Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reliability and validity of a postal version of the Reintegration to Normal Living Index, modified for use with stroke patients

Objective: To adapt the Reintegration to Normal Living Index (RNLI) for postal use with stroke patients. Design: Reliability was examined using test–retest on 26 stroke patients. Construct validity was tested on 76 patients by examining correlations between the modified RNLI and related scales. Subjects: Patients at three months to one year post stroke. Results: All items demonstrated better than chance agreement between test and retest and seven items substantial agreement (kappa= >0.61). The modified RNLI correlated positively with related scales. Patients with stronger reintegration to normal living had better outcomes in anxiety, depression, daily activity and quality of life. Conclusion: This postal instrument appears reliable and valid and may be a useful outcome measure in stroke studies.
Internal quality of eggs coated with whey protein concentrate

The functional properties of foods can be preserved when they are coated with edible films, since both the loss of moisture and the transport of O2 and CO2 are reduced. The objectives of this work were: to compare weight loss, Haugh units, and albumen pH between fresh eggs and eggs coated with whey protein concentrate (WPC), under six storage periods (3, 7, 10, 14, 21 and 28 days), at 25°C. During the entire storage period, regardless of whether the eggs were coated or not, the Haugh unit values and the weight loss decreased, and differences between values from the first to the last period were lower for coated eggs. Albumen pH increased. The Haugh unit values for coated eggs were similar to those found in literature references when the same storage period was considered.
Influencing green technology use behavior in the hospitality industry and the role of the “green champion”

ABSTRACT Facilities managers are tasked not only with the responsibility of maintaining the building systems to sustain the revenue potential of an operation, but also to adopt and implement green technologies related to a hospitality organization’s sustainability program. In this qualitative study, data were collected during semi-structured interviews with multi-level facilities managers from hotels, resorts, and convention centers in the United States. Drawing upon technology acceptance constructs, the findings from this research demonstrated green facilitating conditions and formal green leadership as the primary drivers influencing green technology use behavior in the hospitality industry. In addition, the presence of a green informal leader, or “green champion,” also emerged as a critical influence, revealing nuances in sustainability initiatives undetected in previous research. Theoretical insights are provided as well as operational strategies for successful green technology adoption and use at the property and organizational levels.
MSGD: A Novel Matrix Factorization Approach for Large-Scale Collaborative Filtering Recommender Systems on GPUs

Real-time accurate recommendation of large-scale recommender systems is a challenging task. Matrix factorization (MF), as one of the most accurate and scalable techniques to predict missing ratings, has become popular in the collaborative filtering (CF) community. Currently, stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is one of the most famous approaches for MF. However, it is non-trivial to parallelize SGD for large-scale CF MF problems due to the dependence on the user and item pair, which can cause parallelization over-writing. To remove the dependence on the user and item pair, we propose a multi-stream SGD (MSGD) approach, for which the update process is theoretically convergent. On that basis, we propose a <italic>Compute Unified Device Architecture</italic> (CUDA) parallelization MSGD (CUMSGD) approach. CUMSGD can obtain high parallelism and scalability on <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">${Graphic \;Processing\; Units}$</tex-math><alternatives><inline-graphic xlink:href="li-ieq1-2718515.gif"/></alternatives> </inline-formula> (GPUs). On Tesla K20m and K40c GPUs, the experimental results show that CUMSGD outperforms prior works that accelerated MF on shared memory systems, e.g., DSGD, FPSGD, Hogwild! , and CCD++. For large-scale CF problems, we propose multiple GPUs (multi-GPU) CUMSGD (MCUMSGD). The experimental results show that MCUMSGD can improve MSGD performance further. With a K20m GPU card, CUMSGD can be 5-10 times as fast compared with the state-of-the-art approaches on shared memory platform.
Hydrogen peroxide inhibits Ca2+‐dependent chloride secretion across colonic epithelial cells via distinct kinase signaling pathways and ion transport proteins

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are key mediators in a number of inflammatory conditions, including inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). ROS, including hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), modulate intesti nal epithelial ion transport and are believed to contrib ute to IBD‐associated diarrhea. Intestinal crypt fluid secretion, driven by electrogenic Cl− secretion, hy drates and sterilizes the crypt, thus reducing bacterial adherence. Here, we show that pathophysiological con centrations of H2O2 inhibit Ca2+‐dependent Cl− secretion across T84 colonic epithelial cells by elevating cytosolic Ca2+, which contributes to activation of two distinct signaling pathways. One involves recruitment of the Ca2+‐responsive kinases, Src and Pyk‐2, as well as extracellular signal‐regulated kinase (ERK). A separate pathway recruits p38 MAP kinase and phosphoinositide 3‐kinase (PI3‐K) signaling. The ion transport response to Ca2+‐dependent stimuli is mediated in part by K+ efflux through basolateral K+ channels and Cl− uptake by the Na+‐K+‐2Cl− cotransporter, NKCC1. We dem onstrate that H2O2 inhibits Ca2+‐dependent basolateral K+ efflux and also inhibits NKCC1 activity indepen dently of inhibitory effects on apical Cl− conductance. Thus, we have demonstrated that H2O2 inhibits Ca2+‐ dependent Cl− secretion through multiple negative regulatory signaling pathways and inhibition of specific ion transporters. These findings increase our under standing of mechanisms by which inflammation dis turbs intestinal epithelial function and contributes to intestinal pathophysiology. — Chappell, A. E. , Bunz, M. , Smoll, E. , Dong, H. , Lytle, C. , Barrett, K. E. , McCole, D. F. Hydrogen peroxide inhibits Ca2+‐dependent chlo ride secretion across colonic epithelial cells via distinct kinase signaling pathways and ion transport proteins. FASEB J. 22, 2023—2036 (2008)
Generation, identification and functional characterization of the nob4 mutation of Grm6 in the mouse

We performed genome-wide chemical mutagenesis of C57BL/6J mice using N-ethyl-N-nitrosourea (ENU). Electroretinographic screening of the third generation offspring revealed two G3 individuals from one G1 family with a normal a-wave but lacking the b-wave that we named nob4. The mutation was transmitted with a recessive mode of inheritance and mapped to chromosome 11 in a region containing the Grm6 gene, which encodes a metabotropic glutamate receptor protein, mGluR6. Sequencing confirmed a single nucleotide substitution from T to C in the Grm6 gene. The mutation is predicted to result in substitution of Pro for Ser at position 185 within the extracellular, ligand-binding domain and oocytes expressing the homologous mutation in mGluR6 did not display robust glutamate-induced currents. Retinal mRNA levels for Grm6 were not significantly reduced, but no immunoreactivity for mGluR6 protein was found. Histological and fundus evaluations of nob4 showed normal retinal morphology. In contrast, the mutation has severe consequences for visual function. In nob4 mice, fewer retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) responded to the onset (ON) of a bright full field stimulus. When ON responses could be evoked, their onset was significantly delayed. Visual acuity and contrast sensitivity, measured with optomotor responses, were reduced under both photopic and scotopic conditions. This mutant will be useful because its phenotype is similar to that of human patients with congenital stationary night blindness and will provide a tool for understanding retinal circuitry and the role of ganglion cell encoding of visual information.
Behaviour of Di-Transition-Metal Nitride Ti1-xZrxN Alloy at High Pressure

By means of density-functional theory with the generalized gradient approximation and using the virtual-crystal approximation, we report first-principles calculation results on the structural and elastic properties of Ti1−xZrxN alloy. In order to gain some further information on the mechanical properties of Ti0.5Zr0. 5N compound, we also calculated the Young modulus, Poisson ratio, and anisotropy factor. The variation of calculated unit cell parameter for Ti1−xZrxN structure increases with Zr content x. A linear dependence of the elastic constants and the bulk modulus over a range of composition x is found. All the Cij of Ti0.5Zr0. 5N increase linearly with increasing pressure. The same behaviour is observed for the other compounds with Zr compositions x.
Reporting on sustainable development: A comparison of three Italian small and medium-sized enterprises

Nowadays, we are facing a new phase of capitalism. Information that is beyond financial capital and able to provide a more comprehensive picture of the path towards sustainable development of organizations is increasingly needed. A remarkable body of evidence already exists on how large listed companies are facing this change, but very little is known about small and medium ‐ sized enterprises (SMEs). This work aims to analyse if and to what extent new forms of reporting such as sustainability and integrated reporting are adopted by SMEs to illustrate their journey to sustainable development. To this end, the reports of three Italian SMEs have been examined against the set principles and contents of these reporting models. It emerges that, despite the shared ambition of these reports, they are different in nature and deliver a quite distinctive representation of the concerned SMEs and their ways to pursuing and communicating sustainable development at a micro level.
Determination of Total Monomeric Anthocyanin Pigment Content of Fruit Juices , Beverages , Natural Colorants , and Wines by the pH Differential Method : Collaborative Study

This collaborative study was conducted to determine the total monomeric anthocyanin concentration by the pH differential method, which is a rapid and simple spectrophotometric method based on the anthocyanin structural transformation that occurs with a change in pH (colored at pH 1.0 and colorless at pH 4.5). Eleven collaborators representing commercial laboratories, academic institutions, and government laboratories participated. Seven Youden pair materials representing fruit juices, beverages, natural colorants, and wines were tested. The repeatability relative standard deviation (RSDr) varied from 1.06 to 4.16%. The reproducibility relative standard deviation (RSDR) ranged from 2.69 to 10.12%. The HorRat values were 1.33 for all materials. The Study Director recommends that the method be adopted Official First Action.
Por um estudo da evolução da vegetação: da pirãmide ao NDVI.

O presente artigo, pretende demonstrar que e valida a premissa de premiarmos, na analise paisagistica, os dados "elementares" - aqui entendidos como a identificacao cientifica das especies vegetais componentes das formacoes vegetais de floresta e de cerrado -, com a visao atualizada e ampliada, fornecida pelas imagens de satelites. No sentido de chamarmos a atencao para a contradicao interna da Geografia Fisica - sintetica no seu objeto, ela nao o e, freqiuentemente, no seu metodo -, explicitamos parte das contribuicoes de La Blache e de G. Bertrand, para sustentarmos esse pressuposto. A partir dessa reflexao teorica-metodologica, mostramos como a analise de um elemento da paisagem (a vegetacao) pode ser efetuada no sentido de compreender-se o elemento (as especies vegetais) e o conjunto (a formcao vegetal), tomando como referencia duas formacoes vegetais tropicais: a floresta e o cerrado. Nos partimos da contribuicao da fitossociologia/pirâmides, portanto, deixando a margem a fitogeografia mais descritiva e, mais ao feitio das abordagens lablachianas. Para conc1uirmos este esboco, explicitamos as estrategias que devem ser adotadas para se chegar ao NDV! - Normalized Difference Vegetation Index - e, finalmente, como os dados de terreno, obtidos a partir dos levantamentos fitossociologicos, e os dados digitais, obtidos a partir das imagens de satelite, devem ser superpostos para alcancarmos maior precisao nos estudos sobre a evolucao da vegetacao .
Polar Code Construction for List Decoding

A heuristic construction of polar codes for successive cancellation list (SCL) decoding with a given list size is proposed to balance the trade-off between performance measured in frame error rate (FER) and decoding complexity. Furthermore, a construction based on dynamically frozen bits with constraints among the "low weight bits" (LWB) is presented. Simulation results show that the LWB-polar codes outperform the CRC-polar codes and the eBCH-polar codes under SCL decoding.
High-Energy Collision-Induced Dissociation of Oxosteroids Derivatised to Girard Hydrazones

Neutral oxosteroids have been derivatised with Girard T and P hydrazine reagents to give the corresponding Girard hydrazone quaternary ammonium salts. Both Girard T (GT) and Girard P (GP) hydrazones of oxosteroids give very intense [M]+ ion signals in electrospray (ES) mass spectra and fragment within the ES interface and collision cell to give characteristic fragment ions. GT and GP derivatives give informative high-energy collision-induced dissociation spectra, from which the structure of the precursor oxosteroid can be determined. Both charge-remote and charge-mediated mechanisms are responsible for the formation of the fragment ions at high collision-energy.
Patient-centered Communication Do Patients Really Prefer It?

OBJECTIVE: To investigate patient preferences for a patient-centered or a biomedical communication style. DESIGN: interest in you as a person” as “very important. ” CONCLUSIONS: Given that a significant proportion of patients prefer a biomedical communication style, practicing physicians and medical educators should strive for flexible approaches to physician-patient communication.
The Effects of Precautionary Messages about Electromagnetic Fields from Mobile Phones and Base Stations Revisited: The Role of Recipient Characteristics

Precautionary messages have been shown to increase recipients’ threat perceptions about radio‐frequency electromagnetic fields (RF‐EMFs) emitted by mobile phones and mobile phone base stations. The current study explored the interplay of variables on the side of message recipients with this effect. The individual difference variables of interest were gender, trait anxiety, personal need for structure, and personal fear of invalidity. Furthermore, the study determined whether the increased threat perception is accompanied by emotional distress. A total of 298 university students answered a survey after reading either a basic text about RF‐EMFs or a text including precautionary information. Linear multiple regression with interactions analyses showed that the effect of precautionary messages differed for people with different levels of trait anxiety. How trait anxiety was related to the effect of precautionary messages in turn depended on participants’ gender. Personal need for structure and personal fear of invalidity were mostly unrelated to the effect of precautionary messages. Regarding participants’ emotional distress, we found no difference in state anxiety scores between those participants who received precautionary information and those who did not. The findings show that the effects of precautionary messages on threat perception depend on individual difference variables such as recipients’ trait anxiety and gender. Also, the fact that precautionary communication did not result in heightened state anxiety challenges the assumption that precautionary messages induce fear or anxiety.
A Method for Reporting of Variance in Informal Care Pathways

Care pathways are commonly used as a means to ensure the implementation of proven best practice in clinical care. They can be defined in an Electronic Health Record system using formal representations of template pathways which are then instantiated for specific patients, to guide clinical users through a sequence of tasks and actions. The open source cityEHR system uses HL7 CDA documents for the formal pathway definitions, but in practice we have found that some care pathways, and clinical protocols, can be implemented effectively using less formal mechanisms. In addition to the shared patient record itself, we find that the most important of these mechanisms are notification on recording of patient events, support for care teams, annotation of the record, and the clinician-centred 'In-Tray'. One important feature lost in this approach is the ability to report on the variance of the care provided to the patient from the best practice encapsulated in a more formally defined pathway. To address this, we describe a method for transforming a formally defined care pathway to a finite state machine representation and querying the patient record to generate a retrospective report on the variance of states recorded in the patient record.
Experiments in algorithmic governance : A history and ethnography of “The DAO,” a failed decentralized autonomous organization

This chapter describes an emerging form of algorithmic governance, using the case study of “The DAO,” a short-lived attempt to create a decentralized autonomous organization on the Ethereum blockchain platform. In June, 2016, The DAO launched and raised an unprecedented $250m USD in investment. Within days of its launch, however, The DAO was exploited and drained of nearly 3.7m Ethereum tokens. This study traces the rise and fall of this emerging technology, and details the governance structures that were promised and hoped for, and those that were actually observed in its discourses. Through 2016-2017, these discourses were collected from online discussions and subsequently analysed. Using computer-assisted, qualitative analysis and coding, I traced the discursive strategies of the developers and the community of investors, identifying: 1) questions of legal authority, 2) tensions in practical governance, and 3) admissions of the inherent complexity of bringing to life an algorithmic and experimental organizational model. This chapter describes a short-lived experiment in organizational governance that attempted to utilize algorithmic authority through cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies to create a social and political world quite unlike anything we have seen before. According to the visionaries behind the project, by encoding the rules of governance for organizations and governments in a set of “smart contracts” running on an immutable, decentralized, and potentially unstoppable and public blockchain, new forms of social interactions and order would emerge. This experiment was an example of a new form of organization, called a “Decentralized Autonomous Organization
Electromagnetic Scattering Model for Soybean Canopy

An electromagnetic scattering model for soybean canopy is presented in this paper. For the inter-plant structure, we propose a semi-deterministic description using the antenna array theory to account for the prevailing agriculture practice of soybean. For the underlying rough surface contribution, we employ a recently developed statistical multiple scattering model. For single plant scattering, we adopt the conventional decomposition of the scattering mechanisms. However, in dealing with the ground bounce scattering mechanisms, we use an approach to calculate the roughness modified Fresnel reflection coefficients similar to that of Rodriguez. To validate this proposed model, a comparison is made between the theoretical predictions and polarimetric backscattering measurements. The results show very good agreements between the two and thus clearly demonstrate the validity of this model.
Rasgrf1 Imprinting Is Regulated by a CTCF-Dependent Methylation-Sensitive Enhancer Blocker

ABSTRACT Imprinted methylation of the paternal Rasgrf1 allele in mice occurs at a differentially methylated domain (DMD) 30 kbp 5′ of the promoter. A repeated sequence 3′ of the DMD regulates imprinted methylation, which is required for imprinted expression. Here we identify the mechanism by which methylation controls imprinting. The DMD is an enhancer blocker that binds CTCF in a methylation-sensitive manner. CTCF bound to the unmethylated maternal allele silences expression. CTCF binding to the paternal allele is prevented by repeat-mediated methylation, allowing expression. Optimal in vitro enhancer-blocking activity requires CTCF binding sites. The enhancer blocker can be bypassed in vivo and imprinting abolished by placing an extra enhancer proximal to the promoter. Together, the repeats and the DMD constitute a binary switch that regulates Rasgrf1 imprinting.
Potential use of calcareous mudstones in low hydraulic conductivity earthen barriers for environmental applications

Earthen layers play a significant role in isolating contaminants in the subsurface, controlling the migration of contaminant plumes, and as landfill liners and covers. The physical, chemical and mineralogical properties of three calcareous mudstones from the Jagüel and Roca formations in North Patagonia, Argentina, are evaluated to determine their potential for the construction of liners. These mudstones were deposited in a marine environment in the Upper Cretaceous–Paleocene. The tested specimens mainly comprise silt and clay-sized particles, and their mineralogy is dominated by a smectite/illite mixed layer (70–90% Sm) and calcite in smaller proportion. Powdered mudstone samples have little viscosity and swelling potential when suspended in water. The hydraulic conductivity of compacted mudstones and sand–mudstone mixtures is very low (around 1–3×10−10 m/s) and in good agreement with the expected hydraulic behaviour of compacted earthen layers. This behaviour can be attributed to the large amount of fine particles, high specific surface and the close packing of particles as confirmed by scanning electron microscope analysis. The tested materials also show a high cation exchange capacity (50–70 cmol/kg), indicating a high contaminant retardation capability. The calcareous mudstones show satisfactory mineralogical and chemical properties as well as an adequate hydraulic behaviour, demonstrating the potential use of these materials for the construction of compacted liners for the containment of leachate or as covers in landfills. These findings confirm the potential usage of marine calcareous mudstones as a low-cost geomaterial in environmental engineering projects.
OPTIMAL ERROR ESTIMATE FOR SEMI-DISCRETE GAUGE-UZAWA METHOD FOR THE NAVIER-STOKES EQUATIONS

The Gauge-Uzawa finite element method (GU-FEM)[3] is a fully discrete projection type method to solve the evolution Navier-Stokes equations, which overcomes many shortcomings of projection methods and displays superior numerical performance. Since Gauge-Uzawa is consistent with Navier-Stokes equations, it can be applied easily to more complicate fluid problems [4,6] and the normal mode solution shows full accuracy without spurious boundary layer term for smooth solutions in contrast other projection type methods [7]. In addition, it is an unconditionally stable scheme [3]. However, we have only suboptimal accuracy via the energy estimate which has been proved in [3]. In this paper, we consider semi-discrete Gauge-Uzawa method to prove optimal convergence via energy estimate: ∥u(tⁿ? ¹)-uⁿ? ¹∥? ≤C T and a distinctive result ∥u(tⁿ? ¹)-uⁿ? ¹∥₁+∥p(tⁿ? ¹)-pⁿ? ¹∥? ≤C T .