Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Infrared Image-Displaying of the Fourteen Meridian Courses

To explore the possibility of displaying the classical meridian courses with infrared image technique for and to provide a reliable basis for the existence of the meridian courses. Methods: A thermal tracer (Mod. 6T67), equipped with precise infrared imaging apparatus and computer processing system, is used for observation. The temperature resolution is 0.025 ℃. Three hundreds of healthy volunteer subjects are subjected into this study. The room temperature is kept around 28 ℃. The data are stored in a microcomputer, and then the pictures are taken or processed after experiments. The observation is carried out under the natural conditions in most of the subjects. But in some subjects, IRRTM elicited by local heating is also observed for comparison. In order to get a picture of fine quality, the area for taking clear pictures is limited in an appointed region (such as head, trunk or leg). Results: ①One or more than one IRRTM can be observed in most of the subjects. ②IRRTM may appear along every meridian course of the fourteen meridians. Among them, the incidence of IRRTM is highest in the Du Meridian course (about 80%), but lower in other meridian courses (about 50%). ③IRRTM always manifests as a narrow band like trace. Its length varies from subject to subject and in the display duration; the longer one may travel across several body regions. ④The travelling courses of IRRTM basically coincide with the classical meridian courses, sometime, it appears symmetrically along the bilateral meridian course. ⑤Several IRRTMs may appear in one and some body regions at the same time. ⑥Twenty pictures of infrared image are presented in this paper, the travelling courses of the fourteen meridians described by the Chinese ancient medical workers can be seen clearly. Conclusion: IRRTM is a normal biological phenomenon appearing in a majority of the people and this study provides a reliable evidence for the elucidation of the essence of meridian from one aspect.
The use of the evidence-based practice process by experienced registered nurses to inform and transform clinical practice during the COVID-19 pandemic: A longitudinal national cohort study.

BACKGROUND During the COVID-19 pandemic, many registered nurses (RNs) worked on the frontline caring for severely ill patients. They did so with limited knowledge of how to treat and prevent the disease. This extreme situation puts pressure on RNs to find evidence on which to base the care of their patients. AIMS To examine: (1) the extent to which evidence-based practice (EBP) process was applied by Swedish RN cohorts 15-19 years after graduation during the pandemic, (2) whether there was any change to their EBP process from pre-pandemic to late pandemic, (3) the relationship between RNs' use of the EBP process and the duration of exposure to work situations severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, and (4) whether level of education, position and care setting were associated with the extent of RNs' EBP process. METHODS In 2021, the level of EBP activities was investigated among 2237 RNs 15-19 years after graduation. The scale used to measure EBP consisted of six items of the EBP process. Unpaired t-tests or one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used in the analysis. RESULTS RNs used the EBP process to a moderate extent to inform and transform their clinical practice. There was a minor but significant decrease in practicing the EBP process from pre-pandemic to late in the pandemic. RNs who were most affected by the pandemic scored higher on the scale than less-affected colleagues. RNs in nonclinical positions reported more EBP activities, as did RNs in management positions. RNs working in outpatient settings reported more EBP activities than their colleagues in hospitals. LINKING EVIDENCE TO ACTION It is imperative that RNs hone their skills in EBP if they are to be prepared for future healthcare crises. Healthcare providers have a duty to facilitate the development of EBP and, in this regard, RNs in clinical positions in hospitals need particular support.
Multirobot Adversarial Resilience Using Control Barrier Functions

In this article, we develop an algorithm for resilient path planning, where a team of robots must navigate in a resilient formation such that they achieve <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$F$</tex-math></inline-formula>-resilience, meaning they can coordinate in the presence of up to <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$F$</tex-math></inline-formula> adversaries. Resilient formations are those having high connectivity often achieved by driving robots close together. Unfortunately, the objective of maintaining resilience can often times conflict with achieving collision and obstacle avoidance. We seek to provide safe navigation while maintaining resilience by employing a local controller that uses control barrier functions (CBFs). CBF-based formulations are amenable to satisfying multiple objectives, but can be prone to deadlock if any of the objectives conflict with each other. Furthermore, it is difficult to know a priori where this may occur in a given environment. To this end, we 1) characterize when the environment will force a tradeoff between safe navigation and resilience, and 2) develop an algorithm that derives a new representation of the environment in which areas where resilience cannot be provably guaranteed are blocked off. This algorithm can be used to plan a path through an environment that always provably admits a resilient formation. If the algorithm cannot find such a path, an alternative CBF is proposed where resilience can be treated as a <italic>soft constraint</italic>. For this case, a nested form of the CBF is executed and a critical gain is derived that provably prioritizes navigation over resilience while resilience is not attainable. Finally, in addition to simulation results, we run hardware experiments with six GoPiGo differential-drive robots that achieve <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$F$</tex-math></inline-formula>-resilient consensus while navigating through a cluttered environment, to showcase the applicability of our methods in the presence of adversaries.
VACCINATION ATTITUDE AMONG HEALTHCARE WORKERS AT THE EARLY PHASE OF COVID-19 IN MALAYSIA

Background: Healthcare workers’ (HCWs) vaccination hesitancy during a pandemic can be problematic for the health system as these workers need to be fully vaccinated. Aims: This study aimed to determine the level of vaccine hesitancy and its associated factors among HCWs at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among randomly selected HCWs of a tertiary hospital in the state of Selangor, Malaysia, using an online questionnaire. The questions were designed to collect information on HCWs’ sociodemographic and health status and attitude towards vaccination. Higher scores for the four scales on attitude towards vaccination denote a higher level of vaccine hesitancy. Results: Of the 380 respondents (98% response rate), the overall score depicted low vaccine hesitancy despite the scores being slightly higher on worrying over unforeseen future effects and concerns about commercial profiteering. Women demonstrated a lower preference for natural immunity compared to men. Conclusion: In the context of this study, vaccine hesitancy among HCWs was low, which may indicate good acceptance. However, concerns about unforeseen future effects and commercial profiteering need to be addressed, and health education and promotion activities on the male workers in terms of preference for natural immunity need to be enhanced. Keywords: attitude, COVID-19, healthcare workers, vaccine hesitancy
Influence of Self-Efficacy, Organizational Culture, and Job Satisfaction on The Performance of Madrasah Aliyah Teachers

There are several problems that occur in the field between the expected performance and the actual performance of MA teachers in Batubara Regency at this time. If this problem does not receive special attention and is handled seriously, the result will weaken the quality of madrasa education and even become a setback for the quality of student graduates. This research uses an explanatory correlational method. The results of this research. The findings of the teacher performance model formulated in this research are novel from the results of research which shows the development of a model for improving teacher performance, especially for Madrasah Aliyah teachers in Batubara Regency. This performance model has been tested for suitability with the most dominant proportion of influence from exogenous variables being organizational culture variables, followed by self-efficacy, and achievement motivation, and followed by the smallest proportion of influence being teacher job satisfaction variables. The order of the most influential exogenous variables shows that if you want to improve the performance of Madrasah Aliyah teachers in Batubara Regency, what needs to be improved first is organizational culture, followed by achievement motivation, job satisfaction, and self-efficacy with a total of direct and indirect influences, Spurious, and Unanalyzed who conducted tests of self-efficacy and organizational culture, achievement motivation and job satisfaction on the performance of Madrasah Aliyah teachers in Batubara Regency.
Load-Balancing Routing for LEO Satellite Network with Distributed Hops-Based Back-Pressure Strategy

With the expansion of user scale in LEO satellite networks, unbalanced regional load and bursty network traffic lead to the problem of load disequilibrium. A distributed hops-based back-pressure (DHBP) routing is proposed. DHBP theoretically derives a fast solution for the minimum end-to-end propagation hops between satellite nodes in inclined-orbit LEO satellite networks; hence, link weights are determined based on remaining hops between the next hop and destination satellites. In order to control the number of available retransmission paths, the permitted propagation region is restricted to a rectangular region consisting of source-destination nodes to reduce the propagation cost. Finally, DHBP is designed distributedly, to realize a dynamic selection of the shortest link with low congestion and balanced traffic distribution without obtaining the whole network topology. Network simulation results demonstrate that DHBP has higher throughput and lower delay under high load conditions compared with state-of-the-art routing protocols.
Evaluating Multi-level Risk Factors for Malaria and Arboviral Infections in Regions of Tanzania

vi List of Tables.vii List of Figures.viii List of abbreviations.ix 1. General Introduction 1.2 Mosquito-Borne Diseases & Public Health.1 1.3 Critical Review of Risk Factors for Vector-borne Diseases.5 1.3. 1 Individual-level risk factors.6 1.3. 2 Environmental risk factors.9 a) Temperature.10 b) Precipitation.12 c) Urbanization.12 d) Elevation.14 e) Land-cover.15 1.4 Challenges to Current Modelling Approaches.16 1.5 Research objective.18 1.6 Overview of thesis organization.18 2. Ethics approval.21
Comprehensive Transcriptomic Analysis for Thymic Epithelial Cells of Aged Mice and Humans

Thymic epithelial cells (TECs) play a critical role in thymic development and thymopoiesis. As individuals age, TECs undergo various changes that impact their functions, leading to a reduction in cell numbers and impaired thymic selection. These age-related alterations have been observed in both mice and humans. However, the precise mechanisms underlying age-related TEC dysfunction remain unclear. Furthermore, there is a lack of a comprehensive study that connects mouse and human biological processes in this area. To address this gap, we conducted an extensive transcriptome analysis of young and old TECs in mice, complemented by further analysis of publicly available human TEC single-cell RNA sequencing data. Our analysis revealed alterations in both known and unknown pathways that potentially contribute to age-related TEC dysfunction. Specifically, we observed downregulation of pathways related to cell proliferation, T cell development, metabolism, and cytokine signaling in old age TECs. Conversely, TGF-β, BMP, and Wnt signaling pathways were upregulated, which have been known to be associated with age-related TEC dysfunctions or newly discovered in this study. Importantly, we found that these age-related changes in mouse TECs were consistently present in human TECs as well. This cross-species validation further strengthens the significance of our findings. In conclusion, our comprehensive analysis provides valuable insight into the biological and immunological characteristics of aged TECs in both mice and humans. These findings contribute to a better understanding of thymic involution and age-induced immune dysfunction.
Impact of livestock grazing management on carbon stocks: a case study in sparse elm woodlands of semi-arid lands

Livestock grazing is a widespread practice in human activities worldwide. However, the effects of livestock grazing management on vegetation carbon storage have not been thoroughly evaluated. In this study, we used the system dynamic approach to simulate the effects of different livestock grazing management strategies on carbon stock in sparse elm woodlands. The livestock grazing management strategies included rotational grazing every 5 years (RG5), prohibited grazing (PG), seasonal prohibited grazing (SPG), and continuous grazing (CG). We evaluated the carbon sequestration rate in vegetation using logistical models. The results showed that the carbon stock of elm trees in sparse woodlands was 5–15 M g ha−1. The values of the carbon sequestration rate were 0.15, 0.13, 0.13, and 0.09 Mg C ha−1 year−1 in RG5, PG, CG, and SPG management, respectively. This indicates that rotational grazing management might be the optimal choice for improving vegetation carbon accumulation in sparse woodlands. This study contributes to decision-making on how to choose livestock grazing management to maintain higher carbon storage.
Mendelian randomization analysis suggests no associations of human herpes viruses with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Background The causal associations between infections with human herpes viruses (HHVs) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) has been disputed. This study investigated the causal associations between herpes simplex virus (HSV), varicella-zoster virus (VZV), Epstein–Barr virus (EBV), cytomegalovirus (CMV), HHV-6, and HHV-7 infections and ALS through a bidirectional Mendelian randomization (MR) method. Methods The genome-wide association studies (GWAS) database were analyzed by inverse variance weighted (IVW), MR-Egger, weighted median, simple mode, and weighted mode methods. MR-Egger intercept test, MR-PRESSO test, Cochran’s Q test, funnel plots, and leaveone-out analysis were used to verify the validity and robustness of the MR results. Results In the forward MR analysis of the IVW, genetically predicted HSV infections [odds ratio (OR) = 0.9917; 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.9685–1.0154; p = 0.4886], HSV keratitis and keratoconjunctivitis (OR = 0.9897; 95% CI: 0.9739–1.0059; p = 0.2107), anogenital HSV infection (OR = 1.0062; 95% CI: 0.9826–1.0304; p = 0.6081), VZV IgG (OR = 1.0003; 95% CI: 0.9849–1.0160; p = 0.9659), EBV IgG (OR = 0.9509; 95% CI: 0.8879–1.0183; p = 0.1497), CMV (OR = 0.9481; 95% CI: 0.8680–1.0357; p = 0.2374), HHV-6 IgG (OR = 0.9884; 95% CI: 0.9486–1.0298; p = 0.5765) and HHV-7 IgG (OR = 0.9991; 95% CI: 0.9693–1.0299; p = 0.9557) were not causally associated with ALS. The reverse MR analysis of the IVW revealed comparable findings, indicating no link between HHVs infections and ALS. The reliability and validity of the findings were verified by the sensitivity analysis. Conclusion According to the MR study, there is no evidence of causal associations between genetically predicted HHVs (HSV, VZV, EBV, CMV, HHV-6, and HHV-7) and ALS.
Guilt, shame, and embarrassment: similar or different emotions? A comparison between Italians and Americans

Introduction Guilt, shame, and embarrassment represent affective experiences with social implications and diverse self-relevant negative affect. While the distinction between these emotion terms has been extensively investigated, little is known about how they diverge and are related to each other and their crosscultural differences. Methods Here, we used a community sample (N = 163) comprised of Americans and Italians and a scenario-based measure in which we asked participants to report the intensity of emotions that the story’s main character would feel. The elements used to build the scenarios were based on a recent theoretical approach that proposes distinguishing cognitive, somatic, interoceptive, and behavioral ingredients to differentiate between these emotions. We hypothesized that these ingredients might effectively elicit the target emotions and that the main differences across these cultures would be associated with the emotion terms of shame/vergogna. Results Our findings suggest that these defining elements are effective in evoking experiences of guilt, shame, and embarrassment. Moreover, we found that shame was equally elicited by the Shame and Guilt Scenarios only in the American sample, thus suggesting a proximity between shame and guilt in the American sample compared to the Italian’s terms of vergogna and colpa. Discussion These results suggest important implications for the psychology of moral emotions and highlight the importance of taking into account some cognitive factors, such as the quality of self-evaluation, the discrepancy between the actual self and the ideal self vs. the sense of perceived responsibility, and the different domains related to self-esteem.
Exploring Rehabilitation Provider Experiences of Providing Health Services for People Living with Long COVID in Alberta

Background: COVID-19 infection can result in persistent symptoms, known as long COVID. Understanding the provider experience of service provision for people with long COVID symptoms is crucial for improving care quality and addressing potential challenges. Currently, there is limited knowledge about the provider experience of long COVID service delivery. Aim: To explore the provider experience of delivering health services to people living with long COVID at select primary, rehabilitation, and specialty care sites. Design and setting: This study employed qualitative description methodology. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with frontline providers at primary care, rehabilitation, and specialty care sites across Alberta. Participants were interviewed between June and September 2022. Method: Interviews were conducted virtually over zoom, audio-recorded, and transcribed with consent. Iterative inductive qualitative content analysis of transcripts was employed. Relationships between emergent themes were examined for causality or reciprocity, then clustered into content areas and further abstracted into a priori categories through their interpretive joint meaning. Participants: A total of 15 participants across Alberta representing diverse health care disciplines were interviewed. Results: Main themes include: the importance of education for long COVID recognition; the role of symptom acknowledgement in patient-centred long COVID service delivery; the need to develop recovery expectations; and opportunities for improvement of navigation and wayfinding to long COVID services. Conclusions: Provider experience of delivering long COVID care can be used to inform patient-centred service delivery for persons with long COVID symptoms.
36-Month Outcomes from the Prospective GEMINI Study: Canaloplasty and Trabeculotomy Combined with Cataract Surgery for Patients with Primary Open-Angle Glaucoma

Purpose To provide long-term intraocular pressure (IOP) and ocular hypotensive medication usage outcomes through 36 months for patients treated with canaloplasty and trabeculotomy (OMNI Surgical System) combined with cataract surgery as participants in the GEMINI study. Setting Eleven ophthalmology practices in 10 US states. Design Non-interventional 36-month extension of the 12-month, prospective, multicenter, GEMINI study. Methods GEMINI patients had visually significant cataract, mild-to-moderate glaucoma (ICD-10 guidelines), medicated IOP <33 mmHg, and unmedicated mean diurnal IOP (DIOP) (after washout) 21–36 mmHg. Patients from GEMINI were eligible for inclusion. Outcome measures were reduction in mean unmedicated DIOP, reduction in mean IOP-lowering medications, percent of eyes with ≥20% reduction in unmedicated DIOP, and percent of eyes with unmedicated DIOP ≥6 and ≤18 mmHg. Results A total of 66 patients provided consent and were enrolled. Mean (SD) unmedicated DIOP was 23.1 (2.7) mmHg at baseline, 16.7 (4.1), 16.3 (3.3) at 24 and 36 months; mean reductions of 6.2 (4.1) and 6.9 (3.4) mmHg. Twelve-month IOP at the end of GEMINI was 15.6 mmHg. The proportion of eyes with ≥20% reduction in IOP was 77% and 78% (months 24 and 36) compared to 87% at month 12 from GEMINI. About 68% of patients had an IOP between 6 and 18 mmHg at 24 months and 71% at 36 months. Mean IOP-lowering medications was 1.7 at baseline, which was reduced to 0.4 (24 months, −1.3) and 0.3 (36 months, −1.4). About 74% of patients (46 of 62) were medication free at 36 months. Conclusion GEMINI demonstrated 12-month effectiveness of canaloplasty and trabeculotomy with OMNI combined with cataract surgery for IOP and medication reduction in mild-to-moderate glaucoma. However, longer-term data is key to the decision making in the selection of a surgical treatment. This GEMINI extension demonstrates that the 12-month outcomes from GEMINI were sustained through 36 months.
Seal monitoring and evaluation for the Luchterduinen offshore wind farm 1. T0 - 2013 report

In the Netherlands, the greatest numbers of grey and harbour seals are observed hauling out in the Wadden Sea but both species also haul out in the Delta region. Previous studies suggest there could be considerable movement of seals along the Dutch North Sea coastal zone between the two regions. Next to providing feeding opportunities for the seals, this movement may be particularly important for the maintenance of seal numbers in the Delta, and could be affected by anthropogenic developments in the coastal zone, such as wind farms. Determining when to attach devices to seals must take into account the seals’ annual cycles; in the Netherlands, grey seals give birth in winter and moult in spring, while harbour seals give birth in early summer and moult in late summer. Capturing and tracking of seals is limited by both the pupping period and the moulting period.