Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Nurses’ work patterns: perceived organizational support and psychological contracts

With unfolding human resource challenges in health care, little is known of the impact of changing work patterns and employment relationships on the organization and the nursing profession. Social Exchange Theory (perceived organizational support (POS) and psychological contracts) was used to gain understanding of the influence of nurse's employment patterns on employment relationships and individual, organizational and professional outcomes. The sample consisted of 650 randomly selected nurses employed in full-time, part-time, and casual positions across healthcare settings in Ontario, Canada. A cross-sectional survey design explored demographics, volition, POS, psychological contract, job satisfaction, career commitment, and job and career withdrawal. Work patterns and employment relationships are complex and cannot be examined in isolation of other variables such as volition and work congruence. Full-time nurses were found to have more of a relational psychological contract than part-time or casual nurses. The hypothesis was supported that the psychological contract has a direct effect on nurses’ job satisfaction, job withdrawal, career commitment, and career withdrawal. Nurses want to work different work patterns depending on their age and work-life demands. The importance of fostering strong employment relationships and relational psychological contracts to address such issues as an ageing workforce, nursing shortages, and economic demands is highlighted.
Intrathecal administration of oxytocin induces analgesia in low back pain involving the endogenous opiate peptide system.

Study Design.The effect of oxytocin on low back pain in patients and its mechanism in rats were investigated.Methods. Intrathecal injection, radioimmunoassay, and potassium lontophoresis tail-flick test were used to investigate the effect of oxytocin.Results. In humans, acute and chronic low back pain
Potential Clinical Usefulness of the Polymerase Chain Reaction Test to Detect Pathogens Causing Sepsis

Objective: A real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test is expected for early and precise detection of pathogens in blood. In this study, we compared the ability of the PCR test and blood culture to detect pathogens in the blood of patients with sepsis. Methods: Patients who were diagnosed as or suspected of having sepsis were included in this prospective observational study. A whole blood sample for PCR test was obtained serially simultaneously with the blood culture sample, and the results were compared. Results: We obtained 93 samples from 26 patients; 69 samples were obtained during the septic condition, and 24 samples were from the non-septic condition. Origins of sepsis were pneumonia in 9 patients, necrotizing fasciitis in 5 patients, and other causes in 12 patients. In the septic condition, rates of positive results were 29.0% for the PCR test and 23.2% for blood culture. Sample contamination occurred in 1 PCR test sample and 5 blood culture samples. In positive PCR samples, 16 of 20 samples were obtained during sepsis after beginning administration of broad- spectrum antibiotics, whereas 5 of 12 samples, except for contaminated samples, were positive in blood culture. Conclusion: In sepsis, the PCR test detected more bacteria than did blood culture even after administration of empirical antibiotics, which might contribute to precise diagnosis of the bacteremic cause of sepsis
Use of Standardized Patients for Teaching And Assessing Clinical Skills

Among other significant findings, Elstein, Shulman, & Sprafka (1978) demonstrated that diagnostic expertise is content-specific, tending to be limited to clinical problems with which a physician has had substantial experience. They recommended use of a highly structured, problem-oriented curriculum in which students systematically learn about common problems, so that medical schools could guarantee students' competence to diagnose and treat those problems. Clinical training at most medical schools is far less organized than this: available clinical facilities dictate the patient problems with which students becomefamiliar. In order to increase control over the training environment and the learning outcomes that result, a growing number of schools now use standardized patients (SPs) to teach and test key clinical skills. SPs are non-physicians trained to accurately and consistently portray patients in simulated clinical situations. Students interact with SPs as though they are interviewing, examining, or counseling real patients. This paper discusses the variety of methods in which schools supplement traditional instruction with SP-basedprograms and reviews recent studies of the psychometric characteristics of SP-based tests.
Advanced shape context for plant species identification using leaf image retrieval

This paper presents a novel method for leaf species identification combining local and shape-based features. Our approach extends the shape context model in two ways. First of all, two different sets of points are distinguished when computing the shape contexts: the voting set, i.e. the points used to describe the coarse arrangement of the shape and the computing set containing the points where the shape contexts are computed. This representation is enriched by introducing local features computed in the neighborhood of the computing points. Experiments show the effectiveness of our approach.
Caveolin-1 expression during the progression of pulmonary hypertension

Caveolin-1 plays a pivotal role in maintaining vascular health. Progressive loss of endothelial caveolin-1 and activation of proliferative and anti-apoptotic pathways occur before the onset of monocrotaline (MCT)-induced pulmonary hypertension (PH), and the rescue of endothelial caveolin-1 attenuates PH. Recently, we reported endothelial caveolin-1 loss associated with enhanced expression of caveolin-1 in smooth muscle cells (SMC) with subsequent neointima formation in human PH. To examine whether the loss of endothelial caveolin-1 followed by an enhanced expression in SMC is a sequential event in the progression of PH, we studied rats at two and four weeks post-MCT. Right ventricular (RV) systolic pressure, RV hypertrophy, pulmonary vascular histology, and the expression of caveolin-1 and endothelial membrane proteins (platelet/endothelial cell adhesion molecule-1 [PECAM-1], both α and β subunits of soluble guanylate cyclase [sGC]), von Willebrand factor (vWF), smooth muscle α-actin, proliferative and anti-apoptotic factors (PY-STAT3 and Bcl-xL) and matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) 2 in the lungs were examined. PH was accompanied by a progressive loss of endothelial caveolin-1, activation of PY-STAT3, increased Bcl-xL expression and vascular remodeling at two and four weeks post-MCT. Loss of PECAM-1 and sGC (both subunits) paralleled that of caveolin-1, whereas vWF was well preserved at two weeks post-MCT. At four weeks post-MCT, 29% of the arteries showed a loss of vWF in addition to endothelial caveolin-1, and 70% of these arteries exhibited enhanced expression of caveolin-1 in SMC; and there was increased expression and activity of MMP2. In conclusion, MCT-induced endothelial injury disrupts endothelial cell membrane with a progressive loss of endothelial caveolin-1, and the activation of proliferative and antiapoptotic pathways leading to PH. Subsequent extensive endothelial cell damage results in enhanced expression of caveolin-1 in SMC. In addition, there is a progressive increase in MMP2 expression and activity. These alterations may further facilitate cell proliferation, matrix degradation and cell migration, thus contributing to the progression of the disease.
Drug Class Review: Agents for Overactive Bladder

The purpose of Drug Effectiveness Review Project reports is to make available information regarding the comparative clinical effectiveness and harms of different drugs. Reports are not usage guidelines, nor should they be read as an endorsement of or recommendation for any particular drug, use, or approach. Oregon Health & Science University does not recommend or endorse any guideline or recommendation developed by users of these reports.
Implications of enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli genomics for vaccine development

Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) is a major cause of morbidity and mortality caused by diarrhea in children less than 5 years of age in low- and middle-income countries. Despite a wealth of research elucidating the mechanisms of disease, the immunological responses and vaccine development, ETEC is still relatively uncharacterized when it comes to regulation of virulence and detailed immune mechanisms. The recent emergence of next-generation sequencing now offers the possibility to screen genomes of ETEC strains isolated globally to identify novel vaccine targets in addition to those already established. In this review, we discuss how recent findings on ETEC genomics using novel sequencing techniques will aid in finding novel protective antigens that can be used in vaccine approaches.
Bid optimizing and inventory scoring in targeted online advertising

Billions of online display advertising spots are purchased on a daily basis through real time bidding exchanges (RTBs). Advertising companies bid for these spots on behalf of a company or brand in order to purchase these spots to display banner advertisements. These bidding decisions must be made in fractions of a second after the potential purchaser is informed of what location (Internet site) has a spot available and who would see the advertisement. The entire transaction must be completed in near real-time to avoid delays loading the page and maintain a good users experience. This paper presents a bid-optimization approach that is implemented in production at Media6Degrees for bidding on these advertising opportunities at an appropriate price. The approach combines several supervised learning algorithms, as well as second price auction theory, to determine the correct price to ensure that the right message is delivered to the right person, at the right time.
Event-based social networks: linking the online and offline social worlds

Newly emerged event-based online social services, such as Meetup and Plancast, have experienced increased popularity and rapid growth. From these services, we observed a new type of social network - event-based social network (EBSN). An EBSN does not only contain online social interactions as in other conventional online social networks, but also includes valuable offline social interactions captured in offline activities. By analyzing real data collected from Meetup, we investigated EBSN properties and discovered many unique and interesting characteristics, such as heavy-tailed degree distributions and strong locality of social interactions. We subsequently studied the heterogeneous nature (co-existence of both online and offline social interactions) of EBSNs on two challenging problems: community detection and information flow. We found that communities detected in EBSNs are more cohesive than those in other types of social networks (e.g. location-based social networks). In the context of information flow, we studied the event recommendation problem. By experimenting various information diffusion patterns, we found that a community-based diffusion model that takes into account of both online and offline interactions provides the best prediction power. This paper is the first research to study EBSNs at scale and paves the way for future studies on this new type of social network. A sample dataset of this study can be downloaded from http://www.largenetwork. org/ebsn.
The Use of High-Flux Albumin Haemofiltration (HFAF) with Evaclio EC-2C™ in the Management of Liver Failure as a Bridge to Transplantation

A 44-year-old male who developed liver failure four years after orthotopic liver transplant was managed using high-flux albumin haemofiltration as a bridge to transplant. The technique, which involves using conventional haemofiltration with a plasma component separator using a filter with a sieving coefficient of 20% for albumin, is described.
Using Historical Data With Bayesian Methods in Early Clinical Trial Monitoring

This article presents methods that were used to monitor two recent clinical trials for the early development of a novel therapeutic compound. We present Bayesian methods that were used to incorporate historical control data for monitoring early in the trials when there were very limited trial data. However, decisions to continue the study or terminate the experimental treatment had to be made to protect the patients in the trial. In the first trial, a pause in accrual was planned to allow assessment before a larger cohort could be recruited using more clinical centers. The primary endpoint for the continuation decision was binary, with accrual suspended until all patients in the first phase reached the endpoint time. The Bayesian method replaced decision criteria that regarded the historical data as a known standard, with the concurrent control data used to informally assist interpretation by the study clinicians. Monitoring of the subsequent study was planned without pauses in accrual. Survival methods used the partial information available on the eventual longer-term binary outcome. The Bayesian methods were approximately calibrated to avoid terminating the experimental compound incorrectly, and they were compared with some common, similarly calibrated non-Bayesian methods. The Bayesian methods were more likely to stop the experimental treatment correctly under conditions likely to arise in the trial.
Personalized diversification of search results

Search personalization and diversification are often seen as opposing alternatives to cope with query uncertainty, where, given an ambiguous query, it is either preferable to adapt the search result to a specific aspect that may interest the user (personalization) or to regard multiple aspects in order to maximize the probability that some query aspect is relevant to the user (diversification). In this work, we question this antagonistic view, and hypothesize that these two directions may in fact be effectively combined and enhance each other. We research the introduction of the user as an explicit random variable in state of the art diversification methods, thus developing a generalized framework for personalized diversification. In order to evaluate our hypothesis, we conduct an evaluation with real users using crowdsourcing services. The obtained results suggest that the combination of personalization and diversification achieves competitive performance, improving the base-line, plain personalization, and plain diversification approaches in terms of both diversity and accuracy measures.
-weak Galerkin Finite Element Method for the Biharmonic Equation

Abstract. A C0-weak Galerkin (WG) method is introduced and analyzed for solving the biharmonic equation in 2D and 3D. A weak Laplacian is defined for C0 functions in the new weak formulation. This WG finite element formulation is symmetric, positive definite and parameter free. Optimal order error estimates are established in both a discrete H2 norm and the L2 norm, for the weak Galerkin finite element solution. Numerical results are presented to confirm the theory. As a technical tool, a refined Scott-Zhang interpolation operator is constructed to assist the corresponding error estimate. This refined interpolation preserves the volume mass of order (k + 1 − d) and the surface mass of order (k + 2− d) for the Pk+2 finite element functions in d-dimensional space.
The effects of slow stroking on spasticity in patients with multiple sclerosis: A pilot study

Slow stroking applied for 3 min over the posterior primary rami region is believed to decrease muscle tone by reducing arousal via activation of the inhibitory reticular system (O'Sullivan, 1988). The efficacy of this intervention and insight into the possible mechanisms whereby changes in muscle tone might occur were examined in 10 patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) having mild to moderate plantarflexor spasticity. Electrophysiological measures of spasticity reflecting the excitability of the alpha-motoneuron pool associated with the triceps surae muscles indicated significant differences between the MS group and a group of 12 healthy controls. In the MS group only, amplitudes of the H-reflex, H-reflex during vibration and the Achilles tendon jerk were obtained pre-, post- and 30 min post-stroking. A significant decrease in H-reflex amplitude (normalised to the maximum M-wave) was found 30 min post-stroke when compared with baseline values. This was not attributable to bedrest alone. Other measures ob.
Genital tract infections among HIV-infected pregnant women in Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia

The aim of this study was to compare the prevalence and factors associated with genital tract infections among HIV-infected pregnant women from African sites. Participants were recruited from Blantyre and Lilongwe, Malawi; Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; and Lusaka, Zambia. Genital tract infections were assessed at baseline. Of 2627 eligible women enrolled, 2292 were HIV-infected. Of these, 47.8% had bacterial vaginosis (BV), 22.4% had vaginal candidiasis, 18.8% had trichomoniasis, 8.5% had genital warts, 2.6% had chlamydia infection, 2.2% had genital ulcers and 1.7% had gonorrhoea. The main factors associated with genital tract infections included genital warts (adjusted odds ratio [AOR] 1.8, 95% CI 1.2–2.7), genital ulcers (AOR 2.4, 95% CI 1.2–5.1) and abnormal vaginal discharge (AOR 2.5, 95% CI 1.9–3.3) for trichomoniasis. BV was the most common genital tract infection followed by candidiasis and trichomoniasis. Differences in burdens and risk factors call for enhanced interventions for identification of genital tract infections among HIV-infected women.
Contrast-enhanced cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging of coronary vessel wall: state of art

Coronary wall imaging by cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) emerges as a promising method to detect vascular injury and remodeling directly within the coronary vascular wall. In this review, the current evidence on coronary wall enhancement using CMR is presented and summarized, with particular focus on its ability to detect inflammation in atherosclerosis, Takayasu's arteritis, acute coronary syndromes and immune-mediated inflammatory vasculitides. The authors review the possible mechanisms of coronary wall contrast enhancement on CMR and discuss the technical considerations and limitations. Lastly, the potential clinical applications and possibilities for future research are proposed.
T he relationship between and cigarette sm oking in depressive sym ptom s U S adolescents

A bstract A im s. Data from the Teenage Attitudes and Practices Survey were analyzed to assess the relationship between depressive symptoms and cigarette smoking. D esigns, Setting, Participants. Nationally representative sample of adolescents interviewed in 1989 and again in 1993. M easurem ents. Prevalence rate and adjusted odds ratio for smoking at follow-up by depressive symptoms status at baseline. Findings. Adolescents with depressive symptoms were more likely than other adolescents to start smoking. C onclusions. The associations between depressive symptoms and regular smoking appears to be established by adolescence.
A quasi experimental study to evaluate effectiveness of glycerin magnesium sulphate dressing on phlebitis among patients undergoing peripheral intravenous infusion in selected hospital, Vadodara

Introduction: Intravenous therapy is indicated for many reasons. A significant number of patients admitted into hospital receive some forms of intravenous therapy through peripheral venous cannula, which is a common procedure carried out in hospital to allow rapid and accurate administration of medication. However, the intravenous cannulation can have undesirable effects, the most of which is phlebitis, which is due to mechanical, chemical or infectious cause. Method: In this study quasi-experimental research approach was used. Non probability purposive sampling technique was used to select the sample from the selected hospital. The research design adopted for the study was pre-test, post-test control group design. In the present study a sample of 60 hospitalised patients and who met the inclusion criteria was selected from the target population. In this study the instruments used are baseline Performa, structured interview schedule to assess the subjective symptoms and observation scale to observe the objective symptoms. Result: In experimental group post test mean score 1.10, SD was 0.71 respectively. In control group post test mean score 2.53, SD was 0.78 respectively. The obtained value 7.454 statistically was significant at 0.001 levels. So research hypothesis was accepted. So there was significant difference between post intervention phlebitis among the experimental group and control group. Discussion: In the research study findings revealed that Glycerin Magnesium sulphate dressing is highly effective in decrease phlebitis level to the patients.
Myxomatous mitral valve disease bench to bedside: LDL-density-pressure regulates Lrp5

The myxomatous mitral valve is the most common form of valvular heart disease. The pathologic presentation of myxomatous mitral valve disease varies between valve thickness, degree of leaflet prolapse and the presence or absence of flail leaflets. Recent molecular biology studies have confirmed that the myxomatous changes in mitral valve prolapse equals a cartilage phenotype, which is regulated by the Lrp5 receptor. Clinically, echocardiography defines the valve pathology to determine the surgical approach to valve repair or replacement. Furthermore, the timing of surgical valve repair is controversial and is the subject of a current multicenter trial. The results will resolve the timing of whether watchful waiting versus early surgical valve repair decreases morbidity and mortality of this disease process. This review will summarize the current understanding of the cellular and hemodynamic mechanisms of myxomatous mitral valve disease, which may have future implications in the targeted therapy of this disease process.
The relationship between leptin and arterial stiffness in patients on dialysis

Introduction-Aim : Leptin modifies the systemic inflammatory response and insulin action, but the mechanisms by which it affects vascular disease is unclear.We studied the relationship between leptin serum concentrations and arterial stiffness in dialysis patients. Methods : We studied 76 patients on on-line hemodiafiltration . Dialysis adequacy was defined by Kt/V for urea.Leptin and insulin were measured by radioimmunoassays.Insulin resistance was calculated using the homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance (HOMA-IR). High sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP) and oxidized LDL (ox-LDL) serum concentrations were measured by ELISA. The ratio of LDL / HDL was calculated and serum bicarbonate levels were measured in gas machine. Arterial stiffness was assessed as carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (c-f PWV) and carotid augmentation index (Aix). Results : We observed significantly positive correlation between leptin and BMI, insulin and hsCRP (r=0.397, p=0.001, r=0.284, p=0.02 and r=0.244, p=0.04 respectively), but the correlation between leptin and Aix was significantly reverse (r=-0.251, p=0.04). The higher leptin values were correlated with mildly elevated serum bicarbonate levels, which were inversely associated with hsCRP, c-f PWV and Aix (r=-0.384, p=0.005, r=-0.719, p=0.001 and r=-0.527, p=0.001 respectively). Conclusion : We observed an inverse association between leptin and arterial stiffness may confounded by metabolic acidosis and obesity in dialysis patients.