. Such ‘proof’ involves housing and employment, remaining drug and alcohol free and developing pro-social networks. The research shows that the hurdles incarcerated women need to overcome to meet these requirements are often hampered by limited support and assistance.
TCam-2 Seminoma Cells Exposed to Egg-Derived Microenvironment Modify Their Shape, Adhesive Pattern and Migratory Behaviour: A Molecular and Morphometric Analysis

Seminoma is one of the most common Testicular Germ Cell Tumours that originates during embryonic development due to an alteration of the local niche that in turn results in a delayed or blocked differentiation of Primordial Germ Cells. The block of differentiation is actually a common way to develop cancer disease as postulated by the "embryonic rest theory of cancer". In agreement with this theory different studies have demonstrated that embryonic cues display the capacity of reprogramming aggressive cancer cells towards a less aggressive phenotype. Herein we investigate the ability of a culture medium added with 10% egg albumen (EW, Egg White) to modulate seminoma cell phenotype and behaviour, by ensuring a proper set of morphogenetic signals. We chose to use the TCam-2 seminoma cell line that has been established as the only available cell line, obtained from a primary testicular seminoma. EW is able to: 1) modify TCam-2 cell spreading rate and cell-substrate adhesion without affecting proliferation and survival indexes; 2) modulate TCam-2 actin distribution pattern increasing cortical localization of actin filaments; 3) increase TCam-2 cell-cell junction capability; 4) decrease both chemo-sensitive and collective TCam-2 migratory behaviour. According to these observations morphometric fractal analysis revealed the ability of EW to increase Circularity and Solidity parameters and, consequently, to decrease Fractal dimension. Prompted by these observations we hypothesize that EW treatment could rescue, at least in part, the neoplastic-metastatic behaviour of seminoma cells.
White-collar men and masculinities in contemporary urban China

This work investigates the characteristics of masculinity that are at the symbolic heart of China’s economic success, and of which the figure of the white-collar man is emblematic. Based on fieldwork observations, interview and media publications, it examines the gendered practices, aspirations and attitudes of men who identify with or aspire to white-collar status alongside discursive representations of the Chinese white-collar man, interrogating the links between practice and discourse. Drawing on various approaches to theorizing subjectivity, it argues that white-collar masculinity is performed in ways that suggest both radical shifts and continuities in understandings of gender, which challenge the prevalent teleological narrative of China’s modernization. The first chapter sets the scene for white-collar masculinity in the reform era and discusses fieldwork methodologies. Chapter two sets out the theoretical framework adopted to analyse the gendered white-collar subject, and examines academic literature on masculinities in China. Chapter three examines the ‘body culture’ of informants, and how they ‘bring themselves’ to white-collar discourse through attention to their bodies in areas of daily life such as dress, movement and hygiene. Chapters four and five look respectively at the production of corporate masculinity both inside and outside the office, through an exploration of business and leisure practices, and their overlap. Chapter six takes a close look at the young white-collar man as (heterosexual) boyfriend and husband and the final chapter investigates sexualisations of young urban middle-class males, and comments on their transformative possibilities.
Gonadotropin Induction of Ovulation and Corpus Luteum Formation in Young Estrogen Receptor-α Knockout Mice1

Abstract Estrogen receptor-α (ERα) knockout (ERαKO) female mice are infertile. Initially, they exhibit normal follicular development, but by 4–5 wk of age, they begin to develop hemorrhagic ovarian cysts. Follicles in adult ERαKO female mice progress to the graafian stage, but there are no corpora lutea (CL). To test whether ERα is required for ovarian folliculogenesis, ovulation, and CL formation, eCG and hCG were used to ovulate 3- to 5-wk-old ERαKO and wild-type (WT) sibling mice. Gonadotropin administration resulted in ovulation in both ERαKO and WT mice. Gonadotropin-treated ERαKO females that ovulated produced 7.09 ± 0.77 oocytes per mouse, whereas gonadotropin-treated WT female mice had 16.17 ± 0.84 oocytes. Surprisingly, ruptured ERαKO ovarian follicles developed into CL that had normal morphology. Gonadotropin-treated ERαKO mice had 3-fold higher concentrations of serum progesterone than did control ERαKO mice that had been administered saline rather than gonadotropins. Thus, the CL in gonadotropin-treated ERαKO mice appeared to be steroidogenically functional. On the basis of these findings, ovarian folliculogenesis, ovulation, and CL formation can occur in the absence of ERα, although to a lesser extent than in WT mice.
Fifth-Grade Bilingual Students and Precursors to “Subtractive Schooling”

Abstract In this paper, we present a yearlong ethnographic study of fifth-grade students who are either immigrants or the children of immigrants from Latin American countries, predominantly Mexico. We examined how they used their two languages at home, in the community, and at school. We also examined their perspectives, and those of their parents and teacher, about bilingualism and their awareness of barriers they may face in the future. Interviews and observations suggest these students were in a supportive bilingual environment. Their teacher provided materials and instruction in both languages. As a fluent Spanish speaker and cultural insider, she believes that proficiency in Spanish is important and serves as a strong foundation for acquiring English. The students' parents all valued maintenance of Spanish, and several were proactive in trying to ensure their children remained fluent Spanish speakers. At the time of the study, most students could speak, read, and write Spanish fluently and were concurrently learning English. At first glance, it appeared that the students in this study had been largely sheltered from the pressures to assimilate and that their prospects for maintaining their native-language proficiency were favorable. However, contradictory messages about bilingualism soon became apparent. Students demonstrated awareness of the pressures they will face in the future and acknowledged they must be prepared to struggle to maintain their language and culture. This study's findings help to explicate the conflicts that students in upper elementary grades feel about being bilingual within the dominant English monolingual culture.