Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Facilitating student nurses’ learning using online enquiry-based activities

Health and social care pre-qualifying education has a long established association with small group learning and teaching. The transition from traditional learning and teaching approaches to the use of a Virtual Learning Environment within Higher Education Institutes is not without its complexities. This paper presents evidence from a previous pilot study exploring the use of an online learning activity and discusses how the findings have influenced the development of online scenario-based learning activities. A review of current health-care literature informs the developmental processes, which include using a pedagogic framework for implementing a specifically designed online learning activity developed to allow child health student nurses to follow an online evidence-based enquiry learning process. This paper, written as the online activity process is being introduced to child health branch student nurses, discusses the benefits and challenges of developing the activity and debates the facilitation of a.
Impacts of Microplastics on the Soil Biophysical Environment

Soils are essential components of terrestrial ecosystems that experience strong pollution pressure. Microplastic contamination of soils is being increasingly documented, with potential consequences for soil biodiversity and function. Notwithstanding, data on effects of such contaminants on fundamental properties potentially impacting soil biota are lacking. The present study explores the potential of microplastics to disturb vital relationships between soil and water, as well as its consequences for soil structure and microbial function. During a 5-weeks garden experiment we exposed a loamy sand soil to environmentally relevant nominal concentrations (up to 2%) of four common microplastic types (polyacrylic fibers, polyamide beads, polyester fibers, and polyethylene fragments). Then, we measured bulk density, water holding capacity, hydraulic conductivity, soil aggregation, and microbial activity. Microplastics affected the bulk density, water holding capacity, and the functional relationship between the microbial activity and water stable aggregates. The effects are underestimated if idiosyncrasies of particle type and concentrations are neglected, suggesting that purely qualitative environmental microplastic data might be of limited value for the assessment of effects in soil. If extended to other soils and plastic types, the processes unravelled here suggest that microplastics are relevant long-term anthropogenic stressors and drivers of global change in terrestrial ecosystems.
Neurodevelopmental outcomes of pediatric traumatic brain injury

Pediatric traumatic brain injury is a major cause for concern when considering both the number of children sustaining injuries and the large number of children incurring life-long difficulties that impact on quality of life. Research is continuing to investigate outcomes and predictors of recovery in both cognitive and behavioral domains. Findings have contributed to better identification of children at high risk for neurobehavioral difficulties. The challenge is to now develop intervention programs to prevent or lessen the impact of such difficulties.
SMASHing regulatory sites in DNA by human-mouse sequence comparisons

Regulatory sequence elements provide important clues to understanding and predicting gene expression. Although the binding sites for hundreds of transcription factors are known, there has been no systematic attempt to incorporate this information in the annotation of the human genome. Cross species sequence comparisons are critical to a meaningful annotation of regulatory elements since they generally reside in conserved noncoding regions. To take advantage of the recently completed drafts of the mouse and human genomes for annotating transcription factor binding sites, we developed SMASH, a computational pipeline that identifies thousands of orthologous human/mouse proteins, maps them to genomic sequences, extracts and compares upstream regions and annotates putative regulatory elements in conserved, noncoding, upstream regions. Our current dataset consists of approximately 2500 human/mouse gene pairs. Transcription start sites were estimated by mapping quasifull length cDNA sequences. SMASH uses a novel probabilistic method to identify putative conserved binding sites that takes into account the competition between transcription factors for binding DNA. SMASH presents the results via a genome browser web interface which displays the predicted regulatory information together with the current annotations for the human genome. Our results are validated by comparison to previously published experimental data. SMASH results compare favorably to other existing computational approaches.
Actual Nutritional Information of Products Advertised to Children and Adults on Saturday

We sought to determine the types of commercials and the actual nutritional content of foods advertised to children during Saturday morning and to adults in evening prime time on 4 television broadcast networks. Food commercials for morning programming were greater in number and repetitions and took up more time overall. Foods advertised in the commercials were coded for actual nutritional content. In general, the morning commercials advertised more unhealthy food products than the evening commercials. Specifically, the morning food commercials advertised unhealthy products in terms of sugar and cholesterol. Viewers of both time periods were subjected to advertisements for unhealthy foods. These types of influences on children's health and development have a potentially negative impact and should be empirically investigated by child health care professionals.
A visual servo-based teleoperation robot system for closed diaphyseal fracture reduction

Common fracture treatments include open reduction and intramedullary nailing technology. However, these methods have disadvantages such as intraoperative X-ray radiation, delayed union or nonunion and postoperative rotation. Robots provide a novel solution to the aforementioned problems while posing new challenges. Against this scientific background, we develop a visual servo-based teleoperation robot system. In this article, we present a robot system, analyze the visual servo-based control system in detail and develop path planning for fracture reduction, inverse kinematics, and output forces of the reduction mechanism. A series of experimental tests is conducted on a bone model and an animal bone. The experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of the robot system. The robot system uses preoperative computed tomography data to realize high precision and perform minimally invasive teleoperation for fracture reduction via the visual servo-based control system while protecting surgeons from radiation.
Aligning ESTs to genome using multilayer unique makers

As more and more genomic sequences have been sequenced and rapid growing of number of EST (expressed sequence tag), we need very fast and efficient algorithms to align ESTs to genome. ESTs contain the exon/intron structure. Let G and E denote the given genome and the given EST sequence respectively. In order to reduce the time complexity, it is quite important to locate the position of E in G efficiently. A unique maker is a sequence appeared in G only once. We can locate the position of E in G by finding unique markers contained in E. The time complexity to align ESTs to genome grows rapidly when we use longer unique markers. In this paper, we propose a multi-layer unique marker method to align ESTs to genome. Our method has the benefit of both short and long unique markers. Our algorithm can also use to locate the position of single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP). Experimental result shows that our method is much faster than common tools such as SIM4 and BLAT.
Conhecimentos sobre prevenção e tratamento de glaucoma entre pacientes de unidade hospitalar

OBJETIVO: Verificar conhecimentos de pacientes portadores de glaucoma em relacao a sua afeccao, com a finalidade de obter subsidios para auxiliar a relacao medico-paciente e estimular a observância do tratamento. METODOS: No Hospital do Servidor Publico Estadual do municipio de Sao Paulo, Brasil, foi realizado estudo transversal analitico aplicando-se questionario estruturado, com base em estudo exploratorio e submetido a teste previo para avaliacao do nivel conhecimento em relacao ao glaucoma. A variavel "auto-avaliacao do conhecimento" foi mensurada por escala ordinal (sabe bem, sabe mais ou menos, sabe mal e nada sabe). RESULTADOS: A populacao foi constituida por 405 pacientes portadores de glaucoma; 72,6% do sexo feminino; idade media 66,2 anos; 54,3% cursaram ate o ensino fundamental. Os resultados revelaram: dos que sabem bem sobre o controle da doenca, 95, 8% declararam terem recebido explicacoes (p < 0,000); houve maior proporcao (46,9%) de pacientes que afirmaram "saber mais ou menos" quando comparado com os demais grupos, porem aqueles com maior escolaridade referiram maior conhecimento quando comparado aos com menor escolaridade (p < 0, 000); em relacao as fontes de informacao sobre glaucoma 49,9% mencionaram unicamente o oftalmologista. CONCLUSAO: O conhecimento dos pacientes em relacao ao glaucoma foi relacionado as explicacoes recebidas e ao nivel de escolaridade. Este estudo confirma a necessidade da manutencao de orientacoes, divulgacao continuada de informacoes sobre prevencao e tratamento de glaucoma, nos consultorios e na comunidade, para melhora do prognostico visual.
Including families and carers: an evaluation of the family liaison service on inpatient psychiatric wards in Somerset, UK

Purpose – National mental health policies in the UK have a common theme of seeking to develop working partnerships between people who use mental health services, their families and carers and professionals. In Somerset, following a staff training programme, a Family Liaison Service has been developed whereby systemically trained staff work alongside inpatient staff to hold family meetings as part of the assessment and admission process on all wards for working age adults and older people. This article aims to focus on this initiative. Design/methodology/approach – The article considers the development of the Family Liaison Service and evaluates its progress based on audit data, feedback from families using the service, and a survey of staff experience. Issues raised in developing family inclusive services are discussed. Findings – Evaluation of the service suggests that, although there is still progress to be made, considerable success has been achieved in embedding the service on inpatient units with a s.
Biomechanical optimization of subject-specific implant positioning for femoral head resurfacing to reduce fracture risk

Peri-prosthetic femoral neck fracture after femoral head resurfacing can be either patient-related or surgical technique-related. The study aimed to develop a patient-specific finite element modelling technique that can reliably predict an optimal implant position and give minimal strain in the peri-prosthetic bone tissue, thereby reducing the risk of peri-prosthetic femoral neck fracture. The subject-specific finite element modelling was integrated with optimization techniques including design of experiments to best possibly position the implant for achieving minimal strain for femoral head resurfacing. Sample space was defined by varying the floating point to find the extremes at which the cylindrical reaming operation actually cuts into the femoral neck causing a notch during hip resurfacing surgery. The study showed that the location of the maximum strain, for all non-notching positions, was on the superior femoral neck, in the peri-prosthetic bone tissue. It demonstrated that varus positioning resulted in a higher strain, while valgus positioning reduced the strain, and further that neutral version had a lower strain.
Symmetry comparison between sacrum and center of mass during walking

Sacrum motion is used extensively in clinical research to represent movement of the entire body by replacing the center of mass. The primary objective of this article was to investigate the effect of this replacement on symmetry determination. The secondary objective was to assess the correlation between the symmetries of trajectories of center of mass and sacrum, and that of spatiotemporal parameters. Three-dimensional trajectories obtained from 37 markers placed on anatomical landmarks of 15 healthy subjects were recorded while walking at three speeds on the treadmill. Trajectory of center of mass was determined using segmental analysis method. The results indicated that two symmetries, one determined using sacrum marker and the other using segmental analysis method, were different and this difference was more pronounced in anterior–posterior direction. In other words, harmonic analysis of sacrum and center of mass trajectories revealed different results. Furthermore, low-to-moderate correlations were observed between spatiotemporal parameters symmetry and symmetries obtained from both center of mass and sacrum. In conclusion, the results indicated that it may not be analytically acceptable to substitute sacrum for center of mass in symmetry determination.
Moderating factors of the psychological impact of unemployment.

This study is an exploration of some of the factors important in determining a man's subjective reaction to the experience of unemployment. Goldberg's General Health Questionnaire was used as a normative measure of mental health, and a Present Life Satisfaction Scale was used as a measure of subjective well-being. Length of unemployment was inversely correlated with mental health and well-being; and semi-skilled and unskilled men had poorer psychological well-being during unemployment than those of higher occupational status. The best single predictor of mental health during unemployment was whether or not a man felt his time was occupied.
POTENTIATION OF PRIMARY VIRUS INFECTION BY RADIOMIMETIC DRUGS

Until the discovery of interferon (Isaacs and Hitchcock, 1960), recovery from primary viral infection was explained largely on the basis of immune responses. However, over the last decade, the natural anti-viral protein interferon has become generally regarded as being the most important factor in terminating primary viral infections (Baron, 1963). In addition, the eellular damage in a viral infected tissue produces an inflammatory response, and the raised temperature, acidity and lowered oxygen tension of this response will all tend further to restrict the replication of virus (Lwoff, 1959). It is recognized that immunosuppressant therapy with agents such as x-rays, cytotoxic drugs, and steroids may increase susceptibility to bacterial and fungal infections, bvit much less is known about the effect of these treatments on virus infection. However, it is well known that patients receiving immunosuppressive therapy should not be vaccinated against smallpox because of the risks of complications such as generalized vaccinia and vaccinia necrosum. In addition, there is now increasing evidence that damage to the reticulo-endothelial system, whether caused by drugs, disease, or both, can markedly alter the course of viral infections (Heath, 1969). The recent development of an increasing variety of techniques for the production of immunosuppression permits a re-examination of the complex, but usually highly efficient, process by which the termination of infection at the target organ is accomplished.
Forecasting directional changes in the FX markets

Most of existing studies sample markets' prices as time series when developing models to predict market's trend. Directional Changes (DC) is an approach to summarize market prices other than time series. DC marks the market as downtrend or uptrend based on the magnitude of prices changes. In this paper we address the problem of forecasting trend's direction in the foreign exchange (FX) market under the DC framework. In particularly we aim to answer the question of whether the current trend will continue for a specific percentage before the trend ends. We propose one single independent variable to make the forecast. We assess the accuracy of our approach using three currency pairs in the FX market; namely EUR/CHF, GBP/CHF, and USD/JPY. The experimental results show that the accuracy of the proposed forecasting model is very good; in some cases, forecasting accuracy was over 80%. However, under particular settings the accuracy may not outperform dummy prediction. The results confirm that directional changes are predictable, and the identified independent variable is useful for forecasting under the DC framework.
A pilot programme in prescribing dexamphetamine for amphetamine users (part I)

Amphetamine use is a large and growing problem in the UK. Although much of it is infrequent, oral, recreational use, there are a significant number of people using amphetamines habitually, heavily and intravenously. Because of the perception that traditional drug services are opiate user oriented and have little to offer amphetamine users, there is often a proportional under-representation of amphetamine users presenting to services.Prescribing dexamphetamine in oral form can produce encouraging results in terms of reducing injecting and use of street drugs, and improved health and lifestyle. However, because of the difficulties in obtaining control groups who will stay in treatment without a prescription to evaluate the efficacy of prescribing dexamphetamine, it has yet to achieve the respectability of substitute opiate prescribing.A successful pilot for prescribing dexamphetamine for 10 heavy users is described and the design problems associated with it are discussed.
Incidence and progression of cervical lesions in women with HIV: a systematic global review

Global data on cervical lesion incidence and progression in HIV-positive women are essential for understanding the natural history of cervical neoplasia and informing screening policy. A systematic review was performed summarizing the incidence and progression of cervical lesions in HIV-positive women. Of 5882 HIV-positive women from 15 studies, incidence ranged from 4.9 to 21.1 cases per 100 woman-years for any cervical lesion and 0.4 to 8.8 cases per 100 woman-years for high-grade cervical lesions. HIV-positive women showed a median three-fold higher incidence of cervical lesions compared to HIV-negative women. Of 1099 HIV-positive women from 11 studies, progression from low- to high-grade lesions ranged from 1.2 to 26.2 cases per 100 woman-years. Both incidence and progression rates increased with lower CD4 counts. The effect of antiretroviral therapy on the natural history of cervical neoplasia remains unclear. HIV-positive women have higher incidence and progression of cervical neoplasia. Cervical cancer screening should be integrated into HIV treatment programmes.
Haemoglobin recovery among HIV-1 infected patients on zidovudine-based antiretroviral therapy and other regimens in north-central Nigeria

We conducted a study to assess trends in haemoglobin recovery among HIV-infected patients initiated on zidovudine-based combination antiretroviral therapy (cART) stratified by baseline haemoglobin level. Haemoglobin data from non-pregnant adult patients initiating cART in rural north-central Nigeria between June 2009 and May 2011 were analysed using a linear mixed effects model to assess the interaction between time, zidovudine-containing regimen and baseline haemoglobin level on the outcome of subsequent haemoglobin level. Best-fit curves were created for baseline haemoglobin in the 10th, 25th, 75th and 90th percentiles. We included 313 patients with 736 measures of haemoglobin in the analysis (239 on zidovudine and 74 on non-zidovudine-containing regimens). Median haemoglobin increased over time in both groups, with differences in haemoglobin response over time related to baseline haemoglobin levels and zidovudine use (p = 0.003). The groups of patients on zidovudine at the 10th and 90th percentiles had downward sloping curves while all other groups had upward trending haemoglobin levels. Although haemoglobin levels increased overall for patients on zidovudine-containing regimens, for those in the 10th and 90th percentiles haemoglobin levels trended downward over time. These results have implications for decisions regarding when to initiate, switch from or avoid the use of zidovudine.
Faecal Blending for Nutrient Enrichment and Speedy Sanitisation for Soil Fertility Improvement

Human faeces have been used for soil fertility improvement over time, but limited information is available on the value of this resource in Africa. The fear of the pathogenicity of the material hinders the realisation of its potential value in agriculture. A study was conducted at Makerere University Agricultural Research Institute, Kabanyolo in Uganda, to investigate the sanitising potential and nutrient enrichment capabilities of animal wastes on human faeces from Ecological Sanitation (EcoSan) toilets. Treatments included EcoSan human faeces (EHF) blended with either poultry manure (PM) or cattle manure (CM) mixed in the ratios of 1 : 1 (dry weight basis), before the mixtures were composted. The layout consisted of fifteen wooden composting boxes of 1 m−3 dimensions, laid above ground. Each box was lined with 1.5 m3 1000 um polythene. Poultry manure and its blend with EHF enhanced high temperature and concentrations of plant nutrients. Human faeces alone had meagre nutrients concentrations, but high K
Testicular self-examination amongst genitourinary medicine clinic attendees

Advancements in the diagnosis and treatment of testicular cancer now give a five-year survival rate of 97.2%. Delayed presentation remains the primary cause of poor outcome and recommendations have stressed that men, particularly those with risk factors, should undertake regular testicular self-examination. This study aimed to determine testicular self-examination knowledge and practices amongst 740 unselected men attending a genitourinary medicine clinic via questionnaire survey. Of respondents, 75.8% of men had heard of testicular cancer, and 79.9% had heard of testicular self-examination. Of these, 41% of men had been taught testicular self-examination; 73.9% of them by a doctor or nurse. Importantly, 79.2% had previously performed testicular self-examination. The most common reason for not performing testicular self-examination was ‘Don’t really know what to look for’ (59.5%). Men previously taught testicular self-examination were 11.5 times more likely to perform the practice than those untaught. Of respondents, 74.1% wanted more information regarding testicular self-examination whilst attending the clinic. This study shows an increased level of testicular self-examination amongst genitourinary medicine attendees than has been previously demonstrated in other patient groups. There remains room for improvement via further health promotion and research on the effectiveness of testicular self-examination.
Learning software engineering with group work

This paper describes our experience of teaching a software engineering course based on the use of group work to teaching and practise theoretical concepts. Our work has three main aims: firstly, for the students to develop a complete software project (from specification to delivery); secondly, to acquire knowledge of the main problems of group work and how to overcome them; and finally, to underline the importance of documenting software projects effectively. The programme that we have developed to achieve these goals is presented.