Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Hydrogen sulfide: physiological properties and therapeutic potential in ischaemia

Hydrogen sulfide (H2S) has become a molecule of high interest in recent years, and it is now recognized as the third gasotransmitter in addition to nitric oxide and carbon monoxide. In this review, we discuss the recent literature on the physiology of endogenous and exogenous H2S, focusing upon the protective effects of hydrogen sulfide in models of hypoxia and ischaemia.
HyVE—Hybrid Vibro-Electrotactile Stimulation—Is an Efficient Approach to Multi-Channel Sensory Feedback

An important reason for the abandonment of commercial actuated hand prostheses by the users is the lack of sensory feedback. Wearable afferent interfaces capable of providing electro- or vibro-tactile stimulation have high potential to restore the missing tactile and/or proprioceptive information to the user. By definition, these devices can elicit single modality (i.e., either vibrotactile or electrotactile) substitute sensations. In a recent research we have presented a novel approach comprising hybrid vibro-electrotactile (HyVE) combined stimulation, in order to provide multimodal sensory feedback. An important advantage of this approach is in the size of the design: the HyVE interface is much more compact than two separated single-modality interfaces, since electro- and vibro-tactile stimulators are placed one on top of the other. The HyVE approach has been previously tested in healthy subjects and has shown to provide a range of hybrid stimuli that could be properly discriminated. However, this approach has never been assessed as a method to provide multi-channel stimuli, i.e., stimuli from a variety of stimulators, mapping information from a multitude of sensors on a prosthesis. In this study, the ability of ten healthy subjects to discriminate stimuli and patterns of stimuli from four different five-channel interfaces applied on their forearms was evaluated. We showed that multiple HyVE units could be used to provide multi-channel sensory information with equivalent performance (~95 percent for single stimuli and ~80 percent for pattern) to single modality interfaces (vibro- or electro-tactile) larger in size and with better performance than vibrotactile interfaces (i.e., 73 percent for single stimuli and 69 percent for pattern) with the same size. These results are promising in relation to the current availability of multi-functional prostheses with multiple sensors.
Effects of cognitive remediation therapy versus other interventions on cognitive functioning in schizophrenia inpatients

ABSTRACT Computerised cognitive remediation therapy (CCRT) has been shown to improve cognitive function in individuals with schizophrenia beyond effects of other forms of therapy. However, results vary between studies, and most are aimed at individuals who are living in the community. Very few studies have investigated its efficacy in psychiatric wards in order to assess whether or not this is a suitable site to start the therapy. This study evaluated CCRT efficacy among schizophrenia inpatients who received a broad range of therapeutic interventions in a psychiatric ward. A randomised controlled trial of CCRT versus an active control in 66 young inpatients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia was conducted. The intervention lasted for 6 weeks and its efficacy was assessed with the composite score of the MATRICS Consensus Cognitive Battery. Both groups improved similarly in cognitive function and psychopathological symptoms. However, the CCRT group improved more than the controls in negative symptoms. This result shows that providing a drill and practice cognitive remediation to inpatients does not produce benefits for cognitive functioning substantially greater than other forms of therapy provided in a ward, but it is more efficient in reduction of negative symptoms. Our results suggest that CRT might be considered as a promising intervention for reducing negative symptoms in schizophrenia individuals.
Using Directed Acyclic Graphs in Epidemiological Research in Psychosis: An Analysis of the Role of Bullying in Psychosis

Abstract Modern psychiatric epidemiology researches complex interactions between multiple variables in large datasets. This creates difficulties for causal inference. We argue for the use of probabilistic models represented by directed acyclic graphs (DAGs). These capture the dependence structure of multiple variables and, used appropriately, allow more robust conclusions about the direction of causation. We analyzed British national survey data to assess putative mediators of the association between bullying victimization and persecutory ideation. We compared results using DAGs and the Karlson–Holm–Breen (KHB) logistic regression commands in STATA. We analyzed data from the 2007 English National Survey of Psychiatric Morbidity, using the equivalent 2000 survey in an instant replication. Additional details of methods and results are provided in the supplementary material. DAG analysis revealed a richer structure of relationships than could be inferred using the KHB logistic regression commands. Thus, bullying had direct effects on worry, persecutory ideation, mood instability, and drug use. Depression, sleep and anxiety lay downstream, and therefore did not mediate the link between bullying and persecutory ideation. Mediation by worry and mood instability could not be definitively ascertained. Bullying led to hallucinations indirectly, via persecutory ideation and depression. DAG analysis of the 2000 dataset suggested the technique generates stable results. While causality cannot be fully determined from cross-sectional data, DAGs indicate the relationships providing the best fit. They thereby advance investigation of the complex interactions seen in psychiatry, including the mechanisms underpinning psychiatric symptoms. It may consequently be used to optimize the choice of intervention targets.
A general framework for solving multi-objective optimization under uncertainty

Advanced power system designs involves consideration of a number of objective, and conventional simulation models are based on a steady-state deterministic framework and do not handle uncertainties in a systematic manner. Technical and economic uncertainties are not rigorously treated or characterized in most preliminary cost and performance estimates of advanced power system designs. So, there is clearly a need of developing a computationally efficient systematic optimization framework under uncertainty using the diverse systems model to aid the decision maker. In this paper, we propose a general framework, and take example for one-dimensional, non-isothermal description of proton exchange membrane fuel cells. Results are presented illustrating the effect of uncertainty on the performance of the PEM fuel fell.
Modelling lifetime QALYs and health care costs from different drinking patterns over time: a Markov model

The negative health consequences of alcohol use and its treatment account for significant health care expenditure worldwide. Long‐term modelling techniques are developed in this paper to establish a link between drinking patterns, health consequences and alcohol treatment effectiveness and cost‐effectiveness. The overall change in health related quality and quantity of life which results from changes in health‐related behaviour is estimated. Specifically, a probabilistic lifetime Markov model is presented where alcohol consumption in grams of alcohol per day and drinking history are used for the categorization of patients into four Markov states. Utility weights are assigned to each drinking state using EQ‐5D scores. Mortality and morbidity estimates are state, gender and age specific, and are alcohol‐related and non‐alcohol‐related. The methodology is tested in a case study. This represents a major development in the techniques traditionally used in alcohol economic models, in which short‐term costs and outcomes are assessed, omitting potential longer term cost savings and improvements in health related quality of life. Assumptions and implications of the approach are discussed. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Swedish PE teachers struggle with assessment in a criterion-referenced grading system

ABSTRACT In the field of education, the international trend is to turn to criterion-referenced grading in the hope of achieving accountable and consistent grades. Despite a national criterion-referenced grading system emphasising knowledge as the only base for grading, Swedish physical education (PE) grades have been shown to value non-knowledge factors, such as students’ characteristics and behaviour. In 2011, a new national curriculum was implemented which attempts to deal with the problem by prescribing specific knowledge requirements with a clear progression as the only basis for different grades. The aim of the present study is to explore the impact of the new knowledge requirements on what teachers consider important when assigning grades. It is also to discuss what non-knowledge-related aspects (if any) teachers continue to look for and why these seem to remain resilient to the reform. The Repertory Grid technique was employed to interview the teachers before (2009) and after the implementation (2013). During the interviews, the grading of 45 students was discussed, which generated 125 constructs. After the implementation, there was a near doubling of knowledge constructs, half as many motivation constructs and an almost total elimination of constructs based on confidence and social skills. While motivational factors were still considered valuable for the award of a higher grade, clear criteria seemed to be important, but too limited for the teachers’ needs. In order to understand the persistence of motivational factors, we discuss the results in relation to Bernstein’s interrelated message systems of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. We emphasise the need to discuss how valid grades can be achieved and, at the same time, give value to the regulative discourse in order to realise the overarching national goals of values and norms in education and PE.
What Constitutes “Good” Evidence for Public Health and Social Policy-making? From Hierarchies to Appropriateness

Within public health, and increasingly other areas of social policy, there are widespread calls to increase or improve the use of evidence for policy-making. Often these calls rest on an assumption that increased evidence utilisation will be a more efficient or effective means of achieving social goals. Yet a clear elucidation of what can be considered “good evidence” for policy is rarely articulated. Many of the current discussions of best practise in the health policy sector derive from the evidence-based medicine (EBM) movement, embracing the “hierarchy of evidence” that places experimental trials as pre-eminent in terms of methodological quality. However, a number of problems arise if these hierarchies are used to rank or prioritise policy relevance. Challenges in applying evidence hierarchies to policy questions arise from the fact that the EBM hierarchies rank evidence of intervention effect on a specified and limited number of outcomes. Previous authors have noted that evidence forms at the top of such hierarchies typically serve the needs and realities of clinical medicine, but not necessarily public policy. We build on past insights by applying three disciplinary perspectives from political science, the philosophy of science and the sociology of knowledge to illustrate the limitations of a single evidence hierarchy to guide health policy choices, while simultaneously providing new conceptualisations suited to achieve health sector goals. In doing so, we provide an alternative approach that re-frames “good” evidence for health policy as a question of appropriateness. Rather than adhering to a single hierarchy of evidence to judge what constitutes “good” evidence for policy, it is more useful to examine evidence through the lens of appropriateness. The form of evidence, the determination of relevant categories and variables, and the weight given to any piece of evidence, must suit the policy needs at hand. A more robust and critical examination of relevant and appropriate evidence can ensure that the best possible evidence of various forms is used to achieve health policy goals.
Managing the pediatric patient with refractory asthma: a multidisciplinary approach

Children with asthma that is refractory to high levels of prescribed treatment are described as having problematic severe asthma. Those in whom persistent symptoms result from a failure of basic asthma management are described as having “difficult asthma”, while those who remain symptomatic despite these factors having been addressed are described as having “severe therapy-resistant asthma” (STRA). The majority of children have difficult asthma; asthma that is poorly controlled because of a failure to get the basics of asthma management right. Modifiable factors including nonadherence to medication, persistent adverse environmental exposures, and psychosocial factors often contribute to poor control in these patients. As our skill in identifying and addressing modifiable factors has improved, we have found that a progressively smaller proportion of our clinic patients is categorized as having true STRA, resulting in an infrequent resort to escalation of treatment. Many of the modifiable factors associated with the diagnosis of difficult asthma can be identified in a general pediatric clinic. Characterization of more complex factors, however, requires the time, skill, and expertise of multiple health care professionals within the asthma multidisciplinary team. In this review, we will describe the structured approach adopted by The Royal Brompton Hospital in the management of the child with problematic severe asthma. We highlight the roles of members of the multidisciplinary team at various stages of assessment and focus on prominent themes in the identification and treatment of modifiable factors.
Association of a Locus in the CAMTA1 Gene With Survival in Patients With Sporadic Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis.

IMPORTANCE Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a devastating adult-onset neurodegenerative disorder with a poor prognosis and a median survival of 3 years. However, a significant proportion of patients survive more than 10 years from symptom onset. OBJECTIVE To identify gene variants influencing survival in ALS. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS This genome-wide association study (GWAS) analyzed survival in data sets from several European countries and the United States that were collected by the Italian Consortium for the Genetics of ALS and the International Consortium on Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Genetics. The study population included 4256 patients with ALS (3125 [73.4%] deceased) with genotype data extended to 7 174 392 variants by imputation analysis. Samples of DNA were collected from January 1, 1993, to December 31, 2009, and analyzed from March 1, 2014, to February 28, 2015. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES Cox proportional hazards regression under an additive model with adjustment for age at onset, sex, and the first 4 principal components of ancestry, followed by meta-analysis, were used to analyze data. Survival distributions for the most associated genetic variants were assessed by Kaplan-Meier analysis. RESULTS Among the 4256 patients included in the analysis (2589 male [60.8%] and 1667 female [39.2%]; mean [SD] age at onset, 59 [12] years), the following 2 novel loci were significantly associated with ALS survival: at 10q23 (rs139550538; P = 1.87 × 10-9) and in the CAMTA1 gene at 1p36 (rs2412208, P = 3.53 × 10-8). At locus 10q23, the adjusted hazard ratio for patients with the rs139550538 AA or AT genotype was 1.61 (95% CI, 1.38-1.89; P = 1.87 × 10-9), corresponding to an 8-month reduction in survival compared with TT carriers. For rs2412208 CAMTA1, the adjusted hazard ratio for patients with the GG or GT genotype was 1.17 (95% CI, 1.11-1.24; P = 3.53 × 10-8), corresponding to a 4-month reduction in survival compared with TT carriers. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE This GWAS robustly identified 2 loci at genome-wide levels of significance that influence survival in patients with ALS. Because ALS is a rare disease and prevention is not feasible, treatment that modifies survival is the most realistic strategy. Therefore, identification of modifier genes that might influence ALS survival could improve the understanding of the biology of the disease and suggest biological targets for pharmaceutical intervention. In addition, genetic risk scores for survival could be used as an adjunct to clinical trials to account for the genetic contribution to survival.
Anxiety disorders, gender nonconformity, bullying and self‐esteem in sexual minority adolescents: prospective birth cohort study

BACKGROUND Sexual minority adolescents (i.e. youth not exclusively heterosexual) report more anxiety than heterosexual youth on symptom questionnaires but no research has used standardised diagnostic tools to investigate anxiety disorder risk. This study uses a UK birth cohort to investigate the risk of anxiety disorders in sexual minority and heterosexual youth using a computerised structured clinical interview and explores the influence of gender nonconformity, bullying and self-esteem. METHODS Participants were 4,564 adolescents (2,567 girls and 1,996 boys) from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC). Logistic regression analyses were performed to investigate the association between sexual orientation at 15.5 years and the presence of an anxiety disorder at 17.5 years. Covariates including maternal occupation, ethnicity, mother-reported childhood gender nonconformity at 30, 42 and 57 months, child-reported gender nonconformity at 8 years, child-reported bullying between 12 and 16 years and self-esteem at 17.5 years were added sequentially to regression models. RESULTS Sexual minority adolescents (i.e. those not exclusively heterosexual) had higher early childhood gender nonconformity (CGN), lower self-esteem and reported more bullying than adolescents identifying as 100% heterosexual. Minority sexual orientation at 15.5 years was associated with increased risk of an anxiety disorder at 17.5 years for girls (OR 2.55, CI 1.85-3.52) and boys (OR 2.48, CI 1.40-4.39). Adjusting for ethnicity, maternal occupation, mother-reported and child-reported CGN had minimal impact on this association. Adjusting for bullying between 12 and 16 years and self-esteem at 17.5 years reduced the strength of the associations, although the overall association remained significant for both sexes (girls OR 2.14 and boys OR 1.93). CONCLUSIONS Sexual minority youth are at increased risk of anxiety disorders relative to heterosexual youth at 17.5 years. Bullying between 12-16 years and lower self-esteem may contribute to this risk.
Group sensitive Classifier Chains for multi-label classification

In multi-label classification, labels often have correlations with each other. Exploiting label correlations can improve the performances of classifiers. Current multi-label classification methods mainly consider the global label correlations. However, the label correlations may be different over different data groups. In this paper, we propose a simple and efficient framework for multi-label classification, called Group sensitive Classifier Chains. We assume that similar examples not only share the same label correlations, but also tend to have similar labels. We augment the original feature space with label space and cluster them into groups, then learn the label dependency graph in each group respectively and build the classifier chains on each group specific label dependency graph. The group specific classifier chains which are built on the nearest group of the test example are used for prediction. Comparison results with the state-of-the-art approaches manifest competitive performances of our method.
Soil-Transmitted Helminth Infections Are Associated With an Increase in Human Papillomavirus Prevalence and a T-Helper Type 2 Cytokine Signature in Cervical Fluids.

BACKGROUND An ecological correlation between invasive cervical cancer incidence and burden of soil-transmitted helminths (STH) is hypothesized to explain the excess in detectable human papillomavirus (HPV) infection in Latin America, via a global T-helper type 2 (Th2)-biased mucosal immune response secondary to STH infection. METHODS The association between current STH infection and HPV prevalence was compared in regions of Peru where STH is or is not endemic. Adjusted prevalence ratios (PRs) with robust variance were estimated as an effect measure of STH infection on HPV prevalence in each study site. Soluble immune marker profiles in STH-infected and STH-uninfected women were compared using Spearman rank correlation with the Sidak correction. RESULTS Among women in the helminth-endemic region of the Peruvian Amazon, those with STH infection women had a 60% higher prevalence of HPV, compared with those without STH infection (PR, 1.6; 95% confidence interval, 1.0-2.7). Non-STH parasitic/protozoal infections in the non-STH-endemic population of Peru were not associated with HPV prevalence. In Iquitos, A Th2 immune profile was observed in cervical fluid from helminth-infected women but not helminth-uninfected women. CONCLUSIONS A proportion of the increased HPV prevalence at older ages observed in Latin America may be due to a population-level difference in the efficiency of immunological control of HPV across the lifespan due to endemic STH infection.
The Development, Validation, and Feasibility of the Experienced Coercion Scale

Existing scales for experienced coercion have limitations. We developed and validated a short self-report form for experienced coercion for use across care settings, care phases, and care measures. In Stage 1, we developed an item pool, based on the literature, patient accounts, interviews, and expert feedback. Stages 2 and 3 consisted of 2 cross-sectional studies, with patients from acute and nonacute inpatient wards, outpatient care, and supported housing. In Stage 2, patients (N = 212) responded to the Coercion Ladder and the experienced coercion items from Stage 1. We selected 20 items for Stage 3 based on item performance in typically coercive versus voluntary care settings, each items’ relation to the Coercion Ladder score, and with regard to the component structure from principal component analysis (PCA). In Stage 3, we collected and examined item responses and clinical and coercion data from a new sample of patients (N = 219). We selected 15 items based on factor loadings to form part of the final Experienced Coercion Scale (ECS). The internal consistency was high and score distribution approached the normal curve. ECS sum scores correlated strongly with scores on the Coercion Ladder. In a regression analysis, demographic variables, diagnosis, duration of treatment, and care setting did not predict ECS scores, while legal status and continuing involuntary medication significantly predicted scores. In this initial study, the ECS scores showed promising psychometric properties, suggesting it can be used across care settings and is suitable for research and service evaluation.