Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Personal and Clinical Predictors of Poor Metabolic Control in Children with Type 1 Diabetes in Jordan

Background Achieving adequate metabolic control in children with type 1 diabetes is important in slowing the progression of future microvascular and macrovascular complications, but still it is a universal challenge. We aim to investigate possible factors associated with poor metabolic outcomes in Jordan as an example of a country with limited resources. Methods This is a retrospective chart review study of children with type 1 diabetes. Several clinical and personal characteristics were tested for association with metabolic control reflected by HbA1c levels. Linear logistic regression analysis was used to evaluate possible predictors of metabolic control. One-way ANOVA analysis was used to detect significant differences in HbA1c between categories. Results Significant predictors of metabolic control were found. A one-year increase in age led to an increase in HbA1c by 0.053% (P = 0.044). A decline in HbA1c levels was predicted in children who have precise amount of carbohydrates or who are receiving insulin at school (-0.46% (P = 0.014) and -0.82% (P = 0.004), respectively). When family members other than mothers decided the insulin dose, the HbA1c level increased by 0.74% (P = 0.005). Conclusion Poor metabolic control was associated with age, dietary noncompliance, not receiving insulin at school, and absence of direct mother care. Our study is one of the few studies from Middle East evaluating predictors of metabolic control. Global research studies help in giving universal insight towards developing more effective multidisciplinary team approach for diabetes care and education.
Underreporting of Alcohol Use in Trauma Patients: A Retrospective Analysis

Background This study assessed the inconsistencies between self-reported alcohol consumption and blood alcohol content (BAC) in trauma patients. We aimed to identify the incidence of positive BAC in trauma patients who reported a zero score on the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT). We also sought to identify characteristics of individuals who were likely to negate alcohol use, yet yielded a positive BAC, to improve our ability to provide alcohol screening and healthcare to these at-risk alcohol consumers. Methods We conducted a retrospective study from 2010 to 2018 at a university-based, level-one trauma emergency department. We identified 2581 adult trauma patients who reported a zero score on the AUDIT from the trauma registry. We collected BAC, age, gender, race, education level, mechanism of injury, language and injury severity score (ISS) from patient charts, and used descriptive analyses and multivariate logistic regression to analyze the data. Results One hundred and thirty-one (5.08%) trauma patients who reported AUDIT of zero had a positive BAC. We found that being male (OR 1.53), assaulted or injured from a penetrating mechanism (OR 2.29) and having an ISS greater than 25 (OR 3.76) were independent positive predictors of trauma patients who reported an AUDIT of zero and had a positive BAC. Age (OR 0.99) was an independent negative predictor of trauma patients who reported an AUDIT of zero and had a positive BAC in this cohort. Conclusions Inaccurate self-reporting of alcohol drinking behavior does exist in trauma patients. A composite of objective alcohol screening modalities, in addition to AUDIT, is needed to screen for alcohol use in this population. Healthcare providers should remain highly suspicious of alcohol-related injuries in individuals with the identified characteristics.
Comparative Study of Mean Platelet Volume in Preeclampsia versus Normal Pregnancy in 3rd Trimester

Background: Preeclampsia is a pregnancy-specific multisystem disease that is characterized by development of hypertension and proteinuria after 20 weeks of gestation, resolving by 6-12 weeks postpartum in previous normotensive women. The pursuit of safe, reliable, and cost-effective screening tests for prediction of preeclampsia has been the goal of researchers for many decades, with the aim of improving maternal and fetal outcome, despite the fact that the only current effective treatment remains delivery of fetus and placenta. Objective: The aim of this study is to compare mean platelet volume (MPV) in pre-eclamptic and normal pregnant women in the third trimester of pregnancy, and to evaluate whether this parameter have a prognostic significance in determining the presence of preeclampsia. Patients and methods: This study was done at Kafr Elsheikh General Hospital from January 2018 to December 2018. 80 pregnant women in their third trimester (from 31weeks gestation to completed 37 weeks gestation) were selected to participate in the study. Result: We found in our study that CBC, and MPV values do not have any determining effect on the presence of preeclampsia but the platelet count showed difference. In the literature, papers that include conflicting results especially on MPV values are available, yet this fact is most probably due to the differences between the methods and/or equipment used. Conclusion: Our study found that MPV values do not have any determining effect on the presence of preeclampsia.
Orthodontic treatment in National Dental Centre of Singapore: Trends toward higher proportion of adult patients

Adult patients used to be daunted with the prospect of having fixed appliances to correct malocclusions. However, this has gradually changed and recent literature reported an increasing trend in adults receiving orthodontic treatment. To date, there has been no information regarding the trend of adult orthodontic patients in Singapore. The objective of this study was to determine the changes in the proportion of adult patients seeking orthodontic treatment at the National Dental Centre Singapore (NDCS) from 2011 to 2017. The study sample consists of all patients who commenced active orthodontic treatment from 2011 to 2017 at the NDCS. The data collected were analyzed for the number, gender, and proportion of adult orthodontic patients treated annually from 2011 to 2017. Linear-by-linear association test was used to test for any significant linear trend in proportion of adult orthodontic patients over the 7 years. Pearson’s Chi-squared test was used to test for any significant gender differences. There was a significant increasing linear trend (p = 0.001) in the proportion of adult orthodontic patients from 2011 to 2017. No significant difference (p = 0.770) between the proportions of male and female adults undergoing orthodontic treatment was found. The ages of adults undergoing orthodontic treatment ranged from 21 to 73 years old and majority (48.61%) of them was in the 21–25 years old age range. There is a rising trend in adults seeking orthodontic treatment at the NDCS from 2011 to 2017. No statistically significant gender difference was observed in this rising trend.
Induced power analysis of sequential body motion and elbow valgus load during baseball pitching

ABSTRACT The flow of mechanical energy of segmental motion during baseball pitching is poorly understood, particularly in relation to the valgus torque at the elbow which is prone to pitching-related injuries. This study employed an induced power analysis to determine the components of muscle and velocity-dependent torques that contribute to the power of throwing arm segments when the elbow is under valgus load during the arm-cocking phase of pitching. The 3D throwing kinematics and kinetics of 10 adult pitchers were included in this analysis. Pitchers threw with a maximum elbow valgus torque of 73 ± 20 N•m. The trunk flexion and rotation components of the velocity-dependent torque were the greatest contributors to the work of the forearm at −0.53 ± 0.22 J/kg and −0.43 ± 0.21 J/kg, respectively. Approximately 86% of the total energy transferred through the elbow by the velocity-dependent torque was due to trunk motion, which appears to drive the power of accelerating the throwing elbow in valgus. These results support the importance of trunk motion as a key component in the development of elbow torque and ball velocity. Therefore, this study has practical implications for baseball pitchers seeking to minimise injury risk while improving performance.
PERCEPTIONS OF FINAL PROFESSIONAL MBBS STUDENTS AND THEIR EXAMINERS ABOUT OBJECTIVE STRUCTURED CLINICAL EXAMINATION (OSCE): A COMBINED EXAMINER AND EXAMINEE SURVEY

Objective: To explore the perceptions of MBBS students and their examiners regarding OSCE who appeared in thefinal professional MBBS examination in 2015.Material and Methods: In this cross-sectional study, a validated and pretested questionnaire already used by Khan Met al, in a similar study was distributed among 250 final year MBBS students and 14 examiners soon after the completionof their OSCE in the Department of Medicine of Khyber Teaching Hospital (KTH) Peshawar. Questions were asked aboutany pre-exam orientation regarding OSCE, exam content, quality of performance, validity and reliability, learning opportunities,stress factor and its comparison with previous exam systems. The data was analyzed using SPSS version 16.Results: A total of 250 students participated in this survey, 150 (60%) of which were males and 100 (40%) females. Twohundred students (80%) stated that exam was fair and comprehensive, 88% believed OSCE was more stressful andmentally tougher than traditional exams like multiple choice questions (MCQs), short answer questions (SAQs) andviva. However, 90.8% of the examinees reported that OSCE provided an ample opportunity to learn and compensatefor areas of clinical weakness despite a huge stress factor. Two-hundred and ten (84%) students considered OSCE asa valid and reliable format of clinical assessment and 90% pledged that they would recommend OSCE for use in futureas a tool of assessment in medical education. The total number of examiners conducting the exam was 14, 10 (71.4%)of which were males and 4 (28.6%) were females. Majority of their statements correlated with those of the candidatesexamined. However, there was a sharp contrast in what they felt about stress levels and effect of gender, ethnicity andpersonality on the outcome of OSCE. Only 8% of the examiners (vs 88% of the candidates) thought that OSCE wasvery stressful and 14.3% of them (vs 64% of the candidates) were of the view that factors like gender, ethnicity andpersonality can affect the results of OSCE.Conclusion: Majority of students and examiners thought of OSCE as a fair, standardized and transparent way toassess clinical competencies though students found it tougher mentally in contrast to what the examiners perceived.Moreover, the element of pass by chance and bias was less in OSCE compared to other practical exams like SAQs,long questions and viva.
Sensing Sentiment in On-Line Recommendation Texts and Ratings

Current approaches to sentiment analysis utilise sentiment lexicons such as SentiWordNet or Harvard’s General Inquirer. Sentiment lexicons are dictionaries which associate a word with its sentiment (positive, negative or neutral). There are, however, problems with existing sentiment lexicons; they can contain noisy and inconsistent data (SentiWordNet), they can be quite limited in coverage (General Inquirer) and they are not finely-tuned to particular text types or subject domains. This project’s aim is to address such problems by developing a methodology which, given labeled data in a particular domain, will create a sentiment lexicon for that domain. The research in this project is concerned with user reviews taken from a database of labelled reviews from the website tripadvisor.ie, but will create a generalizable model which can be applied to any domain in creating sentiment lexicon.
Towards improving ASR robustness for PSN & GSM telephone applications

In real-life applications, the speech recognition system errors are mainly due to inadequate detection of speech segments, unreliable rejection of out-of-vocabulary (OOV) words, and noise and transmission channel effects. In this paper, we present the results of several experiments carried out on field vs. laboratory databases and on databases collected over PSN and GSM networks. The main sources of errors are analyzed. Preprocessing techniques as well as HMM adaptation techniques are used to increase the robustness to mismatches between training and testing conditions. We show that a blind equalization scheme improves significantly the recognition accuracy on both field and GSM data. Bayesian adaptation of hidden Markov models (HMM) parameters produces robust models to field conditions. The obtained results prove that HMM adaptation and preprocessing techniques can be advantageously combined, in order to improve ASR robustness.
Noninvasive neuromodulation of supraorbital and occipital nerves as an adjunct to management of chronic headache: A pilot study

Background: Chronic daily headache (CDH) results in significant distress and a substantial impact on the quality of life. Due to its nature of refractoriness to conservative management, exploring other modalities seems worthwhile. Invasive nerve stimulation, though promising, has seen complication rates in plenty. The goal of the present study was to assess the efficacy of noninvasive neuromodulation of supraorbital and occipital nerves (SON and ON) using hybrid pulsed radiofrequency device (Stimpod NMS460) in patients of CDH. Methods: Thirty patients suffering from CDH were enrolled in this randomized double-blind sham-controlled trial and randomly allocated to two groups of 15 patients each. SON and ON stimulations were given using the device Stimpod NMS460 thrice a week for 3 weeks. Follow-up visits were scheduled at 6 and 12 weeks of therapy. Pain relief was measured using numerical rating scale score. The overall change in quality of life (measured by Short Form-12 Health Survey) and associated complications were also noted. Results: Successful stimulation (50% or greater decrease in pain intensity) was seen in 66.67% patients; inadequate response in 33.3% in the intervention group. The 50% responder rate in sham control group was 13.3%; remaining 86.6% showed an inadequate response. This response remained sustained up to 12 weeks of follow-up. Similar changes were observed in the quality of life of patients. No adverse effect was documented during the study period. Conclusion: Noninvasive neuromodulation may serve as a safer and cost-effective treatment option in CDH refractory to conservative management.
Xenogeneic collagen matrix versus connective tissue graft for the treatment of multiple gingival recessions: A systematic review and meta‐analysis

A systematic review and meta‐analysis was performed to understand the efficacy of xenogeneic collagen matrix (CMX) compared with connective tissue graft (CTG) for the treatment of multiple adjacent gingival recessions (MAGRs). A literature search was performed for published randomized controlled trials in adult patients (≥18 years old) with Multiple Adjacent Miller class I and II gingival recessions (MAGRs). The assessments included recession depth, Recession width, complete root coverage, mean root coverage, probing depth, clinical attachment level, and keratinized tissue width. Pooled data were analyzed using fixed‐ and random‐effects models, and Forest plots were constructed. Heterogeneity within studies was calculated to assess publication bias. Four randomized controlled trials were included based on the eligibility criteria. Although the recession depth, complete root coverage, and mean root coverage were significantly lower with CMX (p = .017 and p = .001, p = .001, respectively), there was no statistically significant difference in the Recession width between CMX and CTG (p = .203). CMX showed significantly lower Probing Depth than CTG (p = .023); however, no significant difference in clinical attachment level (p = .060) and keratinized tissue width (p = .052) was observed between the groups. Owing to the heterogeneity in the included studies, firm conclusions cannot be drawn regarding the noninferiority of CMX compared with CTG. Long‐term studies are therefore needed to conclusively establish the relative efficacy of CMX in MAGR.
Factors Associated with Patient Safety Care Activity among Nurses in Small-Medium Sized General Hospitals

This study was conducted to provide data for the development of health program to promote patient safety nursing activities by analyzing the effect of perception of importance of patient safety management, perceptions of patient safety culture and organizational communication on patient safety nursing activities in small & medium hospital nurses. Data collection was conducted from February 8 to 15, 2019. A total of 202 questionnaires were administered to nurses who have worked for more than six months in three small and medium hospitals. The perception of importance of patient safety management of the subjects was 3.60±. 49, perception of patient safety culture was 3.39±. 41, organizational communication was 3.29±. 45 and patient safety nursing activities was 4.08±. 50. The patient safety nursing activities was related to perception of importance of patient safety management(r=.597, p<.001), perception of patient safety culture(r=.626, p<.001), organizational communication(r=.559, p<.001), there was a significant positive correlation. Perception of importance of patient safety management(β=.258, p=.001), perception of patient safety culture(β=.323, p<.001) and organizational communication(β=.160, p=.044) had a significant effect on patient safety nursing activities(F=53.067, p<.001). The explanatory power of these variables was 43.7%.
Studies in Wireless Home Networking Including Coexistence of UWB and IEEE 802.11a Systems

To my loving father, mother, sister, and fiancée. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, my many thanks to God for all his blessings. It is my pleasure to express my most sincere gratitude and appreciation to my advisor, Professor Nikil Jayant, for his thoughtful guidance, encouragement, and kind support. I would also like to express my eternal thanks to my unconditional love and always being there for me.
Competencies and higher education: evidences and returns. The TECO project

The aim of this work is to present the state of progress and the main features of the TECO (TEst of COmpetence) project, promoted by the (Italian) National Agency for the Evaluation of Universities and Research Institutes with the aim to assess students’ learning outcomes in the higher education contest. The results of the 2017-2018 TECO survey (which involved voluntarily over 12,500 nursing, physiotherapy and medical radiology students), showed that attending a university programme makes a difference in development of some competencies, especially for the disciplinary sphere. The analysis will focus on the connections between the characteristics of the students at the beginning of their study career and the achieved level of tested competences. The return of the test results to the students and study programmes’ coordinators will be presented and discussed, considering their possible uses in a self-assessment perspective. TECO results and the new indicators that will be originated from this project could prove to be reliable tools for university programmes self-assessment, encouraging the use of evidence-based strategies for higher education improvement.
Voice treatment in Parkinson’s disease: patient perspectives

Patricia Gillivan-Murphy Nick Miller Paul Carding 1Speech and Language Therapy Department, Mater Misericordiae University Hospital, Dublin, Ireland; 2Newcastle University Institute for Ageing, Speech and Language Sciences, Newcastle University, Newcastle-uponTyne, UK; 3Midwifery and Allied Health Research, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, Oxford Institute of Nursing, Oxford, UK Abstract: Speech and voice changes are a central feature of the symptom complex of people with Parkinson’s disease (pwPD). Speaking is a social activity involving the pwPD, family, and the wider communicative context. Sensory-motor, cognitive-linguistic, and affective changes in Parkinson’s disease (PD) combine to alter communication, impacting on psychosocial quality-of-life, leading to risks of social withdrawal and increased depression and anxiety. The underlying pathophysiology of speech, voice, and communication difficulties in pwPD is multi-factorial and complex. Sensory-motor changes in the respiratory, phonatory, and articulatory subsystems, underscaling of effort, and central processing problems are further affected by broader cognitive-linguistic difficulties, and non-speech motor deficits. Many studies show that, when pwPD are asked to rate their own voice and how it functions in everyday situations, they show increased voice-related disability and negative impact relative to healthy controls. Voice treatment is integral to improving communication in pwPD. Studies show positive benefits from the perspective of pwPD and carers. Treatment approaches vary from one-to-one to group interventions, a singular focus on increasing loudness to more general voice exercises, and choral singing. The nature and underlying pathophysiology of speech, voice, and communication changes in pwPD are reviewed before exploring the effects of voice treatment programs and pwPD and carer perceptions of their effect. Larger scale, better powered, controlled trials of intervention for voice and speech that measure clinically and socially relevant outcomes are finally underway. Future research should also focus on issues of treatment compliance, practicality (for service delivery and use), and long-term follow-up outcomes. The role of carers in longer-term maintenance represents a further important area of exploration.
IKK biology

Summary: The inhibitor of nuclear factor‐κB (IκB) kinase (IKK) complex is the master regulator of the NF‐κB signaling pathway. The activation of the IKK complex is a tightly regulated, highly stimulus‐specific, and target‐specific event that is essential for the plethora of functions attributed to NF‐κB. More recently, NF‐κB‐independent roles of IKK members have brought increased complexity to its biological function. This review highlights some of the major advances in the studies of the process of IKK activation and the biological roles of IKK family members, with a focus on NF‐κB‐independent functions. Understanding these complex processes is essential for targeting IKK for therapeutics.