Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Leading change in tissue viability best practice: an action learning programme for link nurse practitioners

This account of practice reports on an action learning initiative designed and implemented in partnership between a regional NHS Acute Trust and a UK Business School. The central initiative was the implementation of an action learning programme entitled ‘Leading change in tissue viability best practice: a development programme for Link Nurse Practitioners’. The purpose was primarily to foster ‘leadership’ in best practice, in frontline nursing staff who have a specific ward-based responsibility regarding ‘tissue viability’, that is the prevention and management of pressure ulcers and wounds. The approach engaged the active involvement of nurses to become problem identifiers and solvers and key influencers in improving practice. The initiative utilized action learning principles to draw out the real experience of nursing staff to identify and analyze the current situation regarding practices around tissue viability issues, to identify significant improvement areas and develop action and implementation plans to achieve improvements. The process of meeting, sharing experience and action planning took place several times over a five-month period from July to December 2009. The initiative is enveloped within a stand-alone University accredited module of the same title accruing 20 credits at level 4. This account provides a timely opportunity to reflect on and evaluate the outcomes of the initiative and the process of learning engaged in by the participants. The initiative was supported and funded by the regional NHS Strategic Health Authority as part of its commitment to improvements in ‘Patient safety’ (National Audit Office – 2005. London: The Stationery Office).
A search for the third lensed image in JVAS B1030+074

Central gravitational image detection is very important for the study of the mass distribution of the inner parts (∼100 pc) of lens galaxies. However, the detection of such images is extremely rare and difficult. We present a 1.7-GHz High Sensitivity Array (HSA) observation of the double-image radio lens system B1030+074. The data are combined with archive Very Long Baseline Array and global very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) observations, and careful consideration is given to the effects of noise, CLEANing and self-calibration. An upper limit is derived for the strength of the central image of 180 μJy (90 per cent confidence level), considerably greater than would have been expected on the basis of a simple analysis. This gives a lower limit of ∼10 3 for the ratio of the brightest image to the central image. For cusped models of lens mass distributions, we have made use of this non-detection to constrain the relation between inner power-law slopeβ of the lensing galaxy mass profile, and its break radius r b· For r b > 130 pc the power-law slope is required to be close to isothermal (β> 1.8). A flatter inner slope is allowed if a massive black hole is present at the centre of the lensing galaxy, but the effect of the black hole is small unless it is ∼10 times more massive than that implied by the relation between black hole mass and stellar velocity dispersion. By comparing four epochs of VLBI observations, we also detected possible superluminal motion in the jet in the brighter image A. The B jet remains unresolved, as expected from a simple lens model of the system.
Standardizing evaluation of on‐line continuing medical education: Physician knowledge, attitudes, and reflection on practice

Introduction: Physicians increasingly earn continuing medical education (CME) credits through on‐line courses, but there have been few rigorous evaluations to determine their effects. The present study explores the feasibility of implementing standardized evaluation templates and tests them to evaluate 30 on‐line CME courses. Methods: A time series design was used to compare the knowledge, attitudes, and reported changes in practice of physician participants who completed any of 30 on‐line CME courses that were hosted on an academic CME Web site and a CME Web portal during the period from August 1, 2002, through March 31, 2003. Data were collected at baseline, at course completion, and 4 weeks later. Paired t tests were used to compare the means of responses across time. Results: U.S. physicians completed 720 post‐tests. Quality of content was the characteristic of most importance to participants; too little interaction was the largest source of dissatis‐faction. Overall mean knowledge scores increased from 58.1% to 75.6% at post‐test and then decreased to 68.2% at 4 weeks following the course. Effect sizes of increased knowledge immediately following the course were larger for case‐based than for text‐based courses. Nearly all physicians reported making changes in practice following course completion, although reported changes differed from expected changes. Conclusions: Increases in physician knowledge and knowledge retention were demonstrated following participation in on‐line CME courses. The implementation of standardized evaluation tests proved to be feasible and allowed longitudinal evaluation analyses across CME providers and content areas.
An empirical mixture model for large-scale RTT measurements

Monitoring delays in the Internet is essential to understand the network condition and ensure the good functioning of time-sensitive applications. Large-scale measurements of round-trip time (RTT) are promising data sources to gain better insights into Internet-wide delays. However, the lack of efficient methodology to model RTTs prevents researchers from leveraging the value of these datasets. In this work, we propose a log-normal mixture model to identify, characterize, and monitor spatial and temporal dynamics of RTTs. This data-driven approach provides a coarse grained view of numerous RTTs in the form of a graph, thus, it enables efficient and systematic analysis of Internet-wide measurements. Using this model, we analyze more than 13 years of RTTs from about 12 millions unique IP addresses in passively measured backbone traffic traces. We evaluate the proposed method by comparison with external data sets, and present examples where the proposed model highlights interesting delay fluctuations due to route changes or congestion. We also introduce an application based on the proposed model to identify hosts deviating from their typical RTTs fluctuations, and we envision various applications for this empirical model.
Wordform- and Class-based Prediction of the Components of German Nominal Compounds in an AAC System

In word prediction systems for augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), productive word-formation processes such as compounding pose a serious problem. We present a model that predicts German nominal compounds by splitting them into their modifier and head components, instead of trying to predict them as a whole. The model is improved further by the use of class-based modifier-head bigrams constructed using semantic classes automatically extracted from a corpus. The evaluation shows that the split compound model with class bigrams leads to an improvement in keystroke savings of more than 15% over a no split compound baseline model. We also present preliminary results obtained with a word prediction model integrating compound and simple word prediction.
Down-Regulation of Replication Factor C-40 (RFC40) Causes Chromosomal Missegregation in Neonatal and Hypertrophic Adult Rat Cardiac Myocytes

Adult mammalian cardiac myocytes (CMs) are generally assumed to be terminally differentiated, nonetheless, a small fraction of CMs have been shown to replicate during ventricular remodeling. However, the expression of Replication Factor C (RFC; RFC140/40/38/37/36) protein that is required for DNA synthesis, in the adult normal and hypertrophied hearts has rarely been studied.
Effects of Polyamines on Vibrio cholerae Virulence Properties

Vibrio cholerae is the causative agent of the severe enteric disease cholera. To cause cholera the bacterium must be able to synthesize both cholera toxin (CT) and toxin-coregulated pilus (TCP) which mediates autoagglutination and is required for colonization of the small intestine. Only a few environmental signals have been shown to regulate V. cholerae virulence gene expression. Polyamines, which are ubiquitous in nature, and have been implicated in regulating virulence gene expression in other bacteria, have not been extensively studied for their effect on V. cholerae virulence properties. The objective of this study was to test the effect of several polyamines that are abundant in the human intestine on V. cholerae virulence properties. All of the polyamines tested inhibited autoagglutination of V. cholerae O1 classical strain in a concentration dependent manner. Putrescine and cadaverine decreased the synthesis of the major pilin subunit, TcpA, spermidine increased its production, and spermine had no effect. Putrescine and spermidine led to a decrease and increase, respectively, on the relative abundance of TCP found on the cell surface. Spermine led to a small reduction in cholera toxin synthesis whereas none of the other polyamines had an effect. The polyamines did not affect pili bundling morphology, but caused a small reduction in CTXφ transduction, indicating that the TCP present on the cell surface may not be fully functional. We hypothesize the inhibition of autoagglutination is likely to be caused by the positively charged amine groups on the polyamines electrostatically disrupting the pili-pili interactions which mediate autoagglutination. Our results implicate that polyamines may have a protective function against colonization of the small intestine by V. cholerae.
Infection initiated by the RNA pregenome of a DNA virus

We describe experiments demonstrating that after transfection into permissive cells, the RNA pregenome of an avian hepadnavirus, the duck hepatitis B virus, is infectious. Using a Sindbis virus expression vector, we showed that cytoplasmic synthesis of the pregenome resulted in hepadnaviral DNA synthesis. Moreover, complete infectious virus was produced from cells transfected with hepadnaviral pregenomic RNA. We conclude that the pregenome of hepadnaviruses can express all the proteins required for DNA synthesis as well as serve as a template for reverse transcription and that DNA resulting from pregenome expression can be utilized to establish a productive infection in pregenome-transfected cells.
Emulating the Power Consumption Behavior of Server Workloads Using CPU Performance Counters

The accurate measurement of a server's power consumption when running realistic workloads enables characterization of its energy efficiency and helps to make better provisioning and workload placement decisions. Information on the energy efficiency of a server for a given target workload can greatly influence such decisions and thus the final energy efficiency of a cluster or data center. However, measuring energy efficiency and power consumption of server applications has become challenging as applications are often distributed or require work intensive configuration, setup, and specialized load drivers for reproducible testing. As a result, it may be not feasible to perform tests using the actual workload that is to be deployed. We introduce an approach to create small-scale workloads that emulate the power consumption-relevant behavior of an application by deliberately triggering specific power relevant performance counter events. These workloads can then be easily deployed on a target server for fast and efficient power characterization. We validate the proposed approach by approximating the power consumption behavior of different workloads at multiple load levels. We show that our approach is capable of producing small-scale workloads that reflect the power consumption behavior of their reference applications over multiple load levels with a minimum error of less than 1%.
An Implementation of Document Image Reconstruction System on Smart Device

In recent years, the smart devices equipped with imaging functions are widely spread. It is very convenient for people to record information around them. For example, photo one page of a book in a library occasionally, or capture an interesting news on the Bulletin board when people walking on street. But sometimes, one shot full area image cannot give an enough resolution for OCR soft or for human visual recognition. Therefore, people would prefer to take several partial character images with a readable size and then expect to stitch them together in an efficient way. In this study, we proposed print document acquisition method using video camera equipped device. A one dimensional histogram based self-calibration algorithm is developed for modification. And the calculation cost is low so that it can be installed on a smartphone. The simulation result shows the effect is reasonable.
Building Intelligent Environments by Adding Smart Artifacts to Spaces: A Peer-to-Peer Architecture

We envision an intelligent environment comprising collections of smart artifacts, each artifact with an embedded processor, networking and sensing capabilities. The interactive capabilities of the environment are due to the collective working of the smart artifacts. This position paper proposes a rule-based declarative programming model for programming intelligent environment behaviours involving a collection of smart artifacts. We outline our language, provide examples and highlight issues. We contend that a peer-to-peer architecture forms a useful approach to building (and extending, over time) intelligent environments, i.e., by adding (perhaps incrementally over time, a few artifacts at a time) cooperative programmable smart artifacts to physical environments.
Recovery of physical function after limb injuries in independent older people living at home.

OBJECTIVES to describe changes in physical functioning after fall-related injuries to the limbs in independently living older people. DESIGN prospective cohort study, including a pre-injury assessment and post-injury assessments at 8 weeks and 5 and 12 months. SETTING the study is part of the larger, population-based prospective and longitudinal Groningen Longitudinal Aging Study on the determinants of health-related quality of life of people aged 57 and over, who are living independently in the north of the Netherlands. SUBJECTS 171 patients who sustained injuries at various sites on the limbs and who had completed all four assessments (66% of the eligible population). Patients were grouped according to injury site. OUTCOME MEASURE self-reported grades of difficulties with performing basic and instrumental activities of daily living as measured by the Groningen Activity Restriction Scale. RESULTS 1 year after the injury, pre-injury (mean) levels of functioning were not regained in any of the groups studied. However, only those with fractures of the wrist or hip experienced a substantial decrease in ability to perform basic and instrumental activities of daily living between baseline and the final assessment. Furthermore, of the 44 subjects with wrist fractures, seven (15.9%) needed help with at least one relevant activity at baseline and 18 (40.9%) at 12 months. Of the 34 subjects with hip fractures, four (11.8%) needed help with at least one activity at baseline and 18 (52.9%) at 12 months. Practically no changes were found in any of the groups after 5 months post-injury. CONCLUSIONS not only hip fractures, but also wrist fractures may reduce older people's chances of remaining independent. Prospects of further recovery are minimal 5-6 months after the injury.
Assessment of defined antigens for the diagnosis of bovine tuberculosis in skin test-reactor cattle

The continued use of purified protein derivative (PPD) tuberculin is considered to be the main factor which limits the specificity of diagnostic tests for bovine tuberculosis (TB). This study evaluated a whole blood interferon-gamma (IFN-y) assay and compared the diagnostic potential of PPD with two tuberculosis-specific antigens, ESAT-6 and MPB70. To provide estimates of sensitivity and specificity, responses were measured in 180 skin test-reacting cattle, of which 131 were confirmed as tuberculous, and in 128 cattle from TB-free herds. For the skin test reactors, there was a positive correlation between the IFN-y responses to PPD from Mycobacterium bovis (PPDB) and PPD from Mycobaderium avium (PPDA), indicating cross-reactivity between these conmplex antigens which are the basis of the skin test. In comparisons of the ESAT-6 IFN-y test with a PPD IFN-y test (using PPDB compared with PPDA), there was a decrease in sensitivity (76-3 per cent vs 89-3 per cent), but a clear increase in specificity (99-2 per cent vs 92-2 per cent).
On Quiescent Reliable Communication

We study the problem of achieving reliable communication with quiescent algorithms (i.e., algorithms that eventually stop sending messages) in asynchronous systems with process crashes and lossy links. We first show that it is impossible to solve this problem in asynchronous systems (with no failure detectors). We then show that, among failure detectors that output lists of suspects, the weakest one that can be used to solve this problem is $\diamond \cal P,$ a failure detector that cannot be implemented. To overcome this difficulty, we introduce an implementable failure detector called Heartbeat and show that it can be used to achieve quiescent reliable communication. Heartbeat is novel: in contrast to typical failure detectors, it does not output lists of suspects and it is implementable without timeouts. With Heartbeat, many existing algorithms that tolerate only process crashes can be transformed into quiescent algorithms that tolerate both process crashes and message losses. This can be applied to consensus, atomic broadcast, k-set agreement, atomic commitment, etc.
Structural and Thermodynamic Properties of Selective Ion Binding in a K+ Channel

Thermodynamic measurements of ion binding to the Streptomyces lividans K+ channel were carried out using isothermal titration calorimetry, whereas atomic structures of ion-bound and ion-free conformations of the channel were characterized by x-ray crystallography. Here we use these assays to show that the ion radius dependence of selectivity stems from the channel's recognition of ion size (i.e., volume) rather than charge density. Ion size recognition is a function of the channel's ability to adopt a very specific conductive structure with larger ions (K+, Rb+, Cs+, and Ba2+) bound and not with smaller ions (Na+, Mg2+, and Ca2+). The formation of the conductive structure involves selectivity filter atoms that are in direct contact with bound ions as well as protein atoms surrounding the selectivity filter up to a distance of 15 Å from the ions. We conclude that ion selectivity in a K+ channel is a property of size-matched ion binding sites created by the protein structure.
Lack of Character: Personality and Moral Behavior

Preface: a renaissance of virtue 1. Joining the hunt 2. Character and consistency 3. Moral character, moral behavior 4. The fragmentation of character 5. Judging character 6. From psychology to ethics 7. Situation and responsibility 8. Is there anything to be ashamed of?
Care provider perspectives on medical travel: A three-country study of destination hospitals

ABSTRACT Despite growing interest in the current and potential role of medical travel in U.S. patient care, very little research has been conducted on clinician and other provider organizations’ perspectives on providing international patient care. The present study sought to gain formative insights about medical travel from the providers’ perspectives, by conducting structured interviews and focus groups in six hospitals from three countries catering to patients traveling from the United States. Findings highlighted the surprising role of international events and policies in the evolution of medical travel, as well as both the desire and need for more transparent quality standards.
Tractable Algorithm for Open Loop Stochastic Control

We present a fast numerical algorithm for open loop control of stochastic differential equations (SDEs). The major difference between this approach and standard stochastic control is that the control process is a deterministic function of time, and not a fully stochastic adapted process. This results in a tremendous gain in computational tractability: the complexity of our algorithm scales as the complexity of optimal control of ordinary differential equations. The algorithm computes the gradient of the cost function with respect to the control function via Monte Carlo sampling of the pathwise gradient. The pathwise gradient is itself computed by solving a set of forward-backward discretized SDEs. Two types of applications are investigated: stochastic system identification and parametric closed loop design
Wavelet-based holistic sequence descriptor for generating video summaries

We propose a video representation, the Video Scene Trajectory, computed from localised temporal-change in order to capture the holistic action content in a sequence. Such a representation is critical for action based genres such as surveillance. We show that an analysis of the trajectory shape is able to produce a temporal segmentation. Furthermore, we build an action based video summary using the Top Discriminative Active Pixels in the segments. Experiments are presented on real-world outdoor surveillance scenes.
Dynamic Resource Allocation in Software Defined and Virtual Networks : A Comparative Analysis

The increasing user demands for services in Virtual Machines and Cloud computing has made the resource allocation an impossible task to be manually performed by human operators. Software Defined Networks (SDNs) and Virtual Networks have been increasingly getting attention as a way for managing these configurations due to the abstraction of the controlling part of the network and its decoupling from the forwarding layer. In this partial paper, we summarize the paradigm of SDNs and Virtual Networks and survey the stateof-the-art of dynamic resource allocation in the field of Virtual Machines and Cloud computing using SDNs and Virtual Networks.
Influence of trapped and interfacial charges in organic multilayer light-emitting devices

Trapped and interfacial charges have significant impact on the performance of organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs). We have studied devices consisting of 20 nm copper phthalocyanine (CuPc) as the buffer and hole-injection layer, 50 nm N, N′-di(naphthalene-1-yl)-N,N′-diphenyl-benzidine (NPB) as the hole transport layer, and 65 nm tris(8-hydroxyquinolinato)aluminum (Alq3) as the electron transport and emitting layer sandwiched between a high-work-function metal and a semitransparent Ca electrode. Current-voltage measurements show that the device characteristics in the negative bias direction and at low positive bias below the built-in voltage are influenced by trapped charges within the organic layers. This is manifested by a strong dependence of the current in this range on the direction and speed of the voltage sweep. Low-frequency capacitance-voltage and static charge measurements reveal a voltage-independent capacitance in the negative bias direction and a significant increase between 0 and 2 V in the given device configuration, indicating the presence of negative interfacial charges at the NPB/Alq3 interface. Transient experiments show that the delay time of electroluminescence at low voltages in these multilayer devices is controlled by the buildup of internal space charges, which facilitates electron injection, rather than by charge-carrier transport through the organic layers. To summarize, our results clearly demonstrate that the tailoring of internal barriers in multilayer devices leads to a significant improvement in device performance.