Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Assessment of Factors Influencing Communication in Clinical Pharmacy

This study aimed to identify and assess the factors that influence communication quality between clinical pharmacists and patients using a structural equation model based on the predisposing, reinforcing, and enabling constructs in educational/environmental diagnosis and evaluation–policy, regulatory, and organizational constructs in educational and ecological development model to identify the most effective path to increase their communication quality. A survey was conducted at 253 Class-A tertiary hospitals in China from March to December 2016. During on-site observations, verbal communications between clinical pharmacists (n = 752) and patients were audio recorded, and communication quality was rated by an expert panel on an 8-item Quality of Communication Rating Scale. Clinical pharmacists completed questionnaires that examined the predisposing, enabling, and reinforcing factors that influenced communication quality. Finally, AMOS was employed to examine the relationships between the three factors and communication quality. The results indicated that all three factors positively affected communication quality, with correlation coefficients of . 26, . 13, and . 17, respectively. The most influential predisposing factor was attitude (.77), the most influential enabling factors were self-efficacy (.71) and confidence (.72), and the most influential reinforcing factor was rewards (.74). The findings suggest that pharmacists’ attitudes toward, perceived knowledge of, and skill and confidence in communication, and the rewards offered by pharmacy management are the most influential factors that influence communication quality.
ROBE - Knitting a Tight Hub for Shortest Path Discovery in Large Social Graphs

Scalable and efficient algorithms are needed to compute shortest paths between any pair of vertices in large social graphs. In this work, we propose a novel ROBE scheme to estimate the shortest distances. ROBE is based on a hub serving as the skeleton of the large graph. In order to stretch the hub into every corner in the network, we first choose representative nodes with highest degrees that are at least two hops away from each other. Then bridge nodes are selected to connect the representative nodes. Extension nodes are also added to the hub to ensure that the originally connected parts in the large graph are not separated in the hub graph. To improve performance, we compress the hub through chain collapsing, tentacle retracting, and clique compression techniques. A query evaluation algorithm based on the compressed hub is given. We compare our approach with other state-of-the-art techniques and evaluate their performance with respect to miss rate, error rate, as well as construction time through extensive simulations. ROBE is demonstrated to be two orders faster and has more accurate estimations than two recent algorithms, allowing it to scale very well in large social graphs.
Multimodal fusion including camera photoplethysmography for pain recognition

The research in classifying affective states of a participant provided a great amount of feature extraction methods in several modalities like facial motion, speech, biophysiological signals and Action Units (AU). The ability of predicting the heart rate of a participant with remote Photoplethysmography (rPPG) from the video channel enables an interesting modality for classification of affective states but only few authors tried it. In this work, we present the rPPG signal as a new modality for pain classification and evaluate the benefit of a fusion with other modalities. In short the rPPG signal is filtered in multiple frequency ranges corresponding to the respiration rate as biophysiological signal. Then the pain is classified by fusing all modalities with a hierarchical fusion architecture. The performance could be increased around ∼1.4% with the rPPG signal even in combination with biophysiological signals from a biosignal amplifier.
Relationship of Macular Thickness and Function to Optical Microangiography Measurements in Glaucoma

Purpose: The purpose of this article was to evaluate the relationship between macular optical microangiography (OMAG), ganglion cell-inner plexiform layer (GCIPL) thickness, and visual sensitivity measurements of different macular sectors in primary open-angle glaucoma. Methods: In a cross-sectional study, 39 eyes of 26 primary open-angle glaucoma patients underwent optical coherence tomography imaging and 10-2 visual field examination of the macula in the same session. Linear regression models were used to evaluate the relationships between OMAG, GCIPL thickness, and visual sensitivity measurements in different macular sectors. Strength of relationship was reported as coefficient of determination (R2). Results: R2 values for the associations between OMAG and GCIPL thickness measurements ranged from 0.37 in the temporal sector to 0.56 in the inferior macular sector. R2 values for the association between OMAG and visual sensitivity measurements ranged from 0.23 in the superior to 0.53 in the inferior macular sector. R2 values for the association between GCIPL thickness and visual sensitivity measurements ranged from 0.15 in the superior to 0.62 in the temporal sector. Conclusions: The strongest associations between OMAG, GCIPL thickness, and visual sensitivity measurements were found in the inferior macular sector. The association of OMAG with GCIPL thickness measurements was as strong as the association between OMAG and visual sensitivity measurements in the inferior macular sector.
Proposal of design policy of therapy robots system based on relaxation state

While the extension of healthy life expectancy has become an important issue, demands of the health care are growing. In the robot industry, the societal implementation of robots for the health care has proceeded in order to respond to these demands. In this paper, considering the present situation, we propose the design policy of the therapeutic robot system which provides care according to the situation by changing the therapeutic robot's behavior based on the mental state of the user measured by the wearable device.
A novel modulation technique with interleaved‐and‐shifted shoot‐through state placement for quasi‐Z‐source inverters

In this paper, a single‐phase quasi‐Z‐source (qZS) inverter (qZSI), integrating the pulse width modulation (PWM) control with interleaved‐and‐shifted shoot‐through state (STS) placement modulation technique, is proposed to simultaneously achieve both dc voltage boost and dc‐ac inversion. Instead of placing the STS in both inverter legs simultaneously, the addressed method inserts the STS only in left/right inverter leg separately during the positive/negative half cycle of the output voltage to reduce switching losses and thermal stresses of the power devices. The STS shift is also studied to decrease the switching numbers of power devices and thus can improve the efficiency further. Theoretical analysis and design guidelines of the studied inverter are included. Improvement in effectiveness and performance of the devised scheme and modulation strategy are proved experimentally and compared with the previous studies on a built laboratory prototype.
Measuring Bot and Human Behavioral Dynamics

Bots, social media accounts controlled by software rather than by humans, have recently been under the spotlight for their association with various forms of online manipulation. To date, much work has focused on social bot detection, but little attention has been devoted to the characterization and measurement of the behavior and activity of bots, as opposed to humans'. Over the course of the years, bots have become more sophisticated, and to some extent capable of emulating the short-term behavior of human users. The goal of this paper is to study the behavioral dynamics that bots exhibit over the course of an activity session, and highlight if and how these differ from human activity signatures. By using a large Twitter dataset associated with recent political events, we first separate bots and humans, then isolate their activity sessions. We compile a list of quantities to be measured, such as the propensity of users to engage in social interactions or to produce content. Our analysis highlights the presence of short-term behavioral trends in humans, which can be associated with a cognitive origin, that are absent in bots, intuitively due to the automated nature of their activity. These findings are finally codified to create and evaluate a machine learning algorithm to detect activity sessions produced by bots and humans, to allow for more nuanced bot detection strategies.
Characterization of OSPF Convergence with Correlated Failures

As a popular link state protocol, Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) has been studied for years. A network running OSPF usually takes several tens of seconds to recover from a failure because the protocol timers delay the convergence. In this paper we characterize OSPF convergence behaviors in presence of correlated failures, where the reactive protocol dynamics could be enlarged. Our analysis demonstrates that the interactions between failure detection and routing calculation scheduling could lead to complicated protocol response to correlated failures. We also perform experimental study and the results conform to the analysis. Based on the understanding of OSPF convergence, we present some recommendations for configuring protocol timers in principle.
TurkServer: Enabling Synchronous and Longitudinal Online Experiments

With the proliferation of online labor markets and other human computation platforms, online experiments have become a low-cost and scalable way to empirically test hypotheses and mechanisms in both human computation and social science. Yet, despite the potential in designing more powerful and expressive online experiments using multiple subjects, researchers still face many technical and logistical difficulties. We see synchronous and longitudinal experiments involving real-time interaction between participants as a dualuse paradigm for both human computation and social science, and present TurkServer, a platform that facilitates these types of experiments on Amazon Mechanical Turk. Our work has the potential to make more fruitful online experiments accessible to researchers in many different fields.
Curie Temperature of Non-Stoichiometric Ni-Doped Lithium Tantalate

Ceramics of Li0.98? xTa1.004? x/5O3 solid solutions with 0 ≤ x ≤ 0.20 are studied by a new theoretical approach. From the experience, we have proposed the new vacancy models which are able to describe substitutional mechanism in Ni-doped lithium tantalate. Calculations of the Curie temperature in Ni-doped non stoichiometric lithium tantalate reveal good correspondence with experimental results. The substitution mechanism of the doped compositions Ni in LiTaO3 crystal is discussed. So, the mechanism of phase transition due to thermal expansion of crystal is described.
Automatic Persona Generation (APG): A Rationale and Demonstration

We present Automatic Persona Generation (APG), a methodology and system for quantitative persona generation using large amounts of online social media data. The system is operational, beta deployed with several client organizations in multiple industry verticals and ranging from small-to-medium sized enterprises to large multi-national corporations. Using a robust web framework and stable back-end database, APG is currently processing tens of millions of user interactions with thousands of online digital products on multiple social media platforms, such as Facebook and YouTube. APG identifies both distinct and impactful user segments and then creates persona descriptions by automatically adding pertinent features, such as names, photos, and personal attributes. We present the overall methodological approach, architecture development, and main system features. APG has a potential value for organizations distributing content via online platforms and is unique in its approach to persona generation. APG can be found online at https://persona.qcri. org.
Inter-day reliability of blood pressure and cerebral blood flow velocities in persons with spinal cord injury and intact controls

Background: Due to interruption of cardiovascular autonomic control unstable blood pressure (BP) is common in individuals with spinal cord injury (SCI) above the sixth thoracic vertebral level. The impact of unstable BP on cerebral blood flow (CBF) is not well appreciated, but symptoms associated with altered cerebral perfusion are reported, which can negatively impact daily life activities. Methods: We measured seated BP and CBF in participants with SCI and able-bodied (AB) controls on three laboratory visits to determine the inter-day reliability (intraclass correlation coefficient: ICC). BP was assessed at the finger using photoplethysmography and at the brachial artery with manual sphygmomanometry. CBF velocities (CBFv) were assessed at the middle cerebral artery using transcranial Doppler (TCD) ultrasound. Results: Data were collected in 15 participants with chronic SCI (C3-T4) and 10 AB controls, the groups did not differ for age, height, weight or BMI; however, brachial BP (P < 0.001), finger BP (P < 0.01) and CBFv (P < 0.05) were significantly lower in the SCI group compared to the controls. The inter-day ICC for brachial BP ranged from 0.51 to 0.79, whereas the ICC for finger BP was not as high (0.17 to 0.47). The inter-day ICC for CBFv ranged from 0.45 to 0.96, indicating fair to substantial reliability. Conclusions: These data indicate good inter-day reliability of brachial BP and TCD recording of CBFv; however, the assessment of finger BP appears to be somewhat less reliable. In addition, these data confirm reduced resting CBFv in association with hypotension in individuals with SCI compared to matched controls with low BP.
A Single Wide-Field OCT Protocol Can Provide Compelling Information for the Diagnosis of Early Glaucoma

Purpose To evaluate a report for glaucoma diagnosis based on a single optical coherence tomography (OCT) protocol. Methods A wide-field (9 × 12 mm) swept-source (SS) OCT scan, encompassing the macula and disc, was obtained on 130 eyes (patients) with or suspected open-angle glaucoma, a mean deviation greater than or equal to −6 dB on a 24-2 visual field (VF), and spherical refractive error between ± 6 diopters (D). The single-page report contained a circumpapillary retinal nerve fiber layer (cpRNFL) thickness plot; retinal ganglion cell layer and retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) thickness and probability plots of the macula and optic nerve; and an enface slab image of the optic nerve. A report specialist judged each eye as healthy (H); probably healthy (PH); forced-choice healthy (FC-H); optic neuropathy (ON); probably ON (PON); forced-choice optic neuropathy (FC-ON). Two glaucoma specialists made similar judgments about the presence of glaucomatous damage. The glaucoma specialists had 24-2 and 10-2 VFs, fundus photos, patient chart information, and the single-page report including the report specialist's interpretation. Results The reference standard consisted of 57 eyes judged as glaucomatous (ON or PON) and 45 eyes judged as healthy (H or PH) by both glaucoma specialists. The report specialist identified 56 of the glaucomatous eyes as optic neuropathy (i.e., ON, PON, or FC-ON), and 44 of the healthy eyes as healthy (i.e., H, PH, or FC-H), an accuracy of 98.0%. Conclusions A single-page report based upon a single, wide-field OCT scan has the information needed to diagnose early glaucoma with excellent sensitivity/specificity. Translational Relevance It is possible that screening for glaucoma can be effective with only a single OCT protocol.
Occupational Exposure to Coal, Genotoxicity, and Cancer Risk

Coal is a heterogeneous mixture containing large quantities of organic and inorganic matter, including carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, sulfur, nitrogen, and organometallic forms. The presence of mineral matter in coal may result in a number of environmental and human health problems related to its mining, preparation, and combustion. During coal mining activities, large quantities of coal dust, ashes, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and heavy metals are released into the environment, forming a complex mixture. This mixture becomes one of the most important occupational risks for the health and safety of workers due to its synergistic, additive, and enhancing effects. Once inside the organism, this cocktail-like mixture can interact with cellular mechanisms related to the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and can cause damage in important macromolecules such as DNA, lipids, and proteins. In this review, human populations exposed to coal and coal burning were analyzed. Data from different studies were evaluated in relation to the effect of complex mixture exposure on DNA damage and mechanisms, and the background factors, such as gender, age, or smoking habit. The high temperatures that occur in combustion processes affect the characteristics of the resulting particles. The coal fly ash is released by combustion and its composition varies depend‐ ing on the coal type and the method of collection used such as electrostatic precipita‐ tors. Compounds such as PAHs once activated by the organisms have been shown to have mutagenic and carcinogenic activity due to its ability to form adducts with purines. Moreover, metals that commonly are evaporated during the cooling process increase its toxicity. The particles when inhaled can pass from the alveoli into the bloodstream and affect extrapulmonary organs. Several studies have described the inflammatory cascade that triggers exposure to coal and coal fly ash particles; they have a complex composi‐ tion capable of generating a persistent inflammatory process, resulting in diseases widely described as emphysema, bronchitis, pneumoconiosis, asthma, and cancer. Several human biomonitoring studies have been conducted evaluating the inflammatory process and © 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. the release of cytokines, polymorphisms involved in detoxification mechanisms, different biomarkers associated with occupational exposure, DNA damage, and the influence of oxidative stress in disease development. The relationship between chronic exposure to coal and coal ash particles and cancer is still widely debated. This review gave us a broad assessment about the associated mechanisms between cancer and exposure to coal and different findings around the world.
Fast direct neuronal signaling via the IL-4 receptor as therapeutic target in neuroinflammation

Targeting neuronal interleukin-4 signaling is beneficial for clinical progression and axon pathology in different neuroinflammation models. IL-4 empowers axons Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a neuroinflammatory disorder, and current therapies focus on altering immune activity to reduce symptoms. Vogelaar and colleagues tested the ability of intrathecally applied IL-4, a cytokine typically associated with T helper type 2 responses, to treat established disease in several experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) models. IL-4 treatment led to reduced clinical scores, improved locomotor activity, and diminished axon damage. Somewhat surprisingly, the beneficial effects of IL-4 did not depend on T cell modulation in the chronic disease phase. The receptor for IL-4 was observed in postmortem brain histology of several MS patients, and they demonstrated that IL-4 could act directly on neurons in vitro. They also showed benefits of intranasal IL-4 administration in one of the EAE models, which could be a promising avenue to pursue in the clinic. Ongoing axonal degeneration is thought to underlie disability in chronic neuroinflammation, such as multiple sclerosis (MS), especially during its progressive phase. Upon inflammatory attack, axons undergo pathological swelling, which can be reversible. Because we had evidence for beneficial effects of T helper 2 lymphocytes in experimental neurotrauma and discovered interleukin-4 receptor (IL-4R) expressed on axons in MS lesions, we aimed at unraveling the effects of IL-4 on neuroinflammatory axon injury. We demonstrate that intrathecal IL-4 treatment during the chronic phase of several experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis models reversed disease progression without affecting inflammation. Amelioration of disability was abrogated upon neuronal deletion of IL-4R. We discovered direct neuronal signaling via the IRS1-PI3K-PKC pathway underlying cytoskeletal remodeling and axonal repair. Nasal IL-4 application, suitable for clinical translation, was equally effective in improving clinical outcome. Targeting neuronal IL-4 signaling may offer new therapeutic strategies to halt disability progression in MS and possibly also neurodegenerative conditions.
Functional characterization of LotP from Liberibacter asiaticus

Liberibacter asiaticus is an unculturable parasitic bacterium of the alphaproteobacteria group hosted by both citrus plants and a psyllid insect vector (Diaphorina citri). In the citrus tree, the bacteria thrive only inside the phloem, causing a systemically incurable and deadly plant disease named citrus greening or Huanglongbing. Currently, all commercial citrus cultivars in production are susceptible to L. asiaticus, representing a serious threat to the citrus industry worldwide. The technical inability to isolate and culture L. asiaticus has hindered progress in understanding the biology of this bacterium directly. Consequently, a deep understanding of the biological pathways involved in the regulation of host–pathogen interactions becomes critical to rationally design future and necessary strategies of control. In this work, we used surrogate strains to evaluate the biochemical characteristics and biological significance of CLIBASIA_03135. This gene, highly induced during early stages of plant infection, encodes a 23 kDa protein and was renamed in this work as LotP. This protein belongs to an uncharacterized family of proteins with an overall structure resembling the LON protease N‐terminus. Co‐immunoprecipitation assays allowed us to identify the Liberibacter chaperonin GroEL as the main LotP‐interacting protein. The specific interaction between LotP and GroEL was reconstructed and confirmed using a two‐hybrid system in Escherichia coli. Furthermore, it was demonstrated that LotP has a native molecular weight of 44 kDa, corresponding to a dimer in solution with ATPase activity in vitro. In Liberibacter crescens, LotP is strongly induced in response to conditions with high osmolarity but repressed at high temperatures. Electrophoretic mobility shift assay (EMSA) results suggest that LotP is a member of the LdtR regulon and could play an important role in tolerance to osmotic stress.