Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Quality of life, loneliness and health-related characteristics among older people in Liaoning province, China: a cross-sectional study

Objectives The aim of the study was to examine the relations among quality of life (QOL), loneliness and health-related characteristics in a sample of Chinese older people. Design Cross-sectional study. Setting Communities in Dandong city, Liaoning province, China. Participants Sample of 732 older people aged 60 and older who were living in Dandong, Liaoning province, China. Methods A questionnaire was administered to the participants face-to-face. The questionnaire contained four sections: demographic characteristics, health-related characteristics, the EQ-5D Scale and the UCLA Loneliness Scale. The t-test, F-test and multivariable linear regression analyses were performed to individually test associations between the demographic data, health-related characteristics, loneliness and QOL. Results Chronic diseases, loneliness, age and smoking status were negatively associated with QOL (p<0.05). Satisfaction with health services, income and physical activity were positively associated with QOL (p<0.05). Conclusions Loneliness, chronic diseases and health service satisfaction were important factors related to low QOL among older people in China. The findings indicate that reducing loneliness, managing chronic diseases and improving the health service may help to improve the QOL for older people.
Performance of Automation Testing Tools for Android Applications

The number of mobile application is growing remarkably. Hence, the requirement of testing on mobile application is essential in order to assure that all applications on the market have good quality. Testing on mobile application can be conducted manually or automatically. The automation testing utilizes a testing tool to perform test case execution and verification automatically. The utilization of automation testing can improve the performance of testing. There are various automation testing tools for mobile application with different capabilities and characteristics such as Appium, Robotium, and UI Automator. This paper presents an empirical investigation of the performance comparison of automation testing tools when applied into four Android applications as objects under test. Android is a popular operating system for smartphone with a huge number of applications. The result shows that the tools have their advantages and disadvantages. Detail performance comparison of the three tools is presented in this paper. Based on the experiment result, this paper provides recommendation for the utilization of each of the tools.
Evaluation of Prophylactic and Therapeutic Effects of Tramadol and Tramadol Plus Magnesium Sulfate in an Acute Inflammatory Model of Pain and Edema in Rats

Background: Inflammatory pain is the most commonly treated clinical pain, since it develops following trauma or surgery, and accompanies rheumatic or arthritic diseases. Tramadol is one of the most frequently used opioid analgesics in acute and chronic pain of different origin. Magnesium is a widely used dietary supplement that was recently shown to be a safe analgesic drug in different models of inflammatory pain. Aim: This study aimed to evaluate the effects of systemically or locally injected tramadol with/without systemically injected magnesium sulfate in prophylactic or therapeutic protocols of application in a rat model of somatic inflammation. Methods: Inflammation of the rat hind paw was induced by an intraplantar injection of carrageenan (0.1 ml, 0.5%). The antihyperalgesic/antiedematous effects of tramadol (intraperitoneally or intraplantarly injected), and tramadol-magnesium sulfate (subcutaneously injected) combinations were assessed by measuring the changes in paw withdrawal thresholds or paw volume induced by carrageenan. The drugs were administered before or after inflammation induction. Results: Systemically administered tramadol (1.25–10 mg/kg) before or after induction of inflammation reduced mechanical hyperalgesia and edema with a maximal antihyperalgesic/antiedematous effect of about 40–100%. Locally applied tramadol (0.125 mg/paw) better reduced edema (50–100%) than pain (20–50%) during 24 h. Administration of a fixed dose of tramadol (1.25 mg/kg) with different doses of magnesium led to a dose-dependent enhancement and prolongation of the analgesic effect of tramadol both in prevention and treatment of inflammatory pain. Magnesium increases the antiedematous effect of tramadol in the prevention of inflammatory edema while reducing it in treatment. Conclusion: According to results obtained in this animal model, systemic administration of low doses of tramadol and magnesium sulfate given in combination is a potent, effective and relatively safe therapeutic option for prevention and especially therapy of somatic inflammatory pain. The best result is achieved when tramadol is combined with magnesium sulfate at a dose that is equivalent to the average human recommended daily dose and when the drugs are administered when inflammation is maximally developed.
PAPR Analysis as a Ratio of Two Random Variables: Application to Multicarrier Systems With Low Subcarriers Number

The distribution of the peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) of multicarrier systems is studied in the context of signals featuring low subcarriers number. Considering the mean power of the signal as a random variable, a general cumulative distribution function of the PAPR is suggested. We show that the new formulation is valid not only for low subcarriers number but also for larger subcarriers number. Thus, an asymptotic analysis using a large subcarriers number proves a perfect concordance between the suggested approach and the state-of-the-art derivations only valid for large subcarriers number. All the theoretical developments are supported through simulations, and we discuss the case of oversampled signals as well.
High-pressure carbon dioxide pneumoperitoneum induces oxidative stress and mitochondria-associated apoptotic pathway in rabbit kidneys with severe hydronephrosis

The primary aim of the present study was to investigate the potential effect of high-pressure carbon dioxide (CO2) pneumoperitoneum on kidneys with severe hydronephrosis and to investigate the possible underlying mechanism. A total of 18 rabbits underwent a surgical procedure inducing severe hydronephrosis. Rabbits were then divided at random into three groups (n=6 each) and subjected to intraabdominal pressure of 0, 8 or 18 mmHg, respectively. CO2 inflation lasted for 90 min in the pneumoperitoneum groups. Oxidative stress was assessed by measurements of reactive oxygen species (ROS). Activation of apoptosis was analyzed by western blot analysis of B-cell lymphoma 2 (Bcl-2), Bcl-2-associated x protein (Bax), cytochrome c (Cyt c), caspase-3 and caspase-9 levels. In addition, TUNEL assay, hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) staining, measurement of mitochondrial membrane potential (MMP) and detection of changes to kidney ultramicrostructure were performed. In the 0 and 8 mmHg groups, all results were normal and similar. However, in the 18 mmHg group, the kidneys suffered oxidative damage and mitochondrial injuries, and increased ROS levels, lower MMP and mitochondrial vacuolization were observed. Furthermore, the mitochondrial/caspase-dependent pathway of apoptosis was activated, as indicated by the apoptotic index, and the expression levels and translocation of Bax, Bcl-2, Cyt c, caspase-3 and caspase-9. Therefore, it is concluded that high-pressure CO2 pneumoperitoneum induces oxidative damage and apoptosis in rabbit kidneys with severe hydronephrosis, which is associated with the mitochondrial apoptotic pathway.
Intangible Assets Disclosures in the Olive Oil Differentiation Strategy: A Theoretical Review

In an industry like olive oil mills, far from the business examples that have opted for providing information on intangible assets on a voluntary basis up until now, these disclosures can be seen as a strategic objective. Our objective is to review the state of the art in this topic in order to identify the theoretical advantages associated with its realization. The synthesis obtained in our paper highlights the role of intangible assets disclosures to reinforce the differenciation strategy. This can be applied to the specific case of the olive oil mills where their managers could consider all the advantages associated to these practices in a near future.
NFKB1 promoter polymorphism: A new predictive marker of cytomegalovirus infection after kidney transplantation

Cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection represents a common cause of morbidity and mortality in kidney transplant recipients (KTR). The NF‐kB signaling pathway is highly involved in the pathogenesis of CMV infection. The ‐94ins/delATTG functional polymorphism in the promoter of NFKB1 has been associated with low intracellular levels of the protein and high incidence of inflammatory and autoimmune disease. In this study, we evaluated the association of this NFKB1 polymorphism with the risk of CMV infection.
Music for pain relief during bed bathing of mechanically ventilated patients: A pilot study

Background Pain is a universal issue and is of particular concern in mechanically ventilated patients, as they require intensive nursing care and multiple invasive procedures, while being unable to communicate verbally. The aim of this study was to assess the effect of music on pain experienced by mechanically ventilated patients during morning bed bathing. Methods Of the 60 mechanically ventilated patients enrolled in this single-center pilot study between March 2013 and October 2015, the first 30 received no music and the next 30 the music intervention, during the morning bed bath. The Behavioral Pain Scale (BPS) score was determined during and at the end of the bath then 30, 60, and 120 minutes after the bath. BPS score changes over time were assessed and the proportions of bath times spent with a BPS score ≥5 and with the maximal BPS score were determined. Results At baseline, no patient had pain (defined as a BPS score <5) and the median BPS score was 3 [IQR, 3;3] in both groups (P = 0.43). After bed bath initiation, 88% of patients experienced pain. The maximum BPS value during the bath was lower in the music group (5 [5;6.7] vs. 7 [5;7]). Proportions of total bath time spent with BPS≥5 and with the maximum BPS were significantly lower in the music group than in the control group (2.0 [0.3;4.0] vs. 10 [4.3;18.0]; P < .0001 and 1.5 [0;3.0] vs. 3.5 [2.0;6.0]; P = .005; respectively). Two hours after the end of the bath, the BPS values had returned to baseline in both groups. Conclusion In our population, music significantly decreased pain intensity and duration during the morning bed bath in mechanically ventilated patients. These results warrant further assessment in a large multicenter randomized controlled trial. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02883959
Leveraging Financial News for Stock Trend Prediction with Attention-Based Recurrent Neural Network

Stock market prediction is one of the most attractive research topic since the successful prediction on the market's future movement leads to significant profit. Traditional short term stock market predictions are usually based on the analysis of historical market data, such as stock prices, moving averages or daily returns. However, financial news also contains useful information on public companies and the market. Existing methods in finance literature exploit sentiment signal features, which are limited by not considering factors such as events and the news context. We address this issue by leveraging deep neural models to extract rich semantic features from news text. In particular, a Bidirectional-LSTM are used to encode the news text and capture the context information, self attention mechanism are applied to distribute attention on most relative words, news and days. In terms of predicting directional changes in both Standard & Poor's 500 index and individual companies stock price, we show that this technique is competitive with other state of the art approaches, demonstrating the effectiveness of recent NLP technology advances for computational finance.
An Alliance of Gel-Based and Gel-Free Proteomic Techniques Displays Substantial Insight Into the Proteome of a Virulent and an Attenuated Histomonas meleagridis Strain

The unicellular protozoan Histomonas meleagridis is notorious for being the causative agent of histomonosis, which can cause high mortality in turkeys and substantial production losses in chickens. The complete absence of commercially available curative strategies against the disease renders the devising of novel approaches a necessity. A fundamental step toward this objective is to understand the flagellate's virulence and attenuation mechanisms. For this purpose we have previously conducted a comparative proteomic analysis of an in vitro cultivated virulent and attenuated histomonad parasite using two-dimensional electrophoresis and MALDI-TOF/TOF. The current work aimed to substantially extend the knowledge of the flagellate's proteome by applying 2D-DIGE and sequential window acquisition of all theoretical mass spectra (SWATH) MS as tools on the two well-defined strains. In the gel-based experiments, 49 identified protein spots were found to be differentially expressed, of which 37 belonged to the in vitro cultivated virulent strain and 12 to the attenuated one. The most frequently identified proteins in the virulent strain take part in cytoskeleton formation, carbohydrate metabolism and adaptation to stress. However, post-translationally modified or truncated ubiquitous cellular proteins such as actin and GAPDH were identified as upregulated in multiple gel positions. This indicated their contribution to processes not related to cytoskeleton and carbohydrate metabolism, such as fibronectin or plasminogen binding. Proteins involved in cell division and cytoskeleton organization were frequently observed in the attenuated strain. The findings of the gel-based studies were supplemented by the gel-free SWATH MS analysis, which identified and quantified 42 significantly differentially regulated proteins. In this case proteins with peptidase activity, metabolic proteins and actin-regulating proteins were the most frequent findings in the virulent strain, while proteins involved in hydrogenosomal carbohydrate metabolism dominated the results in the attenuated one.
Therapeutic use of mesenchymal stem cell–derived extracellular vesicles in acute lung injury

Acute respiratory distress syndrome is a major cause of respiratory failure in critically ill patients. Despite extensive research into its pathophysiology, mortality remains high. No effective pharmacotherapy exists. Based largely on numerous preclinical animal studies, administration of mesenchymal stem or stromal cell (MSC) as a therapeutic for acute lung injury (ALI) holds great promise, and Phase I and II clinical trials are currently under way internationally. However, concern for the use of stem cells, specifically the risk of iatrogenic tumor formation, as well as the prohibitive cost of production, storage, and distribution of cells in bone marrow transplant facilities, may limit access to this lifesaving therapy. Accumulating evidence now suggest that novel stem cell–derived therapies, including MSC‐conditioned medium and extracellular vesicles (EVs) released from MSCs, might constitute compelling alternatives. The current review summarizes the preclinical studies testing MSC EVs as treatment for ALI and other inflammatory lung diseases. While certain logistic obstacles limit the clinical applications of MSC‐conditioned medium such as the volume required for treatment and lack of standardization of what constitutes the components of conditioned medium, the therapeutic application of MSC EVs remains promising, primarily due to ability of EVs to maintain the functional phenotype of the parent cell. However, utilization of MSC EVs will require large‐scale production and standardization concerning identification, characterization, and quantification.
Comparing Standard Versus Extended Culture Duration in Acute Hip and Knee Periprosthetic Joint Infection

Introduction: Periprosthetic joint infection (PJI) is a devastating complication of hip and knee arthroplasties. Surgical cultures are essential for the diagnosis and treatment of PJI. Yet, the ideal culture duration remains unclear. This study compares culture yield, organism profile, and treatment success between standard (5 days) and extended (14 days) cultures in acute hip and knee PJI. Methods: A retrospective review of medical records was completed between 2006 and 2015. All patients with an acute PJI meeting the modified International Consensus Meeting on PJI criteria of a primary hip or knee arthroplasty were included. All patients underwent irrigation and débridement with exchange of modular bearing surfaces for an acute postoperative or acute hematogenous infection. A standard growth cohort (before February 2012) was compared with an extended growth cohort (after February 2012) to determine if differences existed in culture yield and treatment success using the Delphi consensus criteria. Results: One hundred eighty-nine patients were analyzed, including 102 (54.0%) standard duration and 87 (46.0%) extended duration cohorts. Patient cohorts were closely matched, except more hip PJIs than knee PJIs were included in the standard cohort (69.6% versus 49.4%; P = 0.005). No differences between standard and extended cohorts were observed with regard to overall culture yield, monomicrobial growth, or polymicrobial growth. Propionibacterium acnes was identified more often in the extended cohort (5 versus 0 patients; P = 0.019). However, four of these patients had only one positive P acnes culture and grew additional organisms. Finally, no difference in treatment success between the standard and extended cohorts at the final follow-up was found (53% versus 52%; P = 0.282). Conclusion: Extended culture duration in acute hip and knee PJIs did not change the rate of culture-negative PJI, identify more patients with polymicrobial PJI, or improve the success of surgical treatment. The only difference was a higher incidence of P acnes growth, but contaminants or indolent chronic PJI cannot be excluded. Although extended culture growth may be indicated in acute shoulder arthroplasty PJI, its utility in hip or knee arthroplasty may be limited. Higher-level studies will be needed to address this in the future.
A Reversed Visible Light Multitarget Localization System via Sparse Matrix Reconstruction

A reversed indoor multitarget localization system employing compressive sensing (CS) theory is proposed for the first time in terms of visible light positioning (VLP). Unlike conventional VLP systems, where targets process the received light signals to localize themselves, our system works reversely by using multiple photodiodes (PDs) mounted on the ceiling to localize mobile targets that carry light emitting diodes. By utilizing its nature of sparsity, the problem of multitarget localization is formulated as a problem of sparse matrix reconstruction, and a 3-step workflow is developed to solve the problem. In this workflow, first, a sensing matrix is redesigned by using QR decomposition to enable CS theory. Next, the conventional <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${l} _{\textbf {1}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-minimization (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${l} _{\textbf {1}}\text{M}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>) algorithm which is highly vulnerable to noise in solving a localization problem is theoretically analyzed and subsequently improved by adopting a reweighted <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${l} _{\textbf {1}}\text{M}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> approach. Finally, a subgrid localization algorithm is proposed to overcome a common unpractical assumption of on-grid locations, tackle the false peak problem in sparse matrix reconstruction, and ultimately improve the localization precision. The feasibility of our system and supporting algorithms is verified through extensive simulations. Our system demonstrates a good positioning accuracy of 7.4 cm by using 25 PDs when SNR = 20 dB. We also investigate the impact of various factors on the positioning performance, and the obtained results provide an insightful reference paving the way to a practical system design.
Fair and Individualized Project Teamwork Evaluation for an Engineering Course

Teamwork skills are critical to obtain for every engineering student. Numerous research has outlined this necessity and studied teamwork from various aspects. Yet, from the point of grading, teamwork is one of the task forms that is difficult to evaluate, especially in comparison to individual evaluation. Several criteria may affect the evaluation, and also how the final result is perceived by students - fair or unfair towards them. In this paper a method that was applied to evaluate and advance group teamwork for a systems engineering course in a European university is discussed. The method allows to individualize teamwork results by team members, advantaging of team feedback and self-evaluation. This paper introduces the method, and looks into how applying this method affected the final results of teamwork projects.
MUSED: A multimedia multi-document dataset for topic segmentation

Abstract Research on topic segmentation has recently focused on segmenting documents by taking advantage of documents covering the same topics. In order to properly evaluate such approaches, a dataset of related documents is needed. However, existing datasets are limited in the number of related documents per domain. In addition, most of the available datasets do not consider documents from different media sources (PowerPoints, videos, etc.), which pose specific challenges to segmentation. We fill this gap with the MUltimedia SEgmentation Dataset (MUSED), a collection of documents manually segmented, from different media sources, in seven different domains, with an average of twenty related documents per domain. In this paper, we describe the process of building MUSED. A multi-annotator study is carried out to determine if it is possible to observe agreement among human judges and characterize their disagreement patterns. In addition, we use MUSED to compare the state-of-the-art topic segmentation techniques, including the ones that take advantage of related documents. Moreover, we study the impact of having documents from different media sources in the dataset. To the best of our knowledge, MUSED is the first dataset that allows a straightforward evaluation of both single- and multiple-documents topic segmentation techniques, as well as to study how these behave in the presence of documents from different media sources. Results show that some techniques are, indeed, sensitive to different media sources, and also that current multi-document segmentation models do not outperform previous models, pointing to a research line that needs to be boosted.