Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Instruments for evaluating compliance with infection control practices and factors that affect it: an integrative review.

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES To search for instruments to measure compliance with infection control practices and to report on which dimensions and contents the instruments evaluate, their psychometric characteristics, compliance and factors influencing compliance. BACKGROUND Low compliance with infection control practices has been reported among healthcare professionals around the world over the years. Existing data concerning health professionals' compliance with standard precautions are based on measuring instruments. DESIGN Integrative review. METHODS The descriptors were identified and used separately and in combination to search in the following databases: Lilacs, PubMed (MEDLINE), ISI Web of Knowledge, Scopus and CINAHL. The selected articles complied with inclusion and exclusion criteria. RESULTS Twenty-three studies were analysed, resulting in the identification of 18 instruments. No instrument addressed all compliance topics, and the most commonly addressed topics were the use of personal protective equipment, hand hygiene and safe practices in the handling of cutting material. Most authors explored content validity and some performed reliability analysis by means of Cronbach's alpha and test-retest. Countries in the sample have different human development indices, and countries with medium and low human development indices show less compliance. Some variables were strong predictors of compliance: training, perceptions of safe environment, perception of obstacles to comply with standard precautions and knowledge. CONCLUSIONS Compliance is below the recommended levels. Health professionals seem to be selective in following standard precautions. Significant influences include institutional management and psychosocial variables, which deserve further study. RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE Health managers and government policies and interventions should pay greater attention to this subject.
Environmental factors in glue ear

A survey of school children suffering from chronic secretory otitis media over an eight-year period compares the incidence in a city area and country area and various areas within the city. A factor in the causation of the condition appears to be poor living conditions and air pollution. An increase in the incidence occurred in both areas following a winter in which there was an exceptional incidence of influenza.
Effect of Earthing up Frequencies and Tuber Seed Form on Yield and Profitability of Potato (Solanum Tuberosum) Production in Bale Highlands

Potato (Solanum tubersum) is among the principal tuber crops grown in Ethiopia. It is a very important food and cash crop in Ethiopia, especially in the highand mid-altitude areas. Potato is ranked with wheat and rice as one of the most important staples in the human diet [1]. It serves as food and cash crop for small scale farmers, which occupies the largest area, compared to other vegetable crops and produces more food per unit area and time as compared to cereal crops like maize. Thus, it plays a great role in the process of food self-sufficiency, food security and nutrition, income generation and poverty alleviation and provision of employment in the production, processing and marketing sub-sectors [2,3]. Since potato has relatively short growing season it is one of the acceptable alternative crops in order to with stand the population pressure in developing countries, like Ethiopia and ensure in minimizing hunger [4]. Most soil types are suitable for potato production. The soils for production of the crop should be fine, loose and none compacted layers that hinder root penetration [5]. Potatoes are propagated vegetative from tubers either whole or cut into pieces. Yield of the crop can be regulated by changing the seed rate: by means of the planting density or by the size of the seed tubers [6]. Ridging refers to, as a normal practice in potato production, the practice of earthing (hilling) up around the plant. Proper ridging increases tuber yield by creating favourable condition for tuber initiation and development [5]. It helps to prevent greening of tubers. Ridging operations may also provide a form of weed control mechanism. Studies show that ridging of potato at least twice during the growing period increased tuber yield by 10-20% compared to non-ridging practice. Poor ridging around potato plant could expose the tuber to sunlight, high
Impact of Initial Ventilatory Strategy in Hematological Patients With Acute Respiratory Failure: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis*

Objective: Acute respiratory failure in hematological patients is related to a high mortality. Noninvasive mechanical ventilation may benefit a subset of these patients, but the overall effect on mortality and the risks derived from its failure are unclear. Our objective was to review the impact of initial ventilatory strategy on mortality and the risks related to noninvasive mechanical ventilation failure in this group of patients. Data Sources: Data sources, including PubMed and conference proceedings, were searched from the year 2000 to January 2015. Study Selection: We selected studies reporting mortality and the need for mechanical ventilation in hematological patients with acute respiratory failure. Data Extraction: Two trained reviewers independently conducted study selection, abstracted data, and assessed the risk of bias. Discrepancies between reviewers were resolved through discussion and consensus. The outcomes explored were all-cause mortality after mechanical ventilation and incidence of noninvasive mechanical ventilation failure. Data Synthesis: A random-effects model was used in all the analysis. Thirteen studies, involving 2,380 patients, were included. Use of noninvasive mechanical ventilation was related to a better outcome than initial intubation (risk ratio, 0.74; 95% CI, 0.65–0.84). Failure of noninvasive mechanical ventilation did not increase the overall risk of death (risk ratio, 1.02; 95% CI, 0.93–1.13). There were signs of publication bias and substantial heterogeneity among the studies. Compensation of this bias by using the trim-and-fill method showed a significant risk of death after noninvasive mechanical ventilation failure (risk ratio, 1.07; 95% CI, 1.00–1.14). Meta-regression analysis showed that the predicted risk of death for the noninvasive mechanical ventilation group acted as a significant moderator, with a higher risk of death after noninvasive mechanical ventilation failure in those studies reporting lower predicted mortality. Conclusions: Noninvasive mechanical ventilation is associated with a lower risk of death in hematological patients with respiratory failure. Noninvasive mechanical ventilation failure may worsen the prognosis, mainly in less severe patients.
Prevention of hepatitis B recurrence after liver transplantation using lamivudine or lamivudine combined with hepatitis B Immunoglobulin prophylaxis

The aim of our study was to determine the outcomes of liver transplant recipients receiving either lamivudine (LAM) monotherapy or LAM combined with low‐dose intramuscular (IM) hepatitis B Immunoglobulin (HBIG) therapy. We performed a retrospective review of the medical records of patients that had had liver transplantation in a single center for HBV‐related liver diseases from December 1999 to June 2004. A total of 165 patients received LAM monotherapy (51 patients) or combined prophylaxis (114 patients) post‐liver transplantation (LT) with a mean follow‐up of 20.13 months. Hepatitis B relapsed in 21 patients of the hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) carriers who received LAM monotherapy, with a 1‐ and 2‐yr actuarial risk of 27.4% and 39.7%. Recurrence occurred in 16 patients of 114 patients receiving the combined prophylaxis, with a 1‐ and 2‐yr recurrence rate of 13.5% and 15.2% (P= 0.024). A total of 25 cases (67.6%) with YMDD mutants were detected in all the 37 patients, 14 cases (66.7%) in the monotherapy group and 11 cases (68.8%) in the combination group. In conclusion, LAM and low‐dose intramuscular HBIG treatment demonstrates a better result than LAM monotherapy, as prophylaxis against post‐LT reinfection of the graft, but the safety and efficacy as a substitution for high‐dose intravenous HBIG with LAM needs to be investigated further. Liver Transpl 12:253–258, 2006. © 2006 AASLD.
Metal Removal in a Pediatric Population: Benign Procedure or Necessary Evil?

Thirty-eight percent of patients with internal skeletal fixation had indications for removal other than uncomplicated healing. Plates were removed (p = 0.023) routinely, however, because intramedullary rods and staples were likely to be subcutaneous and painful (p = 0.02). Complications included incomplete removal of the device (1%) and two postoperative fractures. Most complications had no known significant adverse effects on the patients. Operative time and blood loss were significantly increased when a tourniquet could not be used. We believe that the high percentage of other indications for metal removal and the low incidence of major complications support the practice of routine metal removal in this population.
[Different patterns of regional brain activation during emotional stimulation in alexithymics in comparison with normal controls].

OBJECTIVE This study was designed to determine patterns of regional brain activation during emotional stimulation in alexithymics as compared with normal controls. METHOD We used 15O-water positron emission tomography and an emotional stimulation paradigm based upon autobiographic recall of either happy, sad or emotionally neutral situations. 10 normal subjects without medical or psychiatrical history were compared with 9 patients with somatoform disorder without any other DSM-IV diagnosis. TAS-20 was used as a measure for alexithymia, depression was measured using BDI. RESULTS Normal controls showed significantly greater activation than alexithymics in cingulate areas, corpus callosum, and right superior and inferior frontal gyrus. Alexithymics activated significantly more in cuneus and precuneus, thalamus (pulvinar), left medial frontal, right inferior temporal, left superior temporal regions, left precentral gyrus, and the cerebellum. CONCLUSIONS During emotional autobiographic recall, alexithymia, either trait or state, is characterized by utilization of different brain regions when compared to normal controls. The areas activated by alexithymic persons largely comprise of language related regions, leaving out limbic and paralimbic areas.
Highly coherent RF signal generation by heterodyne optical phase locking of external cavity semiconductor lasers

Two narrow-linewidth (<50 kHz) external cavity semiconductor lasers are successfully offset phase-locked to a reference radio-frequency (RF) signal by using a discriminator-aided optical phase-locked loop. By incorporating a phase advance circuit to increase the loop bandwidth, a highly coherent optically heterodyned RF signal with a total phase variance of 1.19/spl times/10/sup -4/ rad/sup 2/ is demonstrated. The measured noise level is -116 dBc/Hz close to the carrier (200-kHz offset), increases to -110 dBc/Hz at an offset of 5.5 MHz, and then decreases to less than -120 dBc/Hz at offset frequencies larger than 10 MHz.
Attention to sex-related factors in the development of clinical practice guidelines.

BACKGROUND Clinical practice guidelines describe optimal strategies for disease prevention, diagnosis, or treatment. Increasing evidence indicates that sex-related factors may have an impact on these strategies. We examined the way in which two Dutch guideline organizations address evidence on sex factors in their guideline development methodologies. We then determined whether attention to these factors could be improved and, if so, how this could be done. METHODS We selected seven recent guidelines on four conditions: hypertension, depression, osteoporosis, and rheumatoid arthritis. We studied information obtained from interviews with members of the guideline committees and analyzed the content of the guideline documents themselves. Our findings were discussed at an expert meeting. RESULTS We found that all the guideline committees concerned applied an internationally accepted framework for guideline development. The proportion of male members ranged from 67% to 100%. None of the guidelines included a question (or subquestion) focusing on sex-related factors. In the literature searches no sex-specific search terms were used. Critical appraisals did not include any systematic focus on sex-related factors or effects. The number of sex-specific recommendations (relative to the total number of recommendations) ranged from 0 of 82 and 0 of 148 in the guidelines on depression to 16 of 84 in one of the guidelines on osteoporosis. CONCLUSIONS We found that when developing guidelines, none of the committees systematically focused on sex-related factors that might be relevant to the way in which evidence is identified, appraised, or described. A number of recommendations were made with the aim to facilitate greater attention to sex-related factors in the current methods of guideline development.
Investigation of the Sensorimotor Training - Analyzing Exercisers with One-dimensional and Multidimensional Instability

The importance and the attractivity of the sensorimotor training is still growing. Up to now the impact of the training on the body is not yet fully investigated. Hence, nowadays the planning of the therapy is mainly based on the experiences of the physiotherapist and on the conditions of the practice. For the development of the therapy the physiotherapist is supported by manufacturer’s information about the exercisers as well as by general assumptions regarding the sensorimotor training. For the validation of this information two setups were investigated. In the first part, the behavior of two students was studied on three exercisers. Here the EMG data and the motion data were analyzed. In the second part, the behavior of the left and the right body side was analyzed for 16 subjects. The study revealed that the major work for the maintenance of the equilibrium is done by the distal musculature. Furthermore, it was shown that there is a different behavior of the musculature at both body sides. Additionally, it has been proven that each test person had an individual behavior on the exercisers. Consequently, it would be hard to make general assumptions regarding the impact of the training
FlashNet: flash/network stack co-design

During the past decade, network and storage devices have undergone rapid performance improvements, delivering ultra-low latency and several Gbps of bandwidth. Nevertheless, current network and storage stacks fail to deliver this hardware performance to the applications, often due to the loss of IO efficiency from stalled CPU performance. While many efforts attempt to address this issue solely on either the network or the storage stack, achieving high-performance for networked-storage applications requires a holistic approach that considers both. In this paper, we present FlashNet, a software IO stack that unifies high-performance network properties with flash storage access and management. FlashNet builds on RDMA principles and abstractions to provide a direct, asynchronous, end-to-end data path between a client and remote flash storage. The key insight behind FlashNet is to co-design the stack's components (an RDMA controller, a flash controller, and a file system) to enable cross-stack optimizations and maximize IO efficiency. In micro-benchmarks, FlashNet improves 4kB network IOPS by 38.6% to 1.22M, decreases access latency by 43.5% to 50.4 µsecs, and prolongs the flash lifetime by 1.6--5.9× for writes. We illustrate the capabilities of FlashNet by building a Key-Value store, and porting a distributed data store that uses RDMA on it. The use of FlashNet's RDMA API improves the performance of KV store by 2×, and requires minimum changes for the ported data store to access remote flash devices.
Tachykinin receptors mediating responses to sensory nerve stimulation and exogenous tachykinins and analogues in the rabbit isolated iris sphincter

1 We have used selective tachykinin receptor agonists and antagonists to investigate the nature of the receptors mediating responses to endogenous and exogenous tachykinins in the rabbit iris sphincter preparation in vitro. 2 The NK1‐selective agonist, substance P methyl ester, induced contraction with a pD2 of 9.16 indicating the presence of NK1 receptors. In confirmation, the NK1‐selective antagonist, GR82334, competitively antagonized responses to substance P methyl ester with high affinity (pKB 7.46). 3 NK3 receptors also mediate contraction since NK3‐selective agonists exhibited high potency, e.g. the pD2 of [Me‐Phe7]‐neurokinin B was 9.67, and their responses were not inhibited by GR82334 (10 μm). 4 NK2 receptor activation does not seem to contribute to contraction since the NK2‐selective agonist [β‐Ala8]‐neurokinin A(4–10) had relatively low potency (pD2 6.43), and the NK2‐selective antagonists MEN10207 (1 μm) and L‐659,877 (10 μm) were inactive or had low affinity, respectively. 5 GR82334 (1 μm) significantly inhibited responses to electrical field‐stimulation of non‐adrenergic non‐cholinergic sensory nerves (3, 10 and 30 Hz), and caused a rightward shift of the log concentration‐response curve to bradykinin (lateral shift ca. 1000 fold). Higher concentrations of GR82334 (10 μm) significantly attenuated responses to capsaicin (1–60 μm) whilst completely abolishing responses to field‐stimulation (3, 10 and 30 Hz) and bradykinin (1 nm– 3 μm). 6 In conclusion, NK1 and NK3 receptor activation results in contraction of the rabbit iris sphincter. The contractile response following sensory nerve stimulation by bradykinin, capsaicin and electrical field stimulation results from NK1 receptor activation.
Operation Enduring Freedom: the 48th Combat Support Hospital in Afghanistan.

OBJECTIVE To examine the experience of the 48th Combat Support Hospital (CSH) while deployed to Afghanistan, with an emphasis on trauma care. MATERIALS AND METHODS Before redeployment, a retrospective review was performed on the medical records of all patients treated at the 48th CSH from December 6, 2002 through June 7, 2003. RESULTS During the 6-month period, 10,679 patients were evaluated and/or treated. There were 477 hospital admissions (adults, 387; children, 90; trauma, 204) and 634 operating room procedures. The most common mechanisms of injury were land mines/unexploded ordinance (74 = 36%) and gunshot wounds (41 = 20%). Extremities were the most common site. A total of 358 cases was performed on 168 trauma patients (mean, 2 cases per patient; range, 1-12). There were 63 complications in 40 trauma patients and 11 patients died. CONCLUSIONS The 48th CSH supported military and humanitarian operations with an ongoing process of re-evaluation, adaptation, and medical education that resulted in low morbidity and mortality rates.
Point‐spread functions for interferometric imaging

Interferometric redatuming is a data‐driven method to transform seismic responses with sources at one level and receivers at a deeper level into virtual reflection data with both sources and receivers at the deeper level. Although this method has traditionally been applied by cross‐correlation, accurate redatuming through a heterogeneous overburden requires solving a multidimensional deconvolution problem. Input data can be obtained either by direct observation (for instance in a horizontal borehole), by modelling or by a novel iterative scheme that is currently being developed. The output of interferometric redatuming can be used for imaging below the redatuming level, resulting in a so‐called interferometric image. Internal multiples from above the redatuming level are eliminated during this process. In the past, we introduced point‐spread functions for interferometric redatuming by cross‐correlation. These point‐spread functions quantify distortions in the redatumed data, caused by internal multiple reflections in the overburden. In this paper, we define point‐spread functions for interferometric imaging to quantify these distortions in the image domain. These point‐spread functions are similar to conventional resolution functions for seismic migration but they contain additional information on the internal multiples in the overburden and they are partly data‐driven. We show how these point‐spread functions can be visualized to diagnose image defocusing and artefacts. Finally, we illustrate how point‐spread functions can also be defined for interferometric imaging with passive noise sources in the subsurface or with simultaneous‐source acquisition at the surface.
SSTR4, Childhood Adversity, Self-efficacy and Suicide Risk in Alcoholics

Abstract Background Patients with alcohol dependence (AD) are known to develop poor social skills, to report a higher number of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and to attempt suicide more frequently than the general population. The background for the association between ACEs and a higher risk of suicide still remains understudied. SSTR4 rs2567608 is a functional polymorphism of the gene for somatostatin receptor subtype 4, predominantly found in the CA1 hippocampus area and involved in memory formation. We hypothesize that the functional polymorphism SSTR4 rs2567608, general self-efficacy, and adverse childhood experiences influence the risk of suicide attempt in patients with AD. Methodology 176 patients with AD and 127 healthy controls were interviewed regarding 13 categories of ACEs and assessed with the General Self-Efficacy Scale. Genotyping for the SSTR4 rs2567608 polymorphism was performed according to the manufacturer’s standard PCR protocol. Results Patients with AD and the controls did not differ significantly according to the SSTR4 rs2567608 genotype and allele frequencies. Lower general self-efficacy, higher number of ACEs, and the SSTR4 rs2567608 TT genotype increased the risk of suicide attempt in patients with AD, and it persisted significant only in male patients with AD. Conclusions Our study supports previous findings on ACEs and general self-efficacy association with a risk for suicide. Additionally, we suggest that patients with AD of the SSTR4 rs2567608 TT genotype may be more vulnerable to ACEs and at a higher risk of suicide attempt.