Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Usage of unscheduled hospital care by homeless individuals in Dublin, Ireland: a cross-sectional study

Objectives Homeless people lack a secure, stable place to live and experience higher rates of serious illness than the housed population. Studies, mainly from the USA, have reported increased use of unscheduled healthcare by homeless individuals. We sought to compare the use of unscheduled emergency department (ED) and inpatient care between housed and homeless hospital patients in a high-income European setting in Dublin, Ireland. Setting A large university teaching hospital serving the south inner city in Dublin, Ireland. Patient data are collected on an electronic patient record within the hospital. Participants We carried out an observational cross-sectional study using data on all ED visits (n=47 174) and all unscheduled admissions under the general medical take (n=7031) in 2015. Primary and secondary outcome measures The address field of the hospital’s electronic patient record was used to identify patients living in emergency accommodation or rough sleeping (hereafter referred to as homeless). Data on demographic details, length of stay and diagnoses were extracted. Results In comparison with housed individuals in the hospital catchment area, homeless individuals had higher rates of ED attendance (0.16 attendances per person/annum vs 3.0 attendances per person/annum, respectively) and inpatient bed days (0.3 vs 4.4 bed days/person/annum). The rate of leaving ED before assessment was higher in homeless individuals (40% of ED attendances vs 15% of ED attendances in housed individuals). The mean age of homeless medical inpatients was 44.19 years (95% CI 42.98 to 45.40), whereas that of housed patients was 61.20 years (95% CI 60.72 to 61.68). Homeless patients were more likely to terminate an inpatient admission against medical advice (15% of admissions vs 2% of admissions in homeless individuals). Conclusion Homeless patients represent a significant proportion of ED attendees and medical inpatients. In contrast to housed patients, the bulk of usage of unscheduled care by homeless people occurs in individuals aged 25–65 years.
Live Donor Liver Transplantation for Acute Liver Failure

Background. Acute liver failure (ALF) carries a high mortality unless urgent orthotopic liver transplantation (OLT) is performed on time. Live donors are utilized to treat this irreversible condition first in pediatric cases and then in adults. Herein, we aimed to report our experience with live donors for ALF in a country of a deceased donor organ donation rate is only 1.5 per million people. Methods. Among the 245 live donor liver transplantations (LDLT) performed from June 1999 to December 2005, 14 of them (6%) were performed for ALF in 8 pediatric and 6 adult cases. Right lobes were harvested for the adult cases whereas left lateral segments were harvested for pediatric cases, except one child transplanted with a right lobe graft. The etiology of the disease was; acute hepatitis B in four cases, hepatitis A in three cases, Wilson disease two cases, autoimmune hepatitis in two cases, and was unknown in three cases. Results. Three-year graft and patient survival is 79% for these series. Five of the six adult patients and six of the eight pediatric cases survived after transplantation. There was not any donor mortality or major morbidity. Conclusions. LDLT offers a safe and effective modality of treatment for ALF for both pediatric and adult patients to overcome the problem of organ shortage especially in countries where the chance of receiving an organ from a deceased donor is low.
Dissemination and stakeholder engagement practices among dissemination & implementation scientists: Results from an online survey

Introduction There has been an increasing focus on disseminating research findings, but less about practices specific to disseminating and engaging non-researchers. The present project sought to describe dissemination practices and engagement of stakeholders among dissemination & implementation (D&I) scientists. Methods Methods to disseminate to and engage non-research stakeholders were assessed using an online survey sent to a broad, diverse sample of D&I scientists. Results Surveys were received from 210 participants. The majority of respondents were from university or research settings in the U.S. (69%) or Canada (13%), representing a mix of clinical (28%) and community settings (34%). 26% had received formal training in D&I. Respondents indicated routinely engaging in a variety of dissemination-related activities, with academic journal publications (88%), conference presentations (86%), and reports to funders (74%) being the most frequent. Journal publication was identified as the most impactful on respondents’ careers (94%), but face-to-face meetings with stakeholders were rated as most impactful on practice or policy (40%). Stakeholder involvement in research was common, with clinical and community-based researchers engaging stakeholder groups in broadly similar ways, but with critical differences noted between researchers with greater seniority, those with more D&I training, those based in the US, and those in community vs, clinical research settings. Conclusions There have been increases in stakeholder engagement, but few other practices since the 2012 survey, and some differences across subgroups. Methods to engage different stakeholders deserve more in-depth investigation. D&I researchers report substantial misalignment of incentives and behaviors related to dissemination to non-research audiences.
I know Spanish Which Romance language should I learn next L2 influence on L3 word recognition

The present study addresses historical and contemporary discussions on second and third language vocabulary development, specifically the effects of lexical similarity. Second language learners of Spanish aspiring to learn another romance language completed a translation recognition task with Spanish as the source language and Portuguese or Italian as the target language. Cognate and non-cognate targets were used. Reaction times were modeled as a function of language and word type using a linear mixed-effects model with subject and item serving as random effects. Results show that there is no significant processing advantage in recognizing words in Italian or Portuguese. With respect to word type, cognates were responded to significantly faster than non-cognates. These results speak to historical and contemporary accounts of lexical similarity in that Spanish and Italian are rated at 82% and Spanish and Portuguese at 89% [13]. Implications speak to both language researchers and educators.
The genetic analysis of β 2 adrenergic receptor gene polymorphisms and preterm birth risk in a Chinese population

Background: Preterm birth is a leading cause of perinatal morbidity and death with sequelae in adult. Genetic factors are proved to play an important role in the onset of preterm birth. In this study, the association of β2 adrenergic receptor gene (ADRB2) polymorphisms with preterm birth was investigated in a Chinese population. Methods: 104 premature infants and 117 normal infants were included and were genotyped by the method of ploymerase chain reaction (PCR) based on ADRB2 rs1042713, rs1042714 polymorphisms. Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium (HWE) was detected by χ2 test in the control group. The frequencies of genotype, allele and haplotype between two groups were also compared using χ2 test as well as the basic indexes of subjects. Linkage disequilibrium (LD) of two polymorphisms was analyzed with Haploview software. Odds ratio (OR) with 95% confidence interval (95% CI) was calculated to show the relative risk of preterm birth. Results: The heterozygous genotype CG of rs1042714 in cases accounted for lower ratio than that in controls (P=0.03), but not homozygous GG genotype. What’s more, rs1042714 also showed the significant association with preterm birth risk under the model of dominance and allele (dominance: OR=0.52, P=0.03; allele: OR=0.59, P=0.04). Two polymorphisms of ADRB2 existed the LD (D’=1.0) and haplotype G-G decreased the occurrence risk of preterm birth (OR=0.58, P=0.04). Conclusion: ADRB2 rs1042714 polymorphism contributes to the susceptibility to preterm birth in Chinese population, but not rs1042713. And these two polymorphisms existed the interaction.
Duplicative or Complementary? The Relationship between Policy Consulting and Internal Policy Analysis in Canadian Government

Abstract Policy consultants are external analysts who provide paid policy-related advice to governments on a contractual basis. Previous research on policy work has examined the work done within governments and by policy consultants separately but has not systematically compared and contrasted the two. A key question regarding the nature of policy advisory practices and policy advice systems in general, however, is whether consultants are duplicating the work of government officials in order to help “triangulate” internal advice or whether there is more of a complementary approach in which consultants supplement the work of internal analysts. This article explores the differences among the two groups using data collected over the past five years in two sets of surveys into internal and external policy work in Canada. The analysis finds a “complementary” relationship to exist, contrary to the conventional wisdom that outside or external advice is sought mainly in order to avoid biases in internal advice. Résumé Consultants politiques sont des analystes externes qui fournissent payés conseils en matière de politique aux gouvernements sur une base contractuelle. Des recherches antérieures sur le travail politique a examiné le travail effectué au sein des gouvernements et par des consultants politiques séparément, mais n'a pas systématiquement comparés et contrastés des deux. Une question clé en ce qui concerne la nature des pratiques consultatifs sur les politiques et les systèmes de conseils de politique en general, cependant, est de savoir si les consultants sont dupliquer le travail des fonctionnaires du gouvernement afin d'aider à « trianguler » conseil interne ou s'il y a plus d'une approche complémentaire en place ou consultants complètent le travail des analystes internes. Cet article explore les différences entre les deux groupes utilisant les données recueillies au cours des cinq dernières années dans deux séries de sondages en œuvre de la politique interne et externe au Canada. L'analyse révèle une relation «complémentaire» d'exister, contrairement à la sagesse conventionnelle que les conseils de l'extérieur ou externe est recherchée principalement afin d'éviter les biais dans des conseils interne.
C‐Functionalized Cationic Diazaoxatriangulenes: Late‐Stage Synthesis and Tuning of Physicochemical Properties

Abstract A series of nine C‐functionalized cationic diazaoxatriangulene (DAOTA) dyes have been successfully synthesized and fully characterized, including X‐ray structural analysis of four derivatives. The introduction of electron‐withdrawing or ‐donating functions enables the tuning of both electro‐ and photochemical properties with, for instance, two consecutive (reversible) reductions or oxidations observed for nitro or amino derivatives, respectively. The substituents also impacted on the optical properties, with absorption maxima varying from λ=528 to 640 nm and fluorescence being shifted from the yellow to the red range, up to λ=656 nm.
The association between alcohol outlet accessibility and adverse birth outcomes: A retrospective cohort study.

BACKGROUND Alcohol outlet accessibility is positively associated with alcohol consumption, although this relationship has not been thoroughly examined in pregnant women. The present study examines the relationship between proximity and density of alcohol outlets and risk for low birth weight (LBW: <2,500 grams) and preterm birth (PTB: <37 weeks gestational age), and is the first Canadian study to investigate this association. METHODS Maternal accessibility to alcohol outlets was specified using a gravity-type measure of accessibility, which provides the amount of accessibility that a given household has to liquor stores within 30-minutes of their home. All singleton newborns without congenital anomalies that were born between February 2009 and February 2014 at London Health Sciences Centre in London, Ontario, were included in this cohort. RESULTS The sample consisted of 25,734 live births, of which 5.8% were LBW and 7.6% were PTB. Only 2.0% of women reported alcohol use during pregnancy. Alcohol outlet gravity was positively correlated with the percentage of mothers living in poverty (rs = 0.33, p < 0.001) and in single-parent families (rs = 0.39, p < 0.001), and who self-identify as visible minorities (rs = 0.45, p < 0.001). Alcohol outlet gravity increased the odds that mothers drank alcohol during pregnancy (OR 1.05; 95% CI: 1.02, 1.07), although the association was weak. Furthermore, alcohol outlet gravity did not increase the likelihood of a LBW or PTB infant. CONCLUSIONS Women with high accessibility to alcohol outlets are more likely to consume alcohol during pregnancy, but greater alcohol outlet accessibility does not translate into poor birth outcomes.
A new analysis for wavelength translation in regular WDM networks

We present a new analysis of wavelength translation in regular all-optical WDM networks, that is simple, computationally inexpensive, and accurate for both low and high network loads. In a network with k wavelengths per link, we model the output link by an auxiliary M/M/k/k queueing system. We then obtain a closed-form expression for the probability P/sub succ/ that a session arriving at a node at a random time successfully establishes a connection from its source node to its destination node. Unlike previous analyses, which use the link independence blocking assumption, we account for the dependence between the acquisition of wavelengths on successive links of the session's path. Based on the success probability, we show that the throughput per wavelength increases superlinearly (as expected) as we increase the number of wavelengths per link; however the extent of this superlinear increase in throughput saturates rather quickly. This suggests some interesting possibilities for network provisioning in an all-optical network. We verify the accuracy of our analysis via simulations for the torus and hypercube networks.
Case Selection after the Trial: A Study of Post-Trial Settlement and Appeal

This paper studies the decisions of litigants in civil disputes whether to settle or appeal a case after a trial. The paper argues that when litigants are unable to meet damage awards in full only cases where the defendant’s position is particularly strong will face appellate court review. In the absence of financial constraints defendants will be more inclined to take chances with cases where their position is weaker. The paper tests the importance of award size and financial constraints in driving settlement and appeals decisions using survey data about post-trial activity for a sample of verdicts in California and New York from 2001-2004. These results indicate that the case-selection model is highly relevant in determining which cases are ultimately resolved by an appellate court. Additionally, defendant financial resources are an important factor that strongly influences post-trial outcomes.
Epigenetic abnormality of SRY gene in the adult XY female with pericentric inversion of the Y chromosome

In normal ontogenetic development, the expression of the sex‐determining region of the Y chromosome (SRY) gene, involved in the first step of male sex differentiation, is spatiotemporally regulated in an elaborate fashion. SRY is expressed in germ cells and Sertoli cells in adult testes. However, only few reports have focused on the expressions of SRY and the other sex‐determining genes in both the classical organ developing through these genes (gonad) and the peripheral tissue (skin) of adult XY females. In this study, we examined the gonadal tissue and fibroblasts of a 17‐year‐old woman suspected of having disorders of sexual differentiation by cytogenetic, histological, and molecular analyses. The patient was found to have the 46,X,inv(Y)(p11.2q11.2) karyotype and streak gonads with abnormally prolonged SRY expression. The sex‐determining gene expressions in the patient‐derived fibroblasts were significantly changed relative to those from a normal male. Further, the acetylated histone H3 levels in the SRY region were significantly high relative to those of the normal male. As SRY is epistatic in the sex‐determination pathway, the prolonged SRY expression possibly induced a destabilizing effect on the expressions of the downstream sex‐determining genes. Collectively, alterations in the sex‐determining gene expressions persisted in association with disorders of sexual differentiation not only in the streak gonads but also in the skin of the patient. The findings suggest that correct regulation of SRY expression is crucial for normal male sex differentiation, even if SRY is translated normally.
Health Risk Information Engagement and Amplification on Social Media

Emerging pandemics call for unique health communication and education strategies in which public health agencies need to satisfy the public’s information needs about possible risks while preventing risk exaggeration and dramatization. As a route to providing a framework for understanding public information behaviors in response to an emerging pandemic, this study examined the characteristics of communicative behaviors of social media audiences in response to Ebola outbreak news. Grounded in the social amplification of risks framework, this study adds to an understanding of information behaviors of online audiences by showing empirical differences in audience engagement with online health information. The data were collected from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Facebook channel. The final data set included 809 CDC posts and 35,916 audience comments. The analysis identified the differences in audience information behaviors in response to an emerging pandemic, Ebola, and health promotion posts. While the CDC had fewer posts on Ebola than health promotion topics, the former received more attention from active page users. Furthermore, audience members who actively engaged with Ebola news had a small overlap with those who engaged with non-Ebola information during the same period. Overall, this study demonstrated that information behavior and audience engagement is topic dependent. Furthermore, audiences who commented on news about an emerging pandemic were homogenous and varied in their degree of information amplification.
Analysis of the ‘angulin’ proteins LSR, ILDR1 and ILDR2 – tricellulin recruitment, epithelial barrier function and implication in deafness pathogenesis

Summary Tricellular tight junctions (tTJs) seal the extracellular space at tricellular contacts (TCs), where the corners of three epithelial cells meet. To date, the transmembrane proteins tricellulin and lipolysis-stimulated lipoprotein receptor (LSR) are known to be molecular components of tTJs. LSR recruits tricellulin to tTJs, and both proteins are required for the full barrier function of epithelial cellular sheets. In the present study, we show that two LSR-related proteins, immunoglobulin-like domain-containing receptor (ILDR) 1 and ILDR2, are also localized at TCs and recruit tricellulin. At least one of LSR, ILDR1 and ILDR2 was expressed in most of the epithelial tissues in mice. The expressions of LSR, ILDR1 and ILDR2 were generally complementary to each other, although LSR and ILDR1 were co-expressed in some epithelia. ILDR1 was required for the establishment of a strong barrier of the epithelium, similar to LSR, when introduced into cultured epithelial cells, whereas ILDR2 provided a much weaker barrier. We further analyzed human ILDR1, mutations in which cause a familial deafness, DFNB42, and found that most DFNB42-associated ILDR1 mutant proteins were defective in recruitment of tricellulin. We also found that tricellulin mutant proteins associated with another familial deafness, DFNB49, were not recruited to TCs by ILDR1. These findings show the heterogeneity of the molecular organization of tTJs in terms of the content of LSR, ILDR1 or ILDR2, and suggest that ILDR1-mediated recruitment of tricellulin to TCs is required for hearing. Given their common localization at epithelial cell corners and recruitment of tricellulin, we propose to designate LSR, ILDR1 and ILDR2 as angulin family proteins.
Decoupled Convolutions for CNNs

In this paper, we are interested in designing small CNNs by decoupling the convolution along the spatial and channel domains. Most existing decoupling techniques focus on approximating the filter matrix through decomposition. In contrast, we provide a two-step interpretation of the standard convolution from the filter at a single location to all locations, which is exactly equivalent to the standard convolution. Motivated by the observations in our decoupling view, we propose an effective approach to relax the sparsity of the filter in spatial aggregation by learning a spatial configuration, and reduce the redundancy by reducing the number of intermediate channels. Our approach achieves comparable classification performance with the standard uncoupled convolution, but with a smaller model size over CIFAR-100, CIFAR-10 and ImageNet.
Depressive symptoms and mortality in a prospective study of 2,558 older adults.

OBJECTIVE The authors report results from a 7-year prospective study of depression and mortality in 2,558 Medicare recipients age 65 and older. METHODS This report is based on a secondary data analysis of a randomized controlled trial that evaluated the cost-effectiveness of preventive services for older enrollees in an HMO. RESULTS Subjects with mild-to-moderate depression at baseline did not have an increased risk of mortality compared with those without significant depression. The 3% of older adults with the most severe depressive syndromes, however, had significant increases in mortality, even after adjusting for demographics, health risk behaviors, and chronic medical disorders. CONCLUSION The increase in mortality in this group of older adults was comparable to that in participants with chronic medical disorders such as emphysema or heart disease.
A Novel Snake Venom Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor (VEGF) Predominantly Induces Vascular Permeability through Preferential Signaling via VEGF Receptor-1*

Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)/vascular permeability factor induces both angiogenesis and vascular permeability mainly through VEGF receptor (VEGFR)-2 activation. VEGF binds VEGFR-1 as well, but the importance of VEGFR-1 signaling in vascular permeability has been largely neglected. Here, we report the purification and characterization of a novel VEGF-like protein from Trimeresurus flavoviridis Habu snake venom. The Habu snake has a venom-specific VEGF-like molecule, T. flavoviridis snake venom VEGF (TfsvVEGF), in addition to VEGF-A. TfsvVEGF has almost 10-fold less mitotic activity than VEGF165, a predominant isoform of human VEGF-A, but a similar effect on vascular permeability. TfsvVEGF bound VEGFR-1 and induced its autophosphorylation to almost the same extent as VEGF165, but bound VEGFR-2 weakly and induced its autophosphorylation almost 10-fold less effectively than VEGF165. This unique binding affinity for VEGFR-1 and VEGFR-2 leads to the vascular permeability-dominant activity of TfsvVEGF. These results suggest that Habu snakes have acquired a highly purposive molecule for a toxin, which enhances the toxicity in envenomation without inducing effective angiogenesis and the following regeneration of damaged tissues, taking advantage of the difference in signaling properties involving VEGFR-1 and VEGFR-2 between vascular permeability and angiogenesis. TfsvVEGF is thus a potent inducing factor selective for vascular permeability through preferential signaling via VEGFR-1. These data strongly indicate the importance of VEGFR-1 signaling in vascular permeability.