Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Altered swelling and ion fluxes in articular cartilage as a biomarker in osteoarthritis and joint immobilization: a computational analysis

In healthy cartilage, mechano-electrochemical phenomena act together to maintain tissue homeostasis. Osteoarthritis (OA) and degenerative diseases disrupt this biological equilibrium by causing structural deterioration and subsequent dysfunction of the tissue. Swelling and ion flux alteration as well as abnormal ion distribution are proposed as primary indicators of tissue degradation. In this paper, we present an extension of a previous three-dimensional computational model of the cartilage behaviour developed by the authors to simulate the contribution of the main tissue components in its behaviour. The model considers the mechano-electrochemical events as concurrent phenomena in a three-dimensional environment. This model has been extended here to include the effect of repulsion of negative charges attached to proteoglycans. Moreover, we have studied the fluctuation of these charges owning to proteoglycan variations in healthy and pathological articular cartilage. In this sense, standard patterns of healthy and degraded tissue behaviour can be obtained which could be a helpful diagnostic tool. By introducing measured properties of unhealthy cartilage into the computational model, the severity of tissue degeneration can be predicted avoiding complex tissue extraction and subsequent in vitro analysis. In this work, the model has been applied to monitor and analyse cartilage behaviour at different stages of OA and in both short (four, six and eight weeks) and long-term (11 weeks) fully immobilized joints. Simulation results showed marked differences in the corresponding swelling phenomena, in outgoing cation fluxes and in cation distributions. Furthermore, long-term immobilized patients display similar swelling as well as fluxes and distribution of cations to patients in the early stages of OA, thus, preventive treatments are highly recommended to avoid tissue deterioration.
Financial Globalization and Economic Policies

We review the large literature on various economic policies that could help developing economies effectively manage the process of financial globalization. Our central findings indicate that policies promoting financial sector development, institutional quality and trade openness appear to help developing countries derive the benefits of globalization. Similarly, sound macroeconomic policies are an important prerequisite for ensuring that financial integration is beneficial. However, our analysis also suggests that the relationship between financial integration and economic policies is a complex one and that there are unavoidable tensions inherent in evaluating the risks and benefits associated with financial globalization. In light of these tensions, structural and macroeconomic policies often need to be tailored to take into account country specific circumstances to improve the risk-benefit tradeoffs of financial integration. Ultimately, it is essential to see financial integration not just as an isolated policy goal but as part of a broader package of reforms and supportive macroeconomic policies.
M-study; arguments for regional trauma databases.

BACKGROUND The TRISS methodology, in combination with coefficients derived from the Major Trauma Outcome Study (MTOS), is the most widely used outcome prediction model for the care of trauma patients. Utilizing the M-statistic, different populations of trauma patients can be compared with the population originally enrolled in the MTOS. PURPOSE We hypothesized that databases outside of North-America would not be well matched to the MTOS study and thus the TRISS methodology would not accurately predict outcome in these different populations. METHODS All trauma studies utilizing TRISS methodology that were published between 1990-2003 were reviewed and M-statistics calculated based on the population described in the study. The populations were grouped by the following geographic locations: Europe, Asia/Africa and North-America. RESULTS The median M-statistic for Europe was 0.65, compared with 0.88 for Asian/African databases, and 0.90 for North-American studies. There was a significant difference between European and North-American studies (p < 0.05). CONCLUSION The trauma populations described in European studies differ significantly from the MTOS with respect to injury severity match, indicating the need for the development of regional trauma databases and modified TRISS coefficients based on the geographic location of the injured population included.
Experience of domestic violence by women attending an inner city accident and emergency department

Objectives: To identify the prevalence of domestic violence (DV) (defined as physical abuse perpetrated by intimate partners) in women attending an inner city accident and emergency department and to elicit women’s response about being asked routinely about domestic violence in this setting. Methods: 22 nursing shifts were purposefully sampled to be representative of day, night, and weekends. A questionnaire was administered to 198 consenting women who were not intoxicated, confused, or critically ill. Results: The prevalence of acute trauma in women attributable to DV was 1% (95%CI 0.14 to 3.6), the prevalence of lifetime physical abuse was 34.8% (95%CI 28.2 to 41.5), of past year physical abuse was 6.1% (95%CI 3.2 to 10.3), and of lifetime life threatening physical abuse was 10.6% (95%CI 6.3 to 14.9). Seventy six per cent of women felt comfortable about being asked about DV and 60.5% of women felt that they should always or usually be asked about DV in this setting. Conclusion: This cross sectional survey adds to the body of knowledge showing that the prevalence of DV in women attending an accident and emergency department is high. Most women were in favour of being asked, and disclosure was associated with discomfort in few women. This sensitive area of history taking and referral could be undertaken by health professionals using a supportive approach.
A frame energy for immersed tori and applications to regular homotopy classes

The paper is devoted to study the Dirichelet energy of moving frames on 2-dimensional tori immersed in the euclidean $3\leq m$-dimensional space. This functional, called Frame energy, is naturally linked to the Willmore energy of the immersion and on the conformal structure of the abstract underlying surface. As first result, a Willmore-conjecture type lower bound is established : namely for every torus immersed in $\R^m$, $m\geq 3$, and any moving frame on it, the frame energy is at least $2\pi^2$ and equalty holds if and only if $m\geq 4$, the immersion is the standard Clifford torus (up to rotations and dilations), and the frame is the flat one. Smootheness of the critical points of the frame energy is proved after the discovery of hidden conservation laws and, as application, the minimization of the Frame energy in regular homotopy classes of immersed tori in $\R^3$ is performed.
Children’s Health Perception and Health Behaviour: An Intervention Approach

The principal aim of this two-study research programme was to investigate the contribution of psychological factors to health behaviours in children, and the intention to perform them. The investigation focused on healthy eating, regular physical activity, avoiding smoking cigarettes and avoiding drinking alcohol. The first study examined children’s individual cognitions, past behaviour and perception of their own and their parents’ health behaviours. Drawing from Social Cognitive Theory (Bandura, 1986) and the Theory of Planned Behaviour (Ajzen, 1985), the aim of study 1 was to investigate the extent to which these psychological factors could predict children’s future intentions towards the above behaviours. The second study aimed to identify if a child’s behavioural intention was a significant predictor of their actual health behaviour. Furthermore, it aimed to develop and run a series of theoretically based intervention workshops drawing from Prospect Theory (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979; 1982) and the Health Action Process Approach (Schwarzer, 1992) to promote health behaviours. A cross-sectional quantitative survey design was used in the first study. Data was collected from 529 school-aged children within year groups 7 (11-12 years) and 10 (14-15 years) using an instrument specifically designed for this research, named the ‘Health Perceptions Questionnaire’. The second study employed an experimental repeated measures 2x3 factorial design. With a sub-sample of study 1 (N = 72) it investigated interactions between pre and post intentions and behaviours, and the possible effects of two framed interventions compared to a control condition. Results from study 1 indicate that the most significant predictors of health behaviour intention are behavioural importance, past behaviour, behaviour-specific self-efficacy, attitude and outcome expectancies. Many of the study variables were found to differ between year group and gender. Study 2 revealed there were no significant differences in behavioural intentions between groups post-intervention. Moreover, a limited effect was observed in health behaviour performance with a significant interaction only found between intervention conditions in healthy eating behaviours. Significant differences were found between healthy eating and regular exercise behaviours from time 1 to time 2 of the research programme. Furthermore, behavioural intentions were found to be significant predictors of health behaviours.
AMP-Inspired Deep Networks for Sparse Linear Inverse Problems

Deep learning has gained great popularity due to its widespread success on many inference problems. We consider the application of deep learning to the sparse linear inverse problem, where one seeks to recover a sparse signal from a few noisy linear measurements. In this paper, we propose two novel neural-network architectures that decouple prediction errors across layers in the same way that the approximate message passing (AMP) algorithms decouple them across iterations: through Onsager correction. First, we propose a “learned AMP” network that significantly improves upon Gregor and LeCun's “learned ISTA. ” Second, inspired by the recently proposed “vector AMP” (VAMP) algorithm, we propose a “learned VAMP” network that offers increased robustness to deviations in the measurement matrix from i.i. d. Gaussian. In both cases, we jointly learn the linear transforms and scalar nonlinearities of the network. Interestingly, with i.i. d. signals, the linear transforms and scalar nonlinearities prescribed by the VAMP algorithm coincide with the values learned through back-propagation, leading to an intuitive interpretation of learned VAMP. Finally, we apply our methods to two problems from 5G wireless communications: compressive random access and massive-MIMO channel estimation.
A spatial-temporal hole filling approach with background modeling and texture synthesis for 3D video

This paper presents a hole-filling method based on spatial-temporal background information for view synthesis in 3D Video. The process of obtaining stationary background information is updated with a new background codebook in order to extract reliable temporal background modeling. An estimation of local background value is conducted to discriminate an adaptively boundary between the background region and the foreground region as well as to update the information about the hole region. The holes are filled by combining the spatial background information and the temporal background information. In addition, an exemplar-based inpainting method is used to fill the rest of holes, in which a priority function using background depth information is defined to determine the order in which the holes are filled. The experimental results demonstrated that the proposed algorithm synthesized satisfactory views regardless of video characteristics and type of hole region.
Assessing family satisfaction with care of critically ill patients: a pilot study.

customers’ expectations while being cost conscious and efficient. Satisfaction is typically measured by satisfaction surveys that patients complete about their recent hospital experience. However, assessing patient satisfaction in critical care environments becomes complicated. Often patients are not making decisions related to their own care because of their severity of illness and level of consciousness. Patients are typically too sick to determine the level of satisfaction with care provided or may not even remember their critical care experience, which makes patient satisfaction surveys inadequate. As a result, family members are often the ones who determine satisfaction with care provided, as well as with the overall critical care experience. Thus, satisfaction may be measured by the Assessing Family Satisfaction With Care of Critically Ill Patients: A Pilot Study Cover Article
Population Dynamics of Immune Responses to Persistent Viruses

Mathematical models, which are based on a firm understanding of biological interactions, can provide nonintuitive insights into the dynamics of host responses to infectious agents and can suggest new avenues for experimentation. Here, a simple mathematical approach is developed to explore the relation between antiviral immune responses, virus load, and virus diversity. The model results are compared to data on cytotoxic T cell responses and viral diversity in infections with the human T cell leukemia virus (HTLV-1) and the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1).
The effect of rich instruction on the vocabulary acquisition of preschool dual language learners

This study was designed to investigate the effectiveness of a rich instructional program on the vocabulary acquisition of three-, four-, and five-year-old Dual Language Learners (DLLs). The lead teacher of a private preschool in western Pennsylvania, five children who were native speakers of English, and 16 DLLs who speak Kirundi, Burmese, Nepali, a combination of Ahiska Turkish and Russian, Karen, and a combination of Karen and Burmese, as well as each child's primary caregiver participated in the study. The children received rich instruction in small groups in three four-day blocks. Five sophisticated vocabulary words from authentic children's literature were targeted during each four-day instructional block. Two control instructional sessions were included in the study to compare the children's word learning based on typical instruction of text-based words in the classroom, to word learning after engaging in rich instructional activities. The children's understanding of each set of five target words was evaluated using two researcher-designed vocabulary measures after the fourth day of instruction. The children's baseline receptive vocabulary skills in English, baseline vocabulary in their home language, the number of months that they lived in the U.S., their home language, and the frequency of book reading in the home were also examined to identify other factors that might explain differences in word learning. Results suggested that the strategies and activities included in the rich instructional program were effective in increasing the children's knowledge of sophisticated English words. Among the 21 participants, the children who demonstrated the most notable gains in word learning included those in the older age group. Results also suggested that children who had lived in the U.S. longer demonstrated higher scores on the verbal portion of the rich instruction posttests. In addition, children who demonstrated understanding of more English words at the start of the study earned higher scores on the picture portion of each posttest.
The organization of memory for familiar songs

The organizing principles in memory for familiar songs were investigated in two experiments. The hypothesis was that we do not store and remember each song in isolation. Rather, there exists a rich system of relationships among tunes that can be revealed through similarity rating studies and memory tasks. One initial assumption was the. division of relations among tunes into musical (tempo, rhythm, etc,) and nonmusical similarity. In the first experiment, subjects were asked: to sort 60 familiar tunes into groups according to both musical and nonmusical criteria. Clustering analyses showed clear patterns of nonmusical similarity but few instances of musical similarity. The second experiment explored the psychological validity of the nonmusical relationships revealed in Experiment 1. A speeded verification task showed that songs similar to each other are confused more often than are distantly related songs. A free-recall task showed greater clustering for closely related songs than for distantly related ones. The relationship between these studies and studies of semantic memory is discussed. Also, the contribution of musical training and individual knowledge to the organization of the memory system is considered. Humans from infancy to old age are able producers of music. Even before reaching an age of 2 years old, children can produce spontaneous songs using distinct pitches and occasional rhythmic patterns (McKernon, 1979). Most adults whistle or sing an enormous repertory of songs and fragments of larger pieces. In addition, people of all ages are competent and enthusiastic music listeners. Simply the ubiquity of music perception would make it a topic of interest to cognitive psychologists. In addition, the fact that music lacks facile verbal referents presents a challenge to theorists accustomed to dealing with perception and memory for verbal, pictorial, and prepositional material. Are there regularities in music processing comparable to those found in these other subfields of cognitive psychology?
The effect of red and blue light component on the growth and development of frigo strawberries

Abstract The experiments were carried out in 2009 in phytotron chambers and commercial greenhouses of the Lithuanian Institute of Horticulture. The frigo plants of ‘Elkat’ strawberries ( Fragaria x ananassa Duch.) were investigated. The frigo sprouts were grown in a phytotron chamber for a month under different light-emitting diode (LED) treatment: sole red (640 nm) light, photosynthetic photon flux density (PPFD) beside leaves of strawberries – 200 µmol m -2 s -1 ; combination of red (640 nm) with blue (455nm) light, maintained PPFD -2 was 174.5 and 25.5 µmol m s -1 , respectively. The photoperiod of 16 hours and 21/16oC day/night temperature in the phytotron chamber were maintained. After LED treatment, strawberry sprouts were transplanted to a bed mulched by white film in the polythene greenhouse. The spectral quality of light influenced the morphogenesis and diverse physiological responses of frigo plants of ‘Elkat’ strawberry. Development was improved, carbohydrate accumulation and pigment ratio of plants was increased in strawberries grown under red and blue LEDs. Whereas, red LED induced elongation of flowering stem and all plant, and resulted in 1.8 times higher shoot/root ratio. The positive influence of red and blue light treatment on the formation of runners, inflorescence and crown was observed. The fruiting of frigo strawberries ended after 40 days after planting. The treatment of sole red light or combination of red and blue LEDs had no persistent effect on the harvest of frigo strawberries. However, red LED treatment resulted in a smaller size of fruits. It confirms that a mixture of red and blue LED spectral components is necessary for the development of frigo strawberries, likewise for normal plants. Key words: carbohydrate, photosynthetic pigment, light-emitting diodes, yield.
Inferior Vena Cava Tumor Thrombosis Secondary to Metastatic Uterine Cancer: A Rare Cause of Sudden Unexpected Death

Pulmonary tumor thromboembolus (PTTE) secondary to uterine cancer is a rare cause of sudden unexpected deaths in the elderly population. Additionally, tumor extension to the inferior vena cava (IVC) makes it rarer. No such cases have been previously reported in the forensic literature. We report this phenomenon in a previously healthy 70‐year‐old woman with no other known risk factors for the development of deep vein thrombosis. The deceased was found dead while watching television with her relatives. Autopsy examination revealed that her death was attributed to a saddle embolus lodged in the main pulmonary arteries. A uterine tumor was discovered, and microscopic examination revealed low‐grade endometrial stromal sarcoma with angiolymphatic invasion. The tumor cells were also found in the embolus and the remnant thrombosis attached to the inner wall of the IVC. This case demonstrates a sudden unexpected death caused by acute PTTE following seeding of uterine cancer into the IVC and raises awareness of such events.
Evidence-Based Review on Interventions and Determinants of Driving Performance in Teens with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder or Autism Spectrum Disorder

Objective: We conducted an evidence-based review of intervention studies and predictor studies related to driving outcomes in teens with attention deficit–hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Methods: Ten primary studies were classified using the American Academy of Neurology's criteria (class I–IV, I = highest level of evidence). We provided recommendations including Level A: intervention/factors are effective/predictive or not; Level B: probably effective/predictive or not; Level C: possibly effective/predictive or not; Level U: no recommendations. Results: For the intervention studies we identified 1 Class II and 1 Class III study; for predictor studies, we identified 7 ADHD studies consisting of 1 Class II and 6 Class III studies. Only 1 Class III ASD study was found. In synopsizing the evidence, the following recommendations are made for the intervention studies pertaining to on-road performance in teens with ADHD: a multimodal intervention is possibly effective in improving driving performance (Level C); stimulants possibly do not affect driving negatively (Level C); no recommendations can be made for hazard perception training in ADHD or ASD (Level U). Consider the following recommendations useful for simulated driving performance: Stimulants possibly improve driving performance (Level C); ADHD diagnosis and being unmedicated possibly worsen driving performance (Level C); no recommendations for driving in low-stimulus conditions (Level U). From self-/proxy report, no recommendations can be made related to gender or ADHD subtype affecting adverse driving outcomes (Level U). Conclusion: Class I studies with Level A recommendations, currently lacking in the literature, are urgently needed to make clear the mechanism underlying driving performance outcomes in ADHD and ASD. Supplementary materials are available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition of Traffic Injury Prevention for the following supplemental resource: Table: Evidence-based Synopsis of ADHD, ASD and Driving Performance: Variables, Sample, Findings & Rationale