Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Is the damage worth it? Testing handheld XRF as a non-destructive analytical tool for determining biogenic bone and tooth chemistry prior to destructive analyses

Isotopic analysis is destructive and requires that a specimen retains its original (biogenic) chemical composition. A specimen's relative abundance of calcium and phosphorous (Ca/P) or carbonate and phosphate (CO3/PO4) is often used to assess preservation. If a specimen's Ca/P or CO3/PO4 is similar to modern specimens, a specimen's isotopic composition may be biogenic. However, most methods for measuring these proxies are destructive. Moreover the relationships between Ca/P, CO3/PO4 and isotopic preservation are poorly established. In this study, we assessed the ability of handheld X-ray fluorescence (hXRF) to non-destructively evaluate a specimen's preservation by characterizing the calcium to phosphorous ratio (Ca/P). We first established that surface Ca/P (Ca/Psurface) for modern specimens was consistent with expectations for unaltered bone (1.3–2.3). Several specimens had slightly larger ratios, suggesting the currently accepted range may need to be expanded. Second, we tested the ability of Ca/Psurface to detect alteration using twenty Quaternary mammal teeth from Big Bone Lick, Kentucky. Ten specimens had Ca/Psurface between 1.3 and 2.3 and ten had larger ratios, suggesting alteration. Because most methods measure Ca/P in powder (Ca/Ppowder), we compared Ca/Psurface, Ca/Ppowder, and the enamel subsurface (Ca/Psubsurface). With two exceptions, Ca/Psubsurface and Ca/Ppowder were below 2.3, regardless of Ca/Psurface, suggesting that Ca/Ppowder and Ca/Psubsurface underestimate alteration. We next compared Ca/Psurface, CO3/PO4, and carbon (δ13C) and oxygen (δ18O) isotope values for the fossil teeth. Fourteen specimens were identified as altered or unaltered by both proxies, but six specimens only had one altered proxy. Specimens with both proxies altered had lower, less variable δ13C values than specimens with both proxies unaltered. Median δ18O values were similar between these groups. Individuals with altered Ca/Psurface but unaltered CO3/PO4 isotopically resembled specimens with both proxies altered. Conversely, specimens with unaltered Ca/Psurface and altered CO3/PO4 were similar to specimens with both proxies unaltered. Notably, all individuals with both proxies altered had relatively low δ13C values, including a horse and mammoth, which are normally considered grazers (and therefore should have higher δ13C values). These and other altered specimens may be isotopically compromised. Overall, our results suggest that Ca/Psurface is effective at detecting alteration non-destructively, quickly, and affordably, making it an attractive approach for analyzing unique specimens.
Student Achievement in Response to Intervention Groups

The purpose of this study was to identify components of Response to Intervention (RTI) groups associated with increased student growth on progress monitoring tests. The relationship between student growth scores and fidelity of implementation scores, types of groups, types of interventionists, group setting, group time, and various demographic groups were examined. Seven hundred fifteen students enrolled in reading and math groups in an RTI program at 8 schools in an Upper East Tennessee school system participated in this study. Ten research questions and null hypotheses were analyzed using Pearson correlations, independent t tests, and one-way Analyses of Variance. Results indicated significant gains for RTI students in every type of reading and math intervention group and every demographic population. These results contradicted current nationwide studies on RTI in which students made limited gains in intervention.
Influence of fear of COVID-19 on depression: The mediating effects of anxiety and the moderating effects of perceived social support and stress perception

Objective Explore the influence of fear of COVID-19 on depression, with anxiety as a mediator and perceived social support and stress perception as moderates. Methods From February to March 2020, 1,196 valid data were collected online through questionnaire by cluster sampling method. Fear of COVID-19 Questionnaire, the Patient Health Questionnaire 9-Item Scale (PHQ-9), the Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7-Item Scale (GAD-7), the Perceived Social Support Scale (PSSS) and the10-item Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10) were used as the survey instrument, and the participants were female undergraduates from a liberal arts college of a Chinese university. Common method bias was assessed using Harman’s single-factor test in SPSS and confirmatory factor analysis in AMOS. The levels of participants’ anxiety, depression and perceived social support were described using frequency and percentage, Pearson Correlation test was used to measure the correlation between the variables. The PROCESS macro for SPSS (Model 1, Model 4, and Model 21) were applied to examine the mediating effect and moderating effect of the model. Results Fear of COVID-19 can positively influence depression, anxiety plays a mediating role between fear of COVID-19 and depression, perceived social support negatively moderates the relationship between fear of COVID-19 and anxiety, and stress perception positively moderates the relationship between anxiety and depression. These five variables can form a moderated mediating effect model. Conclusion Fear of COVID-19, anxiety and stress perception are risk factors for depression, perceived social support is a protective factor for depression. Reducing the fear of COVID-19, anxiety and stress perception and enhancing perceived social support are beneficial to reduce the level of depression.
Analysis of rally point score system (set to 21 points) and time reduction of 15 seconds between serves in high-level men's volleyball: effects on the performance and dynamic of the volleyball game

Esta tesis doctoral tiene como objetivo primordial analizar y valorar el efecto de dos nuevas reglas introducidas en el voleibol en el ano 2013 – la del set de 21 puntos (excluyendo el quinto set), debiendo tener una ventaja de dos puntos al final del set, y la de los 15 segundos entre rallies o jugadas (dividiendose en 10 segundos despues del punto terminado hasta la senal del arbitro para realizar el saque, teniendo desde ese momento 5 segundos para ejecutar el saque) –. Estas reglas influyen sobre la dinamica de los partidos, en cuanto al saque, el tanteo en las partes finales del set, el tiempo de juego y descanso, y en los saltos, golpeos y contactos. El trabajo esta compuesto por cuatro estudios en los que se observa la influencia de estas nuevas reglas en los partidos de voleibol. Para poder llevarla a cabo se ha realizado la observacion de 12 equipos nacionales (Argentina, Australia, Brasil, Bulgaria, la Republica Dominicana, Egipto, Iran, Mexico, Rusia, Serbia, Tunez, y Venezuela), visualizandose y analizandose 36 partidos con 123 sets, en los cuales intervinieron 144 jugadores varones menores de 23 anos (M = 21.1±1.4 anos). El primer estudio incluye 4588 saques en situaciones reales de juego, el segundo estudio aborda las acciones realizadas para ganar puntos en las partes finales del set. Se han considerado 1335 acciones finales que dieron como resultado puntos ganadores. Se aplico la prueba de Chi-Cuadrado de Pearson para analizar los datos en estos dos primeros estudios. El tercer estudio trata de los tiempos de juego y descanso, analizandose 36 horas de partidos, divididos en 123 sets y 4583 puntos. Se han usado las pruebas ANOVA unidireccional y no parametricas de Kruskal-Wallis para el tratamiento estadistico. En el cuarto estudio se analizaron 25930 saltos, 15706 contactos y 10224 golpeos realizados por los jugadores. Se ha utilizado la prueba de Chi-Cuadrado de Pearson y las pruebas T-test y ANOVA unidireccional para probar la significacion entre las medias establecidas. Podemos decir que la aplicacion de estas nuevas reglas si condiciona el juego del voleibol desde diferentes perspectivas, revelando muchas diferencias significativas y que, ademas, su implantacion influye en los resultados de los partidos, siendo un elemento nuevo a la hora de considerar el entrenamiento del voleibol.
Drug funding decision-making in hospital formulary committees in Germany

BACKGROUND: Hospital formularies are usually the gatekeepers for pharmaceutical drugs. Typical majority members of hospital formularies are physicians, although most of the time the formulary is chaired by a pharmacist. As German hospitals are struggling with a difficult economic environment the question arises: what kind of decision-making criteria are applied when pharmaceutical drugs should be added to the formulary list? Information regarding this topic is scarce due to the sensitive topic of decision-making. OBJECTIVES: Build a single decision-making framework which will be created to explain hospital drug funding decision-making and identify underlying mechanisms which explain processes and structures. The results can be used by hospitals to initiate knowledge sharing and provide a basis to analyse local formulary committee decision-making practice. Additionally, they can be used by the pharmaceutical industry to better adapt to the specific needs of the hospital decision-makers. METHODS: In this study, a mixed-methods approach has been used to confirm and further detail a preliminary hospital formulary decision-making framework derived from literature. An online survey was used to get insights on the structure of German hospital formularies and the relative importance of different decision-criteria. Additional semi-structured expert interviews were used to get in-depth information on the underlying mechanisms which influence decision-making on drug funding. RESULTS: Decisions for or against a pharmaceutical drug are influenced by a variety of perceived objective and specifically subjective criteria. Despite a consistency in a dominant, high impact role of pharmacists and lead physicians every hospital formulary member has different relative weighting of decision criteria. Drug funding decision-making in German hospital formularies is highly individual but usually starts with a quasi-rational preference influenced by a mixture of analytic and intuitive criteria. The decision to use more analytic or more intuitive criteria is influenced by a variety of factors. The two most important ones are uncertainty and power. The resulting individual preference is then challenged and adapted in a group decision-making process.
Unpacking the Treatment Contrast in the Head Start Impact Study: To What Extent Does Assignment to Treatment Affect Quality of Care?

ABSTRACT Attending high-quality early childhood care and education (ECCE) is associated with higher cognitive and social-emotional skills, especially for children growing up in poverty, but access to high-quality ECCE is limited. This study capitalizes on the random assignment design of the Head Start Impact Study to better understand whether the randomized offer to attend Head Start, a free comprehensive child development program for low-income and at-risk children, raises the quality of ECCE in which children enroll. Multinomial logistic regression was used to isolate the intent-to-treat impacts of random assignment to Head Start on ECCE quality from impacts on enrollment in formal ECCE. Results indicate that children randomly assigned to receive Head Start (treatment), compared to children in the control group, were more likely to enroll in high-quality and, to a lesser extent, low-quality ECCE. Treatment impacts were largest at the high end of the quality distribution, were driven by increased enrollment in Head Start, and differed for 3- and 4-year-olds. These results highlight the important role of Head Start in providing high-quality ECCE for low-income children.
The establishment of an infectivity assay for human parvovirus B19 to investigate the efficacy of protocols for the inactivation of pathogens from plasma products.

Abstract Erythrovirus B19 is the only parvovirus known to cause disease in humans and represents a concern in transfusion medicine since several blood products were shown to contain B19 despite various inactivation steps and some products have even transmitted viral infection. The aim of the study was to establish a reliable and reproducible infectivity assay that could be used to evaluate the efficiency of viral removal/inactivation methods. This assay was based on the detection of B 19-specific mRNA transcripts from susceptible cells inoculated with virus: the human leukaemic cell line UT-7/EPO-S1. B19 DNA concentrations were also determined using an optimised quantitative real-time PCR assay. Both assays were used to assess the efficacy of one virus removal method, nanofiltration, and four virus inactivation techniques, dry heating treatment, supercritical fluids, INACTINETM system and Helinx® technology. Nanofiltration of a spiked solution of 0.5% albumin with 15N and 20N filters resulted in the removal of more than logio 5 and logio 6 of infectious B19, respectively. Dry heat treatment of factor VIE showed a reduction of infectivity greater than logio 2 after 24 hours and below the limit of detection of the assay after 72 hours. The treatment of plasma with the SuperFluidsTM system removed more than logio 5 infectious viruses. Two chemicals methods used novel small molecules which target and crosslink nucleic acids: PEN 110 (INACTINETM system) and Psoralen S-59 (Helinx® technology). Treatment of red cells with PEN 110 showed a reduction of infectivity below the detection limit while platelet concentrates treated with S-59 resulted in a reduction greater than logio 5. Although chemical methods can be used on cells which do not have a nucleus (red cells and platelets), they also introduce potential toxicity. In contrast, physical methods of removal and inactivation are less toxic but would damage 8 . Abstract red cells and platelets. Overall, this research work allowed the establishment of a reproducible infectivity assay that was successfully used to perform preliminary studies on the efficacy of various viral removal/inactivation methods.
Demographic determinants of patient satisfaction among hypertensive and patients with diabetes in primary health care centers, Jeddah -

Background: Patient satisfaction has been widely investigated in health care research as an indicator of the quality of care. It has been viewed as an important tool for assessment of the level of care from the patient's perspective. Objectives: The objective of the study was to explore the degree of chronic patients’ satisfaction towards services provided through the primary health care (PHC) centers in Jeddah city and to determine the demographic characteristics of the patients that might affect their overall perception of satisfaction about the provided services. Material and Methods: A cross-sectional design was adopted where 400 chronic disease patients were selected randomly from eight centers where they were invited to fill predesigned questionnaire prepared to assess their satisfaction about the health services. Results: The overall satisfaction score accounted for 3.7/5 which approximate to 74%, and the highest scores were reported for their satisfaction about the performance and behavior of nurses and physicians. Monthly income was the significant determinant for overall satisfaction; the highest is the income the lowest is the level of satisfaction. Among other determinants which showed statistical significance with satisfaction subscales were age and educational level of with easiness of access to the center; the older patient is more satisfied than the younger one while the highest is the educational level the lowest is the level of satisfaction. Conclusion: Patients with chronic disease are remarkably satisfied about the services provided in PHC centers in Jeddah; and the level of satisfaction is influenced significantly by the age, educational level, and monthly income.
Evaluating Cost Sharing Measures in Public Primary Units in Greece: Cost Sharing Measures in Primary Care

The mission of this paper is to investigate the economic viability and the workload imposed on nurses of the introduction of a cost sharing mechanism â¬5/visit in public primary health care units. The Ministry of Health provided administrative data for 2011 and 2012. Results highlighted the economic viability of the introduction of a cost sharing mechanism in Outpatient Departments of NHS Hospitals, as an annual economic benefit of â¬11.5 mil was reported. On the other hand, an annual deficit of â¬1.4 mil was estimated for Health Centers. Moreover, in the majority of Health Centers, nurses were put under altering employment in order to collect the fees. In times of economic recession, such as currently the case in Greece, negative consequences of cost sharing mechanisms may outweigh the positive ones. The decision on whether or not to introduce cost sharing arrangements is largely a political one and many factors e.g. accessibility, equity, clinical outcomes have to be taken into account, apart from economic results.
SuperCLASS – II. Photometric redshifts and characteristics of spatially resolved μJy radio sources

We present optical and near-infrared imaging covering a ∼1.53 deg2 region in the Super-Cluster Assisted Shear Survey (SuperCLASS) field, which aims to make the first robust weak lensing measurement at radio wavelengths. We derive photometric redshifts for ≈176 000 sources down to $i^\prime _{\rm AB}\sim 24$ and present photometric redshifts for 1.4 GHz expanded Multi-Element Radio Linked Interferometer Network (e-MERLIN) and Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) detected radio sources found in the central 0.26 deg2. We compile an initial catalogue of 149 radio sources brighter than S1.4 > 75 μJy and find their photometric redshifts span 0 < zphot < 4 with radio luminosities between 1021 and 1025 W Hz−1, with medians of $\langle z \rangle \, =0.55$ and $\langle L_{1.4}\rangle \, =1.9\times 10^{23}$ W Hz−1, respectively. We find 95 per cent of the μJy radio source sample (141/149) have spectral energy distributions (SEDs) best fit by star-forming templates while 5 per cent (8/149) are better fit by active galactic nuclei (AGN). Spectral indices are calculated for sources with radio observations from the VLA and Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) at 325 MHz, with an average spectral slope of α = 0.59 ± 0.04. Using the full photometric redshift catalogue, we construct a density map at the redshift of the known galaxy clusters, z = 0.20 ± 0.08. Four of the five clusters are prominently detected at $\gt 7\, \sigma$ in the density map and we confirm the photometric redshifts are consistent with previously measured spectra from a few galaxies at the cluster centres.
Exclusion Criteria In The Dasision and Enestnd Trials: Which Could Their Impact Be On The Front-Line Treatment Of a “Real-life” Patient Population With Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia?

The DASISION and ENESTnd controlled clinical trials have changed the front-line treatment of Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia (CML) leading to the advent of dasatinib and nilotinib in this setting: however, both these company-sponsored trials had many exclusion criteria, with a possible selection bias compared to the real-life CML population. To address the impact of these exclusion criteria on the 1st line treatment in the current clinical practice, we revised 207 unselected newly diagnosed chronic phase CML patients [M/F 108/99, median age 58.8 years, interquartile range (IR) 42.3 – 70.2] treated with front-line imatinib from June 2002 to June 2013 at our Institution and evaluated how many of them would have been excluded from enrolment in the 2 trials. Among these 207 patients, 28 patients should have been excluded by both trials due to polycomorbidities (12 cases), severe cardiopathy (5 cases), age > 80 with frailty (3 cases), drug abuse (2 cases), severe liver impairment, Rendu-Osler disease, active prostatic cancer, chronic obstructive broncopulmonar disease (COPD) + peripheral arterial obstructive disease (PAOD), COPD + arrhythmia, refusal to any marrow examination (1 case each). In addition, 8 patients should have been considered not eligible only for the DASISION due to isolated COPD and 19 patients should have been considered not eligible only for the ENESTnd due to isolated diabetes (10 cases), arrhythmia (4 cases), acute myocardial infarction > 6 months before CML diagnosis (2 cases), chronic pancreatic disease (2 cases), PAOD (1 case). On the whole, 36/207 patients (17.4%) would have been considered not eligible for the DASISION trial and 47/207 (22.7%) for the ENESTnd trial. As expected, these patients potentially not eligible for DASISION and ENESTnd were significantly older and with the imatinib treatment had a worse follow-up in terms of Complete Cytogenetic Response (CCyR), Major Molecular Response (MMolR) and Overall Survival (OS) compared to patients potentially eligible, as shown in the [Table][1]. View this table: In conclusion, our data highlight that an important fraction of newly diagnosed patients in a real-life setting would have been excluded by the 2 controlled trials whose results are the current mainstay of the 1st line treatment in CML: thus, an automatic transposition of those results into the current clinical practice should be regarded with caution. Disclosures: No relevant conflicts of interest to declare. [1]: #T1
Evaluating Low-Resource Machine Translation between Chinese and Vietnamese with Back-Translation

Back translation (BT) has been widely used and become one of standard techniques for data augmentation in Neural Machine Translation (NMT), BT has proven to be helpful for improving the performance of translation effectively, especially for low-resource scenarios. While most works related to BT mainly focus on European languages, few of them study languages in other areas around the world. In this paper, we investigate the impacts of BT on Asia language translations between the extremely low-resource Chinese and Vietnamese language pair. We evaluate and compare the effects of different sizes of synthetic data on both NMT and Statistical Machine Translation (SMT) models for Chinese to Vietnamese and Vietnamese to Chinese, with character-based and word-based settings. Some conclusions from previous works are partially confirmed and we also draw some other interesting findings and conclusions, which are beneficial to understand BT further.
The Rarity of Repeating Fast Radio Bursts from Binary Neutron Star Mergers

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are extragalactic, bright pulses of emission at radio frequencies with millisecond durations. Observationally, FRBs can be divided into two classes, repeating FRBs and non-repeating FRBs. At present, 20 repeating FRBs have been discovered with unknown physical origins. Localization of the first repeating FRB 121102 and discovery of an associated persistent radio source support that FRBs are powered by young millisecond magnetars, which could be formed by the core-collapses of massive stars or binary neutron star (BNS) mergers. These two formation channels can be distinguished by the gravitational waves generated by BNSs mergers. We first calculate the lower limit of the local formation rate of repeating FRBs observed by the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME). Then we show that only a small fraction (6%) of repeating FRBs are produced by young magnetars from BNS mergers, based on the gravitational-wave detections by the third observing run (O3) of the Advanced LIGO/Virgo gravitational-wave detectors. Therefore, we believe that repeating FRBs are more likely produced by newborn magnetars newborn from the core-collapses of massive stars rather than magnetars from BNS mergers.