Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Continuing to Confront COPD International Patient Survey: methods, COPD prevalence, and disease burden in 2012–2013

Purpose The Continuing to Confront COPD International Patient Survey aimed to estimate the prevalence and burden of COPD globally and to update findings from the Confronting COPD International Survey conducted in 1999–2000. Materials and methods Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients in 12 countries worldwide were identified through systematic screening of population samples. Telephone and face-to-face interviews were conducted between November 2012 and May 2013 using a structured survey that incorporated validated patient-reported outcome instruments. Eligible patients were adults aged 40 years and older who were taking regular respiratory medications or suffered with chronic respiratory symptoms and reported either 1) a physician diagnosis of COPD/emphysema, 2) a physician diagnosis of chronic bronchitis, or 3) a symptom-based definition of chronic bronchitis. The burden of COPD was measured with the COPD Assessment Test (CAT) and the modified Medical Research Council (mMRC) Dyspnea Scale. Results Of 106,876 households with at least one person aged ≥40 years, 4,343 respondents fulfilled the case definition of COPD and completed the full survey. COPD prevalence ranged from 7% to 12%, with most countries falling within the range of 7%–9%. In all countries, prevalence increased with age, and in all countries except the US was greater among men (range 6%–14%) than among women (range 5%–11%). A significant disease burden was observed when considering COPD symptoms or health status, and showed wide variations across countries. Prevalence of moderate-to-severe dyspnea (mMRC scale ≥2) ranged from 27% to 61%, and mean CAT score ranged from 16.0 to 24.8, indicating medium-to-high impairment. Conclusion This survey, representing 12 countries, showed similar rates of estimated COPD prevalence across countries that were higher than those reported a decade ago in the original Confronting COPD International Survey. A significant burden of COPD was demonstrated by symptoms and health care-resource use, similar to that reported in the original survey.
Supermarket self-checkout usage in the United States

Abstract While some retailers have installed more self-service checkouts, others have removed them. A possible explanation is that their customer profiles differ. Previous research provides an incomplete or inconsistent picture of self-checkout users. This study uses an Internet survey of 605 adults to explore sociodemographic and attitude linkages with supermarket self-checkout interest. Interest in self-checkouts was negatively linked with age and with technological anxiety. Risk tolerance may also influence interest. Retailers should examine their current and future customer ages when considering self-checkout installations. Technology upgrades that reduce customer anxiety and decrease potential embarrassment about using self-checkouts may increase use.
Glomerular Glucocorticoid Receptors Expression and Clinicopathological Types of Childhood Nephrotic Syndrome

ABSTRACT Glucocorticoids are primary therapy of idiopathic nephrotic syndrome (INS). However, not all children respond to steroid therapy. We assessed glomerular glucocorticoid receptor expression in fifty-one children with INS and its relation to response to steroid therapy and to histopathological type. Clinical, laboratory and glomerular expression of glucocorticoid receptors were compared between groups with different steroid response. Glomerular glucocorticoid expression was slightly higher in controls than in minimal change early responders, which in turn was significantly higher than in minimal change late responders. There was significantly lower glomerular glucocorticoid receptor expression in steroid-resistance compared to early responders, late responders and controls. Glomerular glucocorticoid expression was significantly higher in all minimal change disease (MCD) compared to focal segmental glomerulosclerosis. In INS, response to glucocorticoid is dependent on glomerular expression of receptors and peripheral expression. Evaluation of glomerular glucocorticoid receptor expression at time of diagnosis of NS can predict response to steroid therapy.
Quantitative study of synthetic Hox transcription factor–DNA interactions in live cells

Transcription factor–DNA interactions are life sustaining and therefore the subject of intensive research. In spite of vast effort, quantitative in vivo studies of the molecular mechanisms underlying these fundamental interactions remain challenging. In the preceding paper, we designed synthetic Sex combs reduced (Scr) peptides and validated genetically their function as transcriptional regulators. Here we present a controllable system for quantitative studies of protein–DNA interactions in live cells that enables us to “titrate” the concentration of the synthetic Scr peptides in a single cell. Using methods with single-molecule sensitivity, advanced fluorescence imaging and fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS), we were able to study the kinetics of Scr-DNA interactions in live salivary gland cells, where Scr is normally expressed during development. We discerned freely moving Scr molecules, characterized the specific and nonspecific Scr peptide–DNA interactions, and estimated their corresponding dissociation constants (Kd) in vivo. Our results suggest that the synthetic Scr transcription factors find their specific target sites primarily by multiple association/dissociation events, the rapidity of which is largely owed to electrostatic interactions. Based on these new findings, we formulate a model mechanism and emulate the kinetics of Scr homeodomain–DNA interactions in live cells using numerical simulations.
Three-dimensional printed miniaturized spectral system for collagen fluorescence lifetime measurements

Abstract. Various types of collagens, e.g., type I and III, represent the main load-bearing components in biological tissues. Their composition changes during processes such as wound healing and fibrosis. When excited by ultraviolet light, collagens exhibit autofluorescence distinguishable by their unique fluorescent lifetimes across a range of emission wavelengths. Here, we designed a miniaturized spectral-lifetime detection system as a noninvasive probe for monitoring tissue collagen compositions. A sine-modulated LED illumination was applied to enable frequency domain fluorescence lifetime measurements under three wavelength bands, separated via a series of longpass dichroics at 387, 409, and 435 nm. We employed a lithography-based three-dimensional (3-D) printer with <50 μm resolution to create a custom designed optomechanics in a handheld form factor. We examined the characteristics of the optomechanics with finite element modeling to simulate the effect of thermal (from LED) and mechanical (from handling) strain on the optical system. The geometry was further optimized with ray tracing to form the final 3-D printed structure. Using this device, the phase shift and demodulation of collagen types were measured, where the separate spectral bands enhanced the differentiation of their lifetimes. This system represents a low cost, handheld probe for clinical tissue monitoring applications.
Relief of Pain During Blood Specimen Collection in Pediatric Patients

Purpose:To investigate the effect of external cold and vibration stimulation via Buzzy® on pain and anxiety levels of children during blood specimen collection. Study Design and Methods:This study was a randomized controlled trial. The sample consisted of 120 children aged from 6 to 12 years undergoing phlebotomy. We randomly assigned subjects to a control group (no intervention) or an experimental group that received external cold and vibration via a device called Buzzy®. External cold and vibration were applied just before the blood specimen collection procedure and continued until the end of the procedure. Preprocedural and procedural anxiety were assessed using the Children's Anxiety and Pain Scale along with parent and observer reports. Procedural pain was assessed via the Faces Pain Scale-Revised along with self-report of children, and parents' and observer's reports. Results:The experimental group showed significantly lower pain (p < .001) and anxiety levels (p < .001) compared to the control group during the blood specimen collection procedure. Use of Buzzy® did not cause a significant difference in the success of the blood specimen collection procedure. Clinical Implications:Use of external cold and vibration via Buzzy® decreased perceived pain and reduced children's anxiety during blood specimen collection.
Viral Hepatitis: Past and Future of Hepatitis B Virus and Hepatitis D Virus

Viral hepatitis is a significant disease afflicting hundreds of millions of people. Hepatitiscausing viruses initiate significant morbidity and mortality by establishing both acute and chronic infections, and several of these viruses are specifically associated with the development of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Consequently, intense research efforts are focused on increasing our understanding of virus biology and on improving antiviral therapy. Even though viral hepatitis can be caused by several viruses from a range of virus families, the discoveryof components of the hepatitis B virus (HBV) became acatalyst for the development of diagnostic assays that differentiate between these viruses as well as strategies for novel methods of vaccine development. Improvements in both the treatment and prevention of viral hepatitis are advancing rapidly. However, HBV, along with the associated infection by the hepatitis D virus, is still among the most common pathogens afflicting humans.
Modes globaux fortement non lineaires dans les ecoulements ouverts

Cette these s'interesse a la dynamique de certains ecoulements ouverts dont la propriete commune est d'osciller de facon auto-entretenue, comme par exemple les sillages, les jets chauds, la convection de rayleigh-benard avec ecoulement de poiseuille ou le probleme de taylor-couette avec ecoulement axial. Pour decrire l'amplitude des ondes d'instabilite, des modeles d'equation d'amplitude de type ginzburg-landau reels ou complexes sont utilises. La prise en compte des non linearites et de l'advection moyenne permet la recherche de solutions non lineaires appelees modes globaux qui representent les modes d'oscillation autoentretenue saturee. Le premier chapitre est consacre a la comparaison des notions d'instabilites absolues et convectives lineaires ou non lineaires, et de modes globaux non lineaires. Il montre que l'instabilite non lineaire globale d'un ecoulement peut avoir lieu soit au seuil d'instabilite lineaire absolu, soit en dessous de ce seuil ; dans ce dernier cas, le systeme devient globalement instable alors qu'il est encore lineairement convectivement instable ou meme stable. Des lois d'echelle generiques, en particulier pour la taille de croissance des modes globaux en fonction du parametre de criticite sont obtenues et different suivant que le seuil d'instabilite globale coincide ou non avec le seuil d'instabilite lineaire absolue. Le second chapitre etend une partie de ces resultats au cas non potentiel de l'equation de ginzburg-landau complexe et permet d'analyser avec succes quelques resultats numeriques recents obtenus par buchel et al. (probleme de taylor-couette avec ecoulement axial) ou par muller et al. (convection de rayleigh-benard avec ecoulement de poiseuille). Une expression de la frequence globale selectionnee est obtenue au premier ordre (valeur et pente). Le domaine de stabilite d'un mode global non lineaire est caracterise simplement par la transition d'instable convectif a instable absolu de l'onde propagative qui lui est associee. Cette instabilite secondaire globale semble directement amener le systeme vers le desordre. Le dernier chapitre est consacre aux ecoulements faiblement inhomogenes et a l'analyse de la structure spatiale des modes globaux non lineaires decrits comme leurs analogues en milieu homogene perturbes par l'inhomogeneite du milieu. Cette description donne lieu a des lois d'echelle pour la position du maximum d'amplitude du mode global en accord avec les observations experimentales de goujon-durand et al. Et numeriques de zielinska et wesfreid pour les sillages
Liberal Use of CT Scanning Helps to Diagnose Appendicitis in Adults

Appendicitis can be difficult to diagnose as patients get older and the incidence of other intraabdominal processes increases. We hypothesize that with the use of helical computed tomography (CT), we will be better at diagnosing appendicitis in adults. We reviewed all the medical records of patients 18 years and older who were admitted to our service with the diagnosis of appendicitis (ICD-9: 540.0, 540.1, 540.9, and 541) from January 1999 through October 2002. In addition to demographics, we collected pathology results, if CTs were done, and CT results. This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of the University of Michigan. Three hundred thirty patients with the diagnosis of appendicitis were admitted to our service. We found the negative appendectomy rate in all patients to be 12.1 per cent. In all patients who had CT scans, the negative appendectomy rate was 7.3 per cent. In patients ≥45 years, patients without CT had 5.6 per cent negative appendectomy rate versus 5 per cent (P = 0.02) with CT scanning. There were no mortalities. Our negative appendectomy rate in adult patients is lower than previously published reports. We believe our high rate of CT scanning helped in making the correct diagnosis. We recommend liberal use of CT scanning to help diagnose appendicitis in adults.
Endotoxin studies in chicks.

The chicken is used infrequently as a test species for endotoxin studies. Jordan and Hinshaw (7) reported that chickens survived intravenous inoculations of endotoxin of up to 40 mg/kg, and Cole and Boyd (2) found no visible reaction to 2 mg of endotoxin in two-week-old chicks. Berczi et al. (1), working with chickens weighing 1? 0.2 kg, found the lethal dose (mg/kg) to be in excess of 50 mg. The endotoxins used by all the above workers had been obtained from strains of Escherichia coli. During a study on pathogenic mechanisms in avian strains of E. coli it was found that two-week-old chicks were susceptible to endotoxins prepared by NaCl extraction from certain strains of E. coli (11). Such extracts possessed the ability to cause liver lesions and were also capable of causing mortality. Extracts prepared with trichloroacetic acid or phenol-water and then dialyzed and lyophilized without further purification also caused lesions and mortality. Since, however, the activity of extracts prepared with NaCl were comparable to those obtained by the above techniques, NaCl was used in the following study to ascertain the relative activity of extracts prepared from different serogroups of E. coli and to compare this activity with the virulence of the bacteria from which they were obtained. In addition, other strains and species were used to determine whether these also possessed similar activity.
Evaluating the effectiveness of collaboration in British Columbia environmental assessments within the mining sector

An effective Environmental Assessment (EA) process in British Columbia (BC) is desirable for many reasons, though perhaps most importantly it can help ensure industrial development is conducted in an environmentally sustainable manner. A key component of the BC EA process is collaboration between stakeholders, though current opinion indicates that this is not always conducted effectively. The focus of this research was to understand stakeholder perceptions of the effectiveness of collaboration and identify opportunities for improvement. The study included a review of EA documentation followed by the survey and interview of stakeholders involved in the EA process for one or more of nine recently certified BC mining projects. The results showed that collaboration is somewhat successful in the current BC EA process though opportunities exist for improvement. These include measures which should be implemented by proponents, consultants, the EAO and other stakeholders.
Two‐sample testing in high dimensions

We propose new methodology for two‐sample testing in high dimensional models. The methodology provides a high dimensional analogue to the classical likelihood ratio test and is applicable to essentially any model class where sparse estimation is feasible. Sparse structure is used in the construction of the test statistic. In the general case, testing then involves non‐nested model comparison, and we provide asymptotic results for the high dimensional setting. We put forward computationally efficient procedures based on data splitting, including a variant of the permutation test that exploits sparse structure. We illustrate the general approach in two‐sample comparisons of high dimensional regression models (‘differential regression’) and graphical models (‘differential network’), showing results on simulated data as well as data from two recent cancer studies.
A method of requirements elicitation and analysis for Global Software Development

To perform requirements elicitation and analysis, effective communication and collaboration between stakeholders are necessary. Global Software Development (GSD), where software teams are located in different parts of the world, has become increasingly popular. However, geographical distance, cultural diversity, differences in time zones, and language barriers create difficulties for GSD stakeholders in engaging in effective communication. Taking into consideration the factors involved in GSD, previous research showed that the ways by which requirements are gathered and analyzed for collocated software development cannot be used effectively for GSD. Thus, in this paper, we present a method of requirements elicitation and analysis for GSD. The method consists of 4 stages: (1) data collection; (2) educating stakeholders about GSD issues; (3) post‐education assessment; and (4) requirements elicitation and analysis. Past researchers used student groups in a university environment to play the roles of stakeholders in experiments in GSD studies. Likewise, we preliminarily validate our method by applying it to a case study of an online shopping system, where the roles of client, requirements engineer, project analyst, and designers were played by a group of students.
Clinical expression and morbidity of systemic lupus erythematosus during a post-diagnostic 5-year follow-up: a male:female comparison

The aim of this study was to analyse the prevalence of the most relevant clinical features of the diagnosis of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) in a sample of male patients with lupus as well as the incidence of the main causes of morbidity in a 5-year period after the diagnosis. A further aim of this study was to investigate the impact of gender on expression and morbidity of SLE. Data were collected from the medical records of 59 male and 535 female patients with SLE who were diagnosed at the hospitals in the region of Thessaloniki. Several differences in the expression and morbidity of the disease were found in relation to the gender of the patient. Male patients had a higher prevalence of thromboses, nephropathy, strokes, gastrointestinal tract symptoms and antiphospholipid syndrome when compared with female patients, but tended to present less often with arthralgia, hair loss, Raynaud’s phenomenon and photosensitivity as the initial clinical manifestations. During the 5-year follow-up, positive associations have been found between male gender and the incidence of tendonitis, myositis, nephropathy and infections, particularly of the respiratory tract. In conclusion, this study has provided information regarding the features of clinical expression and morbidity in male patients, and has shown that gender is a possible factor that can influence the clinical expression of SLE.
Transformational leadership, corporate social responsibility, organizational innovation, and organizational performance: Symmetrical and asymmetrical analytical approaches

This study examines the relationship between transformational leadership and organizational performance by evaluating the mediatory role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and organizational innovation which has received considerably less attention in the literature. This study introduces CSR and organizational innovation as potential mediators of relationships between the key constructs of transformational leadership and organizational performance. Sufficient direct and mediation effects of predictors were tested using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) with data from 396 French firms. Sufficient configurations of the predictors indicating high and low scores of performance were explored using fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). The PLS-SEM results show that both direct and indirect effects of transformational leadership on performance are significant. The fsQCA results reveal that a combination of CSR and transformational leadership leads to high performance. Alternately, high performance results from high innovation. This empirical study contributes to the current knowledge by applying both symmetrical and asymmetrical approaches to indicate performance at an organizational level. This study discusses the findings and provides theoretical, managerial, and research implications.
An exploration of spiritual needs of Taiwanese patients with advanced cancer during the therapeutic processes.

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES This study explores the spiritual needs of patients with advanced cancer during their therapeutic process in Taiwan and analyses the influence of Chinese culture in addressing their spiritual needs. BACKGROUND Many nurse clinicians have concerns about the difficulties of providing spiritual care for ethnic-Chinese cancer clients within their cultural context, possibly as a result of lack of knowledge and training. There has been little research exploring the potential impact of Chinese cultural values on the spiritual needs of patients with advanced cancer. DESIGN Explorative qualitative enquiry was used. METHODS Data were collected through participant observation and in-depth face-to-face interviews. Transcribed interview data were analysed by using qualitative content analysis. The purposive sample (n = 33) was drawn from a leading medical center (n = 19) with 3000 beds in the capital and a community-based rural teaching hospital (n = 14) with 581 beds in Taiwan. RESULTS Four spiritual needs emerged from the analysis: the need to foster hope for survival and obtain a peaceful mindset, to fulfil the meanings of life and preserve one's dignity, to experience more reciprocal human love and finally, to receive assistance in facing death peacefully. CONCLUSION This research has shown that patients with advanced cancer need caregivers, friends and the help of their religion to meet their spiritual needs during the therapeutic processes. RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE The findings of this study could assist health professionals to detect the unmet spiritual needs of ethnic-Chinese patients with cancer in the context of their cultural or religious background as early as possible.