Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Ecological View of Internet Health Information Seeking Behavior Predictors: Findings from the CHAIN Study

Objective: The purpose of the study was to further elucidate proximal and distal demographic and social predictors of Internet Health Information Seeking Behavior (IHISB) among a cohort of HIV+ individuals through an ecological framework. Methods: The Community Health Advisory & Information Network (CHAIN) project is an ongoing prospective study of a representative sample of persons living with HIV/AIDS in New York City and the Tri-County region. The study sample was drawn from a two-stage randomized technique with the clients of 43 medical and social service organizations with 693 HIV+ participants. Bivariate correlations were computed between IHISB and independent demographic variables in ecological blocks. Multivariate hierarchical logistic regression was used to test association between blocks of variables and IHISB. Results: Among the surveyed respondents (n=645) 50.3% indicated that they used the Internet. Being above the poverty line, having less than a high school education, and having fewer neighbors were statistically significant predictors of IHISB related to HIV. Conclusions: The benefits of accessing the Internet may influence health behavior and may be considered a target for interventions that aim to increase access to health related information online. Coupled with increased access, is the need for increased patient education interventions, and creative managed care approaches to ensure that information gleaned from online sources is interpretable and accurate in order to benefit the lives of those living with HIV/AIDS.
Relationship between Stage of Diabetic Retinopathy and Pulse Wave Velocity in Japanese Patients with Type 2 Diabetes

Objectives. We investigated the relationship between the stage of diabetic retinopathy and pulse wave velocity (PWV). Methods. This was a cross-sectional study of 689 patients (406 men and 283 women) with type 2 diabetes who were admitted to our hospital from 2004 to 2007. Brachial-ankle pulse wave velocity (baPWV) was measured by an arterial pressure measurement device as PWV/ABI. Diagnosis of diabetic retinopathy was made by ophthalmologists based on the Davis classification: no diabetic retinopathy (NDR), simple retinopathy (SDR), pre-proliferative retinopathy (pre-PDR), and proliferative retinopathy (PDR). Results. There was a significant difference in PWV between patients without diabetic retinopathy (1657.0 ± 417.9 m/s (mean ± SD)) and with diabetic retinopathy (1847.1 ± 423.9 m/s) (P < 0.001). In addition, the stage of diabetic retinopathy was associated with aortic PWV (1657.0 ± 417.9 m/s in NDR (n = 420), 1819.4 ± 430.3 m/s in SDR (n = 152), 1862.1 ± 394.0 m/s in pre-PDR (n = 54), and 1901.1 ± 433.5 m/s in PDR (n = 63) (P < 0.001)). Conclusions. In patients with diabetic retinopathy, even in those with SDR, PWV was higher than that in patients without diabetic retinopathy. Physicians should therefore pay attention to the value of PWV and macroangiopathy regardless of the stage of diabetic retinopathy.
Genome-Wide Analysis of Light Sensing in Prochlorococcus

ABSTRACT Prochlorococcus MED4 has, with a total of only 1,716 annotated protein-coding genes, the most compact genome of a free-living photoautotroph. Although light quality and quantity play an important role in regulating the growth rate of this organism in its natural habitat, the majority of known light-sensing proteins are absent from its genome. To explore the potential for light sensing in this phototroph, we measured its global gene expression pattern in response to different light qualities and quantities by using high-density Affymetrix microarrays. Though seven different conditions were tested, only blue light elicited a strong response. In addition, hierarchical clustering revealed that the responses to high white light and blue light were very similar and different from that of the lower-intensity white light, suggesting that the actual sensing of high light is mediated via a blue-light receptor. Bacterial cryptochromes seem to be good candidates for the blue-light sensors. The existence of a signaling pathway for the redox state of the photosynthetic electron transport chain was suggested by the presence of genes that responded similarly to red and blue light as well as genes that responded to the addition of DCMU [3-(3,4-dichlorophenyl)-1,1-N-N′-dimethylurea], a specific inhibitor of photosystem II-mediated electron transport.
Quality improvement for patients with hip fracture: experience from a multi-site audit

Problem: The first East Anglian audit of hip fracture was conducted in eight hospitals during 1992. There were significant differences between hospitals in 90-day mortality, development of pressure sores, median lengths of hospital stay, and in most other process measures. Only about half the survivors recovered their pre-fracture physical function. A marked decrease in physical function (for 31%) was associated with postoperative complications. Design: A re-audit was conducted in 1997 as part of a process of continuing quality improvement. This was an interview and record based prospective audit of process and outcome of care with 3 month follow up. Seven hospitals with trauma orthopaedic departments took part in both audits. Results from the 1992 audit and indicator standards for re-audit were circulated to all orthopaedic consultants, care of the elderly consultants, and lead audit facilitators at each hospital. Key measures for improvement: Processes likely to reduce postoperative complications and improve patient outcomes at 90 days. Strategy for change: As this was a multi-site audit, the project group had no direct power to bring about changes within individual NHS hospital trusts. Results: Significant increases were seen in pharmaceutical thromboembolic prophylaxis (from 45% to 81%) and early mobilisation (from 56% to 70%) between 1992 and 1997. There were reduced levels of pneumonia, wound infection, pressure sores, and fatal pulmonary embolism, but no change was recorded in 3 month functional outcomes or mortality. Lessons learnt: While some hospitals had made improvements in care by 1997, others were failing to maintain their level of good practice. This highlights the need for continuous quality improvement by repeating the audit cycle in order to reach and then improve standards. Rehabilitation and long term support to improve functional outcomes are key areas for future audit and research.
Development, characterization, and use of monoclonal antibodies made to antigens expressed on the surface of fetal nucleated red blood cells.

BACKGROUND Current methods for obtaining fetal cells for prenatal diagnosis are invasive and carry a small (0.5-1.0%) but definite risk of miscarriage. An attractive alternative would be isolation of fetal cells from peripheral maternal blood using antibodies with high specificity and avidity. METHODS To generate antibodies, we purified nucleated red blood cells (NRBCs) from fetal livers and used them as the immunogen to generate monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) directed against surface antigens. RESULTS The four antibodies recognized at least two conformationally sensitive epitopes of the transferrin receptor. Isolation of NRBCs from 252 maternal blood samples using these antibodies in magnetic activated cell sorting after an initial density gradient centrifugation yielded 0-419 NRBCs per 25 mL of maternal blood. One antibody, 2B7.4, not only isolated the highest number of NRBCs (>10 in 90% of the samples) but also isolated these NRBCs in 78 consecutive maternal samples. CONCLUSION Antibody 2B7.4 shows promise for the isolation of NRBCs from maternal blood and should allow studies concerning the source of these cells, fetal vs maternal, and the factors controlling their prevalence.
Impact of breast feeding on admission for pneumonia during postneonatal period in Brazil: nested case-control study

Abstract Objective: To determine whether breast feeding protects infants against pneumonia and whether the protection varies with age. Design: Nested case-control study. Setting: Pelotas, southern Brazil. Subjects: Cases were 152 infants aged 28-364 days who had been admitted to hospital for pneumonia. Controls were 2391cases in a population based case-control study. Main outcome measure: Odds ratio of admission for pneumonia according to type of milk consumed (breast milk alone, breast and formula milk, or formula milk and other fluids only), use of fluid supplements apart from formula milk, and use of solid supplements. Results: Infants who were not being breast fed were 17 times more likely than those being breast fed without formula milk to be admitted to hospital for pneumonia (95% confidence interval 7.7 to 36.0). This relative risk was 61 (19.0 to 195.5) for children under 3 months old, decreasing to 10 (2.8 to 36.2) thereafter. Supplementation with solids was associated with a relative risk of 13.4 (7.6 to 23.5) for all infants and 175 (21.8to 1405.1) for those under 3 months old. Conclusion: Breast feeding protects young children against pneumonia, especially in the first months of life. These results may be used for targeting intervention campaigns at the most vulnerable age groups.
I Will Do It If I Enjoy It! The Moderating Effect of Seeking Sensory Pleasure When Exposed to Participatory CSR Campaigns

In an attempt to gain differentiation, companies are allocating resources to corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. At the same time, they are giving consumers a more active role in the process of creating value. In this sense, consumer participation represents a new approach to gain competitive advantage. However, the effectiveness of consumer participation in CSR campaigns still remains unknown. With the purpose of shedding light on this issue, this paper shows that participatory CSR campaigns lead to greater consumer perceptions of CSR, which in turn results in more favorable attitudes toward the company. Furthermore, the effect is stronger for sensory pleasure seekers, whose involvement with the experience is greater. The findings contribute to the CSR literature and reveal important implications for marketers.
An evaluation of community pharmacy-based services for type 2 diabetes in an Indonesian setting: patient survey

Background. Diabetes is an emerging chronic disease in developing countries. Its management in developing countries is mainly hospital/clinic based. The increasing diabetes burden in developing countries provides opportunities for community pharmacists to deliver a range of services. Since the management of diabetes requires the patient’s own involvement, it is important to gain their views in order to develop pharmacy-based diabetes services. Studies on diabetes patients’ views have been limited to developed countries. Objectives. To investigate, within a developing country setting (Indonesia), current use of pharmacy services by type 2 diabetes patients, and to evaluate their views regarding community pharmacists’ roles, and the characteristics that influence their views. Methods. A questionnaire survey was conducted within 10 purposefully selected community pharmacies in Surabaya, Indonesia. Each pharmacy recruited approximately 20 patients seeking antidiabetic medications. Usage of pharmacy services was identified using binary responses (‘yes’/‘no’) and views on pharmacists’ roles were rated using Likert scales; an open-ended question was used to identify patient perceived priority roles. Logistic regression models were used to determine characteristics associated with patients’ views. Results. A total of 196 pharmacy patients with type 2 diabetes responded (58.3% response rate). Most patients used community pharmacies for dispensing (100%) and education on how to use medications (79.6%). There were mixed views towards pharmacists providing services beyond dispensing. The highest priorities identified were from the ‘patient education’ domain: education on medications (i.e., directions for use (64.5%), storage (26.6%), common/important adverse effects (25.5%)); and the ‘monitoring’ domain: monitoring medication compliance (37.3%). Patients with higher incomes or who were working were less supportive of these expanded services, whereas patients who previously used a service, those with risk factors for complications or having poor/unknown glycaemic control were more supportive. Conclusions. Community pharmacies in Surabaya, Indonesia in this study were mainly utilised for dispensing. However, many type 2 diabetes patients using these pharmacies report limited monitoring of blood glucose levels and poor glycaemic control, which indicates an opportunity for greater pharmacist involvement. Yet for this to occur, patients’ limited expectations of pharmacists roles will need to be broadened. Characteristics influencing these views should inform the development of pharmacy-based diabetes services in the environment of the burgeoning burden of diabetes.
Temporary ambiguity in whispered word recognition: a semantic priming study

ABSTRACT We examined whether listeners use acoustic correlates of voicing to resolve lexical ambiguities created by whispered speech in which a key feature, the voicing, is missing. Three associative priming experiments were conducted. The results showed a priming effect with whispered primes that included an intervocalic voiceless consonant (/petal/ “petal”) when the visual targets (FLEUR “flower”) were presented at the offset of the primes. A priming effect emerged with whispered primes that included a voiced intervocalic consonant (/pedal/ “pedal”) when the delay between the offset of the primes and the visual targets (VELO “bike”) was increased by 50 ms. In none of the experiments, the voiced primes (/pedal/) facilitated the processing of the targets (FLEUR) associated with the voiceless primes (/petal/). Our results suggest that the acoustic correlates of voicing are used by listeners to recover the intended words. Nonetheless, the retrieval of the voiced feature is not immediate during whispered word recognition.
Cannabinoid receptor genotype moderation of the effects of childhood physical abuse on anhedonia and depression.

CONTEXT The endocannabinoid system has been implicated in stress adaptation and the regulation of mood in rodent studies, but few human association studies have examined these links and replications are limited. OBJECTIVES To examine whether a synonymous polymorphism, rs1049353, in exon 4 of the gene encoding the human endocannabinoid receptor (CNR1) moderates the effect of self-reported childhood physical abuse on lifetime anhedonia and depression and to replicate this interaction in an independent sample. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS Genetic association study in 1041 young US women with replication in an independent Australian sample of 1428 heroin-dependent individuals as cases and 506 participants as neighborhood controls. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Self-reported anhedonia and depression (with anhedonia). RESULTS In both samples, individuals who experienced childhood physical abuse were considerably more likely to report lifetime anhedonia. However, in those with 1 or more copies of the minor allele of rs1049353, this pathogenic effect of childhood physical abuse was attenuated. Thus, in participants reporting childhood physical abuse, although 57.1% of those homozygous for the major allele reported anhedonia, only 28.6% of those who were carriers of the minor allele reported it (P=.01). The rs1049353 polymorphism also buffered the effects of childhood physical abuse on major depressive disorder; however, this influence was largely attributable to anhedonic depression. These effects were also noted in an independent sample, in which minor allele carriers were at decreased risk for anhedonia even when exposed to physical abuse. CONCLUSIONS Consistent with preclinical findings, a synonymous CNR1 polymorphism, rs1049353, is linked to the effects of stress attributable to childhood physical abuse on anhedonia and anhedonic depression. This polymorphism reportedly resides in the neighborhood of an exon splice enhancer; hence, future studies should carefully examine its effect on expression and conformational variation in CNR1, particularly in relation to stress adaptation.
Informing Loads: Enabling Software to Observe and React to Memory Behavior

Memory latency is an important bottleneck in system performance that cannot be adequately solved by hardware alone. Several promising software techniques have been shown to address this problem successfully in specific situations. However, the generality of these software approaches has been limited because current architectures do not provide a fine-grained, low-overhead mechanism to observe memory behavior directly. To fill this need, we propose a new set of memory operations called informing memory operations, and in particular, we describe the design and functionality of an informing load instruction. This instruction serves as a primitive that allows the software to observe cache misses and to act upon this information inexpensively (i.e. under the miss, when the processor would typically be idle) within the current software context. Informing loads enable new solutions to several important software problems. We demonstrate this through examples that show their usefulness in (i) the collection of fine-grained memory profiles with high precision and low overhead and (ii) the automatic improvement of memory system performance through compiler techniques that take advantage of cache-miss information. Overall, we find that the apparent benefit of an informing load instruction is quite high, while the hardware cost of this functionality is quite modest. In fact, the bulk of the required hardware support is already present in today''s high-performance processors.
The evolution of isotope ratios in the Milky Way Galaxy

Isotope ratios have opened a new window into the study of the details of stellar evolution, supernovae, and galactic chemical evolution. We present the evolution of the isotope ratios of elemental abundances (from C to Zn) in the solar neighbourhood, bulge, halo, and thick disk, using chemical evolution models with updated yields of Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) stars and core-collapse supernovae. The evolutionary history of each element is different owing to the effects of the initial progenitor mass and metallicity on element production. In the bulge and thick disk the star formation timescale is shorter than in the solar neighbourhood, leading to higher [�/Fe] ratios. Likewise, the smaller contribution from Type Ia supernovae in these regions leads to lower [Mn/Fe] ratios. Also in the bulge, the abundances of [(Na, Al, P, Cl, K, Sc, Cu, Zn)/Fe] are higher because of the effect of metallicity on element production from core-collapse supernovae. According to our predictions, it is possible to find metalrich stars ([Fe/H] > 1) that formed in the early Universe as a result of rapid star formation. The chemical enrichment timescale of the halo is longer than in the solar neighbourhood, and consequently the ratios of [(C, F)/Fe] and 12 C/ 13 C are higher owing to a significant contribution from low-mass AGB stars. While the [�/Fe] and [Mn/Fe] ratios are the same as in the solar neighbourhood, the [(Na, Al, P, Cl, K, Sc, Cu, Zn)/Fe] ratios are predicted to be lower. Furthermore, we predict that isotope ratios such as 24 Mg/ 25,26 Mg are larger because of the contribution from low-metallicity supernovae. Using isotopic ratios it is possible to select stars that formed in a system with a low chemical enrichment efficiency such as the satellite galaxies t hat were accreted onto our own Milky Way Galaxy.
Influence of different phosphorus diets on bone parameters of growing pigs

The objectives of this study were to examine the response of growing pigs to a level of phosphorus in excess of current usage and also to examine the effect of reducing phosphorus level in the later growing stages on bone characteristics. After slaughter, third metacarpals were removed from the front right foot of experimental pigs and the bones were weighed. Overall length of each bone and the width of bone shaft at the narrow and wide dimension were measured. Wall thickness, shear force resistance and ash percentage were also measured. Dry weight of bone was significantly affected by treatment (P<0.05). There was a similar trend for both bone ash weight and ash percentage, with those fed a phase phosphorus diet (low phosphorus level in the later growing stages) having significantly lower values than the other treatments (P<0.01). There was a trend for increased stress as dietary phosphorus level increased. We can conclude that pig bone development was significantly affected by dietary phosphorus level. The low-phosphorus diet gave significantly poorer results than the adequate-phosphorus diet; while there were no beneficial effects of supplementing phosphorus at a level higher than 2.4 g/kg. Lowering the phosphorus level to 1.6 g/kg in the late finishing stage seemed to produce a deleterious effect.
Transgender experiences of occupation and the environment: A scoping review

ABSTRACT Background: ‘Cisnormativity’ refers to the Western cultural belief that gender (man/woman) mirrors sex (male/female). This review considers the occupational experiences of people whose gender identity differs from what is expected based on their sex at birth, gender identities operationalised as ‘transgender’. Method: A scoping review was conducted to examine the subjective experiences of occupation for transgender people and the enabling and/or restrictive features of the environment. Forty-one studies were reviewed, using inductive and deductive thematic analysis methods. Results: Three major themes relating to occupational experiences were identified: a) doing difference: gender expression and transition, b) recognisably different: macroaggressions and transphobia, and c) responding to difference: adaptation and identity affirmation. Environmental barriers were reported at a higher frequency than enabling features and pertained to social, physical, cultural and institutional factors. Conclusions: While occupation enables expression of transgender identities, cisnormative ideology shapes participatory norms in Euro-Western contexts. Occupational opportunities are unequal for transgender people, with the policing of binary gender restricting opportunities for inclusion and participation. This review functions as a critical starting point for broader conceptual thinking on occupation, resistance and identity-management for people who are transgender.
If It Is Funny, It Is Mean: Understanding Social Perceptions of Yelp Online Reviews

Online recommendation communities, like Yelp, are valuable information sources for people. Yet, we assert, review communities have their own dynamics behind the social interactions therein. In this work, we study the Yelp review votes of useful, funny, and/or cool to understand these social perceptions of the review. We examine the relationship between these social signals and the emotional valence of the review itself (text and rating). We aim to understand the community's perception of each of these signaling contributions. We construct a conditional inference tree of social signals from 230K Yelp reviews to study how social signals shape the deviance in review rating from the mean rating, an indicator of the overall business rating on Yelp. We find two effects of social signals. First, reviews voted as useful and funny are associated with lower user ratings and relatively negative tone in the review text. Second, reviews voted as cool tend to have a relatively positive tone and higher ratings. Our findings open a research direction for further understanding of perceptions of social signals and have implications for design of recommendation systems.