Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evaluation and Improvement of the Nurse Satisfactory Status in a Tertiary Hospital using the Professional Practice Environment Scale

Background The present study was performed to quantitatively examine nurse satisfaction, to investigate the associated factors influencing satisfaction, and to evaluate the effect of improvement measures based on these factors. Material/Methods A survey using the 38-item Chinese version of the Practice Environment Scale (CPPE-38) was performed in a university-affiliated tertiary hospital in Shanghai, China in 2013. Linear regression analysis was performed to screen for associated factors related to each CPPE-3 score and the total satisfaction score. Several improvement measures were established to improve nurse satisfaction, and the CPPE-38 survey was again performed in 2015 to evaluate the effect of these improvement measures. Results A total of 1,050 respondents were recruited in 2013, with a response rate of 87.6%. The total satisfaction score of the CPPE-38 was 2.99±0.64. The lowest score in a subscale of the CPPE-38 was 2.40±0.59 for interpersonal interaction and the highest score was 3.15±0.40 for internal work motivation. Work location was associated with scores for work motivation and total satisfaction, while the highest education degree was associated with scores for internal relationship and autonomy. The scores for internal work motivation, control over practice, interpersonal interaction, and internal relationship and autonomy were significantly improved in 2015 after two years of improvement efforts, while the total satisfaction score was not significantly different compared to the 2013 score. Conclusions Working location and education degree were two factors correlated with CPPE-38 scores in our hospital. Humanistic concerns, continuing education, and pay raise may improve the practice satisfaction of nurses.
Performance Evaluation of Superposition Coding in Downlink LTE

In this paper, two issues in assessing the performance of superposition coding (SC) in the downlink Long Term Evolution (LTE) are investigated. The first issue is the prediction of user's signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) at the scheduler based on the user's channel state information (CSI) feedback, when the actual transmission scheme is different from the scheme used for CSI computation. Prediction of the SINR value is needed for the assignment of the modulation order and the code rate. The second issue is with regards to the physical layer abstraction used for modeling the system-level performance of the SC scheme on the basis of the link-level simulation results. With the physical layer abstraction, the complexity of the system level simulation is reduced significantly.
Using Markov Logic to Refine an Automatically Extracted Knowledge Base

A number of information extraction (IE) projects such as NELL and TextRunner seek to build a usable knowledge base from the rapidly growing amount of information on the web. However, these solutions use heuristic approaches to reasoning rather than sound probabilistic inference. In this paper, we present a method based on Markov logic for cleaning an automatically extracted knowledge base using only the confidence values and ontological constraints of the original system. Our approach works by reasoning jointly over all candidate facts. To achieve scalability, we introduce a neighborhood grounding method that only instantiates the part of the network most relevant to the given query. This allows us to partition the knowledge cleaning task into tractable pieces that can be solved individually. In experiments on NELL’s knowledge base, our method improves both F1 and AUC.
Characterizing tenant behavior for placement and crisis mitigation in multitenant DBMSs

A multitenant database management system (DBMS) in the cloud must continuously monitor the trade-off between efficient resource sharing among multiple application databases (tenants) and their performance. Considering the scale of \attn{hundreds to} thousands of tenants in such multitenant DBMSs, manual approaches for continuous monitoring are not tenable. A self-managing controller of a multitenant DBMS faces several challenges. For instance, how to characterize a tenant given its variety of workloads, how to reduce the impact of tenant colocation, and how to detect and mitigate a performance crisis where one or more tenants' desired service level objective (SLO) is not achieved. We present Delphi, a self-managing system controller for a multitenant DBMS, and Pythia, a technique to learn behavior through observation and supervision using DBMS-agnostic database level performance measures. Pythia accurately learns tenant behavior even when multiple tenants share a database process, learns good and bad tenant consolidation plans (or packings), and maintains a pertenant history to detect behavior changes. Delphi detects performance crises, and leverages Pythia to suggests remedial actions using a hill-climbing search algorithm to identify a new tenant placement strategy to mitigate violating SLOs. Our evaluation using a variety of tenant types and workloads shows that Pythia can learn a tenant's behavior with more than 92% accuracy and learn the quality of packings with more than 86% accuracy. During a performance crisis, Delphi is able to reduce 99th percentile latencies by 80%, and can consolidate 45% more tenants than a greedy baseline, which balances tenant load without modeling tenant behavior.
Antimicrobial targets localize to the extracellular vesicle-associated proteome of Pseudomonas aeruginosa grown in a biofilm

Microbial biofilms are particularly resistant to antimicrobial therapies. These surface-attached communities are protected against host defenses and pharmacotherapy by a self-produced matrix that surrounds and fortifies them. Recent proteomic evidence also suggests that some bacteria, including the opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa, undergo modifications within a biofilm that make them uniquely resistant compared to their planktonic (free-living) counterparts. This study examines 50 proteins in the resistance subproteome of both surface-associated and free-living P. aeruginosa PAO1 over three time points. Proteins were grouped into categories based on their roles in antimicrobial: (i) binding, (ii) eﬄux, (iii) resistance, and (iv) susceptibility. In addition, the extracellular outer membrane vesicle-associated proteome is examined and compared between the two growth modes. We show that in whole cells between 12–24% of the proteins are present at significantly different abundance levels over time, with some proteins being unique to a specific growth mode; however, the total abundance levels in the four categories remain consistent. In contrast, marked differences are seen in the protein content of the outer membrane vesicles, which contain a greater number of drug-binding proteins in vesicles purified from late-stage biofilms. These results show how the method of analysis can impact the interpretation of proteomic data (i.e., individual proteins vs. systems), and highlight the advantage of using protein-based methods to identify potential antimicrobial resistance mechanisms in extracellular sample components. Furthermore, this information has the potential to inform the development of specific antipseudomonal therapies that quench possible drug-sequestering vesicle proteins. This strategy could serve as a novel approach for combating the high-level of antimicrobial resistance in P. aeruginosa biofilms.
Component-Based Lock Allocation

The allocation of lock objects to critical sections in concurrent programs affects both performance and correctness. Recent work explores automatic lock allocation, aiming primarily to minimize conflicts and maximize parallelism by allocating locks to individual critical section interferences. We investigate component-based lock allocation, which allocates locks to entire groups of interfering critical sections. Our allocator depends on a thread-based side effect analysis, and benefits from precise points-to and may happen in parallel information. Thread-local object information has a small impact, and dynamic locks do not improve significantly on static locks. We experiment with a range of small and large Java benchmarks on 2-way, 4-way, and 8-way machines, and find that a single static lock is sufficient for mtrt, that performance degrades by 10% for hsqldb, that jbb2000 becomes mostly serialized, and that for lusearch, xalan, and jbb2005, component-based lock allocation recovers the performance of the original program.
Accurate estimation of the time-of-arrival of partial discharge pulses in cable systems in service

Accurate location of the origins of partial discharges in power cable systems, based on arrival times, is imperative for the identification and assessment of defects. This paper evaluates different time-of-arrival algorithms in order to determine which method yields most accurate location under different circumstances. These methods are based on trigger level, Akaike Information Criterion, energy criterion, Gabor's signal centroid and phase in frequency domain. Several criteria are defined by which the algorithms are evaluated. These criteria include the sensitivity to noise, pulse shape and effect of load impedance. The sensitivity of the methods upon varying these quantities is evaluated analytically and by means of simulations. Further, the methods are tested on a medium-voltage cable system by injecting PD pulses in a cable with one joint. Each algorithm is applied to the measured pulses and the resulting location is compared with the known joint location. From the results the energy criterion method and the phase method show the best performance.
A useful methodological synergy? Combining critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics to examine discourses of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK press

This article discusses the extent to which methods normally associated with corpus linguistics can be effectively used by critical discourse analysts. Our research is based on the analysis of a 140-million-word corpus of British news articles about refugees, asylum seekers, immigrants and migrants (collectively RASIM). We discuss how processes such as collocation and concordance analysis were able to identify common categories of representation of RASIM as well as directing analysts to representative texts in order to carry out qualitative analysis. The article suggests a framework for adopting corpus approaches in critical discourse analysis.
Addressing the Impacts of Climate Change on U.S. Army Alaska with Decision Support Tools Developed Through Field Work and Modeling

Abstract : The U.S. Army is the largest DoD land user in Alaska overseeing 1.5 million acres of training range and cantonment lands.Some of the training ranges are inaccessible by road and planned infrastructure over the next 10 years will greatly expand the DoDs presence and capabilities in Alaska. The area is underlain by a complex mosaic of discontinuous permafrost and its presence (or absence) plays a major role in soil thermal, hydrologic, and vegetation regimes. A projected 1 to 3 C increase in mean annual air temperatures in the area between now and 2100 is expected to have major ramifications on ecosystem and hydrologic processes. To identify the potential impacts of climate warming on U.S. Army Alaska training lands and to provide land managers with scientifically based information to help them plan for a warmer future we conducted this four year study.We combined field measurements at a variety of spatial and temporal scales with thermal, hydrologic, and ecosystem transitions modeling efforts to be able to apply the point scale nature of our field measurements across a broader region. Our results were linked with a broad array of historical and projected meteorological and climatological information to develop a geospatial decision support system to help DoD manage their lands in a potentially warmer future.
Duration modeling techniques for continuous speech recognition

Phone durations play a significant part in the comprehension of speech. The duration information is still mostly disregarded in automatic speech recognizers due to the use of hidden Markov models (HMMs) which are deficient in modeling phone durations properly. Previous results have shown that using different approaches for explicit duration modeling have improved the isolated word recognition in English. However, a unified comparison between the methods has not been reported. In this paper three techniques for explicit duration modeling are compared and evaluated in a large vocabulary continuous speech recognition task. The target language was Finnish, in which phone durations are especially important for proper understanding. The results show that the choice of the duration modeling technique depends on the speed requirements of the recognizer. The best technique required a slightly longer running time than without an explicit duration model, but achieved an 8% relative improvement to the letter error rate.
Approximating power indices

The height of a continuous tobacco stream between a first side which is supported by a conveyor and an uneven second side is monitored by an opto-electrical level detector which directs a row of parallel light rays transversely across the stream and has a battery of photosensitive elements at different distances from the first side of the stream so that each element produces a signal in response to impingement of a different light ray upon its photosensitive surface. The number of elements which generate signals is indicative of the height of the stream portion advancing past the level detector. Such signals can be utilized to adjust a trimming device which removes the surplus at the second side of the stream before the thus equalized stream enters a wrapping mechanism to be converted into a cigarette rod which is thereupon severed to yield discrete cigarettes.
Spatial Distribution of Carotid Intimal‐Medial Thickness as Measured by B‐Mode Ultrasonography

Measurements of intimal-medial thickness (IMT) of the carotid artery by B-mode ultrasonography are widely used as markers of atherosclerosis. This report describes empirical features of these measurements to characterize their distribution within arterial wall segments, to explore their potential as study outcome measures, and to examine their links with traditional risk factors for cardiovascular disease. Methods Sequential transverse measurements of IMT in the carotid arteries were made in 899 participants from the Asymptomatic Carotid Artery Progression Study (ACAPS) at baseline. Data from 17 intrasegment sites in each of 12 arterial wall segments were used to describe patterns of thickness and visualization and to characterize cross-sectional area, severity, and roughness/irregularity by the intrasegment averages, maxima, and SDs of IMT, respectively. Results Serial correlations of IMT measurements indicated localized and diffuse features of disease. The spatial distribution of IMT had two dominant features: overall mass and mass relative to roughness. The validity of these features was demonstrated by their correlation to known risk factors for carotid atherosclerosis: body mass index, age, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, systolic blood pressure, smoking, and sex. Conclusions Both the mean and maxima of intrasegment measurements appear to be good candidates for use in clinical studies. B-mode ultrasonography has validity for the description of IMT roughness and shape. Both of these features are linked to cardiovascular risk factors, which supports the multifaceted nature of atherosclerosis.
A Survey of Academic and Commercial Approaches to Transaction Support in Mobile Computing Environments

The need for information access and processing in mobile computing environments presents great challenges to database researchers. Apart from advances in wireless communications and device technology, new data management techniques are needed to provide a transparent interaction between fixed and mobile devices in global information systems. A key aspect is to provide a flexible and powerful transaction processing infrastructure that takes into account the peculiarities of mobile computing. Mobile transaction processing shall be able to transparently deal with frequent disconnections and occasional movements of mobile devices. This paper surveys the mobile transaction models proposed in academia and outlines the state-of-the-art of transaction processing in commercial mobile databases.
Drug-related causes of death: Socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of the deceased

Aim: The aim of this study was to describe subgroups of those who died from a drug-related cause of death employing demographic and socioeconomic data. Methods: A total of 1,628 persons with registered drug-related deaths in the Norwegian Cause of Death Registry between 2003 and 2009 were matched with research registers of data on demographic and socioeconomic factors during the five years prior to their deaths. Results: Three equal-sized clusters were identified: persons with very low socioeconomic status, disability pensioners and people on the edge of the workforce. Conclusions: Socioeconomic situation prior to drug-related deaths was more heterogeneous than expected. Greater knowledge about the members of the disability pensioner and the edge of the workforce clusters must be established in order to make prevention efforts towards these groups more precise and goal oriented.
GC assertions: using the garbage collector to check heap properties

This paper introduces GC assertions, a system interface that programmers can use to check for errors, such as data structure invariant violations, and to diagnose performance problems, such as memory leaks. GC assertions are checked by the garbage collector, which is in a unique position to gather information and answer questions about the lifetime and connectivity of objects in the heap. We introduce several kinds of GC assertions, and we describe how they are implemented in the collector. We also describe our reporting mechanism, which provides a complete path through the heap to the offending objects. We show results for one type of assertion that allows the programmer to indicate that an object should be reclaimed at the next GC. We find that using this assertion we can quickly identify a memory leak and its cause with negligible overhead.
Nerve growth cones isolated from fetal rat brain. II. Cyclic adenosine 3':5'-monophosphate (cAMP)-binding proteins and cAMP-dependent protein phosphorylation

Cyclic adenosine 3′:5′-monophosphate (cAMP)-binding proteins and cAMP- dependent protein phosphorylation were examined in growth cone particles (GCPs) prepared from fetal rat brain. Several major proteins which specifically bind a photoactivatable analogue of cAMP are observed in GCPs and correspond to isoelectric variants of the regulatory subunits of the cAMP-dependent protein kinase described in adult brain. We found no evidence for differential compartmentalization of specific cAMP-binding proteins in subcellular fractions of fetal brain or within GCPs. cAMP-stimulated phosphoproteins of GCPs are similar to cAMP-dependent protein kinase substrates characterized in nerve terminals (synaptosomes) of adult brain and include the nerve terminal-specific protein, synapsin I. However, as shown in the companion paper (Katz, F., L. Ellis, and K. H. Pfenninger (1985) J. Neurosci. 5: 1402–1411), this synaptic phosphoprotein is not the major kinase substrate in the GCP fraction. The finding of synapsin I in a subcellular fraction prepared from fetal brain suggests that components of the mature nerve terminal are already present in fetal brain during neuronal sprouting and prior to synaptogenesis.
Characterization of porcine cytokine inducible SH2-containing protein gene and its association with piglet diarrhea traits

Objective The cytokine inducible SH2-containing protein (CISH), which might play a role in porcine intestine immune responses, was one of the promising candidate genes for piglet anti-disease traits. An experiment was conducted to characterize the porcine CISH (pCISH) gene and to evaluate its genetic effects on pig anti-disease breeding. Methods Both reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and PCR were performed to obtain the sequence of pCISH gene. A pEGFP-C1-CISH vector was constructed and transfected into PK-15 cells to analysis the distribution of pCISH. The sequences of individuals were compared with each other to find the polymorphisms in pCISH gene. The association analysis was performed in Min pigs and Landrace pigs to evaluate the genetic effects on piglet diarrhea traits. Results In the present research, the coding sequence and genomic sequence of pCISH gene was obtained. Porcine CISH was mainly localized in cytoplasm. TaqI and HaeIII PCR restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) assays were established to detect single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs); A-1575G in promoter region and A2497C in Intron1, respectively. Association studies indicated that SNP A-1575G was significantly associated with diarrhea index of Min piglets (p<0.05) and SNP A2497C was significantly associated with the diarrhea trait of both Min pig and Landrace piglets (p<0.05). Conclusion This study suggested that the pCISH gene might be a novel candidate gene for pig anti-disease traits, and further studies are needed to confirm the results of this preliminary research.
Estimation of vegetation canopy leaf area index and fraction of absorbed photosynthetically active radiation from atmosphere‐corrected MISR data

The multiangle imaging spectroradiometer (MISR) instrument is designed to provide global imagery at nine discrete viewing angles and four visible/near-infrared spectral bands. This paper describes an algorithm for the retrieval of leaf area index (LAI) and fraction of photosynthetically active radiation absorbed by vegetation (FPAR) from atmospherically corrected MISR data. The proposed algorithm is designed to utilize all the information provided by this instrument, using a two-step process. The first step involves a comparison of the retrieved spectral hemispherically integrated reflectances with those determined from the model which depend on biome type, canopy structure, and soil/understory reflectances. The biome/canopy/soil/understory models that pass this comparison test are subject to the second step, which is a comparison of their directional reflectances at the MISR angles to the retrieved spectral directional reflectances. This procedure, however, can produce multiple acceptable solutions. The measure theory is used to specify the most probable values of LAI and FPAR using the set of all acceptable solutions. Optimization of the retrieval technique for efficient global processing is discussed. This paper is the second of a two-part set describing a synergistic algorithm for producing global LAI and FPAR fields from canopy reflectance data provided by the MODIS (moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer) and MISR instruments.