Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Attitudes and Motivations of Owners Who Enroll Pets in Pet Life-Care Centers

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to examine the characteristics, motivations, and expectations of humans who enroll their dogs, cats, and other pets into pet life-care centers. Pet life-care centers are groups or institutions that provide a permanent home for pets in the event of the owner’s illness, inability to care for their pet, or death. The long-term pet care industry has grown in the quality and type of care available to pet owners and is a classic example of the human–animal bond in action. This bond is well-documented in the literature, with most research focusing on physical, emotional, and mental health benefits to the pet owner. Few studies have examined how the human–animal bond affects the animal, and little is known about the motives and expectations of owners who enroll their pet in a life-care center. We conducted a study using a mail questionnaire sent to 163 current clients of a pet life-care center in Texas, USA. Of 101 respondents, whose ages ranged from 30 to over 70, most were female, married, and college-educated. Respondents strongly endorsed a variety of reasons for enrolling their pet in the center, with quality of veterinary care and satisfaction of their pet’s basic needs being the most highly rated. Coding of open-ended responses was consistent with these ratings and identified having no other options as another frequently endorsed reason. The open-ended responses also indicated that respondents expected that their pet would enjoy extensive social interaction, receive high-quality medical attention, and be treated like they were at home. Respondents who had previously visited the center were more willing to adopt a pet in the future than those who had not visited the center. With the dramatic growth of pet life-care centers in the United States and lack of existing literature, further studies in this area are advised.
Limb Vascular Responsiveness to β‐Adrenergic Receptor Stimulation in Patients With Congestive Heart Failure

BackgroundIn patients with congestive heart failure, the chronotropic and inotropic responses to f3-adrenergic agonists are reduced. It is not known whether desensitization of peripheral β-adrenoceptors accounts for impaired limb vasodilation in these patients. Accordingly, we studied 14 normal subjects and 13 age-matched patients with congestive heart failure. Methods and ResultsTo distinguish vasodilation mediated by 3-adrenoceptors and adenylate cyclase from that mediated by stimulation of guanylate cyclase, each subject received intrabrachial artery infusions of isoproterenol (1-100 ng/min) and sodium nitroprusside (0.3-10, ug/min), respectively. Forearm blood flow was determined by venous occlusion plethysmography. Maximal vasodilative potential, determined during reactive hyperemia, was reduced in the patients with congestive heart failure. The maximal forearm blood flow response to isoproterenol was comparable in patients with heart failure and in normal subjects (8.0 ± +1.1 versus 9.2+1.2 ml/100 ml of tissue/min, respectively, p=NS). Furthermore, the dose-response relation to isoproterenol was similar in both groups. Likewise, the forearm vasodilative response to sodium nitroprusside was preserved in the heart failure group. Plasma concentration of norepinephrine was higher in the patients with heart failure (436+34 versus 201+ 74 pg/ml,p < 0.01). When both groups were considered, there was no correlation between norepinephrine levels and the maximal forearm blood flow response to isoproterenol (r = 0.10,p=NS). ConclusionsWe conclude that β-adrenoceptor desensitization does not occur in the limb vessels of patients with congestive heart failure. (Circulation 1991;83:1873—1879)
Fully Autonomous Quadrotor: A Testbed Platform for Aerial Robotics Tasks

This paper presents a strategy for an attitude and altitude control of a fully autonomous quad rotor helicopter. The hardware and software architecture of the proposed system is based on master-slave paradigm, where the master device is an embedded PC allowing high degree of autonomy. This paper focuses on the low level stabilization control. The stabilization approach is based on a transformation of the input variables of the system to perform a decoupled control. Experimental results of attitude and altitude control of the quad rotor prototype are shown.
FROM INTUITION TO PROFESSIONALIZATION: A QUALITATIVE STUDY ABOUT THE DEVELOPMENT OF TEACHER IDENTITY IN INTERNAL MEDICINE SENIOR RESIDENTS

Objectives: Professional identity can be defined as a developmental process. Literature suggests that residents aiming to practice in a teaching institution should receive support for the development of teaching competencies as much as they do for medical competencies, but there is limited data on how to recognize teacher identity development in residents. Our study focused on the manifestations of teacher identity development in a group of senior residents in a four-week optional pedagogy rotation. In particular, we were interested in seeing teacher identity development towards the end of the residency program, at a time when clinician identity begins to consolidate. Methods: A qualitative and exploratory approach guided our study design. Participants were internal medicine residents, (from Yr4 to Yr6) at University of Montreal, who intended working in a university setting and were interested in developing a teaching project. Focus groups were held at three separate moments: 1) before rotation, 2) after rotation and, 3) six months after rotation. Direct content analysis was chosen to analyze our findings. Results: We observed the emergence and the evolution of teacher identity and furthermore, we identified six development pathways, which underpin the development of teacher professional identity: 1) From awkward and stereotyped usage to mastery of concepts and teaching techniques, 2) From the reproduction of implicit norms of the clinical setting to the establishment of pedagogical norms 3) From the feeling of powerlessness in teaching to a feeling of mastery and taking initiatives 4) From teaching intuitively to reasoning pedagogically 5) From a teacher based paradigm to the discovery of the learner-centered paradigm and 6) From an emerging identity as a clinician to the simultaneous construction of twin identities: clinician and teacher. Six development indicators providing operational cues to help recognize different facets of teacher identity development were then identified. Conclusion: The identity development pathways allowed us to gain deeper insights about how teacher identity develops in internal medicine residents toward the end of a pedagogical rotation. It is our hope that these findings will help educators recognize and support the development of teacher identity in their residents.
DIFFERENCES IN ENZYME CONTENT OF AZUROPHIL AND SPECIFIC GRANULES OF POLYMORPHONUCLEAR LEUKOCYTES

Histochemical procedures for PMN granule enzymes were carried out on smears prepared from normal rabbit bone marrow, and the smears were examined by light microscopy. For each of the enzymes tested, azo dye and heavy metal techniques were utilized when possible. The distribution and intensity of each reaction were compared to the distribution of azurophil and specific granules in developing PMN. The distribution of peroxidase and six lysosomal enzymes (acid phosphatase, arylsulfatase, β-galactosidase, β-glucuronidase, esterase, and 5'-nucleotidase) corresponded to that of azurophil granules. Progranulocytes contained numerous reactive granules, and later stages contained only a few. The distribution of one enzyme, alkaline phosphatase, corresponded to that of specific granules. Reaction product first appeared in myelocytes, and later stages contained numerous reactive granules. The results of tests for lipase and thiolacetic acid esterase were negative at all developmental stages. Both types of granules stained for basic protein and arginine. It is concluded that azurophil and specific granules differ in their enzyme content. Moreover, a given enzyme appears to be restricted to one of the granules. The findings further indicate that azurophil granules are primary lysosomes, since they contain numerous lysosomal, hydrolytic enzymes, but the nature of specific granules is uncertain since, except for alkaline phosphatase, their contents remain unknown.
Moment inversion problem for piecewise D-finite functions

We consider the problem of exact reconstruction of univariate functions with jump discontinuities at unknown positions from their moments. These functions are assumed to satisfy an a priori unknown linear homogeneous differential equation with polynomial coefficients on each continuity interval. Therefore, they may be specified by a finite amount of information. This reconstruction problem has practical importance in signal processing and other applications. It is somewhat of a ‘folklore’ that the sequence of the moments of such ‘piecewise D-finite’ functions satisfies a linear recurrence relation of bounded order and degree. We derive this recurrence relation explicitly. It turns out that the coefficients of the differential operator which annihilates every piece of the function, as well as the locations of the discontinuities, appear in this recurrence in a precisely controlled manner. This leads to the formulation of a generic algorithm for reconstructing a piecewise D-finite function from its moments. We investigate the conditions for solvability of resulting linear systems in the general case, as well as analyse a few particular examples. We provide results of numerical simulations for several types of signals, which test the sensitivity of the proposed algorithm to noise.
Working Paper 1206 March 2012 Common Drifting Volatility in Large Bayesian VARs

Working papers of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland are preliminary materials circulated to stimulate discussion and critical comment on research in progress. They may not have been subject to the formal editorial review accorded offi cial Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland publications. The views stated herein are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland or of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. The estimation of large vector autoregressions with stochastic volatility using standard methods is computationally very demanding. In this paper we propose to model conditional volatilities as driven by a single common unobserved factor. This is justifi ed by the observation that the pattern of estimated volatilities in empirical analyses is often very similar across variables. Using a combination of a standard natural conjugate prior for the VAR coeffi cients and an independent prior on a common stochastic volatility factor, we derive the posterior densities for the parameters of the resulting BVAR with common stochastic volatility (BVAR-CSV). Under the chosen prior, the conditional posterior of the VAR coeffi cients features a Kroneker structure that allows for fast estimation, even in a large system. Using US and UK data, we show that, compared to a model with constant volatilities, our proposed common volatility model signifi cantly improves model fi t and forecast accuracy. The gains are comparable to or as great as the gains achieved with a conventional stochastic volatility specifi cation that allows independent volatility processes for each variable. But our common volatility specifi cation greatly speeds computations.
Consumption with Durability

Using a dynamic programming framework, in an intertemporal consumption-saving model with income uncertainty and durability, we have found a closed form solution for consumption. Also, the precautionary savings term arising from the riskiness of income is formally derived. With durability assumption, consumption has a higher response to permanent income than the one in the standard model, and also responds to a distributed lag of past permanent incomes with alternating signs. Furthermore, the effect of income uncertainty is greater on consumption relative to the case with time-separable preferences. That is, as the strength of durability increases, the level of precautionary savings against income uncertainty will be higher. En utilisant la programmation dynamique, dans un modele intertemporel de consommation et d'epargne avec incertitude de revenu et durabilite, nous avons trouve une solution fermee pour la consommation et derive l'epargne precautionnelle. Avec l'hypothese de durabilite, la consommation a une reaction plus intense au revenu permanent par rapport au modele standard et aussi reagit aux niveaux passes du revenu permanent avec une alternation de signe. En plus, l'effet de l'incertitude de revenu sur la consommation est plus eleve par rapport au cas avec les preferences temps non separables. C'est-a-dire, quand la force de durabilite augmente, le niveau de l'epargne precautionnelle contre l'incertitude de revenu doit etre plus eleve.
An empirical exploratory study on operating system reliability

High-reliability applications run on top of commodity operating systems, which hence must provide high reliable services. In this paper, we conduct an empirical exploratory study on OS reliability. We analyze more than 30,000 real OS failure data collected from different workplace environments. The results show that the main cause of OS failures is related to OS services, and not OS applications or OS kernel. The Gamma and Weibull distributions presented the best fit to the OS failure data. We also found that OS kernel failures are more prevalent in enterprise workplaces than academics, where the observed failure rate in the former was higher than in the latter.
Health care costs among renal cancer patients using pazopanib and sunitinib.

BACKGROUND Pazopanib was noninferior to sunitinib in progression-free survival in a phase III, open-label, randomized clinical trial comparing the efficacy and safety of the 2 drugs for treatment of patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC). A secondary analysis of this trial conducted on patient-reported health care resource utilization (HCRU) endpoints revealed significantly fewer monthly telephone consultations and emergency department visits among patients treated with pazopanib over the first 6 months of treatment. OBJECTIVES To (a) compare total costs of HCRU and adverse events (AEs) in patients with advanced RCC receiving first-line pazopanib or sunitinib from the phase III clinical trial and (b) perform a post hoc economic analysis that applied direct medical care and pharmacy unit costs, obtained from the Truven Health MarketScan Databases, to HCRU and AE rates. METHODS Total HCRU costs included components for provider contacts, diagnostics, hospitalizations, procedures, and study/nonstudy drugs. Patients were stratified by the presence or absence of an AE in order to estimate costs attributable to AEs. Costs were adjusted to 2013 U.S. dollars. The highest 1% of cost outliers were equally excluded from each group. Univariate (t-test and Kaplan-Meier sample average [KMSA]) and multivariate (using treatment group and region as covariates) analyses were performed. RESULTS A total of 906 patients (pazopanib, n = 454; sunitinib, n = 452) reported HCRU; higher rates were observed for sunitinib. In unadjusted cost analyses, the mean total costs for pazopanib-treated patients were 8.0% lower than those treated with sunitinib ($80,464 vs. $86,886; P = 0.20). The difference in KMSA-estimated costs was significantly higher for sunitinib versus pazopanib ($156,128 vs. $143,585; P = 0.003). Adjusted cost differences between arms consistently suggested higher costs for sunitinib. Among patients who experienced greater than or equal to 1 AE, costs were $8,118 higher for pazopanib-treated patients and $14,343 for sunitinib-treated patients. CONCLUSIONS The findings suggest that health care costs were lower among patients with advanced RCC treated first-line with pazopanib versus sunitinib.
A randomized control study of psychological intervention to reduce anxiety, amotivation and psychological distress among medical students

Background: Test anxiety aggravates psychological distress and reduces the motivation among graduate students. This study aimed to identify psychological intervention for test anxiety, which reduces the level of psychological distress, amotivation and increases the intrinsic and extrinsic motivation among medical students. Materials and Methods: Westside test anxiety scale, Kessler Perceived Stress Scale and Academic Motivation Scale were used to measure test anxiety, psychological distress and motivation on 436 1st year medical students. Out of 436 students, 74 students who exhibited moderate to high test anxiety were randomly divided into either experimental or waiting list group. In this true randomized experimental study, 32 participants from the intervention group received five sessions of psychological intervention consist of psychoeducation, relaxation therapy and systematic desensitization. Thirty-three students from waiting list received one session of advice and suggestions. Results: After received psychological intervention participants from the intervention group experienced less anxiety, psychological distress, and amotivation (P < 0.01) and high intrinsic and extrinsic motivation (P < 0.01) in the postassessment compared with their preassessment scores. Conclusion: Overall psychological intervention is effective to reduce anxiety scores and its related variables.
Identification of Body Fat Mass as a Major Determinant of Metabolic Rate in Mice

OBJECTIVE Analysis of energy expenditure (EE) in mice is essential to obesity research. Since EE varies with body mass, comparisons between lean and obese mice are confounded unless EE is normalized to account for body mass differences. We 1) assessed the validity of ratio-based EE normalization involving division of EE by either total body mass (TBM) or lean body mass (LBM), 2) compared the independent contributions of LBM and fat mass (FM) to EE, and 3) investigated whether leptin contributes to the link between FM and EE. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS We used regression modeling of calorimetry and body composition data in 137 mice to estimate the independent contributions of LBM and FM to EE. Subcutaneous administration of leptin or vehicle to 28 obese ob/ob mice and 32 fasting wild-type mice was used to determine if FM affects EE via a leptin-dependent mechanism. RESULTS Division of EE by either TBM or LBM is confounded by body mass variation. The contribution of FM to EE is comparable to that of LBM in normal mice (expressed per gram of tissue) but is absent in leptin-deficient ob/ob mice. When leptin is administered at physiological doses, the plasma leptin concentration supplants FM as an independent determinant of EE in both ob/ob mice and normal mice rendered leptin-deficient by fasting. CONCLUSIONS The contribution of FM to EE is substantially greater than predicted from the metabolic cost of adipose tissue per se, and the mechanism underlying this effect is leptin dependent. Regression-based approaches that account for variation in both FM and LBM are recommended for normalization of EE in mice.
Pengaruh Model Problem Based Learning (PBL) Terhadap Kemampuan Berpikir Kritis Matematis Siswa SMPN 5 Sumbul

Tujuan penelitian ini adalah: (1) untuk mengetahui kemampuan berpikir kritis matematis siswa yang mengikuti pembelajaran dengan model Problem Based Learning (PBL) lebih tinggi dibandingkan dengan siswa yang mengikuti pembelajaran konvensional, (2) untuk mengetahui respon siswa terhadap model Problem Based Learning (PBL) selama pembelajaran berlangsung. Penelitian ini termasuk jenis penelitian kuasi eksperimen. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa kemampuan berpikir kritis matematis siswa yang mengikuti pembelajaran dengan model Problem Based Learning (PBL) lebih tinggi dibandingkan dengan siswa yang mengikuti pembelajaran konvensional. Berdasarkan uji hipotesis diperoleh nilai t hitung = 2,59 dan t tabel = 1,672 dengan dk = 58 dan taraf signifikansi sehingga terlihat bahwa t hitung > t tabel yaitu 2,59 > 1,672. Hasil analisis angket respon siswa menunjukkan bahwa respon siswa positif terhadap model Problem Based Learning , yang berarti bahwa siswa termotivasi dalam belajar dengan menggunakan model Problem Based Learning . Jadi, dapat disimpulkan bahwa model Problem Based Learning berpengaruh terhadap kemampuan berpikir kritis matematis siswa.
Single-stranded genomic architecture constrains optimal codon usage

Viral codon usage is shaped by the conflicting forces of mutational pressure and selection to match host patterns for optimal expression. We examined whether genomic architecture (single- or double-stranded DNA) influences the degree to which bacteriophage codon usage differ from their primary bacterial hosts and each other. While both correlated equally with their hosts’ genomic nucleotide content, the coat genes of ssDNA phages were less well adapted than those of dsDNA phages to their hosts’ codon usage profiles due to their preference for codons ending in thymine. No specific biases were detected in dsDNA phage genomes. In all nine of ten cases of codon redundancy in which a specific codon was overrepresented, ssDNA phages favored the NNT codon. A cytosine to thymine biased mutational pressure working in conjunction with strong selection against non-synonymous mutations appears be shaping codon usage bias in ssDNA viral genomes.
A Structural Smoothing Framework For Robust Graph Comparison

In this paper, we propose a general smoothing framework for graph kernels by taking structural similarity into account, and apply it to derive smoothed variants of popular graph kernels. Our framework is inspired by state-of-the-art smoothing techniques used in natural language processing (NLP). However, unlike NLP applications that primarily deal with strings, we show how one can apply smoothing to a richer class of inter-dependent sub-structures that naturally arise in graphs. Moreover, we discuss extensions of the Pitman-Yor process that can be adapted to smooth structured objects, thereby leading to novel graph kernels. Our kernels are able to tackle the diagonal dominance problem while respecting the structural similarity between features. Experimental evaluation shows that not only our kernels achieve statistically significant improvements over the unsmoothed variants, but also outperform several other graph kernels in the literature. Our kernels are competitive in terms of runtime, and offer a viable option for practitioners.