Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Implementation of a pre-dialysis clinical pathway for patients with chronic kidney disease.

OBJECTIVE The objective of this study was to design and implement an efficient pathway to ensure a smooth transition of patients with advanced chronic kidney disease to dialysis. SETTING In our dialysis service, as elsewhere, we recognized that there was an unacceptably high rate of inadequately prepared patients commencing dialysis. Knowledge of clinical practice and research-based guidelines has not in itself changed clinical practice and patient management. MAIN MEASURE : To address these problems, multidisciplinary process redesign teams reviewed pre-existing arrangements by assessing current practice. The review identified critical points where problems could occur: failure to notify patients to dialysis service, late referral for vascular surgery, and inadequate pre-dialysis education. As a result of this process, we have formulated a modified and coordinated pre-dialysis programme. RESULTS In association with process redesign, the proportion of patients registered 'late' decreased from 29% in July-September 2000 (pre-implementation) to 6% in January-March 2004 (P < 0.01) with the corresponding median time from registration to commencement of dialysis increasing from <1 month to 14 months (P < 0.01). Patients not registered with the service decreased from 57 to 0% (P < 0.001). Eighty-three per cent of patients commenced dialysis with a permanent vascular access in January-March 2004, compared with 24% in July-September 2000 (P < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS Through process redesign, more of our patients are known to us before commencement of dialysis, a greater proportion of which are provided with pre-dialysis education and permanent vascular access. Our results highlight that implementation remains the final and most difficult challenge of the guideline process.
Human Dignity, Decency and Integrity as the Sine Qua Non of Human Rights Education: A Proactive Conceptual and Practical Framework for Promotion of World Peace.

This paper underscores the significance of personal dignity, decency, and integrity as the core values and symbionic concepts to promote human rights education. It proposes a proactive model with philosophical ramifications and practical applications proposed for educators, researchers, and mental health practitioners interested in human rights issues and global peace. The model assumes that matters relating to ethics and values rather than economic and political structures play a prominent role in causing and resolving problems at all levels: local, social, and international. The goal of the model is to inculcate moral sensitivities that are necessary for people to become responsible, genuine, and caring global citizens. The paper states that human rights actions have to become a priority, and educators have to develop new attitudes of empathy, genuineness, and respect. Major emphasis is placed on developing and enhancing critical thinking. The paper also lists some of these strategies as: intellectual curiosity, open-mindedness, flexibility, intellectual honesty, and respect for others' viewpoints. (JDM) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. Human Dignity, Decency, and Integrity as the Sine Qua Non of Human Rights Education: A Proactive Conceptual and Practical Framework for Promotion of World Peace
Are Patent Medicine Vendors Effective Agents in Malaria Control? Using Lot Quality Assurance Sampling to Assess Quality of Practice in Jigawa, Nigeria

Background Patent medicine vendors (PMV) provide antimalarial treatment and care throughout Sub-Saharan Africa, and can play an important role in the fight against malaria. Their close-to-client infrastructure could enable lifesaving artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT) to reach patients in time. However, systematic assessments of drug sellers’ performance quality are crucial if their role is to be managed within the health system. Lot quality assurance sampling (LQAS) could be an efficient method to monitor and evaluate PMV practice, but has so far never been used for this purpose. Methods In support of the Nigeria Malaria Booster Program we assessed PMV practices in three Senatorial Districts (SDs) of Jigawa, Nigeria. A two-stage LQAS assessed whether at least 80% of PMV stores in SDs used national treatment guidelines. Acceptable sampling errors were set in consultation with government officials (alpha and beta <0.10). The hypergeometric formula determined sample sizes and cut-off values for SDs. A structured assessment tool identified high and low performing SDs for quality of care indicators. Findings Drug vendors performed poorly in all SDs of Jigawa for all indicators. For example, all SDs failed for stocking and selling first-line antimalarials. PMV sold no longer recommended antimalarials, such as Chloroquine, Sulfadoxine-Pyrimethamine and oral Artesunate monotherapy. Most PMV were ignorant of and lacked training about new treatment guidelines that had endorsed ACTs as first-line treatment for uncomplicated malaria. Conclusion There is urgent need to regularly monitor and improve the availability and quality of malaria treatment provided by medicine sellers in Nigeria; the irrational use of antimalarials in the ACT era revealed in this study bears a high risk of economic loss, death and development of drug resistance. LQAS has been shown to be a suitable method for monitoring malaria-related indicators among PMV, and should be applied in Nigeria and elsewhere to improve service delivery.
RDF-based Metadata Management in Peer-to-Peer Systems

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) data integration combines the P2P infrastructure with traditional schema-based data integration techniques. One of the primary problems in this research area is the automation of the process of interoperation among heterogeneous data sources. To facilitate this process, metadata are used to add rich semantics to the data sources. In this paper, we propose an RDF-based layered approach to data interoperation in a P2P environment. We use RDF and its vocabulary language RDFS for representation of data and metadata, which are distributed in different peers. For the representation of the mappings of metadata from peer to peer (called P2P mappings), we propose a mapping language, which is an RDF-based meta-ontology (called RDFMS) that enables metadata management in a decentralized way. We also discuss a thesaurus-based mapping process and query translation in the proposed framework, which aim to provide an efficient way to P2P metadata and data management, respectively.
A QoS-Aware BPEL Framework for Service Selection and Composition Using QoS Properties

—The promise of service oriented computing, and the availability of web services in particular, promote delivery of services and creation of new services composed of existing services – service components are assembled to achieve integrated computational goals. Business organizations strive to utilize the services and to provide new service solutions and they will need appropriate tools to achieve these goals. As web and internet based services grow into clouds, inter-dependency of services and their complexity increases tremendously. The cloud ontology depicts service layers from a high-level, such as Application and Software, to a low-level, such as Infrastructure and Platform. Each component resides at one layer can be useful to others as a service. It hints the amount of complexity resulting from not only horizontal but also vertical integrations in building and deploying a composite service. Our framework tackles the complexity of the selection and composition issues with additional qualitative information to the service descriptions using Business Process Execution Language (BPEL). Engineers can use BPEL to explore design options, and have the QoS properties analyzed for the design. QoS properties of each service are annotated with our extension to Web Service Description Language (WSDL). In this paper, we describe our framework and illustrate its application to one QoS property, performance. We translate BPEL orchestration and choreography into appropriate queuing networks, and analyze the resulting model to obtain the performance properties of the composed service. Our framework is also designed to support utilizations of other QoS extensions of WSDL, adaptable business logic languages, and composition models for other QoS properties.
The Risks of Outsourcing Security: Foreign Security Forces in United States National Security Policy

This study combines insights from international relations, diplomatic history, and civilmilitary relations to improve our understanding of the tenuous arrangement between the United States and its foreign military proxies. For over a century, the U.S. has armed and trained these proxies to assume responsibilities that its own military might otherwise have to bear. But throughout that time, critics have doubted whether the U.S. could or should delegate sensitive security responsibilities to “dubious” foreign soldiers. Such doubt highlights an international analog to the principal-agent problem normally associated with domestic civil-military relations. I examine why this international principal-agent problem arose, how it has evolved over the past century, and how this evolution has shifted the U.S.’s approach to bringing its foreign agents in line with its strategic objectives. From extensive archival research, I find that variation in this approach stems from changes in how the U.S., as the principal, has understood and characterized its security agents. To make sense of this finding, I advance constructivist principal-agent theory. This theory 1) reveals how the principal’s evolving perception of its agent defines different bases of the principal-agent problem and 2) shows how each of these bases specifies particular policies—from among all those available—for mitigating that problem. THE RISKS OF OUTSOURCING SECURITY: FOREIGN SECURITY FORCES IN UNITED STATES NATIONAL SECURITY POLICY
A U T O M AT E D H O M E - C A G E B E H AV I O R A L PH E N O T YPIN G O F M I C E

Neurobehavioral analysis of mouse phenotypes requires the monitoring of mouse behavior over long periods of time. Here, we describe a trainable computer vision system enabling the automated analysis of complex mouse behaviors. We provide software and an extensive manually annotated video database used for training and testing the system. Our system performs on par with human scoring, as measured from ground-truth manual annotations of thousands of clips of freely behaving mice. As a validation of the system, we characterized the home-cage behaviors of two standard inbred and two non-standard mouse strains. From this data we were able to predict in a blind test the strain identity of individual animals with high accuracy. Our video-based software will complement existing sensor based automated approaches and enable an adaptable, comprehensive, high-throughput, fine-grained, automated analysis of mouse behavior.
Comparative Advantage and Schooling

In this paper we empirically study how individuals sort across different levels of schooling using a sample of white males from the 1979 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. We find that individuals select into the level of schooling in which they have an absolute advantage. Had high school graduates enrolled in college their wages would have been lower than the wages of college participants. Conversely, had college participants not enrolled in college their wages would have been lower than the wages of regular high school graduates. We illustrate how accounting for changes over time in these sorting patterns is important for the study of wage inequality.
An Approach for Estimation - Reliability Model based Web Application Systems

Structured retrieval of relevant data or information, based upon the user query is an essential factor while retrieving and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. When the information is retrieved from the web, tags play a vital role to identify the relevant data and thereby providing the content to the user. Here we are proposing an approach in which the commonsense knowledge base will provide the gathered relevant information which is requested by the user query. To retrieve data from web, the use of commonsense knowledge will increase the accuracy of the result. When once the information is generated to the user by the common sense knowledge base, it requires evaluating for its quality and correctness. For this, a quantitative reliability estimation approach is explored. A general comparison between the existing approaches and the proposed approach has been also done. General Terms Commonsense knowledge Base, Tags, Reliability Estimation
A Study on the Ability of the Second Year Students of English Study Program Fkip Universitas Riau in Listening to Conversations

This study aims at finding the ability of the second year students of English Study Program FKIP Univeritas Riau in listening to conversations. The writer used Cluster Random Sampling technique to choose the sample. There are three classes for population of this research consists of 90 students there are class A, B and C, class B was chosen as the sample consisted of 30 students. The instrument of this research was in the form of multiple choices test which consisted of tryout and sample. The test was listening test. The test had four scripts and each script had five questions based on listening question comprehension components, so there were 20 questions for the script. The writer used SPSS 16.0 Program to analyze the data. Based on the results, there are two students in the excellent level (6,7%), and eleven of the students (36, 7%) were at good level, 33,3% were at mediocre level, and 23, 3% was at poor level. So, from the result of the calculation, the majority of student's ability in listening comprehension on conversation was at good level. The data also indicated that the highest score obtained by students was 85 while the lowest score was 30, and for each classification of question, the mean score of the students' ability for finding main idea was 65,33 finding detail was 42,00, identifying inference was 66,00 and identifying restatement was 52,00. It means that identifying detail was the students' lowest score and finding main idea was the students' highest score of the second year students especially students from class B of English study program FKIP-UR in listening comprehension on conversations.
MONITORING AND DETECTION OF FAULT USING PHASOR MEASUREMENT UNITS

This paper presents the fault detection and classification in power system using Phasor Measurement Units (PMU). PMU detects the fault in less than seconds and it also gives a time synchronized values of current and voltage in digital form and it is given to local Phasor Data Concentrator (PDC). When major disturbance like blackouts occur, the protection and control actions has to be initiated against the power system degradation, which in turn restore the system to a normal state and minimize the impact of the disturbance. Wide Area Measurement System (WAMS) is emerging nowadays for monitoring and control the power system operations. The system frequency is measured by frequency-tracking method which depends on synchronized phasor measuring technology with high speed communication system and time transfer Global Positioning System (GPS). The proposed method has been validated in IEEE-9 bus system using Matlab Simulink model.
Swing Detection Using Onto Tree

In this paper we present an hybrid approach for Ontology designing by combining Data structure storage techniques and Ontology characteristics to improve understanding about a passages/statement or opinion. By applying classification task we focus on forming a right positive and left negative sub tree and to calculate its positive or negative swing. It serves many Purposes such as, e.g., opinion mining, Inclination and proper designing. Most Existing techniques utilize a list of opinion (also called opinion Lexicon). Opinion words are of both Characteristics (positive or negative) . By using binary search technique we have developed Unique onto trees that utilize tree structure to improve feature ranking. In the end we have formed a swing table that projects the inclination of any statement/opinion or passage.
MarCol: A Market-Based Recommender System

Collaborative information-filtering systems maintain user judgments on the relevance of data items.These systems recommend relevant information to other users on the basis of similarity between user profiles or recommended items. This market-based collaborative information-filtering system employs a pricing mechanism to motivate users to provide judgments. Results show that the model increases feedback and improves recommendation quality. MarCol uses Google as the underlying search engine. It stores all user logs, including queries and judgments.
The effect of a non-zero Lagrangian time scale on bounded shear dispersion

Abstract Previous studies of shear dispersion in bounded velocity fields have assumed random velocities with zero Lagrangian time scale (i.e. velocities are $\delta $-function correlated in time). However, many turbulent (geophysical and engineering) flows with mean velocity shear exist where the Lagrangian time scale is non-zero. Here, the longitudinal (along-flow) shear-induced diffusivity in a two-dimensional bounded velocity field is derived for random velocities with non-zero Lagrangian time scale ${\tau }_{L} $. A non-zero ${\tau }_{L} $ results in two-time transverse (across-flow) displacements that are correlated even for large (relative to the diffusive time scale ${\tau }_{D} $) times. The longitudinal (along-flow) shear-induced diffusivity ${D}_{S} $ is derived, accurate for all ${\tau }_{L} $, using a Lagrangian method where the velocity field is periodically extended to infinity so that unbounded transverse particle spreading statistics can be used to determine ${D}_{S} $. The non-dimensionalized ${D}_{S} $ depends on time and two parameters: the ratio of Lagrangian to diffusive time scales ${\tau }_{L} / {\tau }_{D} $ and the release location. Using a parabolic velocity profile, these dependencies are explored numerically and through asymptotic analysis. The large-time ${D}_{S} $ is enhanced relative to the classic Taylor diffusivity, and this enhancement increases with $ \sqrt{{\tau }_{L} } $. At moderate ${\tau }_{L} / {\tau }_{D} = 0. 1$ this enhancement is approximately a factor of 3. For classic shear dispersion with ${\tau }_{L} = 0$, the diffusive time scale ${\tau }_{D} $ determines the time dependence and large-time limit of the shear-induced diffusivity. In contrast, for sufficiently large ${\tau }_{L} $, a shear time scale ${\tau }_{S} = \mathop{ ({\tau }_{L} {\tau }_{D} )}\nolimits ^{1/ 2} $, anticipated by a simple analysis of the particle’s domain-crossing time, determines both the ${D}_{S} $ time dependence and the large-time limit. In addition, the scalings for turbulent shear dispersion are recovered from the large-time ${D}_{S} $ using properties of wall-bounded turbulence.
Apoptosis in Renal Proximal Tubules of Rats Treated with Low Doses of Aminoglycosides

ABSTRACT Kidney cortex apoptosis was studied with female Wistar rats treated for 10 days with gentamicin and netilmicin at daily doses of 10 or 20 mg/kg of body weight and amikacin or isepamicin at daily doses of 40 mg/kg. Apoptosis was detected and quantitated using cytological (methyl green-pyronine) and immunohistochemical (terminal deoxynucleotidyltransferase-mediated dUTP-biotin nick end labeling) staining, in parallel with a measurement of drug-induced phospholipidosis (cortical phospholipids and phospholipiduria), cortical proliferative response (3H incorporation in DNA and histoautoradiography after in vivo pulse-labeling with [3H]thymidine), and kidney dysfunction (blood urea nitrogen and creatinine). Gentamicin induced in proximal tubules a marked apoptotic reaction which (i) was detectable after 4 days of treatment but was most conspicuous after 10 days, (ii) was dose dependent, (iii) occurred in the absence of necrosis, and (iv) was nonlinearly correlated with the proliferative response (tubular and peritubular cells). Comparative studies revealed a parallelism among the extents of phospholipidosis, apoptosis, and proliferative response for three aminoglycosides (gentamicin >> amikacin ≅ isepamicin). By contrast, netilmicin induced a marked phospholipidosis but a moderate apoptosis and proliferative response. We conclude that rats treated with gentamicin develop an apoptotic process as part of the various cortical alterations induced by this antibiotic at low doses. Netilmicin, and still more amikacin and isepamicin, appears safer in this respect. Whereas a relation between aminoglycoside-induced tubular apoptosis and cortical proliferative response seems to be established, no simple correlation with phospholipidosis can be drawn.
Experiences using Gateway-Enforced Rate-Limiting Techniques in Wireless Mesh Networks

Gateway nodes in a wireless mesh network (WMN) bridge traffic between the mesh nodes and the public Internet. This makes them a suitable aggregation point for policy enforcement or other traffic-shaping responsibilities that may be required to support a scalable, functional mesh network. In this paper we evaluate two gateway-enforced rate-limiting mechanisms so as to avoid congestion and support network-level fairness: automated queue management (AQM) techniques that have previously been widely studied in the context of wired networks, and our gateway rate control (GRC) mechanism. We evaluate the performance of these two techniques through simulations of an 802.11-based multihop mesh network. Our experiments show that the conventional use of AQM techniques fails to provide effective congestion control as these mesh networks exhibit different congestion characteristics than wired networks. Specifically, in a wired network, packet losses under congestion occur at the router queue feeding the bottleneck link. By contrast, in a WMN, many such geographically dispersed points of contention may exist due to asymmetric views of the channel state between different mesh routers. As such, gateway rate-limiting techniques like AQM are ineffective as the gateway queue is not the only bottleneck. Our GRC protocol takes a different approach by rate limiting each active flow to its fair share, thus preserving enough capacity to allow the disadvantaged flows to obtain their fair share of the network throughput. The GRC technique can be further extended to provide quality of service (QoS) guarantees or enforce different notions of fairness.