Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Activity Pacing Self-Management in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: A Randomized Controlled Trial.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the effectiveness of an activity pacing self-management (APSM) intervention in improving performance of daily life activities in women with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). METHOD A total of 33 women with CFS (age 41.1±11.2 yr) were randomly allocated to APSM (experimental group; n=16) or relaxation (control group; n=17). Main outcome measures included the Canadian Occupational Performance Measure (COPM; primary) and Checklist Individual Strength (CIS). RESULTS COPM scores changed significantly over time in both groups (p=.03). The change in Satisfaction scores showed a significant difference in favor only of APSM (effect size=0.74 [0.11, 1.4]). CIS scores decreased significantly in the experimental group only (p<.01). CONCLUSION APSM was found to be feasible and effective in optimizing participation in desired daily life activities in women with CFS. Replication in a larger sample with long-term follow-up is required.
Adherence to Burn Center Referral Criteria: Are Patients Appropriately Being Referred?

The American Burn Association (ABA) has an established set of criteria for burn center referral to guide healthcare providers and improve patient outcomes. As U.S. healthcare becomes increasingly focused on improving quality of care (ie, pay-for-performance initiatives), assessing and monitoring the referral patterns to burn centers is critical in providing optimal burn care. Few studies have compared admission, treatment, and discharge patterns at burn centers and nonburn centers. Our goal was to compare practice and referral guidelines for patients with burn injuries by reviewing every discharge record in our state over a 2-year period. The study was conducted in a retrospective fashion using our state's hospital association patient database of International Classification of Diseases, 9th revision (ICD-9) discharge codes, querying 940.00 to 948.99, over the period of October 1, 2005, to September 30, 2007. Additional variables abstracted included the discharging hospital, outcome, race, gender, payor status, length of stay, procedures, and age. Adherence to referral criteria was established by comparing the discharge ICD-9 codes with the burn center referral criteria established by the ABA and American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma in Guidelines for the Operation of Burn Centers. Injury patterns were analyzed using the 2 burn centers in our state and the remaining 107 nonburn centers providing care to burn patients. A total of 2036 adult patients aged 18 to 106 years sustained burn injuries requiring hospital admission, and 1416 (70%) met ABA referral criteria based on ICD-9 codes. Of the 1084 patients treated at burn centers, 88% met referral criteria. Of the 952 burns treated entirely at nonburn centers, 48% met referral criteria but were not transferred. The most common burns treated at nonburn centers included injuries to the hand, wrist, face, neck, and lower extremity. The mean number of criteria met by patients treated at nonburn centers was 1.5, and all deaths occurring at nonburn centers met referral criteria. A significantly higher percentage of patients with Medicare were not transferred from nonburn centers (P ≤ .00001), and a significantly higher percentage of patients were discharged to nursing homes as opposed to home (P = .01) from nonburn centers. Forty-seven percent of the patients sustaining burn injuries in our state receive all of their acute inpatient care at nonburn centers, and almost half of these met ABA burn center referral criteria. Given the disparity in discharge placement and immediate availability of burn specialists in our state, all patients meeting ABA referral criteria should be referred to burn centers. More focused outreach and education for initial providers may help improve access and referral to burn centers.
Model‐based clustering and classification of functional data

Complex data analysis is a central topic of modern statistics and learning systems which is becoming of broader interest with the increasing prevalence of high‐dimensional data. The challenge is to develop statistical models and autonomous algorithms that are able to discern knowledge from raw data, which can be achieved through clustering techniques, or to make predictions of future data via classification techniques. Latent data models, including mixture model‐based approaches, are among the most popular and successful approaches in both supervised and unsupervised learning. Although being traditional tools in multivariate analysis, they are growing in popularity when considered in the framework of functional data analysis (FDA). FDA is the data analysis paradigm in which each datum is a function, rather than a real vector. In many areas of application, including signal and image processing, functional imaging, bioinformatics, etc., the analyzed data are indeed often available in the form of discretized values of functions, curves, or surfaces. This functional aspect of the data adds additional difficulties when compared to classical multivariate data analysis. We review and present approaches for model‐based clustering and classification of functional data. We present well‐grounded statistical models along with efficient algorithmic tools to address problems regarding the clustering and the classification of these functional data, including their heterogeneity, missing information, and dynamical hidden structures. The presented models and algorithms are illustrated via real‐world functional data analysis problems from several areas of application.
Molecular typing of uropathogenic Escherichia coli isolated from Korean children with urinary tract infection

Purpose We investigated the molecular types of uropathogenic Escherichia coli (UPEC) by using conventional phylogrouping, multilocus sequence typing (MLST), and fimH genotyping. Methods Samples of patients younger than 18 years of age were collected from the Chung-Ang University Hospital over 2 years. Conventional phylogenetic grouping for UPEC strains was performed by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Bacterial strain sequence types (STs) were classified on the basis of the results of partial sequencing of seven housekeeping genes. In addition, we analyzed nucleotide variations in a 424-base pair fragment of fimH, a major virulence factor in UPEC. Results Sixty-four UPEC isolates were analyzed in this study. Phylogenetic grouping revealed that group B2 was the most common type (n=54, 84%). We identified 16 distinctive STs using MLST. The most common STs were ST95 (35.9%), ST73 (15.6%), ST131 (12.5%), ST69 (7.8%), and ST14 (6.3%). Fourteen fimH allele types were identified, of which 11 had been previously reported, and the remaining three were identified in this study. f1 (n=28, 45.2%) was found to be the most common allele type, followed by f6 and f9 (n=7, 11.3% each). Comparative analysis of the results from the three different molecular typing techniques revealed that both MLST and fimH typing generated more discriminatory UPEC types than did PCR-based phylogrouping. Conclusion We characterized UPEC molecular types isolated from Korean children by MLST and fimH genotyping. fimH genotyping might serve as a useful molecular test for large epidemiologic studies of UPEC isolates.
From the Cover: Comparative Numerical Modeling of Inhaled Nanoparticle Deposition in Human and Rat Nasal Cavities.

To gain a better understanding of nanoparticle exposure in human nasal cavities, laboratory animals (e.g. rat) are used for in vivo studies. However, due to anatomical differences between human and rodent nasal cavities, direct particle deposition comparisons between species are difficult. This paper presents a comparative nanoparticle (1 nm, 10 nm, and 100 nm) deposition study using anatomically realistic models of a human and rat nasal cavity. The particle deposition fraction was highest consistently in the main nasal passage, for all nanoparticles tested, in the human model; whereas this was only the case for 10 nm, and 100 nm particles for the rodent model, where greater deposition was found in the anterior nose for 1 nm particles. A deposition intensity (DI) term was introduced to represent the accumulated deposition fraction on cross-sectional slices. A common and preferential deposition site in the human model was found for all nanoparticles occurring at a distance of 3.5 cm inside the nasal passage. For the rodent model maximum DI occurred in the vestibule region at a distance of 0.3 cm, indicating that the rodent vestibule produces exceptionally high particle filtration capability. We also introduced a deposition flux which was a ratio of the regional deposition fraction relative to the region's surface area fraction. This value allowed direct comparison of deposition flux between species, and a regional extrapolation scaling factor was found (e.g. 1/10 scale for vestibule region for rat to human comparison). This study bridges the in vitro exposure experiments and in vivo nanomaterials toxicity studies, and can contribute towards improving inter-species exposure extrapolation studies in the future.
Two-Stream Contextualized CNN for Fine-Grained Image Classification

Human's cognition system prompts that context information provides potentially powerful clue while recognizing objects. However, for fine-grained image classification, the contribution of context may vary over different images, and sometimes the context even confuses the classification result. To alleviate this problem, in our work, we develop a novel approach, two-stream contextualized Convolutional Neural Network, which provides a simple but efficient context-content joint classification model under deep learning framework. The network merely requires the raw image and a coarse segmentation as input to extract both content and context features without need of human interaction. Moreover, our network adopts a weighted fusion scheme to combine the content and the context classifiers, while a subnetwork is introduced to adaptively determine the weight for each image. According to our experiments on public datasets, our approach achieves considerable high recognition accuracy without any tedious human's involvements, as compared with the state-of-the-art approaches.
Interference and conflict monitoring in individuals with amnestic mild cognitive impairment: A structural study of the anterior cingulate cortex

Amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) is a clinical condition characterized by memory impairment in the absence of any other cognitive impairment and is commonly associated with high conversion to Alzheimer's disease. Recent evidence shows that executive functions and selective attention mechanisms could also be impaired in aMCI. In this study, we investigated performance differences (i.e., reaction times [RTs] and accuracy) between a group of aMCI participants and a group of age-matched healthy individuals on the attentional network task (ANT) focusing on situations with increased interference. In particular, we assessed the relationship between interference and conflict effects and grey matter volumes (GMVs) of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC)/pre-supplementary motor area in the entire sample because of its crucial role in conflict monitoring. When compared with controls, aMCI participants were less accurate on the ANT, showing increased interference and conflict effects, but no differences in RTs. In addition, aMCI participants exhibited lower GMV in the ACC than controls. While better accuracy for interference and conflict effects was associated with an increase of GMV in the ACC for both groups, RTs from the interference effect were negatively correlated with GMV of the ACC only in aMCI participants. In other words, lower GMV values of the ACC were paralleled with significantly impaired performance in terms of interference resolution. In conclusion, our study suggests the presence of a selective impairment in interference and conflict monitoring in aMCI, which in turn is associated with decreased GMVs in the ACC.
The Topoisomerase 1 Inhibitor Austrobailignan-1 Isolated from Koelreuteria henryi Induces a G2/M-Phase Arrest and Cell Death Independently of p53 in Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Cells

Koelreuteria henryi Dummer, an endemic plant of Taiwan, has been used as a folk medicine for the treatment of hepatitis, enteritis, cough, pharyngitis, allergy, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and cancer. Austrobailignan-1, a natural lignan derivative isolated from Koelreuteria henryi Dummer, has anti-oxidative and anti-cancer properties. However, the effects of austrobailignan-1 on human cancer cells have not been studied yet. Here, we showed that austrobailignan-1 inhibited cell growth of human non-small cell lung cancer A549 and H1299 cell lines in both dose- and time-dependent manners, the IC50 value (48 h) of austrobailignan-1 were 41 and 22 nM, respectively. Data from flow cytometric analysis indicated that treatment with austrobailignan-1 for 24 h retarded the cell cycle at the G2/M phase. The molecular event of austrobailignan-1-mediated G2/M phase arrest was associated with the increase of p21Waf1/Cip1 and p27Kip1 expression, and decrease of Cdc25C expression. Moreover, treatment with 100 nM austrobailignan-1 for 48 h resulted in a pronounced release of cytochrome c followed by the activation of caspase-2, -3, and -9, and consequently induced apoptosis. These events were accompanied by the increase of PUMA and Bax, and the decrease of Mcl-1 and Bcl-2. Furthermore, our study also showed that austrobailignan-1 was a topoisomerase 1 inhibitor, as evidenced by a relaxation assay and induction of a DNA damage response signaling pathway, including ATM, and Chk1, Chk2, γH2AX phosphorylated activation. Overall, our results suggest that austrobailignan-1 is a novel DNA damaging agent and displays a topoisomerase I inhibitory activity, causes DNA strand breaks, and consequently induces DNA damage response signaling for cell cycle G2/M arrest and apoptosis in a p53 independent manner.
Highly Sensitive Hot-Wire Anemometry Based on Macro-Sized Double-Walled Carbon Nanotube Strands

This paper presents a highly sensitive flow-rate sensor with carbon nanotubes (CNTs) as sensing elements. The sensor uses micro-size centimeters long double-walled CNT (DWCNT) strands as hot-wires to sense fluid velocity. In the theoretical analysis, the sensitivity of the sensor is demonstrated to be positively related to the ratio of its surface. We assemble the flow sensor by suspending the DWCNT strand directly on two tungsten prongs and dripping a small amount of silver glue onto each contact between the DWCNT and the prongs. The DWCNT exhibits a positive TCR of 1980 ppm/K. The self-heating effect on the DWCNT was observed while constant current was applied between the two prongs. This sensor can evidently respond to flow rate, and requires only several milliwatts to operate. We have, thus far, demonstrated that the CNT-based flow sensor has better sensitivity than the Pt-coated DWCNT sensor.
A Convex Optimization-Based Coupled Nonnegative Matrix Factorization Algorithm for Hyperspectral and Multispectral Data Fusion

Fusing a low-spatial-resolution hyperspectral data with a high-spatial-resolution (HSR) multispectral data has been recognized as an economical approach for obtaining HSR hyperspectral data, which is important to accurate identification and classification of the underlying materials. A natural and promising fusion criterion, called coupled nonnegative matrix factorization (CNMF), has been reported that can yield high-quality fused data. However, the CNMF criterion amounts to an ill-posed inverse problem, and hence, advisable regularization can be considered for further upgrading its fusion performance. Besides the commonly used sparsity-promoting regularization, we also incorporate the well-known sum-of-squared-distances regularizer, which serves as a convex surrogate of the volume of the simplex of materials’ spectral signature vectors (i.e., endmembers), into the CNMF criterion, thereby leading to a convex formulation of the fusion problem. Then, thanks to the biconvexity of the problem nature, we decouple it into two convex subproblems, which are then, respectively, solved by two carefully designed alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) algorithms. Closed-form expressions for all the ADMM iterates are derived via convex optimization theories (e.g., Karush–Kuhn–Tucker conditions), and furthermore, some matrix structures are employed to obtain alternative expressions with much lower computational complexities, thus suitable for practical applications. Some experimental results are provided to demonstrate the superior fusion performance of the proposed algorithm over state-of-the-art methods.
Magnetostriction of martensite

Abstract A general strategy is described for inducing magnetostriction in ferromagnetic martensitic materials. An analysis of domain redistribution caused by a magnetic field is given, and certain relations between material constants that promote this effect are described. These relations suggest a ‘constrained theory of magnetostriction’ which is used to predict strain against field in a tetragonal martensite subject to an orthogonal biaxial magnetic field and uniaxial stress. These predictions are compared with the corresponding experiments in Fe70Pd30. Reversible field-induced strains of 0.6% are exhibited in this system. Microstructural observations confirm that these strains are caused by a field-induced redistribution of martensitic twins.
Ion channels in control of pancreatic stellate cell migration

Pancreatic stellate cells (PSCs) play a critical role in the progression of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC). Once activated, PSCs support proliferation and metastasis of carcinoma cells. PSCs even co-metastasise with carcinoma cells. This requires the ability of PSCs to migrate. In recent years, it has been established that almost all “hallmarks of cancer” such as proliferation or migration/invasion also rely on the expression and function of ion channels. So far, there is only very limited information about the function of ion channels in PSCs. Yet, there is growing evidence that ion channels in stromal cells also contribute to tumor progression. Here we investigated the function of KCa3.1 channels in PSCs. KCa3.1 channels are also found in many tumor cells of different origin. We revealed the functional expression of KCa3.1 channels by means of Western blot, immunofluorescence and patch clamp analysis. The impact of KCa3.1 channel activity on PSC function was determined with live-cell imaging and by measuring the intracellular Ca2+ concentration ([Ca2+]i). KCa3.1 channel blockade or knockout prevents the stimulation of PSC migration and chemotaxis by reducing the [Ca2+]i and calpain activity. KCa3.1 channels functionally cooperate with TRPC3 channels that are upregulated in PDAC stroma. Knockdown of TRPC3 channels largely abolishes the impact of KCa3.1 channels on PSC migration. In summary, our results clearly show that ion channels are crucial players in PSC physiology and pathophysiology.
A Population-Based Questionnaire Study on the Prevalence and Epidemiology of Burn Patients in Denizli, Turkey

Epidemiological investigations of burn patients help health services to identify the need for burn care and to plan burn care facilities. Various epidemiological studies on burn injury have been conducted, but they have usually covered major burn victims who required hospitalization or minor burn victims who were treated at health care centers. Few studies have included burn victims who were not admitted to any health care center. Through a population-based questionnaire, we studied the epidemiology of the entire population of burn victims, including those who did not seek medical attention. Thus, we identified the actual frequency of hospital admission and the frequency of sequelae. In total, 1068 persons from the city of Denizli, Turkey were questioned about burns in the last 10 years and the burn prevalence was found to be 12.6%. Only 33.3% of the burn victims were treated at a health care center; thus, 66.7% of the victims were treated at home with traditional burn wound care methods. Etiologic factors such as the age and sex of each victim, the cause and anatomic location of the burn, and location of the victim when burned were all investigated. The overall percentage of sequelae was 31.3%; of these, 89.5% were cosmetic problems, 7.9% were functional impairments, and 2.9% were physiological problems. The low percentage of health care center admissions and high incidence of sequelae suggest the need for professional burn care centers that can be easily reached by burn victims.
RE-AIM: Evidence-based standards and a web resource to improve translation of research into practice

Background: Health services data indicate that under present conditions evidence-based medical and preventive practices are not consistently implemented in clinical practice and affect the quality of care provided to patients. Operating with similar conditions and resources, it is unlikely that evidencebased behavioral medicine (EBBM) practices will be more successfully implemented.Purpose: In this article we propose ways to help improve the implementation of EBBM practice.Methods: This article describes the RE-AIM (Reach, Efficacy/Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation, and Maintenance) framework that is available on a free-use Web site (http://www. re-aim.org), which offers practical research translation tools, resources, and support for program planners, community leaders, and researchers. The material located at www.re-aim.org can be used to help anticipate and overcome likely barriers to dissemination and to estimate eventual public health impact.Results: Data on Web site utilization and lessons learned thus far in its implementation are presented.Conclusions: Scientists and public health leaders should devote greater attention to reporting practice-oriented issues such as generalizability, breadth of application, and pragmatic and setting or contextual issues in addition to the current focus on internal validity issues. We hope that this and similar efforts will assist EBBM interventions to have broader applications, be consistently implemented, and be sustained.
Whole-Body Oxygen (16O) Ion-Exposure-Induced Impairments in Social Odor Recognition Memory in Rats are Dose and Time Dependent

Future long-duration space missions will involve travel outside of the Earth's magnetosphere, which will result in increased radiation exposure for astronauts. Exposure could permanently damage multiple tissues, including the central nervous system (CNS), and result in deleterious effects on cognition and behavior during and beyond the mission. Here, we assessed the effects of whole-body oxygen ion (16O; 1,000 MeV/n) exposure (5 or 25 cGy) on social odor recognition memory in male Long-Evans rats at one and six months after exposure. At one month postirradiation, all rats displayed a preference for a novel 1 (N1) social odor experienced during the habituation phase. When assessed for recognition memory 24 h later, only sham-irradiated rats spent more time exploring a second novel social odor (novel 2, N2), whereas rats irradiated with 5 or 25 cGy 16O ions did not show a preference for the N2 odor compared to the N1 odor experienced 24 h earlier, thus displaying a memory deficit for recall of the social odor encountered 24 h prior. At six months postirradiation, rats exposed to 25 cGy showed persistent deficits in 24 h recognition memory, while the 5 cGy-exposed rats did not. Thus, 24 h recognition memory was apparently recovered at six months postirradiation for the low, but not the higher, dose of 16O ions. Both irradiated groups displayed similar numbers of Ki67+ cells, a marker of cell proliferation, in the subventricular zone. These results further demonstrate that space-relevant 16O ion exposure has deleterious effects on the CNS, which are related to both radiation dose and time after exposure.