Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Anatomy of a successful multimodal hand hygiene campaign

In 2005, in the far northeastern corner of the USA, Kirkland et al ,1 found themselves in a situation painfully familiar to many infection control professionals worldwide, including our institution in the early 1990s.2 Hand hygiene compliance amongst healthcare workers in their hospital was poor, healthcare workers were unenthusiastic about the importance of hand hygiene, and quality improvement interventions were ‘not consistently supported by organisational leaders’. 1 In response, they undertook a comprehensive hand hygiene promotion programme, which evolved over the course of 2 years, that resulted in an institutional culture change, a dramatic increase in hand hygiene compliance from 41% to 87%, and most importantly, a significant reduction in healthcare-associated infections from 4.8 to 3.3 per 1000 inpatient days. These changes were sustained during a 1-year postintervention follow-up. So how did they do it and what can we learn from them? First, Kirkland et al used well-established strategies with local interpretation and adaptation. Their intervention included each of the five components of WHO multimodal hand hygiene improvement strategy (table 1),3 and each of these components was implemented with careful attention to the local landscape and available resources, similar to the earlier ‘Geneva hand hygiene promotion model’. 2 System change involved carefully considered installation of alcohol-based hand-rub dispensers in locations designed to suit staff workflow as assessed by a workgroup comprised of senior biomedical engineering and clinical staff.1 Education and training of healthcare workers was facilitated by development of an electronic learning module. This was complemented by a voluntary—and well received—hand hygiene competency certification programme. The measurement and feedback component of this initiative is particularly …
The inconstancy of the transient climate response parameter under increasing CO2

In the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5), the model-mean increase in global mean surface air temperature T under the 1pctCO2 scenario (atmospheric CO2 increasing at 1% yr−1) during the second doubling of CO2 is 40% larger than the transient climate response (TCR), i.e. the increase in T during the first doubling. We identify four possible contributory effects. First, the surface climate system loses heat less readily into the ocean beneath as the latter warms. The model spread in the thermal coupling between the upper and deep ocean largely explains the model spread in ocean heat uptake efficiency. Second, CO2 radiative forcing may rise more rapidly than logarithmically with CO2 concentration. Third, the climate feedback parameter may decline as the CO2 concentration rises. With CMIP5 data, we cannot distinguish the second and third possibilities. Fourth, the climate feedback parameter declines as time passes or T rises; in 1pctCO2, this effect is less important than the others. We find that T projected for the end of the twenty-first century correlates more highly with T at the time of quadrupled CO2 in 1pctCO2 than with the TCR, and we suggest that the TCR may be underestimated from observed climate change.
Benign Pelvic Masses Associated with Raised CA 125 Level: Radiological Pathological Correlation

Introduction: The detection of pelvic mass with associated raised CA 125 level is highly suspicious for ovarian cancer, but there are various other benign pelvic pathologies that mimic the above fi ndings, especially in premenopausal women in the Indian subcontinent as seen in our case series. Purpose: Purpose of the study was to look for different benign pelvic masses associated with raised level of CA 125. Materials and Methods: It was prospective study in which cases of pelvic mass with raised CA 125 level that turned out to be benign in etiology on complete work up were evaluated and followed up on treatment at 2 months of interval with serial measurement of CA 125. Result: Out of 15 cases of benign pelvic masses with raised CA 125 level, 10 cases were of genital tuberculosis and associated pelvic infl ammatory disease, 4 cases were of endometriotic cysts, and 1 case was of ruptured dermoid cyst of ovary. All cases showed a signifi cant reduction in CA 125 level on follow-up at 2 months. Conclusion: There are various benign pelvic masses that are associated with raised CA 125 level. Detailed clinical history and radiological investigations can be helpful in arriving at a correct diagnosis. This is more important in India subcontinent where genital tuberculosis and pelvic infl ammatory disease are common.
Factors affecting perception of effort (session rating of perceived exertion) during rugby league training.

PURPOSE The purpose of this study was to examine the validity of session rating of perceived exertion (sRPE) for monitoring training intensity in rugby league. METHODS Thirty-two professional rugby league players participated in this study. Training-load (TL) data were collected during an entire season and assessed via microtechnology (heart-rate [HR] monitors, global positioning systems [GPS], and accelerometers) and sRPE. Within-individual correlation analysis was used to determine relationships between sRPE and various other measures of training intensity and load. Stepwise multiple regressions were used to determine a predictive equation to estimate sRPE during rugby league training. RESULTS There were significant within-individual correlations between sRPE and various other internal and external measures of intensity and load. The stepwise multiple-regression analysis also revealed that 62.4% of the adjusted variance in sRPE-TL could be explained by TL measures of distance, impacts, body load, and training impulse (y = 37.21 + 0.93 distance - 0.39 impacts + 0.18 body load + 0.03 training impulse). Furthermore, 35.2% of the adjusted variance in sRPE could be explained by exercise-intensity measures of percentage of peak HR (%HRpeak), impacts/min, m/min, and body load/min (y = -0.01 + 0.37%HRpeak + 0.10 impacts/min + 0.17 m/min + 0.09 body load/min). CONCLUSION A combination of internal and external TL factors predicts sRPE in rugby league training better than any individual measures alone. These findings provide new evidence to support the use of sRPE as a global measure of exercise intensity in rugby league training.
Technology of pressure-sensitive adhesives and products

MANUFACTURE TECHNOLOGY OF PRESSURE-SENSITIVE ADHESIVES. Synthesis of Pressure-Sensitive Raw Materials. Design and Formulation of Pressure-Sensitive Adhesives. MANUFACTURE TECHNOLOGY OF PRESSURE-SENSITIVE PRODUCTS. Components and Build-Up of Pressure-Sensitive Products. Manufacture of Pressure-Sensitive Products by Coating of Pressure-Sensitive Adhesives. Manufacture of Pressure-Sensitive Products by Other Technologies. Manufacture of Release Liner. Converting and Confectionating of Pressure-Sensitive Products. Test of Pressure-Sensitive Adhesives and Pressure-Sensitive Products. Manufacture of the Main Pressure-Sensitive Products. ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS. INDEX.
A double stain for total and oxidized proteins from two-dimensional fingerprints.

Oxidative modification of proteins plays a major role in the etiology of aging and age-related diseases. For example, in Alzheimer's disease, although evidence points to oxidation of proteins as a causative factor in loss of cognitive abilities, it is not known which specific proteins of the brain are most susceptible to these modifications. Thus, it is of interest to identify the specific proteins which are susceptible to oxidation in vivo. Two-dimensional protein fingerprint methods offer the analytical potential for resolution of thousands of individual proteins from tissues, and the oxidized proteins can be visualized with immunological probes. Sensitive methods permit recovery and sufficient amino acid sequencing to identify these proteins. However, for such analyses it is essential to simultaneously analyze both protein content and level of oxidation. We have evaluated several approaches, identified the sources of artifacts and interferences, and developed a double-staining procedure that allows visualization and quantitation of total protein patterns as well as the specific oxidized proteins from two-dimensional protein fingerprints. The method has been applied to cells grown in culture and to tissue extracts from young and old animals.
Fast algorithms to test robust static equilibrium for legged robots

Maintaining equilibrium is of primary importance for legged systems. It is not surprising then that static equilibrium is at the core of most control/planning algorithms for legged robots. Being able to check whether a system is in static equilibrium is thus important, and doing it efficiently is crucial. While this is straightforward for a system in contact with a flat ground only, it is not the case for arbitrary contact geometries. In this paper we propose two new techniques to test static equilibrium and we show that they are computationally faster than all other existing methods. Moreover, we address the issue of robustness to errors in the contact-force tracking, which could lead to slippage or rotation at the contacts. We extend all the discussed techniques to test for robust static equilibrium, that is the ability to maintain equilibrium while avoiding to lose contacts despite bounded force-tracking errors. Accounting for robustness does not affect the computation time of the equilibrium tests, while it qualitatively improves the contact postures generated by our reachability-based multicontact planner.
Metaheuristics for dynamic combinatorial optimization problems.

Many real-world optimization problems are combinatorial optimization problems subject to dynamic environments. In such dynamic combinatorial optimization problems (DCOPs), the objective, decision variables and/or constraints may change over time, and so solving DCOPs is a challenging task. Metaheuristics are a good choice of tools to tackle DCOPs because many metaheuristics are inspired by natural or biological evolution processes, which are always subject to changing environments. In recent years, DCOPs have attracted a growing interest from the metaheuristics community. This paper is a tutorial on metaheuristics for DCOPs. We cover the definition of DCOPs, typical benchmark problems and their characteristics, methodologies and performance measures, real-world case study and key challenges in the area. Some future research directions are also pointed out in this paper.
Chemical sensors and biosensors : fundamentals and applications

This is a modern introductory book on sensors, combining underlying theory with bang up to date topics such as nanotechnology. The text is suitable for graduate students and research scientists with little background in analytical chemistry. It is user-friendly, with an accessible theoretical approach of the basic principles, and references for further reading. The book covers up-to-date advances in the sensor field, e.g. nanotechnology and quantum dots. It includes calculation exercises and solutions, and the accompanying website contains Powerpoint slides.
Active Discriminative Text Representation Learning

We propose a new active learning (AL) method for text classification with convolutional neural networks (CNNs). In AL, one selects the instances to be manually labeled with the aim of maximizing model performance with minimal effort. Neural models capitalize on word embeddings as representations (features), tuning these to the task at hand. We argue that AL strategies for multi-layered neural models should focus on selecting instances that most affect the embedding space (i.e., induce discriminative word representations). This is in contrast to traditional AL approaches (e.g., entropy-based uncertainty sampling), which specify higher level objectives. We propose a simple approach for sentence classification that selects instances containing words whose embeddings are likely to be updated with the greatest magnitude, thereby rapidly learning discriminative, task-specific embeddings. We extend this approach to document classification by jointly considering: (1) the expected changes to the constituent word representations; and (2) the model’s current overall uncertainty regarding the instance. The relative emphasis placed on these criteria is governed by a stochastic process that favors selecting instances likely to improve representations at the outset of learning, and then shifts toward general uncertainty sampling as AL progresses. Empirical results show that our method outperforms baseline AL approaches on both sentence and document classification tasks. We also show that, as expected, the method quickly learns discriminative word embeddings. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work on AL addressing neural models for text classification.
Deep MOS Spectroscopy of NGC 1316 Globular Clusters

The giant elliptical galaxy NGC 1316 is the brightest galaxy in the Fornax cluster, and displays a number of morphological features that might be interpreted as an intermediate age merger remanent (∼3 Gyr). Based on the idea that globular clusters systems (GCS) constitute genuine tracers of the formation and evolution of their host galaxies, we conducted a spectroscopic study of approximately 40 globular clusters (GCs) candidates associated with this interesting galaxy. We determined ages, metallicities, and α -element abundances for each GC present in the sample, through the measurement of different Lick indices and their subsequent comparison with simple stellar populations models (SSPs).
Ontology Schema-specific Rule Materialization

The reasoning should tackle big data issues like other domains as the size of ontology grows bigger and bigger. Especially, rule-based reasoning should overcome the following challenges: duplicate elimination and rule matching efficiency. To deal with these challenges, we introduce a new rulebased reasoning method which materializes each generic instance rule into several schema-specific instance rules and combines with Hadoop framework to deal with billions of triples. The experiment shows the materialization remarkably improves the efficiency of rule-based reasoning by reducing the amount of required memory and making it linear to the data size.
The effect of emergency department crowding on clinically oriented outcomes.

BACKGROUND An Institute of Medicine (IOM) report defines six domains of quality of care: safety, patient-centeredness, timeliness, efficiency, effectiveness, and equity. The effect of emergency department (ED) crowding on these domains of quality has not been comprehensively evaluated. OBJECTIVES The objective was to review the medical literature addressing the effects of ED crowding on clinically oriented outcomes (COOs). METHODS We reviewed the English-language literature for the years 1989-2007 for case series, cohort studies, and clinical trials addressing crowding's effects on COOs. Keywords searched included "ED crowding,""ED overcrowding,""mortality,""time to treatment,""patient satisfaction,""quality of care," and others. RESULTS A total of 369 articles were identified, of which 41 were kept for inclusion. Study quality was modest; most articles reflected observational work performed at a single institution. There were no randomized controlled trials. ED crowding is associated with an increased risk of in-hospital mortality, longer times to treatment for patients with pneumonia or acute pain, and a higher probability of leaving the ED against medical advice or without being seen. Crowding is not associated with delays in reperfusion for patients with ST-elevation myocardial infarction. Insufficient data were available to draw conclusions on crowding's effects on patient satisfaction and other quality endpoints. CONCLUSIONS A growing body of data suggests that ED crowding is associated both with objective clinical endpoints, such as mortality, as well as clinically important processes of care, such as time to treatment for patients with time-sensitive conditions such as pneumonia. At least two domains of quality of care, safety and timeliness, are compromised by ED crowding.
Sex Differences in the Use of Oral Anticoagulants for Atrial Fibrillation: A Report From the National Cardiovascular Data Registry (NCDR ®) PINNACLE Registry

Background Despite higher thromboembolism risk, women with atrial fibrillation have lower oral anticoagulation (OAC) use compared to men. The influence of the CHA 2 DS 2‐VASc score or the introduction of non–vitamin K OACs on this relationship is not known. Methods and Results Using the PINNACLE National Cardiovascular Data Registry from 2008 to 2014, we compared the association of sex with OAC use (warfarin or non–vitamin K OACs) overall and by CHA 2 DS 2‐VASc score and examined temporal trends in OAC use by sex. Multivariable regression models assessed the association between sex and OAC use in those with CHA 2 DS 2‐VASc scores ≥2. Temporal analyses assessed changes in OAC use by sex over time. Of the 691 906 atrial fibrillation patients, 48.5% were women. Women were significantly less likely than men to use any OAC overall (56.7% versus 61.3%; P<0.001) and at all levels of CHA 2 DS 2‐VASc score (adjusted risk ratio 9% to 33% lower, all P<0.001). Compared to other thromboembolic risk factors, female sex was associated with lower use of OAC (risk ratio 0.90, 95%CI 0.90‐0.91). Over time, non–vitamin K OAC use increased at a slightly higher rate in women (56.2% increase per year, 95%CI 54.6% to 57.9%) compared to men (53.6% increase per year, 95%CI 52.0% to 55.2%), yet women remained less likely to receive any OAC at all time points (P<0.001). Conclusions Among patients with atrial fibrillation, women were significantly less likely to receive OAC at all levels of the CHA 2 DS 2‐VASc score. Despite increasing non–vitamin K OAC use, women had persistently lower rates of OAC use compared to men over time.
Spectroscopic binaries among Hipparcos M giants III. The eccentricity-period diagram and mass-transfer signatures

Context. This paper is the third one in a series devoted to studying the properties of binaries involving M giants. Aims. We use a new set of orbits to construct the first (e − logP) diagram of an extensive sample of M giant binaries, to obtain their mass-function distribution, and to derive evolutionary constraints for this class of binaries and related systems. Methods. The orbital properties of binaries involving M giants were analysed and compared with those of related families of binaries (K giants, post-AGB stars, barium stars, Tc-poor S stars). Results. The orbital elements of post-AGB stars and M giants are not very different, which may indicate that, for the considered sample of post-AGB binaries, the post-AGB star left the AGB at quite an early stage (M4 or so). Neither are the orbital elements of post-mass-transfer binaries like barium stars very different from those of M giants, suggesting that the mass transfer did not alter the orbital elements much, contrary to current belief. Finally, we show that binary systems with e < 0. 4l ogP − 1 (with periods expressed in days) are predominantly post-mass-transfer systems, because (i) the vast majority of barium and S systems match this condition; and (ii) these systems have companion masses peaking around 0.6 M� , as expected for white dwarfs. The latter property has been shown to hold as well for open-cluster binaries involving K giants, for which a lower bound on the companion mass may easily be set.
Producing Softness Sensation on an Electrostatic Texture Display for Rendering Diverse Tactile Feelings

This paper investigates the possibility of producing two different tactile feelings on one device. A simple mechanism for softness presentation was integrated with an electrostatic tactile display that can generate surface texture sensations. The principle of softness presentation is contact-width control, where contact width between a fingertip and the display is controlled corresponding to contact force. In the prototype, the softness-producing mechanism deforms the slider film of the electrostatic display so as to control the contact width between the fingertip and the film. Experimental results showed that the prototype could successfully elicit softness sensations, although the perceived softness was slightly harder than the intended softness
A-1 High-resolution Geophysics in Imaging and Characterization of Buried Cultural Heritage

Resolution is a crucial parameter in pre-excavation surveys of archaeological sites. Geophysical methods based on Laplace (gravity, magnetics), diffusion (e.g. low-frequency electromagnetics) and wave equations (i.e. seismics and ground-penetrating radar GPR) are often applied in this sequence to attain increasing detail about subsurface characteristics (i.e. shape and location of subsurface volumes) and physical properties. We apply potential (magnetic gradiometry) and wave-equation based (i.e. seismics and GPR), combined with dedicated data-processing and analysis techniques based on instantaneous attributes, to the study of different archaeological sites, namely: an area characterized by scattered remains of unknown shape and dimension, a prehistoric grave, buried walls and foundations, a funerary tumulus. The depth range of interest is between 80 and 500 cm. Magnetic gradiometry, filtered to remove long wavelength anomalies and to focus the analysis on a +/5 nT range, allows clear identification of buried brick-walls, with unavoidable uncertainty concerning the depth of the targets. Detailed 2-D and 3-D subsurface models come from the GPR results, where imaging of the buried structures can be combined with assessment of physical properties that affect wave velocity and attenuation. The combination of magnetic and radar methods in sequence is an effective strategy for high-resolution pre-excavation surveys: magnetic measurements allow rapid identification of localized anomalies, GPR provides higher resolution in their imaging and characterization. The application of attribute analysis techniques to GPR data further enhances the performance of the method in target identification. Peculiar archaeological targets, such as e.g. burial mounds, eventually require the use of transmission seismic tomography to overcome the limits of potential and GPR methods. Examples from pre-historic graves show that
A geometrically nonlinear analysis of interlaminar stresses in unsymmetrically laminated plates subjected to inplane mechanical loading

An analytical study of interlaminar stresses in unsymmetrically laminated plates is presented. The study examines the linear elastic, large deflection response of square laminated composite plates subjected to uniform thermal loading. Both cross-ply and angle-ply, symmetric and unsymmetric, laminates are examined to evaluate the effects of mismatch between adjacent layers in elastic constants and coefficients of thermal expansion. A geometrically nonlinear kinematic description is used to predict the large out-of-plane (transverse) deflections. The nonlinear, three-dimensional boundary value problems are formulated from elasticity theory and approximate solutions are determined using the finite element method. A global/local analysis procedure is used to obtain improved free edge stress predictions. For the laminates and loading conditions considered, the results indicate that the out-of-plane deflections of the unsymmetric laminates reduce interlaminar shear stresses. These deflections also reduce interlaminar normal stresses in some laminates and increase these stresses for others. The results indicate that as the out-of-plane deflections become large, the differences in interlaminar stress predictions between linear and nonlinear theory can become quite large.