Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Effect of Stress Management Training through PRECEDE-PROCEED Model on Occupational Stress among Nurses and Midwives at Iran Hospital, Iranshahr.

INTRODUCTION Occupational stress is a major factor in hindering the performance of nurses and midwives and developing physical and mental complications in them. Given that these two groups are in direct contact with patients more than other medical staff and stress management training can be effective in the reduction of occupational stress among the nurses and midwives. AIM This study was set out to compare the effect of a PRECEDE-PROCEED based stress management training program on the occupational stress of the nurses and midwives. MATERIALS AND METHODS This quasi-experimental study was conducted on the aforementioned nurses and midwives. Data collection instruments included the Nursing Stress Scale (NSS). The training program was held in two 4-hour-long sessions for three months from 1st January to 31st March 2013. RESULTS The results showed a significant increase in the PRECEDE scores of both groups by the end of the program, as compared to the baseline. A significant decrease was also observed in the stress scores of both groups. There was no difference between groups in these regards. CONCLUSION The PRECEDE-based stress management training is effective in the reduction of occupational stress among the nurses and midwives.
Upper frequency limit of the power loss method for the estimation of ohmic losses in hollow metallic waveguides

The ohmic losses of hollow metallic waveguides are normally estimated by the power loss method. This approximate method is based on using the solution of the ideal problem (with perfect conductors) and the Leontovich or impedance boundary condition. In this paper the highest frequency where the power loss method can be used with accuracy is investigated. This frequency is determined by both, the cross-sectional dimension of the waveguide and the behaviour of the metallic conductors. Based on the analytical exact solution for the circular waveguide a general transcendental equation is proposed. The estimation of the upper frequency obtained from this formulation is presented in this paper, very useful and with practical consequences from an engineering point of view.
Welfare and Redistribution in Residential Electricity Markets with Solar Power

An increasing number of households installing solar panels raises two challenges for regulators: network financing and vertical equity. We propose an optimal tariff design for policymakers to incentivise solar panel adoptions, while guaranteeing the sustainability and equitable distribution of network costs. We estimate structural models of energy demand and solar panel adoption, using a unique matched dataset on energy consumption, income, wealth, solar panel installations, and building characteristics for 135,000 households in the Canton of Bern (Switzerland) in 2008-2013. Our counterfactuals recommend the optimal solar panel installation cost subsidies and optimal tariffs to achieve various solar energy targets.
Supervised Learning of Automatic Pyramid for Optimization-Based Multi-Document Summarization

We present a new supervised framework that learns to estimate automatic Pyramid scores and uses them for optimization-based extractive multi-document summarization. For learning automatic Pyramid scores, we developed a method for automatic training data generation which is based on a genetic algorithm using automatic Pyramid as the fitness function. Our experimental evaluation shows that our new framework significantly outperforms strong baselines regarding automatic Pyramid, and that there is much room for improvement in comparison with the upper-bound for automatic Pyramid.
Glucose-induced β cell production of IL-1β contributes to glucotoxicity in human pancreatic islets.

In type 2 diabetes, chronic hyperglycemia is suggested to be detrimental to pancreatic beta cells, causing impaired insulin secretion. IL-1beta is a proinflammatory cytokine acting during the autoimmune process of type 1 diabetes. IL-1beta inhibits beta cell function and promotes Fas-triggered apoptosis in part by activating the transcription factor NF-kappaB. Recently, we have shown that increased glucose concentrations also induce Fas expression and beta cell apoptosis in human islets. The aim of the present study was to test the hypothesis that IL-1beta may mediate the deleterious effects of high glucose on human beta cells. In vitro exposure of islets from nondiabetic organ donors to high glucose levels resulted in increased production and release of IL-1beta, followed by NF-kappaB activation, Fas upregulation, DNA fragmentation, and impaired beta cell function. The IL-1 receptor antagonist protected cultured human islets from these deleterious effects. beta cells themselves were identified as the islet cellular source of glucose-induced IL-1beta. In vivo, IL-1beta-producing beta cells were observed in pancreatic sections of type 2 diabetic patients but not in nondiabetic control subjects. Similarly, IL-1beta was induced in beta cells of the gerbil Psammomys obesus during development of diabetes. Treatment of the animals with phlorizin normalized plasma glucose and prevented beta cell expression of IL-1beta. These findings implicate an inflammatory process in the pathogenesis of glucotoxicity in type 2 diabetes and identify the IL-1beta/NF-kappaB pathway as a target to preserve beta cell mass and function in this condition.
Tackling Undeclared Work in Montenegro

The aim of this report is to provide a systematic overview of the extent and nature of undeclared work, and how it is being tackled, in the EU candidate country of Montenegro. The objectives of the report are to analyse the prevalence and character of undeclared work; to examine how the fight against undeclared work is organised; and to review relevant policy approaches and measures adopted. Throughout the report, the situation in Montenegro is compared with the EU27 wherever feasible. This report forms part of a research study into undeclared work in five countries: four candidate countries for EU membership (Iceland, Montenegro, Turkey and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) and one acceding country, Croatia.
IR-n un sistema de Recuperación de Información basado en pasajes

PhD Thesis in Computer Science written by Fernando Llopis Pascual under the supervision of Dr. José Luis Vicedo González and Dr. Antonio Ferrández Rodŕıguez (University of Alicante Spain). The author was examined in May 6th, 2003 by the commitee formed by Dr. Manuel Palomar Sanz (Univ. de Alicante), Alfonso Ureña López (Univ. de Jaén), Emilio Sanch́ıs Arnal (Univ. Politécnica de Valencia), Miguel Angel Alonso Pardo (Univ. de A Coruña) y Horacio Rodŕıguez Hontoria (Univ. Politécnica de Barcelona). The grade obtained was Sobresaliente Cum Laude.
The Method of Protecting Privacy Capable of Distributing and Storing of Data Efficiently for Cloud Computing Environment

Large amounts of information being generated in real time in a distributed environment due to recent development of cloud services such as SaaS, etc. is stored and managed in a database and is shared by users. But because the sensitive information of an individual is included in this information, the privacy damage by illegal utilization is worried. As the sensitive information is linked with specific individuals, this privacy damage is generated, so its anonymity, namely, unlinkability should be provided to solve this. Currently, the method of V. Ciriani, etc. for guaranteeing data privacy such as unlinkability, etc. is solving the unlinkability problem by using fragmentation and encryption. But this method includes a problem that the database capacity increases due to duplicate encryption data of attributes caused by fragmentation. This paper proposes a privacy enforcing method based on AONT to solve this problem. The proposed method is suitable for large data processing through variability of transformed pieces according to AONT properties and an XOR operation and can minimize the increase of database capacity.
Essential Role of BDNF in the Mesolimbic Dopamine Pathway in Social Defeat Stress

Mice experiencing repeated aggression develop a long-lasting aversion to social contact, which can be normalized by chronic, but not acute, administration of antidepressant. Using viral-mediated, mesolimbic dopamine pathway–specific knockdown of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), we showed that BDNF is required for the development of this experience-dependent social aversion. Gene profiling in the nucleus accumbens indicates that local knockdown of BDNF obliterates most of the effects of repeated aggression on gene expression within this circuit, with similar effects being produced by chronic treatment with antidepressant. These results establish an essential role for BDNF in mediating long-term neural and behavioral plasticity in response to aversive social experiences.
Historic Forage Productivity and Cost of Capital for Cow-Calf Ranches in California

Much has been made of the low returns on investment for western rangeland ranching. However, little work has been done to empirically compare these returns to the return that would be demanded by financial markets from assets with similar risk and return characteristics. This study uses historical forage productivity data from three locations in California’s Mediterranean rangelands to simulate financial statements for three hypothetical cow-calf ranches and measures the variability in return on investment from year to year. This performance is then compared to the actual performance of a diversified portfolio of investment assets using the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM), from which the theoretical cost of capital for these hypothetical ranches is derived. Much like other agricultural enterprises, cow-calf ranching in California is found to have low market risk and a low theoretical cost of capital based on the CAPM, approximately equal to the risk-free rate of return, which averaged 4.8 percent for the period 1988-2007. This cost of capital is still significantly greater than the historical return on cow-calf ranching in the western U.S. of 2.0 to 3.0 percent, implying that ranchers are receiving benefits from their business beyond financial returns, and reinforcing the idea that they derive amenity or other environmental values from these investments.
Non-viral episomal modification of cells using S/MAR elements

Introduction: The early potential of gene therapy is slowly becoming realized following the recent treatment of patients with severe combined immunodeficiency and ocular diseases. However at present the field of gene therapy is tempered by the toxicity issues, mainly that of the integrated retroviral vector used in most trials which led to oncogenesis in several of the treated patients. The development of safer, alternative vectors is therefore vital for further progress in this field, in particular vectors which remain episomal and are therefore less genotoxic. One such unique class of vectors are those based on scaffold matrix attachment regions (S/MARs) elements, which are maintained extra-chromosomally and replicate in vitro and in vivo. Areas covered: The overview here describes the most relevant studies utilizing the S/MAR element to episomally modify mammalian cells and tissues with a particular focus on liver tissue, as well as the brain, the muscle, the eye, cancer cells, embryonic cells and neonatal mice. For this purpose, recently published data in these areas (mainly articles published between 2000 and 2010) are reviewed. Expert opinion: The utilisation of vectors harbouring an S/MAR element is an efficient, safe and cost-effective way to episomally modify mammalian cells.
Wavelength–selective and anisotropic light–diffusing scale on the wing of the Morpho butterfly

We have found that cover scales on the wing of the butterfly Morpho didius possess specially designed microscopic structures for wavelength–selective reflection and contribute considerably to the brilliant blue colour of the wing. In addition, the cover scale functions as an anisotropic optical diffuser which diffuses light only in one plane, while it makes the range of reflection narrower in the orthogonal plane. The quantitative analyses for the wavelength–selection mechanism and the peculiar optical diffuser are given and the role of such a special optical effect is discussed from physical and biological viewpoints.
Adaptive Neural Networks Decentralized FTC Design for Nonstrict-Feedback Nonlinear Interconnected Large-Scale Systems Against Actuator Faults

The problem of active fault-tolerant control (FTC) is investigated for the large-scale nonlinear systems in nonstrict-feedback form. The nonstrict-feedback nonlinear systems considered in this paper consist of unstructured uncertainties, unmeasured states, unknown interconnected terms, and actuator faults (e.g., bias fault and gain fault). A state observer is designed to solve the unmeasurable state problem. Neural networks (NNs) are used to identify the unknown lumped nonlinear functions so that the problems of unstructured uncertainties and unknown interconnected terms can be solved. By combining the adaptive backstepping design principle with the combination Nussbaum gain function property, a novel NN adaptive output-feedback FTC approach is developed. The proposed FTC controller can guarantee that all signals in all subsystems are bounded, and the tracking errors for each subsystem converge to a small neighborhood of zero. Finally, numerical results of practical examples are presented to further demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy.
A neural mapping for improving the performance of a high-energy calorimeter

For a scintillating calorimeter, which is being designed to perform energy measurements in a next-generation high-energy collider experiment, a neural mapping is established to improve the overall detector performance. Training a neural network with energy vectors formed by the energy deposited on each cell of this granular detector, the original energy scale of the experimental particle beam is reconstructed and the linearity is significantly improved. In practice, the neural mapping corrects the nonlinearities that arise from the calorimeter design, and it may replace classical methods that use energy dependent multiparameter functions.
Mutual Fund Competition with Misspecified Investment Objectives

This paper studies the relation between past performance and fund flows into and out of mutual funds in the Italian market. Using monthly data on more than 800 funds divided in 23 investment categories I try to evaluate the length of the relevant evaluation period used by investors to measure the past performance of mutual funds, the level of competition between funds that operate in different investment categories and the likeliness between the behavior of gross investments (flows into mutual funds) and withdrawals (flows out of mutual funds). I find that investors evaluate fund performance on a very short time horizon (three months seems to be the relevant period), that the relevant performance measure is the position in the category ranking and not the return of the fund (the competition is segmented: funds do not compete across categories), that while fund inflows are related positively to past performance there is not any sensible relation between withdrawals and past performance.
Pain Intensity Estimation from Mobile Video Using 2D and 3D Facial Keypoints

Managing post-surgical pain is critical for successful surgical outcomes. One of the challenges of pain management is accurately assessing the pain level of patients. Self-reported numeric pain ratings are limited because they are subjective, can be affected by mood, and can influence the patient's perception of pain when making comparisons. In this paper, we introduce an approach that analyzes 2D and 3D facial keypoints of post-surgical patients to estimate their pain intensity level. Our approach leverages the previously unexplored capabilities of a smartphone to capture a dense 3D representation of a person's face as input for pain intensity level estimation. Our contributions are adata collection study with post-surgical patients to collect ground-truth labeled sequences of 2D and 3D facial keypoints for developing a pain estimation algorithm, a pain estimation model that uses multiple instance learning to overcome inherent limitations in facial keypoint sequences, and the preliminary results of the pain estimation model using 2D and 3D features with comparisons of alternate approaches.
Decision Support for Networked Crisis & Disaster Management - A Comparison with the Air Traffic Management Domain

This paper is about European networked crisis and disaster management and how to achieve more intelligent decision support and better collaboration. Although collaboration processes are established, the underlying information management tools today don’t support integrated electronic information management in multi-organizational scenarios. This leads to a fragmentation of relevant information into pieces held by different stakeholders. Recently, the concept of the Common Information Space has been introduced as possible solution. This paper looks to the domain of Air Traffic Management where a similar problem was tackled by a concept called System Wide Information Management. The paper starts with describing the operational context, the unresolved needs, and the derived requirements. Experiences from the Air Traffic Management domain are gathered and compared with current solution concepts from the public safety domain. The paper concludes with lessons learned during the on-going development in the public safety domain.
On a theorem of Grove and Searle.

A theorem of Grove and Searle directly establishes that positive curvature 2d manifolds M with effective circular symmetry group of dimension 8 or less have positive Euler characteristic X(M): the fixed point set N consists of even dimensional positive curvature manifolds and has the Euler characteristic X(N)=X(M). It is not empty by Berger. If N has a co-dimension 2 component, Grove-Searle forces M to be in { RP^2d,S^2d,CP^d }. By Frankel, there can be not two codimension 2 cases. In the remaining cases, Gauss-Bonnet-Chern forces all to have positive Euler characteristic. This simple proof does not quite reach the record 10 or less which uses methods of Wilking but it motivates to analyze the structure of fixed point components N and in particular to look at positive curvature manifolds which admit a U(1) or SU(2) symmetry with connected or almost connected fixed point set N. They have amazing geodesic properties: the fixed point manifold N agrees with the caustic of each of its points and the geodesic flow is integrable. In full generality, the Lefschetz fixed point property X(N)=X(M) and Frankel's dimension theorem dim(M) is less than dim(A) + dim(B) for two different connectivity components A,B of N produce already heavy constraints in building up M from smaller components. It is possible that S^2d, RP^2d, CP^d, HP^d, OP^2, W^6,E^6,W^12,W^24 are actually a complete list of even-dimensional positive curvature manifolds admitting a continuum symmetry. Aside from the projective spaces, the Euler characteristic of the known cases is always 1,2 or 6, where the jump from 2 to 6 happened with the Wallach or Eschenburg manifolds W^6,E^6 which have four fixed point components N=S^2 + S^2 + S^0, the only known case which are not of the Grove-Searle form N=N_1 or N=N_1 + p} with connected N_1.
Efficacy of curcumin in the treatment of chronic gingivitis: a pilot study.

PURPOSE To evaluate the efficacy of curcumin mouthwash as an adjunct to scaling and root planing in the treatment of chronic gingivitis and to compare curcumin to chlorhexidine in terms of its anti-inflammatory and anti-microbial properties. MATERIALS AND METHODS Thirty patients aged 20-40 years with generalised chronic gingivitis were included in the study. They were randomly divided into 3 groups of 10 each. In group 1, patients underwent scaling and root planing followed by chlorhexidine mouthwash (SRP/CHX Gr-1); in group 2, patients underwent scaling and root planing followed by curcumin mouthwash (SRP/CUR Gr-2); in group 3, patients underwent only scaling and root planing (SRP Gr-3). Gingival and plaque indices were recorded at baseline (day 0) and 7, 14 and 21 days. Differences between the groups were statistically analysed. RESULTS The clinical parameters showed improvement in all the three groups compared to baseline. When compared to the scaling and root planing group (Gr-3), both curcumin and chlorhexidine groups were found to have statistically significantly better results (P < 0.05). However, when curcumin and chlorhexidine groups were compared, the gingival (Löe and Silness) and plaque index (Silness and Löe) scores were not found to be statistically significant (P > 0.05). CONCLUSION Curcumin is comparable to chlorhexidine as an anti-inflammatory mouthwash. Thus, it can be considered as an effective adjunct to mechanical periodontal therapy.
Inhibition of migration and invasion of carcinoma cells by urokinase‐derived antagonists of αvβ5 integrin activation

We previously showed that, while binding to urokinase receptor (uPAR) through its growth factor domain (GFD, residues 1–49), urokinase (uPA) can engage αvβ5 integrin through an internal domain (CP, residues 132–158). This novel uPA/αvβ5 interaction promotes cytoskeletal rearrangements and directional cell migration (Franco et al., J Cell Sci 2006;119:3424–34). We now show that treatment of cells with phosphomimic uPA (uPA138E/303E, serine 138 and 303 substituted with glutamic acid) strongly inhibits matrix‐induced cell migration. Unlike uPA, binding of uPA138E/303E to cell surface did not induce F‐actin enriched protruding structures and caused a 5‐fold reduction in cell translocation speed, as determined by video tracking of living cells. Inhibition of migration was found to be independent of uPAR, since uPA variants lacking the GFD domain, but carrying the relevant Ser to Glu substitutions were as effective inhibitor as uPA138E/303E. Through several independent approaches, we established that the phosphomimics specifically bind to αvβ5 integrin through the CP region carrying the S138E mutation. This interaction blocks integrin activation, as determined by a decreased affinity of αvβ5 to vitronectin and a reduced association of the β5 cytoplasmic tail with talin. Finally, stable expression of uPA138E/303E in human squamous carcinoma cells prevented tumor cell invasion in vivo. Thus, when expressed in cancer cells, the inhibitory phosphomimic effect was dominant over the effect of endogenously produced uPA. These results shed light on the regulation of cell migration by uPA phosphorylation and provide a realistic opportunity for a novel antiinvasive/metastatic therapeutic intervention. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
DOEE: dynamic optimization framework for better energy efficiency

The growing adoption of mobile devices powered by batteries along with the high power costs in datacenters raise the need for energy efficient computing. Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling is often used by the operating system to balance power-performance. However, optimizing for energy-efficiency faces multiple challenges such as when dealing with non-steady state workloads. In this work we develop DOEE - a novel method that optimizes certain processor features for energy efficiency using user-supplied metrics. The optimization is dynamic, taking into account the runtime characteristics of the workload and the platform. The method instruments monitoring code to search for per-program-phase optimal feature-configurations that ultimately improve system energy efficiency. We demonstrate the framework using the LLVM compiler when tuning the Turbo Boost feature on modern Intel Core processors. Our implementation improves energy efficiency by up to 23% on SPEC CPU2006 benchmarks, outperforming the energy-efficient firmware algorithm. This framework paves the way for auto-tuning additional CPU features.