Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Understanding interprofessional relationships by the use of contact theory

The importance and necessity of interprofessional collaboration (IPC) present challenges for educators as they determine how best to achieve IPC through interprofessional education (IPE). Simulation-based teaching has been shown to enhance students’ understanding of professional roles and promote positive attitudes toward team members; yet, empirical evidence providing direction on the conditions necessary to promote these positive outcomes is lacking. This study used a quasi-experimental design with a pre-/post-test to examine changes in undergraduate healthcare students’ perceptions and attitudes toward IPC following their participation in an interprofessional simulation program. Allport's (1954) intergroup contact theory was used to help understand the nature of this IPE workshop and its reported outcomes. Participants included students in the final year of their respective programs (n = 84) such as pharmacy technician, paramedic, nursing and occupational therapy assistant/physical therapy assistant programs. These students were engaged in simulation exercises with interactive contact opportunities. Using the interdisciplinary education perceptions scale, statistically significant increases in positive attitudes in three of four sub-scales were found. An analysis of the structure and format of the workshop suggests that this IPE initiative fulfilled the key conditions suggested by intergroup contact theory. Attention to the key conditions provided by Allport's theory in the context of successful intergroup relationships may help provide direction for educators interested in planning IPE initiatives with student groups enrolled in various health programs.
Nickel Nano-Wires Filled Alumina Templates for Microwave Electronics

The magnetic properties of arrays of one-dimensional nickel nano-wires with high aspect ratio have been studied by a network analyzer based ferromagnetic resonance (NA-FMR) technique using a flip-chip method in frequency domain. The frequency-field data [fr(H 0)] is observed to be tunable up to 14-16 GHz with an applied field (H0) of 4 kOe. The fundamental magnetic parameters such as the spontaneous magnetization, gyromagnetic ratio (gamma) , and magnetic anisotropies of the nanowires were derived from fr(H 0) data. The resonance response of the Ni nanowire is explained theoretically by calculating the transmission parameter using a simple method; where the nanowire in the alumina matrix is represented by an effective medium. The power transmitted per unit area in the coplanar waveguide transmission line with the sample is calculated from the Poynting vector using the RF field components at all positions around the signal line in the waveguide.
ROS-Induced GATA4 and GATA6 Downregulation Inhibits StAR Expression in LPS-Treated Porcine Granulosa-Lutein Cells

LPS is a major endotoxin produced by gram-negative bacteria, and exposure to it commonly occurs in animal husbandry. Previous studies have shown that LPS infection disturbs steroidogenesis, including progesterone production, and subsequently decreases animal reproductive performance. However, little information about the underlying mechanisms is available thus far. In the present study, an in vitro-luteinized porcine granulosa cell model was used to study the underlying molecular mechanisms of LPS treatment. We found that LPS significantly inhibits progesterone production and downregulates the expressions of progesterone synthesis-associated genes (StAR, CYP11A1, and 3β-HSD). Furthermore, the levels of ROS were significantly increased in an LPS dose-dependent manner. Moreover, transcriptional factors GATA4 and GATA6, but not NR5A1, were significantly downregulated. Elimination of LPS-stimulated ROS by melatonin or vitamin C could restore the expressions of GATA4, GATA6, and StAR. In parallel, StAR expression was also inhibited by the knockdown of GATA4 and GATA6. Based on these data, we conclude that LPS impairs StAR expression via the ROS-induced downregulation of GATA4 and GATA6. Collectively, these findings provide new insights into the understanding of reproductive losses in animals suffering from bacterial infection and LPS exposure.
Timescalenet : A Multiresolution Approach for Raw Audio Recognition

In recent years, the use of Deep Learning techniques in audio signal processing has led the scientific community to develop machine learning strategies that allow to build efficient representations from raw waveforms for machine hearing tasks. In the present paper, we show the benefit of a multi-resolution approach : TimeScaleNet aims at learning an efficient representation of a sound, by learning time dependencies both at the sample level and at the frame level. At the sample level, TimeScaleNet’s architecture introduces a new form of recurrent neural layer that acts as a learnable passband biquadratic digital IIR filterbank and self-adapts to the specific recognition task and dataset, with a large receptive field and very few learnable parameters. The obtained frame-level feature map is then processed using a residual network of depthwise separable atrous convolutions. This second scale of analysis allows to encode the time fluctuations at the frame timescale, in different learnt pooled frequency bands. In the present paper, TimeScaleNet is tested using the Speech Commands Dataset. We report a very high mean accuracy of 94.87 ± 0.24% (macro averaged F1-score : 94.9 ± 0.24%) for this particular task.
Analyzing orientation patterns of human skin fibroblasts using image gradient information

Fibroblasts are the cells within the dermis layer of skin which are responsible for generating connective tissue, where collagen is the main component. However, the effects of collagen on the motion behavior of human skin fibroblasts were not studied well. We therefore propose an image analysis method to quantify the effects of collagen on the motion characteristics of fibroblasts. Images are divided into disjoint blocks and three gradient based descriptors, namely histogram of oriented gradients (HOG), the modified HOG (modiHOG), and the gradient direction histogram (GDH) are then applied to each block. These features can extract the orientation and shape or orientation only information of the skin fibroblasts from images. An orientation similarity function and a quantitative index, called first minimum similarity distance, are defined to quantify the orientation behavior of fibroblasts. An experiment with two sets of fibroblasts images, obtained from cell culture with and without collagen coating, demonstrates that the skin fibroblasts produce smaller orientation patterns, when they are cultured in the presence of collagen proteins. A statistical t-test is then performed, which validates the significant differences in the orientation behavior of the skin fibroblasts in the two cases mentioned.
Simultaneous optimization of supply and threshold voltages for low-power and high-performance circuits in the leakage dominant era

Electrothermal couplings between supply voltage, operating frequency, power dissipation and die temperature have been shown to significantly impact the energy-delay-product (EDP) based simultaneous optimization of supply (Vdd) and threshold (Vth) voltages. We present for the first time, the implications of an electrothermally aware EDP optimization on circuit operation in leakage dominant nanometer scale CMOS technologies. It is demonstrated that electrothermal EDP (EEDP) optimization restricts the operation of the circuit to a certain region in the Vdd-Vth plane. Also, the significance of EEDP optimization has been shown to increase with increase in leakage power and/or process variations.
A Narrative Review and Novel Framework for Application of Team-Based Learning in Graduate Medical Education.

BACKGROUND Team-based learning (TBL) promotes problem solving and teamwork, and has been applied as an instructional method in undergraduate medical education with purported benefits. Although TBL curricula have been implemented for residents, no published systematic reviews or guidelines exist for the development and use of TBL in graduate medical education (GME). OBJECTIVE To review TBL curricula in GME, identify gaps in the literature, and synthesize a framework to guide the development of TBL curricula at the GME level. METHODS We searched PubMed, MEDLINE, and ERIC databases from 1990 to 2014 for relevant articles. References were reviewed to identify additional studies. The inclusion criteria were peer-reviewed publications in English that described TBL curriculum implementation in GME. Data were systematically abstracted and reviewed for consensus. Based on included publications, a 4-element framework-system, residents, significance, and scaffolding-was developed to serve as a step-wise guide to planning a TBL curriculum in GME. RESULTS Nine publications describing 7 unique TBL curricula in residency met inclusion criteria. Outcomes included feasibility, satisfaction, clinical behavior, teamwork, and knowledge application. CONCLUSIONS TBL appears feasible in the GME environment, with learner reactions ranging from positive to neutral. Gaps in the literature occur within each of the 4 elements of the suggested framework, including: system, faculty preparation time and minimum length of effective TBL sessions; residents, impact of team heterogeneity and inconsistent attendance; significance, comparison to other instructional methods and outcomes measuring knowledge retention, knowledge application, and skill development; and scaffolding, factors that influence the completion of preparatory work.
Neurosteroid Levels in the Orbital Frontal Cortex of Subjects With PTSD and Controls: A Preliminary Report

Background Neurosteroids mediate stress signaling and have been implicated in the pathogenesis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in both preclinical and clinical studies. Compared to controls, subjects with PTSD exhibit altered neurosteroid levels in peripheral blood and cerebrospinal fluid as well as hypoactivity in the medial orbital frontal cortex (mOFC). Therefore, the aim of this study was to compare neurosteroid levels in the mOFC of subjects with PTSD (n = 18) and controls (n = 35). Methods Gray matter was dissected from fresh-frozen mOFC, and levels of the neurosteroids pregnenolone, allopregnanolone, pregnanolone, epiallopregnanolone, epipregnanolone, tetrahydrodeoxycorticosterone, and androsterone were determined by gas chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. Results Analyses of unadjusted levels revealed that males with PTSD had significantly decreased levels of allopregnanolone (p = 0.03) compared to control males, and females with PTSD had significantly increased levels of pregnenolone (p = 0.03) relative to control females. After controlling for age, postmortem interval, and smoking status, results showed that males with PTSD had significantly decreased levels of androsterone (t46 = 2.37, p = 0.02) compared to control males and females with PTSD had significantly increased levels of pregnanolone (t46 = −2.25, p = 0.03) relative to control females. Conclusions To our knowledge, this is the first report of neurosteroid levels in postmortem brain tissue of subjects with PTSD. Although replication is required in other brain regions and a larger cohort of subjects, the results suggest a dysregulation of allopregnanolone and androsterone in males with PTSD and pregnanolone in females with PTSD in the mOFC.
Drag-and-type: a new method for typing with virtual keyboards on small touchscreens

Small touchscreens are widely used in consumer electronics, such as smartphones and mobile electronic devices. However, typing on the small touchscreen is still worth studying. In fact, smartphone users are experiencing difficulties and also many errors in typing alphanumeric keys with their thumbs because a small virtual keyboard even with the reduced set of touchable keys can only provide tiny size keys to the users. This paper studies a new style of typing method called Drag-and-Type, which leverages the dragging action instead of direct tapping on the touchscreen to ease more accurate typing on the small virtual keyboard. Although the typing speed is controversial, the consumers can choose this method when an accurate typing is more required, for example, for a password entry that is quite more sensitive to erroneous key inputs. In that sense, the proposed method is further explored to the extension called Secure Drag-and-Type for securing the password entry against shoulder-surfing and spyware attacks under the Drag-and- Type paradigm. In the user study, it was found that the proposed method could be used for secure and accurate password entry on the small touchscreen regarding the security-sensitive consumer electronics applications.
“Pray or Prey?” Dissociation of Semantic Memory Retrieval from Episodic Memory Processes Using Positron Emission Tomography and a Novel Homophone Task

One problem in studying the neural basis of semantic memory using functional neuroimaging is that it is often difficult to disentangle activation associated with semantic memory retrieval from that associated with episodic memory encoding and retrieval. To address this issue, a novel homophone task was used in which subjects were PET scanned whilst learning a series of real words (e.g., prey). In a subsequent scan, the subjects were presented with homophone pairs (e.g., prey vs pray) and were required to choose the one that had been shown previously. In two corresponding baseline tasks, the subjects were scanned whilst learning and recognizing pronounceable nonwords. Thus, while all of these tasks recruited either episodic memory encoding or retrieval processes, only the homophone tasks involved semantic memory retrieval. A conjunction analysis designed to isolate activation associated with semantic memory retrieval, revealed changes in several left lateral frontal regions (BA 9/10, 9/45), the left middle temporal cortex (BA 21), and in the left inferior temporoparietal cortex (BA 39). In contrast, a conjunction analysis designed to isolate activation associated with episodic memory encoding, revealed significant changes in the left hippocampus, as well as in the frontopolar cortex (BA 10) bilaterally, the left inferior parietal cortex (BA 40), and the left superior temporal gyrus (BA 22, 28). The present results clarify and extend recent attempts to understand the neural basis of semantic memory retrieval, by actively controlling for the confounding effects of episodic memory encoding and retrieval processes.
Exploiting Mobile Big Data: Sources, Features, and Applications

The worldwide rollout of 4G LTE mobile communication networks has accelerated the proliferation of the mobile Internet and spurred a new wave of mobile applications on smartphones. This new wave has provided mobile operators an enormous opportunity to collect a huge amount of data to monitor the technical and transactional aspects of their networks. Recent research on mobile big data mining have shown its great potential for diverse purposes ranging from improving traffic management, enabling personal and contextual services, to monitoring city dynamics and so on. The mobile big data research has a multi-disciplinary nature that demands distinct knowledge from mobile communications, signal processing, and data mining. The research field of mobile big data has emerged quickly in recent years, but is somewhat fragmented. This article aims to provide an integrated picture of this emerging field to bridge multiple disciplines and hopefully to inspire future research.
Extracting Experiences Using Dependency Parsing on Japanese e-Commerce Websites

In recent years, the expansion of e-commerce has led to a rapid increase in the number of customer reviews on websites. In general, the reviews are written by consumers after they have purchased or used the products. However, reviews may not only be written by users who have experience of the products, making it difficult to determine which reviews are useful references when purchasing items. On e-commerce websites, in particular, reviews written by consumers who have actually used or purchased the items are useful to both consumers and shops, so a method of extracting such experiential information is needed. In this paper, we propose a method for extracting reviews that contain useful information using Japanese dependency parsing. Our method extracts rather less information than previous methods, but requires less processing to achieve almost the same accuracy as conventional approaches.
Random vibration testing beyond PSD limitations

The traditional approach to random vibration testing using fast-Fourier-transform simulation has become out-of-date, since it is restricted to consideration of the power spectral density only. The latter means that the FFT approach is based on a Gaussian random signal model. However, the MIL-STD-810F standard establishes that "care must be taken to examine field-measured probability density for non-Gaussian behavior. " A test engineer is now required to "ensure that test and analysis hardware and software are appropriate when non-Gaussian distributions are encountered. " There is widespread belief that the time waveform replication can address the non-Gaussian issue. However the TWR method is not a simulation, since the replication test is representative of just one road sample measured, not of a road type like the simulation test. This difference between replication and simulation is discussed here. Two methods of non-Gaussian simulation (polynomial function transformation and special phase selection) based on kurtosis and skewness characteristics are considered and examples of simulating various field data are given.
EXAMINING THE RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY OF THE FITBIT® CHARGE 2™ ON STEP COUNT DURING TREADMILL EXERCISE

The purpose of this study was to determine the reliability and validity of the Fitbit® Charge 2TM to count steps during a treadmill protocol. The participants wore a Fitbit® Charge 2TM on their wrist. 16 participants who met inclusion criteria were assigned to the following testing conditions; GPS stride length/manual stride length and hold/no-hold onto the handrails of the treadmill. The participants completed a walking protocol that included light (<40% of HRR), moderate (40-60% of HRR), and vigorous (>60% of HRR) intensities. The Fitbit® Charge 2TM step count and the manually counted steps were documented. Intraclass Correlation Coefficients (ICC) analysis found that the Fitbit® Charge 2TM was not reliable or valid to count steps.
Novel Concept of Dish Stirling Solar Power Generation Designed With a HTS Linear Generator

A novel dish Stirling solar power generation (DSSPG) system has been designed incorporated with a high temperature superconducting (HTS) linear synchronous generator (LSG). The high efficient HTSLSG is a compact energy converter for a Stirling engine in the DSSPG system, where a duplex of Stirling cycles is applied, in which a Stirling engine replaces the conventional linear compressor forming a Stirling pulse tube refrigerator (SPTR). This paper presents the DSSPG system designed with the HTSLSG cooled by the duplex Stirling system, and analyzes the thermal load and power distribution in the system to provide bases for consideration of practical application. Analysis results show that the DSSPG system with the HTSLSG refrigerated by the SPTR powered by the DSSPG system itself can be realized, and has higher efficiency than that with the conventional LSG and has larger system capacity.
The Collinearity Problem in Linear Regression. The Partial Least Squares (PLS) Approach to Generalized Inverses

The use of partial least squares (PLS) for handling collinearities among the independent variables X in multiple regression is discussed. Consecutive estimates $({\text{rank }}1,2,\cdots )$ are obtained using the residuals from previous rank as a new dependent variable y. The PLS method is equivalent to the conjugate gradient method used in Numerical Analysis for related problems.To estimate the “optimal” rank, cross validation is used. Jackknife estimates of the standard errors are thereby obtained with no extra computation.The PLS method is compared with ridge regression and principal components regression on a chemical example of modelling the relation between the measured biological activity and variables describing the chemical structure of a set of substituted phenethylamines.
The Local Lymph Node Assay (LLNA)

The murine local lymph node assay (LLNA) is a widely accepted method for assessing the skin sensitization potential of chemicals. Compared with other in vivo methods in guinea pig, the LLNA offers important advantages with respect to animal welfare, including a requirement for reduced animal numbers as well as reduced pain and trauma. In addition to hazard identification, the LLNA is used for determining the relative skin sensitizing potency of contact allergens as a pivotal contribution to the risk assessment process. The LLNA is the only in vivo method that has been subjected to a formal validation process. The original LLNA protocol is based on measurement of the proliferative activity of draining lymph node cells (LNC), as determined by incorporation of radiolabeled thymidine. Several variants to the original LLNA have been developed to eliminate the use of radioactive materials. One such alternative is considered here: the LLNA:BrdU‐ELISA method, which uses 5‐bromo‐2‐deoxyuridine (BrdU) in place of radiolabeled thymidine to measure LNC proliferation in draining nodes. Curr. Protoc. Toxicol. 51:20.7. 1‐20.7. 14. © 2012 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
New drugs for familiar therapeutic targets: thrombopoietin receptor agonists and immune thrombocytopenic purpura

Various agents to treat immune thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP) have been developed on the principle that stimulating the thrombopoietin (TPO) receptor would increase platelet production. First‐generation agents—recombinant human thrombopoietin (rHuTPO) and pegylated recombinant human megakaryocyte growth and development factor (PEG rHuMGDF)—showed promise, but observations of antibody formation to PEG rHuMGDF led to the discontinuation of development of both agents. Second‐generation agents—the TPO peptide mimetics, TPO non‐peptide mimetics, and TPO agonist antibodies—have been developed to reduce or eliminate the problem of antigenicity. Clinical studies for some of these agents, such as AMG 531 (romiplosim, Nplate) and eltrombopag (Promacta), are demonstrating their relative safety and efficacy in increasing platelet counts in patients with ITP; AMG 531 and eltrombopag are in late‐stage clinical development and are able to stimulate platelet production in patients with ITP. Some differences in safety profiles have been described and are undergoing further study. There are currently seven second‐generation TPO receptor agonists that have been reported in the literature, representing the potential advantages—and continuing challenges—with this novel class of platelet‐stimulating therapies for ITP and possibly thrombocytopenia in other disease states as well.
Poly[[diaquadi-μ2-cyanido-bis(μ2-pyrazine-2-carboxylato)dicopper(I)copper(II)] dihydrate]

In the title compound, {[CuIICuI 2(C5H3N2O2)2(CN)2(H2O)2]·2H2O}n, the CuII atom lies on an inversion centre and is octahedrally coordinated by two N atoms and two O atoms from opposing pyrazine-2-carboxylate (2-pac) ligands and two water O atoms. The CuI atom has a triangular geometry, coordinated by one N atom and one C atom from two bridging cyanide ligands, and another N atom from the 2-pac ligand. The three-dimensional structure features a succession of two-dimensional sheets containing [Cu(CN)]n chains linked by Cu(2-pac)2(H2O)2 groups. The coordinated and free water molecules are involved in an extended three-dimensional hydrogen-bond network with the 2-pac ligands.