Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An increased body mass index is no risk factor for postoperative nausea and vomiting. A systematic review and results of original data.

BACKGROUND An increased Body Mass Index (BMI) is almost always mentioned as a fundamental risk factor for postoperative nausea (PN), vomiting (PV) or both (PONV). However, multivariate analyses were unable to detect any correlation. Therefore, we asked whether an increased BMI is really a risk factor for PONV. METHODS For the systematic review, a search of electronic databases and a detailed manual search of reviews were carried out. For the analysis of the original data, 587 adult patients from a randomised controlled antiemetic trial (RCT) who underwent general anaesthesia were allocated to four weight groups: Underweight (BMI < 20), Normal Weight (BMI 20-25), Overweight (BMI 25-30) and Obesity (BMI > or = 30). RESULTS Four publications with original data were found. Two described a positive relationship, although not clearly supported by the data. Despite this, most narrative reviews claimed a positive correlation between obesity and PONV by quoting again narrative reviews or misquoting originals. In the RCT, the calculated underlying risk profile for PONV was comparable between all groups. Incidences (95% confidence intervals) of PONV were 45.8% (34.0; 57.6), 41.7 (36.5; 46.9), 47.8 (38.4; 57.1) and 44.1 (31.0; 57.1), for the groups Underweight, Normal Weight, Overweight and Obesity, respectively (P=0.69). The incidences of PN and PV also did not differ with P=0.76 and P=0.36, respectively. CONCLUSION Systematic search of the literature provides no evidence for a positive relationship. Furthermore, our data confirm that an increased BMI is not a risk factor for PONV. This negative finding is important as focussing on the relevant risk factors is needed to allow for an objective risk assessment of PONV.
Investigating Nonneutrality in a State-Dependent Pricing Model with Firm-Level Productivity Shocks

In recent years there has been an abundance of empirical work examining price setting behavior at the micro level. First generation models with price setting rigidities were generally at odds with much of the micro price data. A second generation of models, with fixed costs of price adjustment and idiosyncratic shocks, have attempted to rectify this shortcoming. Using a model that matches a large set of microeconomic facts we find significant nonneutrality. We decompose the nonneutrality and find that state-dependence plays an important part in the responses of output and inflation to a monetary shock. We also examine how aggregating firm behavior can generate . at hazards. Lastly we find that the steady state statistic developed by Alvarez, Le Bihan, and Lippi (2016) is an imperfect guide to characterizing nonneutrality in our model.
Timing of elective repeat cesarean delivery at term and neonatal outcomes.

BACKGROUND Because of increased rates of respiratory complications, elective cesarean delivery is discouraged before 39 weeks of gestation unless there is evidence of fetal lung maturity. We assessed associations between elective cesarean delivery at term (37 weeks of gestation or longer) but before 39 weeks of gestation and neonatal outcomes. METHODS We studied a cohort of consecutive patients undergoing repeat cesarean sections performed at 19 centers of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Maternal-Fetal Medicine Units Network from 1999 through 2002. Women with viable singleton pregnancies delivered electively (i.e., before the onset of labor and without any recognized indications for delivery before 39 weeks of gestation) were included. The primary outcome was the composite of neonatal death and any of several adverse events, including respiratory complications, treated hypoglycemia, newborn sepsis, and admission to the neonatal intensive care unit (ICU). RESULTS Of 24,077 repeat cesarean deliveries at term, 13,258 were performed electively; of these, 35.8% were performed before 39 completed weeks of gestation (6.3% at 37 weeks and 29.5% at 38 weeks) and 49.1% at 39 weeks of gestation. One neonatal death occurred. As compared with births at 39 weeks, births at 37 weeks and at 38 weeks were associated with an increased risk of the primary outcome (adjusted odds ratio for births at 37 weeks, 2.1; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.7 to 2.5; adjusted odds ratio for births at 38 weeks, 1.5; 95% CI, 1.3 to 1.7; P for trend <0.001). The rates of adverse respiratory outcomes, mechanical ventilation, newborn sepsis, hypoglycemia, admission to the neonatal ICU, and hospitalization for 5 days or more were increased by a factor of 1.8 to 4.2 for births at 37 weeks and 1.3 to 2.1 for births at 38 weeks. CONCLUSIONS Elective repeat cesarean delivery before 39 weeks of gestation is common and is associated with respiratory and other adverse neonatal outcomes.
Self-neglect among the elderly: a model based on more than 500 patients seen by a geriatric medicine team.

OBJECTIVES We sought to identify the functional, cognitive, and social factors associated with self-neglect among the elderly to aid the development of etiologic models to guide future research. METHODS A cross-sectional chart review was conducted at Baylor College of Medicine Geriatrics Clinic in Houston, Tex. Patients were assessed using standardized comprehensive geriatric assessment tools. RESULTS Data analysis was performed using the charts of 538 patients; the average patient age was 75.6 years, and 70% were women. Further analysis in 460 persons aged 65 years and older showed that 50% had abnormal Mini Mental State Examination scores, 15% had abnormal Geriatric Depression Scale scores, 76.3% had abnormal physical performance test scores, and 95% had moderate-to-poor social support per the Duke Social Support Index. Patients had a range of illnesses; 46.4% were taking no medications. CONCLUSIONS A model of self-neglect was developed wherein executive dyscontrol leads to functional impairment in the setting of inadequate medical and social support. Future studies should aim to provide empirical evidence that validates this model as a framework for self-neglect. If validated, this model will impart a better understanding of the pathways to self-neglect and provide clinicians and public service workers with more effective prevention and intervention strategies.
Linear programs for resource sharing among heterogeneous agents: The effect of random agent arrivals

We consider a multi-agent resource sharing problem that can be represented by a linear program. The amount of resource to be shared is fixed, and each agent adds to the linear cost and constraint a term that depends on some randomly extracted parameters, thus modelling heterogeneity among agents. We study the probability that the arrival of a new agent does not affect the optimal value and the resource share of the other agents, which means that the system cannot accommodate the request of a further agent and has reached its saturation limit. In particular, we determine the maximum number of requests for the shared resource that the system can accommodate in a probabilistic sense. This result is proven by first formulating the dual of the resource sharing linear program, and then showing that this is a random linear program. Using results from the scenario theory for randomized optimization, we bound the probability of constraint violation for the dual optimal solution, and prove that this is equivalent with the primal optimal value and resource share remaining unchanged upon arrival of a new agent. We discuss how this can be thought of as probabilistic sensitivity analysis and offer an interpretation of this setting in an electric vehicle charging control problem.
Gastric ulcer in the elderly.

Our experience shows that neither basal nor pentagastrin-stimulated acid, pepsin, pepsinogen group A and gastrin secretion significantly change across the age spectrum in subjects with peptic ulcer, even though the typical secretory patterns of patients with GU remain well-defined compared to those with duodenal ulcer (DU), even in the later decades of life. Very little is currently known about age-related changes in the various components of the gastric mucosal barrier; however, a significant reduction of the prostaglandin levels in the gastric mucosa of elderly subjects was recently reported. In elderly GU patients, the concentration of neutral glycoproteins and N-acetylneuraminic acid (NANA) was significantly higher than in young adult GU patients perhaps resulting from the migration of the border between the mucosa of the corpus and the antrum that occurs in the aged stomach. Other factors of pathogenetic importance in GU, such as Helicobacter pylori infection, gastroduodenal motility, gastrointestinal hormones, immune disorders and psychological and social characteristics of the elderly should certainly be further investigated. To date, the published data on the treatment of acute GU in the elderly patients concern studies with H2 blockers: famotidine, ranitidine and nizatidine with healing rates ranging from 67.6% to 90.9% after 6 weeks and 83.8% to 96.0% after 12 weeks of treatment. t present the data available on long-term maintenance treatment of GU disease in the elderly are few: a recent randomized, double-blind study conducted on 61 elderly GU patients with nizatidine vs ranitidine both at the dosage of 150 mg/day showed a relapse rate of 8.29% after 6 months and 34.4% after 12 months. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Early adolescents show sustained susceptibility to cognitive interference by emotional distractors

A child's ability to continuously pay attention to a cognitive task is often challenged by distracting events. Distraction is especially detrimental in a learning or classroom environment in which attended information is typically associated with establishing skills and knowledge. Here we report a study examining the effect of emotional distractors on performance in a subsequent visual lexical decision task in 11- to 13-year-old students (n=30). Lexical decisions about neutral verbs and verb-like pseudowords (i.e., targets) were analysed as a function of the preceding distractor type (pleasant, neutral, or unpleasant photos) and the picture–target stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA; 200 or 600 ms). Across distractor categories, emotionally arousing pictures prolonged decisions about word targets when compared to neutral pictures, irrespective of the SOA. The present results demonstrate that similar to adults, early adolescent students exhibit sustained susceptibility to cognitive interference by irrelevant emotional events.
Evaluation of Telomerase in Canine Mammary Tissues by Immunohistochemical Analysis and a Polymerase Chain Reaction-Based Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay

The enzyme telomerase is considered a potential marker for neoplastic tissue and is used as a diagnostic and prognostic tool in clinical medicine and therapeutics. For this reason, the possible role of telomerase activation in the process of malignant transformation is currently the subject of intense research efforts. The focus of the study reported here was to detect telomerase in 37 canine mammary samples, by comparing two methods: immunohistochemical (IHC) analysis for detecting the catalytic subunit of the enzyme, telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT), and the telomeric repeat amplification protocol–enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (TRAP-ELISA), a polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based technique that uses a colorimetric detection method. Using the TRAP-ELISA, samples were considered positive when they yielded a difference of at least 0.2 absorbance units between the readings at 450 nm versus 690 nm wavelength. On the basis of this criterion, 18 negative and 19 positive cases were obtained. Specific immunohistochemical staining was observed mainly in the nucleoli, to a lesser extent in the nuclei, and rarely in the cytoplasm of epithelial cells. A sample was considered positive when at least 10% of the epithelial cells had specific staining. The Pearson correlation between the TRAP-ELISA and IHC results was significant only when IHC nucleolar (r = 0.53, P < 0.01) or nuclear (r = 0.36, P < 0.05) staining or their combination (r = 0.58, P < 0.01) was considered. Thus, IHC staining of nucleoli and nuclei can be considered as an alternative method to the TRAP-ELISA. The detection of telomerase in normal mammary gland and fibrocystic mastopathy using both methods does not support the idea that telomerase may be used as a specific marker of mammary neoplasia in dogs.
COSMIC RAYS ACTIVITY AND MONTHLY NUMBER OF DEATHS: A CORRELATIVE STUDY

We studied the relation between the intensity of cosmic rays, the level of solar/geomagnetic activity, and the monthly numbers of deaths in a large hospital in Israel and in all Lithuania. The Israeli data include 30526 hospital deaths, two groups of fatal suicides (2359, 2763), and 15435 suicidal attempts for two periods of 108 and 236 consecutive months. The national data for the entire Republic of Lithuania include 424925 deaths for the period of 120 consecutive months. Cosmic rays intensity was measured by an Apatity neutron monitor. We obtained the data on solar, geomagnetic radiovawe propagation, ionosphere ionization hours, proton flux of two energy levels (>90 and 60 MeV) from the National Geophysical Data Center at Goddard Space Flight Center, National Space Environment Center at Boulder, Colorado, USA, and from the Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism, Ionosphere and Radio Wave Propagation (IZMIRAN), Russia. We calculated Pearson coefficients and their probabilities for correlation between monthly space activity level and monthly number of male and female deaths from different causes. Cosmic rays activity revealed significant negative correlation with solar/geomagnetic activity indices and related physical phenomena levels. This activity strongly correlated with flux of protons with the energies >90 MeV proton flux and did not exhibit significant correlation with 60 MeV proton fluxes. Cosmic rays intensity correlation with monthly numbers of deaths was strong for noncardiovascular deaths, suicides, and traffic accidents. The correlation was much weaker for deaths caused by ishemic heart disease and strokes.
Training paraprofessionals to implement interventions for people autism spectrum disorders: A systematic review

Objective: This review summarizes studies in which paraprofessionals were trained to implement interventions for people with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in school and rehabilitation settings. Methods: Systematic searches identified 12 studies meeting inclusion criteria. These studies were evaluated in terms of: (a) participant characteristics, (b) intervention implemented, (c) training procedures, (d) outcomes and (e) certainty of evidence. Results: Across the 12 studies intervention was provided to a total of 39 paraprofessionals including teacher aides and rehabilitation staff. Paraprofessionals were trained to implement: social stories, prompting, Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS), Discrete Trial Training (DTT), Pivotal Response Training (PRT), incidental teaching or activity schedules. Training procedures included written and verbal explanations, modelling, video demonstrations, role playing and feedback. Positive outcomes were reported in 92% of the included studies. Conclusion: Although the literature base is limited, this review highlights promising training procedures and areas in need of further research.
Oral vaccination: where we are?

As early as 900 years ago, the Bedouins of the Negev desert were reported to kill a rabid dog, roast its liver and feed it to a dog-bitten person for three to five days according to the size and number of bites 1. In sixteenth century China, physicians routinely prescribed pills made from the fleas collected from sick cows, which purportedly prevented smallpox. One may dismiss the wisdom of the Bedouins or Chinese but the Nobel laureate, Charles Richet, demonstrated in 1900 that feeding raw meat can cure tuberculous dogs – an approach he termed zomotherapy. Despite historical clues indicating the feasibility of oral vaccination, this particular field is notoriously infamous for the abundance of dead-end leads. Today, most commercial vaccines are delivered by injection, which has the principal limitation that recipients do not like needles. In the last few years, there has been a sharp increase in interest in needle-free vaccine delivery; new data emerges almost daily in the literature. So far, there are very few licensed oral vaccines, but many more vaccine candidates are in development. Vaccines delivered orally have the potential to take immunization to a fundamentally new level. In this review, the authors summarize the recent progress in the area of oral vaccines.
Synergy of Caspofungin with Human Polymorphonuclear Granulocytes for Killing Candida albicans

ABSTRACT The influence of caspofungin on polymorphonuclear leukocyte (PMN) phagocytosis and intracellular killing of Candida albicans was investigated. Caspofungin, at all of the concentrations tested (2, 3.2, and 8 μg/ml), significantly increased intracellular killing by PMNs through its direct action on both yeast cells and PMNs, indicating the potential ability of caspofungin to synergize with phagocytes for candidal killing. Caspofungin may therefore constitute an effective therapeutic option for the treatment of invasive fungal infections, including those refractory to conventional treatment with azole agents.
Sustainable development, Education for Sustainable Development, and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development: Emergence, efficacy, eminence, and future

This paper aims to present a narrative of the outcome of an extensive historical literature review of global policy development and processes concerning the emergence, efficacy, and eminence of sustainable development, Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (Sustainable Development Goals [SDGs]) inception to date. It starts by presenting the emergence, efficacy, and eminence of the concept and term “sustainable development” (which is integral to ESD) in terms of its historical definition, dimensions, understanding, interpretations, and challenges. It also highlights the take‐up of sustainable development in terms of green growth, human development, and human agency. It then presents an overview of ESD, accompanied by a discussion of its key characteristics, approaches, and significances. The paper then highlights a semantic analysis of the development of ESD, with a special focus on some converging processes, events, concepts, discourses, and declarations that have supported the rise of ESD and shaped its status to date. Considerable emphasis is placed on the significance and nexus between environmental education and ESD. The paper analyses the crucial interconnection between education, sustainable development, ESD, the SDGs, and human development. Furthermore, the paper discusses the centrality of ESD to the global education discourse and the nexus, role, and relevance of education and particularly ESD in relation to the achievement of all the SDGs. The paper concludes by critically reflecting on the above, vis‐a‐vis the author's previous empirical research on higher ESD, making recommendations on the future of ESD research and practice.
A prospective observational assessment of Surgical Safety Checklist use in Brasov Children's Hospital, barriers to implementation and methods to improve compliance.

INTRODUCTION The WHO surgical checklist is a universal tool which has been shown to reduce surgical morbidity and mortality and improve patient safety; however, simply implementing a checklist in a hospital may not lead to its utilisation. We aim to evaluate completion of this checklist, and to investigate problems in compliance and methods for improving these. METHODS In July 2015 data was recorded regarding compliance with each of the components of the Surgical Safety Checklist (SSC) in a Children's Hospital in Brasov. 40 surgeries were observed over 10 days, information was gathered as regards to the surgical speciality, the number of surgeries per day, the number of theatre staff present and whether it was elective or emergency. At the end of the 10 days questionnaires were given to 15 staff members to ask their opinions regarding the surgical checklist. Data analysis was performed using a chi-squared with p < 0.05 determining statistical significance. RESULTS None of the checklists in the patient files were filled in; however, components of the SSC were completed, with an average of 55% of the checklist being performed. The percentage of the SSC completed was not statistically significant with different numbers of staff, theatre numbers of the day, speciality and whether it was elective or emergency. CONCLUSION The success of the Surgical Safety Checklist implementation is dependent on the training of staff to improve knowledge and compliance. It cannot be assumed that the introduction of a checklist will automatically lead to improved outcomes and communication with staff is essential in order to improve and ensure compliance.
Dimensions of Electricity Economics

Electricity has assumed immense significance in modern world and we are concerned with its numerous dimensions such as electricity demand, supply, sustainability of electricity generation options, renewable electricity, energy security, reforms in electricity sector and so on. Moreover, it is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain it in environmental friendly ways. The present study attempts to review the existing literature on various dimensions of electricity and to explore the areas where further research is required. The first section introduces the significance of electricity and the second reviews some of the studies regarding the various facets of electricity. The final section draws some conclusions and offers policy implications besides mentioning the areas for further research. The strategic conclusions of the study are that sector reforms are currently at their preliminary stage and a strong will and efficient governance is required to improve the viability of power sector. Moreover, the need for promoting environmentally benign sources of electricity generation cannot be overemphasized.
Temporal Stability in the Rorschach Method : A Meta-Analytic Review

The temporal stabilities of the Rorschach method scoring systems were investigated. A comprehensive literature search was conducted to find all test-retest studies, both regular and from control samples in therapy evaluation studies. Meta-analyses were conducted for samples, individual entries, and variables in 36 samples. Separate analyses were made for 10 samples using the Comprehensive System (CS; Exner, 1993). The temporal stability was high, especially those obtained from regression model predictions. The CS consistently shows higher stability than other systems, whereas increasing retest intervals leads to decreasing stability. Shortcomings of the available studies are highlighted and discussed, and recommendations are given for design and methodology.