Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Functional performance in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease declines with time.

PURPOSE it is well known that people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease experience declines in functional performance, but little is known about the rate of decline. The purposes of this research were to describe the rate of decline in functional performance and to examine the contribution of disease severity, body composition, symptoms, and functional capacity. Functional performance was defined as the activities that people choose to engage in on a day-to-day basis. METHODS people (n = 108) with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease were enrolled and followed yearly for 3 yr with self-reported functional performance (Functional Performance Inventory), spirometry, lung volumes, diffusion capacity, body composition (dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry), dyspnea and fatigue (Chronic Respiratory Disease Questionnaire), and functional capacity (6-min walk distance (6MWD), isokinetic strength of knee flexors and extensors, handgrip strength, and maximal inspiratory pressure). A total of 88 subjects completed a (mean ± SD) of 2.7 ± 0.9 yr of follow-up. RESULTS significant negative slopes were observed for functional performance (P = 0.001), spirometry (the ratio of forced expiratory volume in 1 s to forced vital capacity (FEV1/FVC), P < 0.0001), diffusion capacity (P < 0.0001), and muscle strength (P < 0.0001)). The slopes for dyspnea, fatigue, and functional capacity were not significantly different from zero, but there was a wide individual variation. Hierarchical regression demonstrated that 31% of the variance in the slope of functional performance was accounted for by the hierarchical model, and the primary predictors were the slopes of the FEV1/FVC, 6MWD, and muscle strength (knee flexors/extensor and handgrip). CONCLUSIONS subjects experienced a slow decline in functional performance, associated with declines in functional capacity and increases in body fat. Symptoms were relatively stable and not associated with declines in functional performance.
Mnemosyne: lightweight persistent memory

New storage-class memory (SCM) technologies, such as phase-change memory, STT-RAM, and memristors, promise user-level access to non-volatile storage through regular memory instructions. These memory devices enable fast user-mode access to persistence, allowing regular in-memory data structures to survive system crashes. In this paper, we present Mnemosyne, a simple interface for programming with persistent memory. Mnemosyne addresses two challenges: how to create and manage such memory, and how to ensure consistency in the presence of failures. Without additional mechanisms, a system failure may leave data structures in SCM in an invalid state, crashing the program the next time it starts. In Mnemosyne, programmers declare global persistent data with the keyword "pstatic" or allocate it dynamically. Mnemosyne provides primitives for directly modifying persistent variables and supports consistent updates through a lightweight transaction mechanism. Compared to past work on disk-based persistent memory, Mnemosyne reduces latency to storage by writing data directly to memory at the granularity of an update rather than writing memory pages back to disk through the file system. In tests emulating the performance characteristics of forthcoming SCMs, we show that Mnemosyne can persist data as fast as 3 microseconds. Furthermore, it provides a 35 percent performance increase when applied in the OpenLDAP directory server. In microbenchmark studies we find that Mnemosyne can be up to 1400% faster than alternative persistence strategies, such as Berkeley DB or Boost serialization, that are designed for disks.
Mucosal immunity and illness incidence in elite rugby union players across a season.

PURPOSE To examine the relationship between upper respiratory illness (URI) incidence with changes in mucosal immunity (saliva immunoglobulin A (s-IgA) and saliva lysozyme (s-Lys)) and training load (TL) in a squad of elite rugby union players. METHODS Timed resting morning saliva samples were taken from players (n = 31) at preselected time points for 11 months. Weekly illness rates and TL were assessed using a Web-based diary and from medical/coaching staff reports. RESULTS No significant correlation was found between absolute s-IgA or s-Lys concentrations and URI incidence. Peaks in URI (December and March) were preceded by periods of increased training intensity and reduced game activity. In 23% of all URI episodes, players reported that presence of an illness either reduced activity (14.4%) or felt the need to go to bed (8.6%). When s-IgA concentration was expressed relative to that when in a URI-free state, a 15% reduction (P = 0.08) was observed in individuals who had present URI symptoms. Decreases in absolute s-IgA (December) and s-Lys (November and February) concentrations were associated with a corresponding increase in saliva cortisol (P < 0.05). Lower s-IgA (P < 0.05) and s-Lys concentrations were consistently observed in backs than forwards, whereas URI incidence also differed for player position (3.4 forwards vs 4.3 backs). CONCLUSIONS Regular monitoring of s-IgA and s-Lys may be useful in the assessment of exercise stress and URI risk status in elite team sport athletes. A combination of alterations in training intensity and seasonal influence is a likely contributor to observed peaks in URI incidence. It is probable that stress-induced increases in cortisol release contribute to reductions in mucosal immunity, which, when lowered, predispose rugby players to increased risk of illness.
Comparison of Student and Instructor Perceptions of Best Practices in Online Technology Courses

This study investigated the perception of students and instructors in online technology courses relative to the use of seven principles that demonstrate good practices in undergraduate education. The principles were originally developed for face-to-face instruction, but are applicable in a variety of instructional delivery methods. Results show that on average, students perceived that two of the seven practices were utilized by instructors at a high level which was consistent with instructor emphasis. For the remaining five principles, students perceived these at a medium level, also consistent with instructor emphasis. The study also compared the means of the instructor to the students’ means in the same online class and demonstrated that their perception of the use of the seven principles were not significantly different. Implications of these findings are discussed and recommendations are provided for how instructors can utilize strategies to increase the level of perception of use of the principles that rated medium to low.
Setting the stage for computing curricula 2013: computer science -- report from the ACM/IEEE-CS joint task force

Following a roughly 10 year cycle, the Computing Curricula volumes have helped to set international curricular guidelines for undergraduate programs in computing. In the summer of 2010, planning for the next volume in the series, Computer Science 2013, began. This panel seeks to update and engage the SIGCSE community on the Computer Science 2013 effort. The development of curricular guidelines in Computer Science is particularly challenging given the rapid evolution and expansion of the field. Moreover, the growing diversity of topics in Computer Science and the integration of computing with other disciplines create additional challenges and opportunities in defining computing curricula. As a result, it is particularly important to engage the broader computer science education community in a dialog to better understand new opportunities, local needs, and novel successful models of computing curriculum. The last complete Computer Science curricular volume was released in 2001 [3] and followed by a review effort that concluded in 2008 [2]. While the review helped to update some of the knowledge units in the 2001 volume, it was not aimed at producing an entirely new curricular volume and deferred some of the more significant questions that arose at the time. The Computer Science 2013 effort seeks to provide a new volume reflecting the current state of the field and highlighting promising future directions through revisiting and redefining the knowledge units in CS, rethinking the essentials necessary for a CS curriculum, and identifying working exemplars of courses and curricula along these lines.
The Irish Mental Health Act 2001

The Mental Health Act 2001 was formally enacted by the Irish Houses of Oireachtas (parliament) on 8 July 2001 and implemented in full on 1 November 2006. The Mental Health Act 2001 replaces and updates a number of older pieces of legislation, including the Mental Treatment Act 1945. The purpose of
Impairment and protection of endothelium-dependent relaxation in aortae of various strains of spontaneously hypertensive rats

Endothelium-dependent relaxations of aortae from various strains of spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) were studied using SHR, stroke-prone SHR (SHRSP), and malignat SHRSP (M-SHRSP) of the Okamoto strain. Blood pressure of the rats was higher in the order of M-SHRSP>SHRSP>SHR. the endothelium-dependent relaxation of the aorta was impaired in these hypertensive rats compared with Wistar-Kyoto (WKY) rats. The impairment was age dependent and, when compared at the same age, greater in the following order: M-SHRSP>SHRSP>SHR.
THE EXPERIENCES OF MALE NURSES IN MIDWIFERY CLINICAL TRAINING AT A REGIONAL HOSPITAL IN THE EASTERN CAPE

The purpose of the study was to explore and describe the experiences of male community service officers during midwifery clinical training. A qualitative, explorative, descriptive and contextual design was used in order to achieve the study objectives. Data was collected by means of semi-structured interviews. Data analysis elucidated analogous themes and categories which translated into the overall experiences of the participants. The study found that whilst the experience was described as beneficial, there were overwhelming challenges in providing intimate care to female clients, dealing with ethno-cultural aspects, meeting clinical practice requirements and the right to choose to be part of midwifery clinical training. Recommendations to nurse educators, clinical midwives and midwifery clinical supervisors with regard to better support for male nurses during midwifery clinical training emanated from the study findings.
Reducing Postrelease HIV Risk among Male Prison Inmates

Male prison inmates within 2 weeks of release were recruited to evaluate a prerelease HIV prevention intervention. A total of 414 inmates were randomly assigned to receive the intervention or to a comparison group. All participants completed a face-to-face survey at baseline; high rates of preincarceration at-risk behavior were reported. Follow-up telephone surveys were completed with 43% of participants; results support the effectiveness of the prerelease intervention. Men who received the intervention were significantly more likely to use a condom the first time they had sex after release from prison and also were less likely to have used drugs, injected drugs, or shared needles in the first 2 weeks after release from prison. Implications for the development, implementation, and evaluation of prison-based HIV prevention programs are discussed.
Differences in the mechanics of information diffusion across topics: idioms, political hashtags, and complex contagion on twitter

There is a widespread intuitive sense that different kinds of information spread differently on-line, but it has been difficult to evaluate this question quantitatively since it requires a setting where many different kinds of information spread in a shared environment. Here we study this issue on Twitter, analyzing the ways in which tokens known as hashtags spread on a network defined by the interactions among Twitter users. We find significant variation in the ways that widely-used hashtags on different topics spread. Our results show that this variation is not attributable simply to differences in "stickiness," the probability of adoption based on one or more exposures, but also to a quantity that could be viewed as a kind of "persistence" - the relative extent to which repeated exposures to a hashtag continue to have significant marginal effects. We find that hashtags on politically controversial topics are particularly persistent, with repeated exposures continuing to have unusually large marginal effects on adoption; this provides, to our knowledge, the first large-scale validation of the "complex contagion" principle from sociology, which posits that repeated exposures to an idea are particularly crucial when the idea is in some way controversial or contentious. Among other findings, we discover that hashtags representing the natural analogues of Twitter idioms and neologisms are particularly non-persistent, with the effect of multiple exposures decaying rapidly relative to the first exposure. We also study the subgraph structure of the initial adopters for different widely-adopted hashtags, again finding structural differences across topics. We develop simulation-based and generative models to analyze how the adoption dynamics interact with the network structure of the early adopters on which a hashtag spreads.
Evaluation of activity monitors in controlled and free-living environments.

UNLABELLED Numerous studies have established the usefulness of pedometers and accelerometers as objective activity monitors. Under laboratory conditions, some of these devices have been shown to provide accurate and reliable measures of steps. However, limited data exist on the performance of these devices under free-living conditions. PURPOSE This study aimed 1) to compare the effects of speed and body mass index (BMI) on the step count accuracy of five different accelerometer-based activity monitors and a pedometer during treadmill walking, 2) to compare the performance of these devices in a free-living environment, and 3) to compare the step counts of three generations of a single device (ActiGraph) against a criterion method. METHODS Fifty-six individuals wore six activity monitors while performing treadmill walking (40, 54, 67, 80, and 94 m·min⁻¹) and during 1 d of free-living activity. The criterion measure of steps during treadmill walking was investigator-determined steps, whereas the criterion measure of steps during the free-living condition was the StepWatch. RESULTS BMI had no effect on step count accuracy during treadmill walking. The StepWatch, activPAL™, and the AG7164 were the most accurate across all speeds, whereas the remaining devices were only accurate at 67 m·min⁻¹ and faster. In the free-living environment, the AG7164 recorded 99.5% ± 27% (mean ± SD) of StepWatch-determined steps. CONCLUSIONS We demonstrated that BMI does not affect the step output of commonly used activity monitors during walking. In addition, 67 m·min⁻¹ seems to be the minimum speed required for accurate step counting, at least for most waist-mounted activity monitors. Finally, the StepWatch, AG7164, and activPAL™ were the most accurate devices on the TM, but only the AG7164 yielded comparable step counts to the StepWatch in the free-living environment.
Calibration and validation of wearable monitors.

BACKGROUND Wearable monitors are increasingly being used to objectively monitor physical activity in research studies within the field of exercise science. Calibration and validation of these devices are vital to obtaining accurate data. This article is aimed primarily at the physical activity measurement specialist, although the end user who is conducting studies with these devices also may benefit from knowing about this topic. BEST PRACTICES Initially, wearable physical activity monitors should undergo unit calibration to ensure interinstrument reliability. The next step is to simultaneously collect both raw signal data (e.g., acceleration) from the wearable monitors and rates of energy expenditure, so that algorithms can be developed to convert the direct signals into energy expenditure. This process should use multiple wearable monitors and a large and diverse subject group and should include a wide range of physical activities commonly performed in daily life (from sedentary to vigorous). FUTURE DIRECTIONS New methods of calibration now use "pattern recognition" approaches to train the algorithms on various activities, and they provide estimates of energy expenditure that are much better than those previously available with the single-regression approach. Once a method of predicting energy expenditure has been established, the next step is to examine its predictive accuracy by cross-validating it in other populations. In this article, we attempt to summarize the best practices for calibration and validation of wearable physical activity monitors. Finally, we conclude with some ideas for future research ideas that will move the field of physical activity measurement forward.
Are under- and overweight female elite athletes thin and fat? A controlled study.

PURPOSE The study's purpose was to relate body mass index (BMI) to body fat percentage as measured by dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry in female elite athletes from different sports and nonathletic controls and to investigate what characterizes the athletes with unhealthy low and high body fat values. METHODS This study was conducted in three phases: 1) screening with a detailed questionnaire, 2) body composition measurement (dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry), and 3) clinical interview. All female elite athletes representing national teams at the junior or senior level age 13-39 yr (n = 938) and an age group-matched randomly selected population-based control group (n = 900) were invited to participate. A stratified random sample was invited to participate in parts 2 and 3. A total of 186 athletes (62%) and 145 controls (48%) participated in all three phases. RESULTS Of those athletes with normal BMI values (18.5-24.9 kg·m⁻²) (n = 150), 2.0% were classified with low body fat levels (<12%), and 6.7% were classified with obese body fat levels (≥ 33%). The median value for the entire group was 24.3% body fat. For the controls with normal BMI values (n = 96), none was classified with low body fat levels, and 50% were classified with obese body fat levels (median = 33.1%). The correlation between BMI and body fat percentage was 0.671 (P < 0.01) (SEE = 5.3%) for the athletes and 0.813 (P < 0.01) (SEE = 4.1%) for the controls. Both under- and overfat athletes self-reported menstrual dysfunction, stress fractures, history of weight fluctuation, and use of pathogenic weight control methods and were diagnosed with clinical eating disorders and/or low bone density. CONCLUSIONS Our data show that BMI is not a valid measure for assessing or monitoring body composition in female elite athletes, and it should be used carefully in female nonathletes.
ROPdefender: a detection tool to defend against return-oriented programming attacks

Modern runtime attacks increasingly make use of the powerful return-oriented programming (ROP) attack techniques and principles such as recent attacks on Apple iPhone and Acrobat products to name some. These attacks even work under the presence of modern memory protection mechanisms such as data execution prevention (DEP). In this paper, we present our tool, ROPdefender, that dynamically detects conventional ROP attacks (that are based on return instructions). In contrast to existing solutions, ROPdefender can be immediately deployed by end-users, since it does not rely on side information (e.g., source code or debugging information) which are rarely provided in practice. Currently, our tool adds a runtime overhead of 2x which is comparable to similar instrumentation-based tools.
Attacks against process control systems: risk assessment, detection, and response

In the last years there has been an increasing interest in the security of process control and SCADA systems. Furthermore, recent computer attacks such as the Stuxnet worm, have shown there are parties with the motivation and resources to effectively attack control systems. While previous work has proposed new security mechanisms for control systems, few of them have explored new and fundamentally different research problems for securing control systems when compared to securing traditional information technology (IT) systems. In particular, the sophistication of new malware attacking control systems--malware including zero-days attacks, rootkits created for control systems, and software signed by trusted certificate authorities--has shown that it is very difficult to prevent and detect these attacks based solely on IT system information. In this paper we show how, by incorporating knowledge of the physical system under control, we are able to detect computer attacks that change the behavior of the targeted control system. By using knowledge of the physical system we are able to focus on the final objective of the attack, and not on the particular mechanisms of how vulnerabilities are exploited, and how the attack is hidden. We analyze the security and safety of our mechanisms by exploring the effects of stealthy attacks, and by ensuring that automatic attack-response mechanisms will not drive the system to an unsafe state. A secondary goal of this paper is to initiate the discussion between control and security practitioners--two areas that have had little interaction in the past. We believe that control engineers can leverage security engineering to design--based on a combination of their best practices--control algorithms that go beyond safety and fault tolerance, and include considerations to survive targeted attacks.
Study of incidence of peptic ulcer perforation in young adults

Background: Peptic ulcer perforation is the commonest perforation of the gastrointestinal tract affecting 2-10% population showing a shift from older to the younger population. With this statistics a study for incidence of peptic ulcer perforation in young adults 18-30 years was carried out. Methods: Prospective study of patients admitted on emergency basis and diagnosed as peptic ulcer perforation either gastric or duodenal perforation intraoperatively in patients 18-30 years were studied from June 2009 to October 2011. Results: Of 175 patients, 70 (40%) patients were between 18 and 30 years age. 58 (82.85%) were males and 12 (17.14%) were females. Twenty-three (32.85%) patients had history suggestive of acute peptic disease/ulcer and had taken some treatment in the form of antacid H-2 blocker or proton pump inhibitor while 47 (67.14%) patients had no history. Pain was the consistent symptom while tachycardia, tenderness, and guarding were the signs present in all 70 (40%) patients. Gas under diaphragm (pneumoperitoneum) was found in 67 (95.71%). Ultrasonography abdomen S/O pyoperitoneum was found that all 70 (100%). 57 (81.42%) patients had an anterior duodenal perforation, 12 (17.14%) patients had a gastric perforation with a ratio of 4.7:1, and 1 patient had a combined gastric and duodenal perforation. 1 (2.43%) patient expired in the post-operative period, 55 (78.57%) patients come for regular follow and 14 (20%) patients were lost to follow-up. Only 4 (7.2%) patients had mild to moderate symptoms of peptic ulcer disease which were controlled by anti-ulcer drugs. Conclusion: Peptic ulcer perforation is a disease more common in the young population with a male preponderance.