Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Timing Effect on Training-Session Rating of Perceived Exertion in Top-Class Soccer Referees.

PURPOSE To examine the effect of recall timing on training-session rating of perceived exertion (sRPE) in a population of athletes well familiarized with the method and procedures during a 5-d training microcycle. METHODS Fifty-one top-class field referees (FRs) (age 38.4 ± 3.3 y, height 181 ± 5.6 cm, body mass 76.8 ± 6.8 kg, body-mass index 23.4 ± 1.7 kg/m2, body fat 20.4% ± 3.6%, international refereeing experience 5 ± 3.5 y) from 43 national football associations worldwide, preselected by the FIFA refereeing department for officiating during the FIFA World Cup 2014 Brazil, volunteered for this study. The FRs were randomly allocated into 3 assessment groups (n = 17 each), defined according to the timing of the sRPE, ie, immediately at the end of or 30 min or 7 h after the training sessions' end. The CR10 Borg scale was used to rate the training sessions (n = 5). All FRs again rated each training session of the 5-d training microcycle on the next morning (~20 h after) for confirmation (absolute and relative reliability). RESULTS No significant timing effect was found between or within groups. Relative reliability ranged from large to very large with trivial within- and between-groups differences. CONCLUSIONS This study showed no effect of recall timing on postexercise RPE when well-familiarized athletes are submitted to training during a weekly microcycle. Posttraining RPE was reported to be a reliable subjective measure; however, specific timing is advisable to reduce difference in RPE values.
Are people living with HIV less productive at work?

ABSTRACT Health problems may cause decreased productivity among working people. It is unclear if this also applies for people living with HIV (PLWH). This cross-sectional study compares data of PLWH of one of the main HIV treatment centres in the Netherlands (n = 298) to data of the general working population from a previously conducted study (n = 986). We investigate whether productivity at work differs between these groups. The questionnaires used in these studies contained a core of identical questions regarding productivity losses, in the form of absenteeism and presenteeism, over a four-week period and a variety of baseline characteristics, including health status measured with EQ-5D. For PLWH additional clinical data were collected from patient records. From the data, descriptive statistics were computed to characterize the samples. Pearson correlations were used to explore significant associations of productivity with baseline characteristics. A two-part model was used to evaluate both the occurrence and of size of productivity losses in working PLWH and an aggregated sample of PLWH and the general population. It was observed that, on average, total productivity losses do not differ significantly between working PWLH and the general working population, but that the occurrence and size of absenteeism and presenteeism were different. Furthermore, more health problems were associated with higher productivity losses. HIV status was not significantly associated with productivity losses. We conclude that among working people, health status was related to productivity losses but HIV status was not. However, further research is needed into the relation between HIV status and unemployment.
Fabrication of type I collagen microcarrier using a microfluidic 3D T-junction device and its application for the quantitative analysis of cell–ECM interactions

We presented a new quantitative analysis for cell and extracellular matrix (ECM) interactions, using cell-coated ECM hydrogel microbeads (hydrobeads) made of type I collagen. The hydrobeads can carry cells as three-dimensional spheroidal forms with an ECM inside, facilitating a direct interaction between the cells and ECM. The cells on hydrobeads do not have a hypoxic core, which opens the possibility for using as a cell microcarrier for bottom-up tissue reconstitution. This technique can utilize various types of cells, even MDA-MB-231 cells, which have weak cell–cell interactions and do not form spheroids in conventional spheroid culture methods. Morphological indices of the cell-coated hydrobead visually present cell–ECM interactions in a quantitative manner.
Low‐frequency nonsynonymous variants in FKBPL and ARPC1B genes are associated with breast cancer risk in Chinese women

Genome‐wide association studies have reported more than 100 independent common loci associated with breast cancer risk. The contribution of low‐frequency or rare variants to breast cancer susceptibility has not been well explored. Thus, we applied exome chip to genotype >200 000 low‐frequency and rare variants in 1064 breast cancer cases and 1125 cancer‐free controls and subsequently validated promising associations in another 1040 breast cancer cases and 1240 controls. We identified two low‐frequency nonsynonymous variants at FKBPL (rs200847762, OR = 0.34, 95% CI = 0.20–0.57, P = 4.31 × 10−5) and ARPC1B (rs1045012, OR = 0.56, 95% CI = 0.43–0.74, P = 4.30 × 10−5) associated with breast cancer risk. In stratification analyses, we found that the protective effect of rs200847762 was stronger in ER‐positive breast cancer (OR = 0.18, 95% CI = 0.06–0.42) than that in ER‐negative one (OR = 0.59, 95% CI = 0.31–1.05). Our findings indicate that low‐frequency variants may also contribute to breast cancer susceptibility and genetic variants in 6p21.33 and 7q22.1 are important in breast carcinogenesis. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Validation of a simple tool for anxiety trait screening in children presenting for surgery

Background. Screening for preoperative anxiety is an important challenge during the preoperative period. The aim of our study was to validate the faces scale used to detect anxiety trait in children. Methods. Children aged 8-18 yr were asked to quantify their anxiety trait using the readily available faces scale and to respond to the trait component of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) for children (C) or adults (A) before the anaesthesia consultation. Using receiver operating characteristics analysis, we determined the faces scale optimal value on a construct cohort. A validation cohort was recruited to assess the accuracy of the results. Results. The construction cohort comprised 207 patients and the validation cohort 91 patients. The receiver operating characteristics analysis found an area under the curve of 0.75 [95% confidence interval (CI) 0.67, 0.83]. The optimal value for faces scale score was 4, with a sensitivity of 0.61 [95% CI 0.59, 0.62] and a specificity of 0.82 [95% CI 0.81, 0.83]. When this threshold was applied to the construction and validation cohorts, 61.3 and 44.4% of positives were true positives in the construction and validation cohorts, respectively; and 82.1 and 81.3% of negatives were true negatives, respectively. Conclusions. Our study determined the performance of a simple faces scale to measure the preoperative anxiety trait in children aged 8-18 yr. This tool is potentially helpful for clinicians aiming to identify patients at risk of preoperative anxiety and to assign them to targeted management.
Antipsychotic Drug Interactions and Mortality Among Nursing Home Residents With Cognitive Impairment.

OBJECTIVE Among elderly individuals with dementia, the use of antipsychotics has been associated with serious adverse events including ischemic stroke and death. Multiple medications can interact with antipsychotics and increase the risk of such adverse events. The purpose of this retrospective, longitudinal cohort study was to estimate the prevalence of potential antipsychotic drug interactions and their effect on increasing the risk of death among cognitively impaired elderly individuals treated with antipsychotics. METHODS We conducted a retrospective longitudinal cohort study in 59 nursing homes of 7 European Union countries and Israel. The study was conducted during the years 2009 to 2011. Participants were cognitively impaired individuals aged 65 years or older residing in the participating nursing homes and being treated with antipsychotics (N = 604). Risk of death associated with potential antipsychotic drug interactions was the main outcome. The inter-Resident Assessment Instrument for Long Term Care Facilities (interRAI LTCF) was used to assess participants. Follow-up time was 12 months. RESULTS The prevalence of potential antipsychotic drug interactions was 46.0%. Antipsychotic drug interactions were associated with higher mortality (incidence rate of 0.26 per person-year in the antipsychotic drug-interaction group versus 0.17 per person year in the no antipsychotic drug-interaction group). After adjusting for potential confounders, risk of death was higher in the group of residents with potential antipsychotic drug interactions relative to those unexposed to such interactions (hazard ratio = 1.71; 95% CI, 1.15-2.54). CONCLUSIONS Part of the observed excess risk of death associated with the use of antipsychotic medications in elderly individuals with cognitive impairment may be attributable to antipsychotic drug interactions. Antipsychotics should be used with extreme caution especially among those individuals receiving concomitant cardiovascular or psychotropic medications.
Dexmedetomidine improves the outcomes in paediatric cardiac surgery: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.

OBJECTIVES Dexmedetomidine has been shown to decrease cardiac complications in adults undergoing cardiac surgery. Results from clinical trials of dexmedetomidine on outcomes following paediatric cardiac surgery are controversial. METHODS We searched EMBASE, PubMed and Cochrane CENTRAL databases for randomized controlled trials comparing the effect of dexmedetomidine versus placebo or other anaesthetic drugs in paediatric patients undergoing cardiac surgery. The primary outcome was the duration of mechanical ventilation. The secondary outcomes were intensive care unit stay, hospital length of stay (LOS), incidence of junctional ectopic tachycardia and postoperative deaths. RESULTS Nine trials with a total of 837 patients were selected. Compared with controls, dexmedetomidine significantly reduced the postoperative duration of mechanical ventilation [in hours; n = 837; weighted mean difference -2.20, 95% confidence interval (CI) -3.51 to -0.90; P = 0.001; I2 = 97%], intensive care unit LOS (in days; n = 737; weighted mean difference -0.47, 95% CI -0.90 to -0.03; P = 0.03; I2 = 97%) and hospital LOS (in days; n = 291; weighted mean difference -1.80, 95% CI -3.36 to -0.25; P = 0.02; I2 = 96%). Dexmedetomidine also significantly reduced the incidence of postoperative junctional ectopic tachycardia (21/292 vs 50/263; risk ratio 0.40, 95% CI 0.25-0.64; P = 0.0001; I2 = 0.0%), but there was no difference between groups in postoperative deaths (4/182 vs 6/153; odds ratio 0.54, 95% CI 0.15-1.93; P = 0.34; I2 = 0.0%). CONCLUSIONS Perioperative administration of dexmedetomidine to paediatric patients undergoing cardiac surgery may shorten the duration of mechanical ventilation, LOS in the intensive care unit and in the hospital and reduce the incidence of junctional ectopic tachycardia. More high-quality randomized controlled trials are encouraged to verify the beneficial effect of dexmedetomidine before its clinical application in paediatric patients undergoing surgery for congenital heart disease.
Memory for faces with emotional expressions in Alzheimer’s disease and healthy older participants: positivity effect is not only due to familiarity

ABSTRACT Young individuals better memorize initially seen faces with emotional rather than neutral expressions. Healthy older participants and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients show better memory for faces with positive expressions. The socioemotional selectivity theory postulates that this positivity effect in memory reflects a general age-related preference for positive stimuli, subserving emotion regulation. Another explanation might be that older participants use compensatory strategies, often considering happy faces as previously seen. The question about the existence of this effect in tasks not permitting such compensatory strategies is still open. Thus, we compared the performance of healthy participants and AD patients for positive, neutral, and negative faces in such tasks. Healthy older participants and AD patients showed a positivity effect in memory, but there was no difference between emotional and neutral faces in young participants. Our results suggest that the positivity effect in memory is not entirely due to the sense of familiarity for smiling faces.
An evaluation of cognitive and neural correlates for indirect vision driving and rover teleoperation

An essential aspect of escalating and improving the situational awareness of military personnel is related to the development and evaluation of indirect vision-based user interfaces, which provides full-spectrum local area awareness to the individual. But, a study which identifies the cognitive-ergonomic challenges in using such indirect vision-based user interfaces is lacking in the literature. In our study, we evaluated the cognitive, behavioral and neurological challenges faced by an individual when he/she was navigating and maneuvering a teleoperated rover across a physical terrain with the objective of searching and collecting a certain number of apriori specified memory objects among a lot of distinct/similar looking memory objects which were distributed randomly across the terrain course. We recorded Electroencephalographic (EEG) data from a 14-channel electrode device called EMOTIV-EPOC and also recorded various behavioral measures when the subject was executing the task, in addition to the cognitive variables recorded by the self-reported NASA-TLX. The results indicated that cognitive variables from the NASA-TLX, appropriate behavioral variables recorded during the teleoperation experiment and the energies extracted from the alpha band from the frontal lobe are excellent descriptors/features which can be taken into consideration for preparing personalized cognitive enhancement and training material for indirect vision driving. These descriptors would be very helpful in indicating the optimum transfer of workload and attention from the computer-based simulations to the real world.
Parallel implementation of a watershed algorithm on shared memory multicore architecture

Watershed transform is widely used in image segmentation. In literature, this transform is computed by various algorithms among which the M-border kernel algorithm [1]. This algorithm computes the watershed transform in the framework of edge weighted graphs. It is based on a local property that makes it adapted to parallelization. In this paper we propose a parallel implementation of this algorithm. We start by studying the data dependencies problematic that it raises. We give then an approach that allows overcoming this problematic based on an alternated edges processing strategy. The implementation of this strategy on a shared memory multicore architecture using a Single Program Multiple Data (SPMD) approach proves its effectiveness. In fact, experimental results show that our implementation achieves a relative speedup factor of 2.8 using 4 processors over the performance of the sequential algorithm using a single processor on the same system.
Passive L-Band Microwave Remote Sensing of Organic Soil Surface Layers: A Tower-Based Experiment

Organic soils play a key role in global warming because they store large amount of soil carbon which might be degraded with changing soil temperatures or soil water contents. There is thus a strong need to monitor these soils and, in particular, their hydrological characteristics using, for instance, space-borne L-band brightness temperature observations. However, there are still open issues with respect to soil moisture retrieval techniques over organic soils. In view of this, organic soil blocks with their vegetation cover were collected from a heathland in the Skjern River catchment in western Denmark and then transported to a remote sensing field laboratory in Germany where their structure was reconstituted. The controlled conditions at this field laboratory made it possible to perform tower-based L-band radiometer measurements of the soils over a period of two months. Brightness temperature data were inverted using a radiative transfer (RT) model for estimating the time variations in the soil dielectric permittivity and the vegetation optical depth. In addition, the effective vegetation scattering albedo parameter of the RT model was retrieved based on a two-step inversion approach. The remote estimations of the dielectric permittivity were compared to in situ measurements. The results indicated that the radiometer-derived dielectric permittivities were significantly correlated with the in situ measurements, but their values were systematically lower compared to the in situ ones. This could be explained by the difference between the operating frequency of the L-band radiometer (1.4 GHz) and that of the in situ sensors (70 MHz). The effective vegetation scattering albedo parameter was found to be polarization dependent. While the scattering effect within the vegetation could be neglected at horizontal polarization, it was found to be important at vertical polarization. The vegetation optical depth estimated values over time oscillated between 0.10 and 0.19 with a mean value of 0.13. This study provides further insights into the characterization of the L-band brightness temperature signatures of organic soil surface layers and, in particular, into the parametrization of the RT model for these specific soils. Therefore, the results of this study are expected to improve the performance of space-borne remote sensing soil moisture products over areas dominated by organic soils.
Overall Preference of Running Shoes Can Be Predicted by Suitable Perception Factors Using a Multiple Regression Model

Objective: This study examined (a) the strength of four individual footwear perception factors to influence the overall preference of running shoes and (b) whether these perception factors satisfied the nonmulticollinear assumption in a regression model. Background: Running footwear must fulfill multiple functional criteria to satisfy its potential users. Footwear perception factors, such as fit and cushioning, are commonly used to guide shoe design and development, but it is unclear whether running-footwear users are able to differentiate one factor from another. Methods: One hundred casual runners assessed four running shoes on a 15-cm visual analogue scale for four footwear perception factors (fit, cushioning, arch support, and stability) as well as for overall preference during a treadmill running protocol. Results: Diagnostic tests showed an absence of multicollinearity between factors, where values for tolerance ranged from . 36 to . 72, corresponding to variance inflation factors of 2.8 to 1.4. The multiple regression model of these four footwear perception variables accounted for 77.7% to 81.6% of variance in overall preference, with each factor explaining a unique part of the total variance. Conclusion: Casual runners were able to rate each footwear perception factor separately, thus assigning each factor a true potential to improve overall preference for the users. The results also support the use of a multiple regression model of footwear perception factors to predict overall running shoe preference. Application: Regression modeling is a useful tool for running-shoe manufacturers to more precisely evaluate how individual factors contribute to the subjective assessment of running footwear.
Weighting video information into a multikernel SVM for human action recognition

Action classification using a Bag of Words (BoW) representation has shown computational simplicity and good performance, but the increasing number of categories, including actions with high confusion, and the addition of significant contextual information has led most authors to focus their efforts on the combination of image descriptors. In this approach we code the action videos using a BoW representation with diverse image descriptors and introduce them to the optimal SVM kernel as a linear combination of learning weighted single kernels. Experiments have been carried out on the action database HMDB and the upturn achieved with our approach is much better than the state of the art, reaching an improvement of 14.63% of accuracy.
Inductive logic programming: derivations, successes and shortcomings

Inductive Logic Programming (ILP) is a research area which investigates the construction of first-order definite clause theories from examples and background knowledge. ILP systems have been applied successfully in a number of real-world domains. These include the learning of structure-activity rules for drug design, finite-element mesh design rules, rules for primary-secondary prediction of protein structure and fault diagnosis rules for satellites. There is a well established tradition of learning-in-the-limit results in ILP. Recently some results within Valiant's PAC-learning framework have also been demonstrated for ILP systems. In this paper it is argued that algorithms can be directly derived from the formal specifications of ILP. This provides a common basis for Inverse Resolution, Explanation-Based Learning, Abduction and Relative Least General Generalisation. A new general-purpose, efficient approach to predicate invention is demonstrated. ILP is underconstrained by its logical specification. Therefore a brief overview of extra-logical constraints used in ILP systems is given. Some present limitations and research directions for the field are identified.
Dynamic Thermo-mechanical PhenomenaInduced In Isotropic Cylinders Impacted ByHigh Energy Particle Beams

High energy beams of elementary particles play a key role in laboratories working in fundamental research on particle physics. For several reasons (beam dump, secondary particle production etc.), these beams may be driven against solid structures. During such interactions, dynamic phenomena, very similar to those taking place after a mechanical impact, might occur in the hit solids. The studies of such dynamic thermo-mechanical problems are usually made via numerical methods. However, an analytical approach is also needed to provide reference solutions for the numerical results. In this paper a general introduction to these thermo-mechanical phenomena is first presented, followed by an example of the analytical solution for a graphite rod used as a beam target to produce secondary particles. The method allows the computation of the dynamic transient elastic stresses induced by a fast proton beam hitting off-axis the target. An exact solution for the temperature field is first obtained, using Fourier-Bessel series expansion. Quasi-static thermal stresses are then computed as a function of the calculated temperature distribution, making use of the thermoelastic displacement potential and of the Michell solution for the equivalent isothermal two-dimensional stress problem. Finally, the contribution of dynamic stresses due to longitudinal and bending stress waves is determined by means of the modal summation method, in the hypothesis of plane strain behaviour.