Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evaluation of spatial accessibility to Ohio trauma centers using a GIS-based gravity model.

Aims: Traumatic injury is one of the leading causes of death in all age groups. Ensuring adequate and effective access to trauma centers is key to improving the quality of care for injured patients. This study evaluates the spatial accessibility of Ohio trauma centers and identifies potentially underserved Ohio counties. Study Design: A gravity based accessibility model using a Geographic Information System (GIS) was implemented. Place and Duration of Study: The study was conducted in Nationwide Children’s Hospital in 2015. Methodology: A gravity based accessibility model using a Geographic Information System (GIS) Original Research Article Chen et al.; BJMMR, 10(7): 1-12, 2015; Article no.BJMMR. 20378 2 was adapted to incorporate US census data, trauma center location data, and trauma center utilization data to quantify accessibility to trauma centers at both the zip code and county levels. An underserved index was developed to identify the location and clustering pattern of underserved regions within the state. Results: Most served counties were about 10 times more served than an average county while least served counties were about 4 times less served than an average county. Conclusion: Findings of this study are potentially useful for evaluating regionalized trauma care and provide evidence for trauma care system improvements.
The Asymmetric Impact of Negative and Positive Attribute-Level Performance on Overall Satisfaction and Repurchase Intentions

The relationship between attribute-level performance, overall satisfaction, and repurchase intentions is of critical importance to managers and generally has been conceptualized as linear and symmetric. The authors investigate the asymmetric and nonlinear nature of the relationship among these constructs. Predictions are developed and tested empirically using survey data from two different contexts: a service (health care, n = 4517) and a product (automobile, n = 9359 and n = 13,759). Results show that (1) negative performance on an attribute has a greater impact on overall satisfaction and repurchase intentions than positive performance has on that same attribute, and (2) overall satisfaction displays diminishing sensitivity to attribute-level performance. Surprisingly, results show that attribute performance has a direct impact on repurchase intentions in addition to its effect through satisfaction.
Effectiveness of Interactive Self‐Management Interventions in Individuals With Poorly Controlled Type 2 Diabetes: A Meta‐Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials

AIMS To identify, assess, and summarize available scientific evidence on the effectiveness of interactive self-management interventions on glycemic control and patient-centered outcomes in individuals with poorly controlled type 2 diabetes. METHODS Major English and Chinese electronic databases including Medline, EMBASE, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, and WanFang Data were searched to identify randomized controlled trials that reported the effectiveness of interactive self-management interventions in individuals with poorly controlled type 2 diabetes (glycated hemoglobin [HbA1c] ≥ 7.5% or 58 mmol/mol), from inception to June 2015. Data extraction and risk-of-bias assessment were performed by two reviewers independently. Meta-analysis was performed using Review Manager 5.3. RESULTS A total of 16 trials with 3,545 participants were included in the meta-analysis. Interactive self-management interventions could have a beneficial effect in individuals with poorly controlled type 2 diabetes in reducing HbA1c (mean difference: -0.43%, 95% CI: -0.67% to -0.18%), improving diabetes knowledge (standardized mean difference [SMD]: 0.30, 95% CI: 0.03 to 0.58), enhancing self-efficacy (SMD: 0.29, 95% CI: 0.14 to 0.44), and reducing diabetes-related distress (SMD: -0.21, 95% CI: -0.39 to -0.04). Self-management interventions supported with theory and structured curriculum showed desirable results in glycemic control. The behavioral change techniques, including providing feedback on performance, problem-solving, and action planning, were associated with a significant reduction in HbA1c. LINKING EVIDENCE TO ACTION Individuals with poorly controlled type 2 diabetes could benefit from interactive self-management interventions. Interventions targeting patients with poorly controlled diabetes, those who are at the greatest risk of developing complications, should be prioritized. Our findings indicate that providing feedback on performance, problem-solving, and action planning are promising behavioral change techniques specifically for individuals with poor glycemic control.
Monocarboxylate transporter 1 (MCT1) plays a direct role in short‐chain fatty acids absorption in caprine rumen

Despite the importance of short‐chain fatty acids (SCFA) in maintaining the ruminant physiology, the mechanism of SCFA absorption is still not fully studied. The goal of this study was to elucidate the possible involvement of monocarboxylate transporter 1 (MCT1) in the mechanism of SCFA transport in the caprine rumen, and to delineate the precise cellular localization and the level of MCT1 protein along the entire caprine gastrointestinal tract. RT‐PCR revealed the presence of mRNA encoding for MCT1 in all regions of the caprine gastrointestinal tract. Quantitative Western blot analysis showed that the level of MCT1 protein was in the order of rumen ≥ reticulum > omasum > caecum > proximal colon > distal colon > abomasum > small intestine. Immunohistochemistry and immunofluorescence confocal analyses revealed widespread immunoreactive positivities for MCT1 in the caprine stomach and large intestine. Amongst the stratified squamous epithelial cells of the forestomach, MCT1 was predominantly expressed on the cell boundaries of the stratum basale and stratum spinosum. Double‐immunofluorescence confocal laser‐scanning microscopy confirmed the co‐localization of MCT1 with its ancillary protein, CD147 in the caprine gastrointestinal tract. In vivo and in vitro functional studies, under the influence of the MCT1 inhibitors, p‐chloromercuribenzoate (pCMB) and p‐chloromercuribenzoic acid (pCMBA), demonstrated significant inhibitory effect on acetate and propionate transport in the rumen. This study provides evidence, for the first time in ruminants, that MCT1 has a direct role in the transepithelial transport and efflux of the SCFA across the stratum spinosum and stratum basale of the forestomach toward the blood side.
Management of Vascular Access for Hemodialysis after Successful Kidney Transplantation

Objective: There is a lack of data concerning the fate of arterio-venous fistulas (AVF) after successful kidney transplantation. The objective of this study was to assess the evolution of AVF in transplanted patients and to discuss the management of such vascular access once dialysis has been stopped. Material and Methods: We reviewed 160 renal transplant patients who had undergone an AVF 0 to 312 months (mean 29) before transplantation. 136 (85%) of AVF were created in the forearm/wrist region and 21 (13%) at the elbow. Results: The mean follow-up was 69 months from renal transplantation and 95 months from constitution of the AVF. Vascular access had to be closed in 7.5% of cases. Thrombosis occurred in 31% of cases, mainly in distal fistulas (85%). AVF was still functional in 61% of patients at the end of follow-up. Conclusion: AVF remains functional in the majority of patients after renal transplantation and is not usually associated with any significant morbidity. Systematic closure of AVF does not seem warranted as it would deprive patients of a useful vascular access should dialysis become again necessary in the long term.
Managing Knowledge Flows Through Appropriation and Learning Strategies

In this paper, the management of outgoing and incoming knowledge is modelled as part of the firm's profit-seeking strategy. Firms stem their outflow of commercially-sensitive knowledge through appropriation mechanisms such as patents and secrecy and stimulate inflows of commercially-valuable knowledge through networking, attending conferences and other forms of external interaction. It is probable, however, that some learning styles undermine some appropriation mechanisms. For instance, recent research on the "paradox of openness" highlights the conflict between firms' openness and their ability to appropriate innovation profits. We use survey data from over 600 Australian firms to examine this paradox and other effects of firms' management of knowledge flows such as the complementarity between patents and secrecy and the conflict between patents and interactive forms of learning.
A study on consumer adoption of technology-facilitated services

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to study the factors affecting the customer’s “Intention to Adopt TFS” (I-TFS), and a conceptual model has been proposed, while most previous studies have focused on the study of self-service technology (SST). Interactions between customer and service provider during delivery of a service is termed as “service-encounter”. The technology that enables service delivery without customer having a face-to-face service-encounter is known as “self-service technology” (SST). Froehle and Roth described five different ways in which technology can be used in service-encounter. One of the ways, known as technology-facilitated service (TFS), requires the simultaneous existence of three entities – customer, technology and service provider – during a service-encounter. Unlike SST, in TFS customer, technology and service provider must co-exist for the completion of the service. Design/methodology/approach – The factors affecting I-TFS can be divided in two categories: human – technology .
Fostering Purchasing Intention: The Influence of Appearance and Functionality on Consumers’ Initial Trust in a web Vendor

In the highly competitive e-commerce environment, a large portion of the web vendors are new, small, or lack name recognition. When a customer visits an unknown vendor, the website needs to provide signals that it is trustworthy, or the customer may not complete a transaction. This research investigates how vendors may signal trustworthiness through features of the website. We examine how to win consumers’ trust through examining appearance and functionality features of a website. Consumers’ awareness and impressions of these features should influence their initial trust in a web vendor. If the vendor successfully fosters trust, then consumers will be more likely to make a purchase. We conduct an empirical study to test these relationships. This research contributes to the literature of online trust and web design. We will discuss the implications for research and practice in the conference.
SMC4AC: A New Symbolic Model Checker for Intelligent Agent Communication

Social approaches have been put forward to define semantics for intelligent agent communication messages and to tackle the shortcomings of mental approaches. Formal semantics of those social approaches can be model checked as they are focused on public behaviors instead of private mental states. Social conditional commitments are essential concepts in social approaches that can effectively model agent communications. However, conditional commitments exclusively are not able to model agent communication actions, the cornerstone of the fundamental agent communication theory, namely speech act theory. These actions provide mechanisms for dynamic interactions and enable designers to track the evolution of active conditional commitments. From the perspective of model checking, we need to define a formal and computationally grounded semantics for relevant social actions that can directly be applied to active conditional commitments. This manuscript describes a new symbolic model checker, SMC4AC, developed and implemented to automate the verification of interaction among intelligent agents. SMC4AC is the result of developing a new symbolic model checking algorithm devoted to CTLC, a combination of CTL and new temporal modalities to represent and reason about conditional commitments ∗Address for correspondence: Concordia Institute for Information Systems Engineering, Concordia University, Canada. †Also afiliated as Concordia Institute for Information Systems Engineering, Concordia University, Canada. Received December 2015; revised November 2016. 224 W. El Kholy et al. / SMC4AC: A New Symbolic Model Checker for Intelligent Agent Communication and common commitment actions. The core of this paper consists of a new logical language, a detailed description of the symbolic algorithms needed for commitments and their action modalities, complexity analysis, implementation and application. The implementation of our algorithm and its graphical user interface is built on top of the MCMAS symbolic model checker tailored for checking intelligent multi-agent systems. We select business processes and multi-agent interaction protocols as application domains to test and validate the effectiveness and scalability of SMC4AC. We report extensive experimental results, which confirm the theoretical findings and make SMC4AC practical.
Public feedback for better banknote design

The euro banknotes recently celebrated their 4th year anniversary (2002 - 2006)! DNB has monitored the Dutch public's acceptance of the euro banknotes through surveys in 2002, 2003 and 2005, contrasting its findings with those for the former guilder notes as well as the results of other recent consumer surveys conducted by the US Treasury (2002), Bank of Canada (2003) and several others. A unique time line is presented of the public's knowledge of security features in the Netherlands over the years 1983- 2005.
Validity of Vision Screening Tests by Teachers Among School Children in Mashhad, Iran

Purpose: To determine the sensitivity and specificity of vision screening in Iranian schools where teachers have provided screening services for over 10 years. Methods: In a cross-sectional study, using random cluster sampling, 1163 school children were selected from 14 clusters. Data of vision tests performed by teachers were derived from 847 student records and compared with data obtained by optometrists. Measurement of the uncorrected visual acuity was done using the E chart by both the teachers and the optometrists. Examinations performed by optometrists were regarded as gold standard in this study and the sensitivity and specificity of the examinations performed by teachers were evaluated against them. Uncorrected visual acuity worse than 20/25 in the better eye was considered as the cut-off point for students’ visual impairment. Results: The sensitivity and specificity of the screening tests performed by the teachers were 37.5% and 92.0%, respectively. The positive and negative predictive values were 25.0% and 95.4%, respectively. There was no significant difference in the validity of the vision test between males and females (P = 0.093 for sensitivity and P = 0.052 for specificity). Conclusion: Our findings showed that teachers missed a significant number of children with vision impairment and the examinations performed by teachers lacked the required sensitivity for case detection. The number of false negative results should be minimized through continued investment in accurate screening processes.
Discovery of potent peptide-mimetic antagonists for the human thrombin receptor, protease-activated receptor-1 (PAR-1).

Protease-activated receptors (PARs) represent a unique family of seven-transmembrane G-protein-coupled receptors, which are enzymatically cleaved to expose a new extracellular N-terminus that acts as a tethered activating ligand. PAR-1 is cleaved and activated by the serine protease alpha-thrombin, is expressed in various tissues (e.g. platelets and vascular cells), and is involved in cellular responses associated with hemostasis, proliferation, and tissue injury. By using a de novo design approach, we have discovered a series of potent heterocycle-based peptide-miimetic antagonists of PAR-1, exemplified by advanced leads RWJ-56110 (22) and RWJ-58259 (32). These compounds are potent, selective PAR-1 antagonists, devoid of PAR-1 agonist and thrombin inhibitory activity: they bind to PAR-1, interfere with calcium mobilization and cellular functions associated with PAR-1, and do not affect PAR-2, PAR-3, or PAR-4. RWJ-56110 was determined to be a direct inhibitor of PAR-1 activation and internalization, without affecting PAR-1 N-terminal cleavage. At high concentrations of alpha-thrombin, RWJ-56110 fully blocked activation responses in human vascular cells, but not in human platelets; whereas, at high concentrations of TRAP-6, RWJ-56110 blocked activation responses in both cell types. This result is consistent with the presence of another thrombin receptor on human platelets, namely PAR-4. RWJ-56110 and RWJ-58259 clearly interrupt the binding of a tethered ligand to its receptor. RWJ-58259 demonstrated antirestenotic activity in a rat balloon angioplasty model and antithrombotic activity in a cynomolgus monkey arterial injury model. Such PAR-1 antagonists should not only serve as useful tools to delineate the physiological and pathophysiological roles of PAR-1, but also may have therapeutic potential for treating thrombosis and restenosis in humans.
Performance bounds for turbo-coded multiple antenna systems

We derive performance bounds for turbo-coded systems with transmit and receive antenna diversity. The bounds are derived by limiting the conditional union bound before averaging over the fading process. It is demonstrated that this approach provides a tight upper bound on the error probability of the turbo-coded multiple antenna systems. We also describe a method for deriving the weight-enumerating function of turbo-coded multiple antenna systems in order to take into account the presence of transmit and receive antenna diversity. Examples of the bounds are presented to illustrate their usefulness.
Acceptability and nutritional composition of flavoured vegetables

A range of flavoured vegetables has been produced by a food retailer with a view to helping children increase their vegetable consumption. The flavouring ingredients used in these vegetable products (chocolate flavoured carrots, cheese and onion flavoured cauliflower, baked bean flavoured peas and pizza flavoured sweetcorn) inherently alter the overall nutrient profile. Products contain considerably more non‐milk extrinsic sugars and salt than their plain counterparts as well as added flavours and artificial sweetener. The flavoured vegetables and their plain counterparts were scored for appearance, flavour, texture, and odour by 33 pupils aged 12‐13 years. Chocolate flavoured carrots, baked bean flavoured peas and pizza flavoured sweetcorn scored significantly lower on appearance (and flavour for pizza flavoured sweetcorn) than their plain counterparts. A preference for the odour of the cheese and onion flavoured cauliflower compared to the plain cauliflower was seen but there were no significant differences in any other attribute. Thus for this age group we may conclude that this range of flavoured vegetables is unlikely to be any more acceptable than plain boiled vegetables.
Cortisol and cortisone ratio in urine: LC-MS/MS method validation and preliminary clinical application

Abstract Background: The determination of urinary cortisol/cortisone ratio is of clinical utility in cases of Cushing’s syndrome, apparent mineralocorticoid excess, and also provides information on 11β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase (11β-HSD) type 2 activity. It is therefore of utmost importance to ensure accurate cortisol and cortisone measurement and establish appropriate reference ranges. Methods: After the isotopic dilution of urine, sample cleanups were obtained with on-line solid-phase extraction and cortisol and cortisone, separated using a Zorbax Eclipse XDB-C18 HPLC analytical column, were analyzed by tandem mass spectrometry with an electrospray ionization source in positive ion mode operation. Results: The method was linear, with concentrations of up to 625 and 1125 nmol/L and lower limit of quantitation (LLOQ) of 5 and 6 nmol/L, for cortisol and cortisone, respectively. Within-run and between-run coefficients of variation were <5% and 6% for cortisol and 6% and 8% for cortisone, respectively. No ion suppression was observed. The non-parametric reference range for the cortisol/cortisone ratio was 0.14–1.09. Conclusions: A simple and sensitive liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry method was developed and validated for the measurement of cortisol and cortisone in urine. Our findings indicate that the proposed analytical method is suitable for routine purposes and useful in many pathological conditions.
Effect of oat hulls on performance, gut capacity and feed passage time in broiler chickens

Abstract 1. Two experiments were conducted to study effects of oat hulls and their interaction with soluble fibre in broiler chickens. 2. In experiment 1, wheat or naked oats based diets with or without NSP-degrading enzymes were mixed with 0, 40 or 100 g/kg oat hulls which replaced a maize starch/soy isolate mixture, and the diets were fed to broiler chickens from 7-21 d of age. 3. Production results, AME n determined between 14 and 16 d of age, and ileal digestibility indicated no negative effect of oat hulls on nutrient digestibility or weight gain. 4. Feed consumption increased significantly when oat hulls were included in the diet and relative gut weight increased correspondingly ( P <0.05). 5. No interaction effects were found between soluble and insoluble fibres, except for a possible effect on starch digestibility in wheat diets. 6. In experiment 2, mash diets were fed unsupplemented, or were supplemented with coarsely or finely ground oat hulls which replaced a maize starch/soy isolate mixture. 7. Faecal titanium dioxide excreted between 1 and 48 h after feeding of a gelatin capsule containing titanium dioxide, was used to calculate feed passage time. 8. There was a tendency ( P =0.08) for faster feed passage with inclusion of coarsely ground oat hulls, but no effect of finely ground oat hulls was found.