Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Does the patient-centred medical home work? A critical synthesis of research on patient-centred medical homes and patient-related outcomes

Health-care systems in the USA and most of western Europe face challenges in the coordination and integration of care for patients, particularly those with chronic conditions. In response to these problems, interest in the patient-centred medical home (PCMH) model has increased significantly in recent years in the USA, with PCMH implementation underway in a wide variety of pratice settings across the country. Despite this enthusiasm, there have been relatively few attempts to examine the empirical evidence on the effects of PCMH on quality and access-related outcomes for patients. This article reviews findings from empirical evaluations of the effects of PCMH on patient-related outcomes and critically examines methodological and conceptual issues in the growing body of PCMH literature. The results of this review suggest that published evaluations are predominantly weighted towards findings that indicate that PCMH is associated with a wide range of positive patient outcomes. However, methodological and measurement issues present in much of this research should be considered when evaluating these findings. The article concludes with recommendations for future PCMH evaluation.
The handbook of social work direct practice

Introduction PART ONE: THE CONTEXT OF PRACTICE The Context of Social Work Practice - Robert Fisher and Howard Karger Legal Issues in Practice - Robert G Madden The Role of Critical Thinking in Evidence-Based Social Work - Eileen Gambrill The Concepts of Levels and Systems in Social Work - John E Tropman and Katherine E Richards-Schuster PART TWO: FRAMEWORKS FOR PRACTICE Prevention - Mark Fraser, Karen Randolph and M Daniel Bennett A Risk and Resilience Perspective Empowerment-Oriented Practice - Enid O Cox and Ruth J Parsons From Practice Value to Practice Model Multicultural Perspectives on Direct Practice in Social Work - Michael Spencer, Edith Lewis and Lorraine Gutierrez Feminist Social Work Practice - Mary Bricker-Jenkins Womanly Warrior or Damsel in Distress? PART THREE: APPROACHES TO CHANGE Thinking Differently - Sharon B Berlin and Jane E Barden The Cognitive-Integrative Approach to Changing a Mind Approaches to Behavioral Change - Bruce A Thyer and Laura L Myers Affective Change - Joseph A Himle Depression and Anxiety Disorders Adult Change - William J Reid and Elizabeth Misener Individual Change in Children and Direct Social Work Practice - Kathleen Coulborn Faller Change in Groups - David E Pollio, Aaron M Brower and Maeda J Galinsky Advances in Family Therapy - Froma Walsh and Carmen Crosser Theory and Practice Crisis Intervention Practices in Social Work Settings - Albert R Roberts and Jacqui Corcoran Coping - Paula S Nurius Social Work Practice in the Social Environment - Marie Weil Integrated Practice - An Empowerment/Structural Approach PART FOUR: FIELDS OF PRACTICE Direct Practice in Fields Related to Development Tasks - Edith M Freeman A Life-Span Perspective The New World of Practice in Physical and Mental Health - Lonnie R Snowden Comorbidity, Cultural Competence and Managed Care The Juvenile Justice System in Crises - Rosemary C Sarri Challenges and Opportunities for Social Workers Social Work Practice with Lesbians and Gay Men - John F Longres and Karen I Fredriksen Practice in the World of Work - Sheila H Akabas Promise Unrealized Social Work Practice Issues Related to Poverty and Homelessness - Elizabeth A Segal and Layne K Stromwall PART FIVE: RESEARCH AND EMPIRICAL ISSUES Pragmatic Applications of Single Case and Group Designs in Social Work Practice Evaluation and Research - Neil Abell and Walter H Hudson Assessment and Measurement Issues in Direct Practice in Social Work - Betty Blythe and Anita Reithoffer Computer-Mediated Communications in Direct Social Work Practice - Marilyn Flynn PART FIVE: PROFESSIONAL ISSUES Ethical Issues in Direct Practice - Frederic G Reamer Supervision Standards of Practice in an Era of Societal Restructuring - Carlton E Munson International Perspectives on Social Work Practice - Doreen Elliott and Nazneen S Mayadas Fundraising for the Direct Services - Armand Lauffer Conclusion
A Survey of Literature Regarding the Multiple Access Channel and Broadcast Channel with Noiseless Feedback

This report is a survey of currently known literature with respect to noiseless (“perfect”) feedback (FB) for the multi–user access channel (MAC, “MISO”) and broadcast channel (BC, “SIMO”), for both the discrete memoryless (DM) case as well as for the additive white gaussian noise (AWGN) case. A motivating example is the FB uplink from a controlling ground terminal to a satellite, where for all practical purposes the signal power can completely dominate the noise and hence the link can be viewed as noiseless. A review of literature on noiseless FB in information theory is provided in the next section. The MAC achievable rates as found in [1] and [2] will be discussed in Section 2.1. The BC achievable rates as found in [3] will be discussed in Section 2.2. Complete determination of the capacity region of some MACs and BCs with FB remain an open problem, e.g. the inner and outer bounds do not coincide.
Image Space Rendering of Point Clouds Using the HPR Operator

The hidden point removal (HPR) operator introduced by Katz et al. [KTB07] provides an elegant solution for the problem of estimating the visibility of points in point samplings of surfaces. Since the method requires computing the three‐dimensional convex hull of a set with the same cardinality as the original cloud, the method has been largely viewed as impractical for real‐time rendering of medium to large clouds. In this paper we examine how the HPR operator can be used more efficiently by combining several image space techniques, including an approximate convex hull algorithm, cloud sampling, and GPU programming. Experiments show that this combination permits faster renderings without overly compromising the accuracy.
Design and kinematic analysis of a neurosurgical spring-based continuum robot using SMA spring actuators

Brain tumor, be it primary or metastatic, is usually life threatening for a person at any age. The risks involved in carrying out surgery within a brain can cause severe anxiety in patients. However, primary surgical resection which is one of the most effective ways of treating brain tumors can have a tremendously increased success rate if the appropriate imaging modality is used for complete tumor resection. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is the imaging modality of choice for brain tumor imaging because of its excellent soft-tissue contrast. MRI combined with continuum soft robotics has immense potential to be the next major technological breakthrough in the field of brain cancer diagnosis and therapy. In this work, we present the design and kinematic analysis of a flexible spring-based minimally invasive neurosurgical intracranial robot (MINIR-II). It is comprised of an inter-connected inner spring and an outer spring to enable motion in three dimensions (3D). Our design provides improved dexterity with higher degrees of freedom (DoFs) and independent joint control because of the centrally routed tendon configuration. Since the robot itself is made of plastic (except the electrocautery probes and SMA spring actuators), it is MRI-compatible and allows surgeons to track the real-time location of the robot in the brain and to reach the brain tumor target. The inter-connected spring and the outer spring are manufactured individually in a single piece using rapid prototyping technology at low cost to make it disposable after single use. Our three-segment robot has two DoFs at each segment with both joints controlled by two pairs of MRI-compatible SMA spring actuators. We also present a detailed kinematic analysis of the robot, simulation of the robot motion, and experimental evaluation of the robot motion using vision feedback.
Correlates of placental infection with cytomegalovirus, parvovirus B19 or human herpes virus 7

Vertical transmission of viruses is an important cause of morbidity in the fetus and neonate. Placental viral infection indicates risk of vertical transmission, but not always transmission to, or disease of the fetus. Specimens from mothers and babies from three groups—two prospective and one retrospective cohort—were tested for pathogens of teratogenic potential using multiplex PCR. Placental infection was present in 13% of the 105 samples collected. Assessment of the prospective cohorts showed cytomegalovirus (CMV) detected in 4% of placentae from unselected women, parvovirus B19 in 1% and Ureaplasma parvum in 1% of placentae. In a retrospective cohort of women at high risk of transmitting congenital infection due to seroconversion during pregnancy, miscarriage or stillbirth, CMV was detected in 64% and human herpes virus type 7 in 9% of placentae. Of 14 PCR‐positive placentae, two were associated with the birth of a living symptomatic infant, two with stillbirth, one with miscarriage, and two with elective terminations of pregnancy. Directed laboratory assessment of women at high risk of transmitting congenital infection, on the basis of clinical or laboratory markers, is important for accurate diagnosis of adverse outcomes of pregnancy. However, routine screening for viruses in the placentae from women with a low‐risk serological profile for transmitting congenital infection is unlikely to result in significant numbers of additional diagnoses and is confounded by inadequacy of current diagnostic methods. The major pathogen detected in all cases of placental infection associated with fetal death was human CMV. J. Med. Virol. 78:747–756, 2006. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Hopsets with Constant Hopbound, and Applications to Approximate Shortest Paths

A (β, ∈)-hopset for a weighted undirected n-vertex graph G = (V, E) is a set of edges, whose addition to the graph guarantees that every pair of vertices has a path between them that contains at most β edges, whose length is within 1 + ∈ of the shortest path. In her seminal paper, Cohen [8, JACM 2000] introduced the notion of hopsets in the context of parallel computation of approximate shortest paths, and since then it has found numerous applications in various other settings, such as dynamic graph algorithms, distributed computing, and the streaming model. Cohen [8] devised efficient algorithms for constructing hopsets with polylogarithmic in n number of hops. Her constructions remain the state-of-the-art since the publication of her paper in STOC'94, i.e., for more than two decades. In this paper we exhibit the first construction of sparse hopsets with a constant number of hops. We also find efficient algorithms for hopsets in various computational settings, improving the best known constructions. Generally, our hopsets strictly outperform the hopsets of [8], both in terms of their parameters, and in terms of the resources required to construct them. We demonstrate the applicability of our results for the fundamental problem of computing approximate shortest paths from s sources. Our results improve the running time for this problem in the parallel, distributed and streaming models, for a vast range of s.
A Novel Image Encryption Approach using Matrix Reordering

Transmission and storage of multimedia data like audio, video, and images over the Internet has increased in today's digital communication. Among the different multimedia data, images are transmitted and used very often. It is essential to protect the multimedia data from unauthorized disclosure during transmit. A novel approach for encrypting digital images using Matrix Reordering (MR), a kind of scanning, and simple XOR operation is proposed in this paper. The MR is applied to permute the pixel positions and the XOR operation is done to diffuse the pixel values. The bitwise XOR operation is performed using pseudorandom numbers generated by the linear congruential method. The image encryption algorithm evaluation parameters such as histogram, correlation, cut test, dispersion test, visual testing, and speed test have been conducted using the suggested method, and the results are analyzed. The analysis shows that the proposed system is resistant to statistical and differential attacks, and could be used in real-time applications to provide confidentiality service for images with less computational overhead.
Multi-site Gargamel: optimistic synchronization for reliable geo-replicated databases

Databases scale poorly in distributed configurations. This is mainly due to the cost of concurrency control and to resource contention. The alternative of centralizing writes works well only for read-intensive workloads, whereas weakening transactional properties is problematic for application developers. In a previous work we introduced Gargamel, a middleware that spreads non-conflicting update transactions to different replicas, but still provides strong transactional guarantees. We extended Gargamel to geo-replication settings. If a data-center fails, the database remains available at other locations. We minimize the synchronization cost, synchronizing optimistically replicas at distant data-centers. The evaluations of our prototype using distant Amazon data-centers show that Gargamel improves both response time and load by an order of magnitude when contention is high (highly loaded system with bounded resources), and that in the geo-replicated case, the slow-down is negligible.
Tabula ex-cambio

Tabula-ex-cambio is an interactive installation that delivers visual and audio content. It works as a sort of perpetual billiard game, powered by the data originating from the trend of a stock exchange index. The visual content is a real-time animated 3D computer graphics, that represents a billiard game where each ball is associated with a stock in the index. The audio content is an electroacoustic music composition featuring as many layers of sounds as stocks in the index. All the balls in the billiard are musical sources that play an iterated sequence of sounds while moving on the billiard table; each sequence is altered in frequency by the trend of the related company index. The final delivered visual and audio contents depend on the interaction with the user, who can select a view/listening point on the billiard game. The physical installation consists of a deformed billiard structure connected to a stele through cables; the stele is a vertical display where the billiard game takes place. The visual display relies on the graphic engine Ogre, while the aural display is implemented in SuperCollider. The installation was exposed in Shanghai, Beijing, Birmingham, and Terni (Italy).
Overlapping Functions of Nuclear Envelope Proteins NET25 (Lem2) and Emerin in Regulation of Extracellular Signal-Regulated Kinase Signaling in Myoblast Differentiation

ABSTRACT Mutations in certain nuclear envelope (NE) proteins cause muscular dystrophies and other disorders, but the disease mechanisms remain unclear. The nuclear envelope transmembrane protein NET25 (Lem2) is a truncated paralog of MAN1, an NE component linked to bone disorders. NET25 and MAN1 share an ∼40-residue LEM homology domain with emerin, the protein mutated in X-linked Emery-Dreifuss muscular dystrophy. However, roles for NET25 and MAN1 in myogenesis have not yet been described. Using RNA interference in C2C12 myoblasts, we show for the first time that both NET25 and MAN1 are required for myogenic differentiation. NET25 depletion causes hyperactivation of extracellular signal-regulated kinase 1/2 at the onset of differentiation, and pharmacological inhibition of this transient overactivation rescues myogenesis. In contrast, pharmacological inhibition of both mitogen-activated protein kinase and transforming growth factor β signaling is required to rescue differentiation after MAN1 depletion. Ectopic expression of silencing-resistant NET25 rescues myogenesis after depletion of emerin but not after MAN1 silencing. Thus, NET25 and emerin have at least partially overlapping functions during myogenic differentiation, which are distinct from those of MAN1. Our work supports the hypothesis that deregulation of cell signaling contributes to NE-linked disorders and suggests that mutations in NET25 and MAN1 may cause muscle diseases.
Effectiveness and Toxicities of Intensity-Modulated Radiotherapy for Patients with Locally Recurrent Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma

Purpose To analyze the effectiveness and toxicities in the re-irradiation of locally recurrent nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) using intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT). Methods This is a retrospective analysis of 54 NPC patients with local recurrence re-irradiated with IMRT. The re-staging for rT1, rT2, rT3, rT4 were 3 (5.6%), 8 (14.8%), 9 (16.7%), 34 (63%) respectively. The average dose to GTV was 69.95 Gy (49.8-76.58 Gy), the average BED3Gy was 116.8 Gy (83.5-127.9 Gy). V95 was 96%, and D95 was 65.75Gy. 33.3% of them received concurrent chemoradiotherapy. Results Median overall survival (OS) was 21 months (1-93 mon). The 1-, 2-year local progression free survival (LPFS) rate was 84.5%, 64% and OS rate was 71.7%, 44.3%. Severe late adverse events (SLAE) occurred in 48.1% of patients, including 31.5% with ulcer or necrosis of the nasopharyngeal mucosa, 20.4% with difficulty in feeding, 18.5% with temporal lobe necrosis, 11.1% with massive hemorrhage. 15.4% died of local regional progression, 5.8% died of distant metastasis, 25% died of SLAE, 9.6% died of both local regional progression and SLAE that could not be differentiated, 5.8% died of other medical complications. Concurrent chemoradiotherapy was the independent negative prognostic factors for LPFS; PTV>100 ml was a predictive factor of poor OS; patients with invasion of post-styloid space were at higher risk of SLAE. Conclusions The present study demonstrated that IMRT with 70Gy was efficient for local tumor control. However, we observed a high frequency of serious late complications. More optimized combination treatment and patient selection are required to achieve excellent local control without significant late morbidities in locally recurrent NPC.
Simulation of Energy Efficient Routing Protocols

Swarm Intelligence is an emerging area that has recently captured much attention in the field of network routing. In addition to conventional approaches, many new researches have proposed the implementation of Swarm Intelligence for WSN routing. Routing based on SI, is adaptive and dynamic in nature. In this paper, bioinspired routing protocols have been discussed. In this work a study and evolution has been done on the behavioral aspect of different swarm based routing protocols like ASAR (Ant-based service-aware routing algorithm) and PSO (Particle Swarm Optimization) using the NS-3 simulation tool.
Searching an Appropriate Journal for your Paper - an Approach Inspired by Expert Search and Data Fusion

On an abstract level, one is often confronted with some type of classification problem where we have one example instance or a textual query and we are looking for the class most appropriate for this instance or query. More concretely, we consider journals as classes and the papers published in certain journals as constituting and describing the respective class. In this scenario two information needs are conceivable: (1) We know one paper and we are looking for all journals which could potentially contain similar work. (2) We want to write a paper, have a first working title, and are looking for journals which could be potential targets for a submission of that paper. In this work, we transfer methods used in expert search and data fusion to find appropriate journals: Using a flat, title based search query for articles we examine voting models used in expertise retrieval with its different data fusion techniques to find and rank journals associated with the matching articles that potentially contain most suitable other articles. To evaluate the ranking of found journals, we remove several test articles from the applied collection and utilize them as request items with their titles. We assume that—on average—the journals where these test articles have been published should be among the top ranked journals to provide a suitable result. This fully automated evaluation provides the opportunity to execute a huge number of requests against the collection of articles and to evaluate the different voting techniques transferred from expert search.
FDTD modelling of a borehole radar wave propagation: a 3-D simulation study in conductive media

Before embarking on any mining operations, it is advantageous to know the location of orebodies, as well as the types, structures and distributions with a high resolution (~1m). A borehole radar is an electromagnetic (EM) tool for detecting electrical discontinuities in the rock formation with high resolution. Often the host rock medium through which the wave propagates and the target orebody have complex electromagnetic properties. Modelling EM wave propagation in 3-D is important for understanding the physics of observed responses, and for providing insight into data processing and interpretation. The finite difference time domain (FDTD) method is a useful numerical method suitable for modelling complex antenna configuration and EM wave propagation through complex media. A 3-D FDTD code in a Cartesian coordinate system has been written and implemented by using uniaxial perfectly matched layer (UPML) for boundary absorber. The code has been applied to some subsurface problems, such as layered sediments EM wave propagation and reflection from a geological reverse fault in a conductive host. Near surface sediments often form layered structures. When the wavelength of the propagating pulse is similar to the thickness of the host layer, cross-well radar traces start propagating as a guided wave. A borehole has been included in the simulation experiment and the borehole mud has been modelled as wet clay. The borehole mud and the size of the borehole causes a significant effect both on the amplitude and signature (frequency content) of the radar traces.
Directed evolution provides insight into conformational substrate sampling by SrtA

The Sortase family of transpeptidases are found in numerous gram-positive bacteria and involved in divergent physiological processes including anchoring of surface proteins to the cell wall as well as pili assembly. As essential proteins, sortase enzymes have been the focus of considerable interest for the development of novel anti-microbials, however, more recently their function as unique transpeptidases has been exploited for the synthesis of novel bio-conjugates. Yet, for synthetic purposes, SrtA-mediated conjugation suffers from the enzyme’s inherently poor catalytic efficiency. Therefore, to identify SrtA variants with improved catalytic efficiency, we used directed evolution to select a catalytically enhanced SrtA enzyme. An analysis of improved SrtA variants in the context of sequence conservation, NMR and x-ray crystal structures, and kinetic data suggests a novel mechanism for catalysis involving large conformational changes that delivers substrate to the active site pocket. Indeed, using DEER-EPR spectroscopy, we reveal that upon substrate binding, SrtA undergoes a large scissors-like conformational change that simultaneously translates the sort-tag substrate to the active site in addition to repositioning key catalytic residues for esterification. A better understanding of Sortase dynamics will significantly enhance future engineering and drug discovery efforts.