Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Repeat resection versus percutaneous ablation for recurrent hepatocellular carcinoma: a meta-analysis

Introduction Both repeat resection (RR) and percutaneous ablation (PA) have been used for treating recurrent hepatocellular carcinoma (rHCC). Each method has its advantages and disadvantages. Aim To compare the safety and effectiveness between RR and PA in patients with rHCC. Material and methods Relevant articles published in the PubMed, Embase, Wanfang, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) databases published as of April 2022 were identified. Primary endpoints for this meta-analysis included patient overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS), whereas secondary endpoints included rates of repeat recurrence, complications, and the duration of hospitalization. Results This meta-analysis included a total of 6 relevant studies. Pooled repeat recurrence rates were comparable between the PA and RR groups (p = 0.09), although the pooled 5-year DFS rate (p = 0.01), DFS duration (p = 0.02), and 3-year OS rate (p = 0.04) in the RR group were considerably higher than in the PA group. Pooled rates of both Grade 1/2 (p = 0.04) and Grade 3/4 (p = 0.001) complications, however, were significantly lower for patients who underwent PA as compared to patients who underwent RR. PA was associated with a significantly shorter hospitalization duration relative to RR in this patient cohort (p = 0.0002). Conclusions According to the obtained findings, RR may be associated with better long-term disease control in rHCC patients than PA, whereas PA is associated with a better safety profile and a shorter duration of hospitalization.
Is Early Bilingual Experience Associated with Greater Fluid Intelligence in Adults?

Emerging evidence suggests that early bilingual experience constrains the development of attentional processes in infants, and that some of these early bilingual adaptations could last into adulthood. However, it is not known whether the early adaptations in the attentional domain alter more general cognitive abilities. If they do, then we would expect that bilingual adults who learned their second language early in life would score more highly across cognitive tasks than bilingual adults who learned their second language later in life. To test this hypothesis, 170 adult participants were administered a well-established (non-verbal) measure of fluid intelligence: Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices (RAPM). Fluid intelligence (the ability to solve novel reasoning problems, independent of acquired knowledge) is highly correlated with numerous cognitive abilities across development. Performance on the RAPM was greater in bilinguals than monolinguals, and greater in ‘early bilinguals’ (adults who learned their second language between 0–6 years) than ‘late bilinguals’ (adults who learned their second language after age 6 years). The groups did not significantly differ on a proxy of socioeconomic status. These results suggest that the difference in fluid intelligence between bilinguals and monolinguals is not a consequence of bilingualism per se, but of early adaptive processes. However, the finding may depend on how bilingualism is operationalized, and thus needs to be replicated with a larger sample and more detailed measures.
Social and religious dimensions of mixed-faith families: The case of a Muslim–Christian family

The article reports data from a study investigating the religious identity formation of young people in mixed-faith families. This involved parents from Christian, Hindu, Sikh, and Muslim backgrounds, with a spouse of these four faiths. One of the ‘Muslim–non-Muslim’ families is considered here as a case study to shed light on social and religious dimensions pertaining to both parents and children. One parent has a Muslim, the other a Christian background. The article examines how the parents understand and approach the ‘mixed’ nature of their family and how this translates into socialising their children into their respective religious traditions. It also engages with the perceptions of the children, exploring their sense of religious identity and social belonging. Drawing on interviews, the article discusses participants’ perspectives regarding ‘dual heritage’/‘mixedness’ and cultural and religious transmission, referring to studies on mixed-faith families to embed the data in existing research.
Early Life Nutrition and the Role of Complementary Feeding on Later Adherence to the Mediterranean Diet in Children up to 3 Years of Age

The first years of life represent a window of opportunity to establish proper dietary patterns and to maintain them over time. Our aim was to describe the diet of a cohort of Spanish children, from 2 to 36 months, and to identify the components that could influence the quality of the diet at 24 and 36 months of age. This was a longitudinal prospective study analyzing information from administered questionnaires about general characteristics and food frequency consumption in 97 full-term babies. At 2–3 months of age, only 53.6% of infants were observed to be breastfed. The intake of animal foodstuffs from 12 to 36 months was higher than national recommendations, and the contrary was true for fruits and vegetables. The intake of vitamin D was below European Food Safety Authority recommendations. Moreover, energy intake at 6 months was inversely associated with Mediterranean Diet Score (MDS) at 24 months, whereas vegetables intake was positively associated with MDS at 36 months. These results could be useful in the creation of future guidelines focused on the promotion of breastfeeding and healthy early-life food habits.
Validation of Psychometric Properties of the Nursing Work Index—Revised Scale in Portugal

The use of instruments designed to assess the nursing practice environment is crucial to improve the quality of nursing care, to anticipate problems and difficulties that may arise in organizations, and allow nurse managers to implement changes and improvements in key areas. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Nursing Work Index—Revised Portuguese version (NWI-R-PT) scale. A quantitative, observational, descriptive, and cross-sectional study was conducted. Methods: The sample consisted of 767 nurses from 4 public Portuguese hospitals. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis techniques were used to test the distinct structural models. The scale’s accuracy was evaluated through internal consistency, using Cronbach’s alpha. Results: NWI-R-PT internal consistency was 0.91. The NWI-R-PT model with six factors, namely “Management Support,” “Professional Development,” “Fundamentals of Nursing,” “Nurse–Physician Relationship,” “Endowments,” and “Organization of Nursing Care,” was supported by exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. The NWI-R-PT scale presents adequate goodness-of-fit indices concerning the final factorial model and the convergent validity. Conclusions: The NWI-R-PT scale has a competent and reliable structure. The scale’s validity is confirmed; therefore, it may be employed in all contexts in clinical practice, research, and nursing management. The NWI-R-PT is a useful and valid instrument to assess the nursing environment in hospitals, primary care, long-term care, and nursing homes. The scale has significance in improving the quality of nursing care and patient safety, the professional development of nurses, and organizational results.
The coexistence curve and surface tension of a monatomic water model.

We study the monatomic water model of Molinero and Moore the grand canonical ensemble Monte Carlo simulation. Measurements of the probability distribution of the number density obtained via multicanonical sampling and histogram reweighting provide accurate estimates of the temperature dependence of both the liquid-vapor coexistence densities and the surface tension. Using finite-size scaling methods, we locate the liquid-vapor critical point at Tc = 917.6 K, ρc = 0.311 g cm-3. When plotted in scaled variables, in order to test the law of corresponding states, the coexistence curve of monatomic water is close to that of real water. In this respect, it performs better than extended simple point charge (SPC/E), TIP4P, and TIP4P/2005 water.
HIGH-THROUGHPUT FPGA QC-LDPC DECODER ARCHITECTURE FOR 5G WIRELESS

OF THE THESIS High-Throughput FPGA QC-LDPC Decoder Architecture for 5G Wireless by Swapnil Mhaske Thesis Director: Professor Predrag Spasojevic Wireless data traffic is expected to increase by a 1000 fold by the year 2020 with more than 50 billion devices connected to these wireless networks with peak data rates upto 10 Gb/s . The next generation of wireless cellular technology (being collectively termed as 5G) is slated to operate in the mm-wave (30-300GHz) spectrum which comes with challenges such as, reliance on line of sight (LOS) communication, short range of communication, increased shadowing and, rapid fading in time. This will necessitate additional signal processing techniques such as large antenna arrays and beamsteering which will further reduce the processing budget available to the channel coding system. In an effort to design and develop a channel coding solution suitable to such systems, in this thesis we propose strategies to achieve a high-throughput FPGA-based decoder architecture for a QC-LDPC code based on circulant-1 identity matrix construction. We present a novel representation of the parity-check matrix (PCM) providing a multifold throughput gain. Splitting of the node processing algorithm enables us to achieve pipelining of blocks and hence layers. By partitioning the PCM into not only layers but superlayers, we derive an upper bound on the pipelining depth with respect to the size of the superlayer for the compact representation. To validate the architecture, a decoder for the IEEE 802.11n (2012) QC-LDPC is implemented on the Xilinx Kintex-7 FPGA
Changes in Parenteral Nutrition Requirements and BMI in Patients with Parenteral Nutrition-Dependent Short Bowel Syndrome after Stopping Teduglutide—9 Years of Follow-Up

Teduglutide (TED) is widely used in patients with short-bowel-syndrome-associated intestinal failure (SBS-IF) to enhance intestinal adaptation and reduce the need for parenteral support (PS). There are limited data on the effects of discontinuing TED. In this study, we describe the changes in parenteral nutrition (PN) requirements and body mass index (BMI) in a 9-year follow-up of patients receiving home parenteral nutrition after discontinuation of the TED treatment. We performed a retrospective analysis of changes in weekly PN orders and BMI in all patients with PN-dependent SBS from two Polish home parenteral nutrition (HPN) centers who received teduglutide between 2009 and 2013 and still required HPN 9 years after discontinuation of the TED treatment. Data included in the analysis were collected prospectively at mandatory visits to the HPN centers at 12, 24, 60, 84, and 108 months after drug discontinuation and compared with values before and after TED treatment. Weekly PN volume values varied significantly between all of the above time points from baseline to 9 years after TED discontinuation (χ2 = 34.860, p < 0.001). After an initial increase within the first year after treatment discontinuation (not statistically significant), the PN volume requirements remained stable for 4 years and increased 5–9 years after treatment discontinuation. The rate of patients requiring an increase in PN volume was 84.62% at 60 and 84 months and 92.30% at 108 months. At 9 years after cessation of the TED treatment, 53.85% of the study group required a 21.21% increase in PN volume compared with values before treatment. The need for PN volume in patients with PN-dependent SBS who discontinued the TED treatment increased within the first year and 4–5 years after treatment cessation, and in some cases might even exceed pretreatment values after 9 years.
Evaluation of the Potential Impact of Medical Ozone Therapy on Covid-19: A Review Study

ABSTRACT The key objective of this review is to summarize the available information on the effects of medical ozone therapy in COVID-19 and its therapeutic potentials. An electronic literature search was performed using the PubMed, Cochrane, Web of Science, Science Direct, Scopus, Google Scholar, Ovid Medline, J Stage and China Knowledge Resource Integrated (CNKI) databases to September 2021. In total, 1833 articles were identified. Twenty-six articles were selected out of 667 articles. The most preferred and effective administration method for COVID-19 is major autohemotherapy (MAHT), followed by rectal insufflation and minor autohemotherapy (MiAHT). However, other methods, including ozonized oils and ozonated saline, are also used for COVID-19 due to ease of application, prophylactic and therapeutic effects. In studies, 850 patients were treated with ozone therapy as a complementary treatment. The effectiveness of ozone concentrations below 20 μg/mL or above 45 μg/mL for MAHT are yet to be proven in the COVID-19 patient population, and may be less effective. Complementary ozone therapy combined with antivirals increase the activity of antivirals against COVID-19. Large-scale, multicenter randomized clinical trials are needed to be able to isolate the effect of ozone therapy where the clinical variables are distributed more homogeneously. Also, an extended period of follow-up of COVID-19 patients may give more accurate indications about the effectiveness of the treatment in the long term.
Maintenance of rural water supply facilities in the Builsa North District of the Upper East Region of Ghana

In Ghana, the sustainability of rural water supply facilities has been a recurring national issue. Therefore, this study examined the maintenance structures, as they exist for the effective management of water supply facilities in the Builsa North District. The study was descriptive, non-interventional and applied the mixed method approach to collect data from 138 water users who were randomly selected from hand pump communities. The study found that the management architecture of the water supply systems of the district hinged on the District Water and Sanitation Teams (DWSTs), Water and Sanitation (WATSAN) committees, area mechanics and pumped spare-parts dealers. The significant constraints to pump maintenance were inadequate logistics, finance, and remuneration of DWST, poor financial mobilisation, financial embezzlement, and high attrition among WATSAN committee members. Additionally, poor transport support for area mechanics, bad access routes, and scarcity of spare parts were also significant constraints to the maintenance architecture. The study recommends government and donor/agency to provide requisite financial and logistical support to the DWSTs, WATSAN committees and area mechanics and provision of spare parts at affordable prices.
Synopsis of Leptosphaeriaceae and Introduction of Three New Taxa and One New Record from China

Leptosphaeriaceae, a diverse family in the order Pleosporales, is remarkable for its scleroplectenchymatous or plectenchymatous peridium cells. Four Leptosphaeriaceae species were discovered and studied during the investigation of saprobic fungi from plant substrates in China. Novel taxa were defined using multiloci phylogenetic analyses and are supported by morphology. Based on maximum likelihood (ML) and Bayesian inference (BI) analyses, these isolates represent three novel taxa and one new record within Leptosphaeriaceae. A new genus, Angularia, is introduced to accommodate Angularia xanthoceratis, with a synopsis chart for 15 genera in Leptosphaeriaceae. This study also revealed a new species, Plenodomus changchunensis, and a new record of Alternariaster centaureae-diffusae. These species add to the increasing number of fungi known from China.
Antecedents for Older Adults’ Intention to Use Smart Health Wearable Devices-Technology Anxiety as a Moderator

The increase in the demands for surveillance of chronic diseases, long-term care, and self-health management has allowed mobile smart health wearable devices to become products with greater business potential in past years. Wearable devices being able to be worn for long periods are the most suitable for 24-h weatherproof monitoring. Nevertheless, most technological products are not developed specifically for older adults. Older adults might be apprehensive and fearful about the use of technological equipment and might appear “technologically anxious”, so it was wondered whether older adults could smoothly operate and comfortably use smart wearable device products, and how “technological anxiety” would affect their behavior and attitude towards using these devices. The variables of “technology readiness”, “technological interactivity”, “perceived usefulness”, “perceived ease of use”, “attitude”, and “intention to use” are therefore discussed in this study. Taking “technological anxiety” as the moderating variable to develop the questionnaire scale, the quantitative research with structural equation model is applied to discuss the older adults’ intention to use smart health wearable devices. The questionnaire was distributed to older adults’ community care centers, senior centers, and senior learning centers in Taiwan, and to an older adults’ group above the age of 60 with experience in using smart bracelets. A total of 200 questionnaires were distributed, and 183 were retrieved, with 166 valid copies. The research results reveal that users with higher technology readiness, and older adult users with higher technological interactivity, present a higher perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness. Technological anxiety would affect users’ attitude and further influence the intention to use. The research results could help understand older adults’ needs for using smart health wearable devices.
Understanding hedonic and utilitarian responses to product reviews on youtube and purchase intention

Abstract YouTube has become popular among consumers as an information preference in the decision-making process within the social commerce environment. YouTubers share experiences, information, opinions, and thoughts regarding products or services in product-review content, and consumers’ motivations (hedonic or utilitarian) in reacting to how the content affect their buying behavior. This study investigates hedonic and utilitarian consumer responses to YouTubers’ product reviews that lead to purchase intention. We employed a questionnaire data collection method targeted at consumers who buy products after watching product-review content on YouTube. We collected 384 valid responses and employed structural equation modeling to test the validity and research hypotheses. The results showed that (1) parasocial interaction significantly influences hedonic (transparency, perceived enjoyment) and utilitarian (credibility, informativeness) responses and purchase intention, while (2) hedonic (perceived transparency) and utilitarian (informativeness) responses were insignificant for purchase intention. In addition, hedonic (perceived enjoyment) and utilitarian (credibility) responses have significant effects on purchase intention. Thus, YouTubers’ product-review content on YouTube influences consumer behavior in both hedonic and utilitarian terms. While marketers implement marketing strategies to include products in YouTube content, YouTubers communicate products to consumers. Furthermore, the theoretical and practical contributions of this study are discussed.
Effects of relativistic parameter sets on tidal deformabilities and f-mode oscillations of neutron stars

The implications of relativistic parameter sets established at saturation density on the tidal deformabilities and f-mode oscillations of neutron stars (NSs) are examined using constraints from the gravitational wave (GW) event GW170817 and NICER. According to our findings, the isovector saturation parameters have a greater impact on the radii and tidal deformabilities of NSs than the isoscalar saturation parameters. Our analysis also examines the impact of saturation properties on f-mode frequencies and finds that f-mode frequencies with 1.4 M ⊙ (solar mass) are roughly between 1.95 and 2.15 kHz. These findings could be confirmed by future advanced GW detectors. A good linear parameter-independent correlation between f-mode frequencies inferred from saturation parameters in the entire region is also observed, and we attempt to fit an updated version of this universal relationship. Furthermore, we used chiral effective theory (χ EFT) together with the multi-messenger astronomy constraints to further reinforce the rationality of the conclusions we have reached.
Effects of Atorvastatin Therapy on Postoperative Delirium After Malignant Tumor Surgeries in Older Adults

Introduction Postoperative delirium (POD) is one of the prevalent and potentially fatal clinical conditions, leading to high disability and mortality in older patients, as well as increased duration of hospital stay and more hospitalization expenses. There were no effective drugs in the clinical management of POD, and an absence of evidence-based medicine concerning the treatment of POD. Materials and Methods The present study explored whether atorvastatin (Ato) can decrease the occurrence rate of POD. The present research included patients over the age of 60 who were hospitalized to critical care units (ICUs) following surgery for malignant tumors. Patients received Ato (40mg/day) or placebos utilizing a computer-based random sequencing (in a 1:1 ratio). The primary outcome measure was the occurrence of delirium within the first seven days following surgery. Results A total of 230 individuals were classified into two groups, namely the placebo group (n=123) and the Ato group (n=107). Patients belonging to two groups had similar baseline clinical data, and there were no statistically significant differences between them. The occurrence of delirium in the Ato group was remarkably reduced unlike the case in the placebo group. 30-day all-cause mortality did not vary significantly between the two groups. Pulmonary infection and Bedsore were significantly decreased in the Ato group than the placebo group, there were no statistically significant differences between the two groups in rhabdomyolysis and abnormal liver enzymes. In terms of medication responses, there were no statistically significant differences between the two groups. Ato patients had remarkably shortened hospital stays and spent remarkably less on hospitalization expenditures in comparison with those in the placebo group. Conclusion The findings from the present research indicated that Ato can decrease the occurrence of delirium following surgical operation of malignant tumors among elderly patients, it also can reduce the duration of hospitalization, hospital cost, and post-surgical complications, but not improve 30-day all-cause mortality. Registration Number ChiCTR-IPR-17011984.