Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The process of research use in nursing.

AIM This paper describes the process of research use undertaken by groups of specialist nurses involved in the construction of policy recommendations for nursing practice. BACKGROUND A number of prescriptive models of research use have been described in the nursing literature. Previous studies have attempted to measure the instrumental use of research findings in nursing practice. However, there is no evidence on how research use occurs, or why results differ across individuals, settings, tasks or time. There has been little investigation into the congruence of prescriptive models with the realities of research use in practice. METHOD The study used an ethnomethodological approach to describe the practical reasoning undertaken by specialist nurses during research use. The method was participant observation with three clinical workgroups, comprising a series of meetings of practitioners from between 11 and 25 health care provider organizations. Data collected from recording discussions at the meetings were analysed using grounded data reduction, and were subject to external verification of description and inference. FINDINGS The process of research use consistently contained four stages of practical reasoning comprising research identification, confirmation, evaluation and application. Each stage involved practitioners in cognitive work to translate the research evidence into practice policy. CONCLUSIONS While the process of research use described in the findings is not markedly different in outline from prescriptive models of the process available in the literature, inconsistencies are highlighted in the way the process is conceptualized. Prescriptive models of research use do not adequately reflect the task of problem-setting, use of multiple frames of reference for evaluation, and how information from research is to be integrated with information from other sources.
Web-Based Assessments of Physical Activity in Youth: Considerations for Design and Scale Calibration

This paper describes the design and methods involved in calibrating a Web-based self-report instrument to estimate physical activity behavior. The limitations of self-report measures are well known, but calibration methods enable the reported information to be equated to estimates obtained from objective data. This paper summarizes design considerations for effective development and calibration of physical activity self-report measures. Each of the design considerations is put into context and followed by a practical application based on our ongoing calibration research with a promising online self-report tool called the Youth Activity Profile (YAP). We first describe the overall concept of calibration and how this influences the selection of appropriate self-report tools for this population. We point out the advantages and disadvantages of different monitoring devices since the choice of the criterion measure and the strategies used to minimize error in the measure can dramatically improve the quality of the data. We summarize strategies to ensure quality control in data collection and discuss analytical considerations involved in group- vs individual-level inference. For cross-validation procedures, we describe the advantages of equivalence testing procedures that directly test and quantify agreement. Lastly, we introduce the unique challenges encountered when transitioning from paper to a Web-based tool. The Web offers considerable potential for broad adoption but an iterative calibration approach focused on continued refinement is needed to ensure that estimates are generalizable across individuals, regions, seasons and countries.
In-depth analysis of tax reforms using the EUROMOD microsimulation model

In the aftermath of the financial and sovereign debt crisis, the need for a better understanding of the fiscal and equity implications of national tax policy reforms is greater than ever. National fiscal policies have a significant share in paving the way for economic recovery, fiscal consolidation and reducing looming inequality problems. The present work sets out a consistent framework for the in-depth country analyses of tax reforms using EUROMOD performed by the European Commission services in the context of the European Semester. Three examples of policy analysis are presented with the focus being on the provision of correct inferences alongside the typically analysed estimates and indicators.
Polymorphisms in DNA repair genes and risk of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in New South Wales, Australia

Background and Objectives A number of occupational and environmental exposures that can directly or indirectly cause DNA damage have been proposed as risk factors for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL). The human DNA damage repair system can recognize and repair such damage and maintain genomic stability. We investigated whether putatively functional single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) in DNA repair genes influence susceptibility to NHL in a population-based case-control study conducted in Australia. Design A total of 561 cases and 506 controls were included in the analysis. Twenty-two SNP in 14 DNA repair genes were genotyped by a TaqMan-based assay. Unconditional logistic regression was used to calculate odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI), adjusting for age, sex, residence, and ethnicity. Results Two SNP in MGMT (Ile143Val and Lys178Arg) were in complete linkage disequilibrium and associated with increased risk of NHL (Ile143Val, Ile/Val vs. Ile/Ile, OR: 1.26; 95% CI: 0.93–1.70; Val/Val vs. Ile/Ile, OR: 2.55; 95% CI: 0.98–6.63; p trend: 0.024). These SNP were associated with increased risk of several NHL subtypes. In addition, the XRCC1 Arg194Trp polymorphism was associated with decreased NHL risk (Arg/Trp vs. Arg/Arg, OR: 0.72; 95% CI: 0.49–1.07; Trp/Trp vs. Arg/Arg, OR: 0.45; 95% CI: 0.10–1.99; p trend: 0.059), mainly in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. Interpretation and Conclusions The association of genetic variants in MGMT with increased risk of NHL suggests that alkyl adducts may contribute to lymphomagenesis, and points to environmental and endogenous alkylating agents as possible risk factors for NHL. However, given that these results were based on a small number of variant carriers and the possibility that these results may have arisen due to chance, replication in other studies is needed.
Prediction confidence for associative classification

Associative classification, which uses association rules for classification, has achieved high accuracy in comparison with other classification approaches. However, the confidence measure, which is used to select association rules for classification, may not conform to the prediction accuracy of the rules. In this paper, we propose a measure for association rules called prediction confidence to measure the accuracy of the prediction of association rules. An approach for estimating the prediction confidence of a rule is also given. The use of prediction confidence instead of confidence measure helps gather better association rules for associative classification. As a result, a more accurate associative classifier can be constructed using the prediction confidence measure.
Automated tracking of migrating cells in phase‐contrast video microscopy sequences using image registration

Analysis of in vitro cell motility is a useful tool for assessing cellular response to a range of factors. However, the majority of cell‐tracking systems available are designed primarily for use with fluorescently labelled images. In this paper, five commonly used tracking systems are examined for their performance compared with the use of a novel in‐house cell‐tracking system based on the principles of image registration and optical flow. Image registration is a tool commonly used in medical imaging to correct for the effects of patient motion during imaging procedures and works well on low‐contrast images, such as those found in bright‐field and phase‐contrast microscopy. The five cell‐tracking systems examined were Retrac, a manual tracking system used as the gold standard; CellTrack, a recently released freely downloadable software system that uses a combination of tracking methods; ImageJ, which is a freely available piece of software with a plug‐in for automated tracking (MTrack2) and Imaris and Volocity, both commercially available automated tracking systems. All systems were used to track migration of human epithelial cells over ten frames of a phase‐contrast time‐lapse microscopy sequence. This showed that the in‐house image‐registration system was the most effective of those tested when tracking non‐dividing epithelial cells in low‐contrast images, with a successful tracking rate of 95%. The performance of the tracking systems was also evaluated by tracking fluorescently labelled epithelial cells imaged with both phase‐contrast and confocal microscopy techniques. The results showed that using fluorescence microscopy instead of phase contrast does improve the tracking efficiency for each of the tested systems. For the in‐house software, this improvement was relatively small (<5% difference in tracking success rate), whereas much greater improvements in performance were seen when using fluorescence microscopy with Volocity and ImageJ.
Using Centroidal Voronoi Tessellations to Scale Up the Multidimensional Archive of Phenotypic Elites Algorithm

The recently introduced multidimensional archive of phenotypic elites (MAP-Elites) is an evolutionary algorithm capable of producing a large archive of diverse, high-performing solutions in a single run. It works by discretizing a continuous feature space into unique regions according to the desired discretization per dimension. While simple, this algorithm has a main drawback: it cannot scale to high-dimensional feature spaces since the number of regions increase exponentially with the number of dimensions. In this paper, we address this limitation by introducing a simple extension of MAP-Elites that has a constant, predefined number of regions irrespective of the dimensionality of the feature space. Our main insight is that methods from computational geometry could partition a high-dimensional space into well-spread geometric regions. In particular, our algorithm uses a centroidal Voronoi tessellation (CVT) to divide the feature space into a desired number of regions; it then places every generated individual in its closest region, replacing a less fit one if the region is already occupied. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the new “CVT-MAP-Elites” algorithm in high-dimensional feature spaces through comparisons against MAP-Elites in maze navigation and hexapod locomotion tasks.
Advanced nanocrystalline ZrO2 for optical oxygen sensors

It was shown that ZrO2 nanopowders and nanoceramics can be used as an optical oxygen sensor, where the luminescence signal is proportional to the partial oxygen pressure in gases. The nanopowders were obtained in a hydrothermal microwave driven process followed by annealing at 750°C. Nanoceramics were obtained by sintering at pressures up to 6 GPa and at 250°C so that grain growth did not occur. Luminescence of both materials depends linearly on the oxygen content in nitrogen-oxygen mixtures for 2.1% - 25 vol% oxygen content. For luminescence excitation using an electron beam, the luminescence intensity decreases as oxygen pressure increases. For excitation with a laser beam, the opposite effect is observed - the lower the oxygen pressure, the lower the luminescence signal. The experimental results are explained in terms of luminescence centers being distorted lattice sites close to vacancies.
Assessing Public Sector Performance Reforms and the Plight of Disadvantaged Citizens

Performance management proposes to use market reforms to enhance the quality of public services provided to vulnerable citizens. However, the ability to accomplish this goal is largely unsubstantiated. In the field of education, the No Child Left Behind Act mandated the development of performance reform guidelines that held educators accountable for disadvantaged students outcomes. This research assesses the quality of states’ NCLB provisions that targeted minority and vulnerable student performance as well as change in outcomes. It reveals that performance reforms holding educators accountable while also enhancing performance is limited by organized employee groups and enhanced by past performance, political affiliation, preexisting voluntary performance reforms.
CityMob: A Mobility Model Pattern Generator for VANETs

Ad hoc networking is regarded as an adequate solution to cooperative driving between communicating cars on the road. Deploying and testing these networks, usually known as Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs), involves a high cost in the real world, and so simulation is an useful alternative in research. One of the most critical issues in a simulation study of VANETs is the use of a mobility model which resembles, as closely as possible, the real behavior of vehicular traffic. Mobility models are crucial to obtain accurate and meaningful simulation results. In this paper we present CityMob, a mobility pattern generator for VANETs. Citymob allows researchers to easily create urban mobility scenarios, including the possibility to model car accidents. We designed and developed it targeting compatibility with the ns- 2 simulator, and we implemented three different mobility models: Simple Model (SM), Manhattan Model (MM) and Downtown Model (DM). Based on a flooding alert protocol we show that the most realistic mobility model to simulate traffic accidents is the Downtown model. We also find that, for flooding to be effective, a moderate number of vehicles is required.
Assessment of Labionasal Structures in Patients With Unilateral Cleft Lip

Introduction:Unilateral cleft lip (UCL) patients have lip and nose deformities that must be addressed during lip repair. Currently, devices to achieve lip and nose improvements have been developed. The most researched presurgical molding device is the nasoalveolar molding (NAM), which has shown favorable results. However, clinical observation shows that unilateral cleft patients, even without molding devices, achieve spontaneous improvements. The aim of this study is to compare morphological and symmetry changes in nose and lip, between patients less than 30-day old and those submitted to cheiloplasty, at 6 months of age. Materials and Methods:A total of 27 UCL patients with 2 photographs were selected. The pictures were taken from frontal view and nasal base view at 2 distinct moments: before 30 days of life (t1) and at 6 months of age, during cheiloplasty surgery (T2). Images were analyzed with indirect measurement to assess lip and nose dimensions and nasal symmetry. ImageJ software was used to perform the analyses. Results:A total of 20 patients (P < 0.05) had an average cleft width reduction of 15% [standard deviation (SD) ± 11%]. A 55% average increase (SD ± 29%) was observed in nostril height of cleft side in 16 of patients (P < 0.05). There was an reduction in facial asymmetry of nostril width (P < 0.05), from 95% (SD ± 90%) (t1) to 59% (SD ± 50) (T2). Also, nasal base width asymmetry (P < 0.05) was decreased from 64% (SD ± 66%) (t1) to 40% (SD ± 29%) (T2). Conclusion:Facial growth causes a natural improvement on cleft morphological changes and nasal symmetry.
Multiple sample amplification and genotyping integrated on a single electronic microarray

We report a novel method that allows simultaneous in situ amplification and then genotyping of single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) for multiple samples on a single electronic microarray. The locus coding for one of the common inherited thrombosis risk factors, Factor V Leiden (FVL), was chosen as a model system for SNP analysis. This method combines strand displacement amplification (SDA) with electrophoretic movement and concentration of DNA on electronic microarrays to provide a single platform for DNA amplification and analysis. The method includes: electronic anchoring of allele‐specific SDA amplifiable primers (APs) and a nonamplifiable primer (NAP) to different electrodes, electronic hybridization of genomic DNA from different samples to those primers, in situ amplification of target DNA, and genotyping of FVL. Compared to previous anchored SDA methods, the addition of a NAP improves detection signals by at least 20‐fold. The sensitivity of this method is dependent on the amplification time. Using this method, nine different genomic DNA samples with known FVL genotypes were amplified and correctly genotyped on a single electronic microarray without any contamination between samples. The present method could streamline development of nucleic acid‐based assays in applications of molecular diagnostic, point‐of‐care testing, and forensic detection, which often require the capability to analyze multiple samples efficiently.
Activation of fast‐twitch fibers assessed with twitch potentiation

Introduction: The augmentation of twitch response following brief muscle activation, called twitch potentiation, has been shown to be much more pronounced in fast‐twitch than in slow‐twitch fibers. We thus explored the possibility of twitch potentiation as a noninvasive measure of fast‐twitch fiber activation, by studying its dependence on the intensity of preceding contraction. Methods: Twitch contraction of plantar flexor muscles was evoked with supramaximal stimulation of the posterior tibial nerve, before and immediately after 6‐s voluntary contractions at intensities of 10–100% of maximal voluntary contraction (MVC). Results: Except for low‐intensity contractions (< 30%MVC), voluntary contraction induced twitch potentiation, the magnitude of which increased with increasing contraction intensity (P < 0.001). The shortened contractile process was associated with the potentiation. Conclusions: These results are consistent with the concept of “hierarchical order of fiber activation”, suggesting that the magnitude of twitch potentiation reflects the activation of fast‐twitch fibers during a brief contraction. Muscle Nerve 46: 218–227, 2012
Role of the low-affinity NGF receptor (p75) in survival of retinal bipolar cells

We have examined the role of neurotrophins in promoting survival of mammalian rod bipolar cells (RBC) in culture. Retinas taken from 8- to 10-day-old Long-Evans rats were dissociated and cultured in media supplemented with either nerve growth factor (NGF), neurotrophin-3 (NT-3), brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), ciliary neurotrophic factor (CNTF), or basic fibroblast growth factor (FGF-2). Survival was measured by the number of cells that were immunoreactive for α-, β-, γ-PKC, a bipolar cell-specific marker. Compared to untreated cultures, CNTF had no effect on RBC survival, while NGF and NT-3 increased survival only slightly. BDNF, however, increased survival by approximately 300%. Similar results were obtained with FGF-2. Both nerve growth factor (NGF) and an antibody (anti-REX) which interferes with binding to the 75-kD low-affinity neurotrophin receptor (p75NTR) eliminated BDNF-promoted survival, but had no effect on FGF-2-mediated survival. Interestingly, p75NTR was expressed by retinal glia (Müller cells), but not by the bipolar cells themselves, providing for the possibility that BDNF might induce Müller cells to produce a secondary factor, perhaps FGF-2, which directly rescues RBCs. In support of this hypothesis, an antibody that neutralizes FGF-2 attenuated the trophic effects of BDNF, and dramatically reduced survival in cultures with no added growth factors, indicating that there may be an endogenous source of FGF-2 that promotes survival of RBCs in culture. We suggest that BDNF increases production or release of FGF-2 by binding to p75NTR on Müller cells.
Transportation elasticity for the analysis of Italian transportation demand on a regional scale

Is there a relationship between economic fluctuations and transportation demand? How does a GDP variation influence passenger and freight mobility? Interested readers may find an answer to both these questions in the following paper. Taking Italian regions as subject of the analysis, the paper describes a simplified but rather reliable elasticity-based procedure for the analysis of transportation demand. Within this paper, elasticity can be roughly defined as the percentage change in the transportation demand produced from a unit fluctuation of GDP. The concept of elasticity will be widely defined in section 1, also summarising some of the most interesting results of the literature. As the use of elasticity for the forecast of transportation demand is also considered in this paper, section 2 deals with a brief overview of the main methods. In section 3, relations between transportation demand and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for Italy are derived, a forecast method based on transportation elasticity is developed and its results considered in the light of the literature. Section 4 gives statistic evidence to the method and analyses of demand elasticity of the Italian regional systems. Finally, some conclusions are drawn (section 5).
Unilateral cerebral inactivation produces differential left/right heart rate responses

We studied heart rate following unilateral hemispheric inactivation by intracarotid amobarbital in 25 patients undergoing preoperative evaluation for epilepsy surgery. Heart rate increased after left hemisphere inactivation, but decreased following right hemisphere inactivation. The results are consistent with differential left/right cerebral hemispheric effects on autonomic function, and appear related to functional and anatomic asymmetries in both the central and peripheral nervous systems.
Effect of Preoperative Scrub on the Bacterial Flora of the Endocervix and Vagina

A study was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of a preoperative vaginal and perineal scrub in reducing bacteria. An iodophore soap followed by an iodophore solution was used for the scrub. Cultures were taken from the vagina and endocervix of 50 patients before and after the scrub, and cultured for aerobes, anaerobes, and mycoplasma. An average of 5.62 bacterial species per patient was cultured from the vagina before the scrub and 3.9 from the endocervix. The corresponding numbers after the scrub were 0.08 species per patient from the vagina and 1.84 from the endocervix. The reduction of organisms from the vagina was unrelated to the reduction in the endocervix. The scrub was by far more effective in the vagina than in the endocervix. The vagina was bacteria free in 92% of cases while the endocervix was bacteria free in only 8% of cases. No organisms could be recovered from the cervix of 8 patients who had removal of the endocervix by hot conization followed by the iodophore scrub. There was an average of 4.25 species per patient from the 8 cultures of the endocervix prior to the cone and scrub.