Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Applying Participatory Methods to Address Motivational Aspects in Informal Workplace

Motivational aspects are core to successful knowledge sharing and collaborative learning experiences. However, it still remains one of the great challenges to overcome motivational barriers when it comes to introducing information systems for collaborative learning at the workplace. In the context of an international research project we have taken motivational aspects into account during the design phase and started a participatory process involving researchers, end-users, managers, designers and developers. As initial findings show, a continuous dialogue with end-users may contribute to creating a sense of ownership amongst them and become a motivational driver for the future use of the system.
CD 97 neutralisation increases resistance to collagen-induced arthritis in mice

Synovial tissue of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients is characterised by an influx and retention of CD97-positive inflammatory cells. The ligands of CD97, CD55, chondroitin sulfate B, and α5β1 (very late antigen [VLA]-5) are expressed abundantly in the synovial tissue predominantly on fibroblast-like synoviocytes, endothelium, and extracellular matrix. Based upon this expression pattern, we hypothesise CD97 expression to result in accumulation of inflammatory cells in the synovial tissue of RA patients. To determine the therapeutic effect of blocking CD97 in an animal model of RA, collagen-induced arthritis was induced in a total of 124 DBA/J1 mice. Treatment was started on day 21 (early disease) or on day 35 (longstanding disease) with the blocking hamster anti-mouse CD97 monoclonal antibody (mAb) 1B2, control hamster immunoglobulin, or NaCl, applied intraperitoneally three times a week. The paws were evaluated for clinical signs of arthritis and, in addition, examined by radiological and histological analysis. Mice receiving 0.5 mg CD97 mAb starting from day 21 had significantly less arthritis activity and hind paw swelling. Furthermore, joint damage and inflammation were reduced and granulocyte infiltration was decreased. When treatment was started on day 35, CD97 mAb treatment had similar effects, albeit less pronounced. The results support the notion that CD97 contributes to synovial inflammation and joint destruction in arthritis. Introduction Synovial tissue of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is characterised by a striking increase in cellularity [1]. The accumulation of inflammatory cells is probably due to multiple processes, including enhanced migration, local retention, and proliferation of these cells as well as reduced apoptosis [2]. CD97 is a member of the epidermal growth factor (EGF)seven-span transmembrane (TM7) family [3] of TM7 adhesion receptors [4,5]. These predominantly leukocyte-restricted cellsurface proteins possess a large extracellular region containing multiple N-terminal EGF-like domains [3]. CD97 is expressed by a wide range of leukocytes, including activated lymphocytes, granulocytes, monocytes, macrophages, and dendritic cells. Due to alternative mRNA splicing, isoforms with three, four, and five EGF domains are expressed [5]. CD97 interacts with cellular ligands. All isoforms, albeit with different affinity, bind CD55, which is also known as DAF (decay accelerating factor) [6,7]. The largest isoform, in addition, interacts with the glycosaminoglycan chondroitin sulfate B (dermatan sulfate) [8,9]. More recently, a third ligand of CD97 was identified by demonstrating that the integrin α5β1 (very late antigen [VLA]-5) and possibly also αvβ3 binds the Arg-Gly-Asp (RGD) motif in the stalk region of human CD97
Pest fruit fly (Diptera: Tephritidae) in northwestern Australia: one species or two?

Abstract Since 1985, a new and serious fruit fly pest has been reported in northwestern Australia. It has been unclear whether this pest was the supposedly benign endemic species, Bactrocera aquilonis, or a recent introduction of the morphologically near-identical Queensland fruit fly, B. tryoni. B. tryoni is a major pest throughout eastern Australia but is isolated from the northwest region by an arid zone. In the present study, we sought to clarify the species status of these new pests using an extensive DNA microsatellite survey across the entire northwest region of Australia. Population differentiation tests and clustering analyses revealed a high degree of homogeneity within the northwest samples, suggesting that just one species is present in the region. That northwestern population showed minimal genetic differentiation from B. tryoni from Queensland (FST=0.015). Since 2000, new outbreaks of this pest fruit fly have occurred to the west of the region, and clustering analysis suggested recurrent migration from the northwest region rather than Queensland. Mitochondrial DNA sequencing also showed no evidence for the existence of a distinct species in the northwest region. We conclude that the new pest fruit fly in the northwest is the endemic population of B. aquilonis but that there is no genetic evidence supporting the separation of B. aquilonis and B. tryoni as distinct species.
Vitamin C is not the Missing Link Between Cigarette Smoking and Spinal Pain

Study Design. A nationwide cross-sectional study. Objectives. To measure the associations between cigarette smoking (defined as serum cotinine concentration >15 ng/mL) and the 3-month prevalence of spinal pain (neck pain, low back pain, low back pain with pain below knee, and self-reported diagnosis of arthritis/rheumatism) and related limitations, and to verify whether these associations are mediated by serum concentrations of vitamin C. Summary of Background Data. Cigarette smoking has been consistently associated with back pain, but this association has never been explained. Because vitamin C has recently been reported to be associated with spinal pain and related functional limitations, and the metabolism of vitamin C differs between smokers and nonsmokers, we hypothesized that the prevalence of spinal pain and related limitations might be greater among smokers because they are more susceptible to be in a state of hypovitaminosis C. Methods. We conducted secondary analyses of National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2003 to 2004 data on 4438 individuals aged ≥20 years. Results. Serum concentrations of vitamin C and cotinine were strongly and inversely correlated (r = -0.35, P < 0.0001). Smoking was statistically associated with the prevalence of neck pain [adjusted odds ratio: aOR: 1.25; 95% confidence interval (95% CI): 1.06–1.47], low back pain (aOR: 1.20; 95% CI: 1.04–1.39), and low back pain with pain below knee (aOR: 1.58; 95% CI: 1.13–2.22) and related limitations, with a dose-response relationship (P < 0.05). However, the associations between smoking and spinal pain were not mediated by concentrations of vitamin C. Conclusion. These results confirm the relationship between smoking and spinal pain, but they do not support a mediating effect of vitamin C on this relationship. Level of Evidence: 2
AN OVERVIEW OF CLINICAL AND PATHOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS AND SURVIVAL RATE OF COLORECTAL CANCER IN IRAN

Context: Colorectal cancer is one of the most common cancers and the leading cause of cancer death in Iran. This study aimed to identify the clinical and pathological characteristics, as well as survival rate of colorectal cancer in Iran. Evidence Acquisition: The articles published in PubMed without language and time restrictions were included in this review. Only original clinical articles were included in the review and non-clinical studies, including cellular, molecular, genetics, and animal reports, were excluded. The case reports, letters, reviews, and clinical reports with less than 100 patients were excluded, as well. All the clinical data regarding the patients’ demographics, tumor characteristics, and survival rate were collected. Results: A total of 178 studies were identified at the initial step of literature search. After applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 27 studies, including 37901 patients were eligible. The mean age of the patients was 57.2 years, and the male-female ratio was 1.38. Colon, rectum, and rectosigmoid junction accounted for 58%, 28%, and 14% of all colorectal primary sites, respectively. Moreover, the average proportion of the patients with stages 0-I, II, III, and IV was 9%, 39%, 36%, and 16%, respectively. Besides, tumor grades 1, 2, and 3 were reported in 52%, 37%, and 11% of the patients, respectively. Adenocarcinoma (96.8%) was the most frequent histological type. The mean and median survival rate was 80.1 and 55.2 months, respectively. Additionally, the average 5-year overall survival rate was 52.5%. Conclusions: In Iran, colorectal cancer tends to manifest at locally advanced stage with poor prognosis. Therefore, public health strategies, such as screening programs, should be planned for early detection of this aggressive neoplasm.
Topic evolution modeling in social media short texts based on recurrent semantic dependent CRP

Social media has become an important platform for people to express opinions, share information and communicate with others. Detecting and tracking topics from social media can help people grasp essential information and facilitate many security-related applications. As social media texts are usually short, traditional topic evolution models built based on LDA or HDP often suffer from the data sparsity problem. Recently proposed topic evolution models are more suitable for short texts, but they need to manually specify topic number which is fixed during different time period. To address these issues, in this paper, we propose a nonparametric topic evolution model for social media short texts. We first propose the recurrent semantic dependent Chinese restaurant process (rsdCRP), which is a nonparametric process incorporating word embeddings to capture semantic similarity information. Then we combine rsdCRP with word co-occurrence modeling and build our short-text oriented topic evolution model sdTEM. We carry out experimental studies on Twitter dataset. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of our method to monitor social media topic evolution compared to the baseline methods.
Radiation therapy for symptomatic hepatomegaly in myelofibrosis with myeloid metaplasia

Abstract: Objective: To describe the experience with liver irradiation in advanced cases of myelofibrosis with myeloid metaplasia (MMM). Methods: Over a 20‐yr period, 14 patients with MMM were treated with a total of 25 courses of liver, abdominal, or abdominal and pelvic irradiation for symptomatic hepatomegaly with (5 patients) or without (9 patients) ascites. All 14 patients had advanced disease and 11 (79%) had previous splenectomy. The median radiation therapy (RT) dose per course was 150 cGy (range 50–1000) administered at a median of six fractions. Four patients received two to six courses. Results: Twelve of the 14 patients (86%) had a transient (median 3 months) subjective response from RT. However, in only 35% of these was there a transient (median 3 months) decrease in palpable liver size. Four of the five patients with ascites experienced a short‐term response from RT. Eight of the 13 patients suitable for evaluation (62%) had treatment‐associated cytopenia, often in the form of anemia and/or thrombocytopenia. At last follow‐up, 10 patients (71%) had died after a median of 7 months (range 0.1–23) and 4 were alive at 3, 20, 33, and 57 months after RT. Conclusions: Low‐dose abdominal RT for symptomatic hepatomegaly or ascites associated with advanced‐stage MMM is myelosuppressive and provides only temporary and mainly subjective and short‐lived relief.
Differentially-fed charge pumping rectifier design with an enhanced efficiency for ambient RF energy harvesting

In this paper, a differentially-fed charge pumping rectifier design is presented with an enhanced efficiency for ambient RF energy harvesting. Due to the differential signals induced by a delicately designed rat-race coupler, circuit topology of the modified Greinacher rectifier is simplified with an enhanced RF-to-dc power conversion efficiency (PCE) over low power ranges. Meanwhile, high output DC voltage is sustained for the requirements of an efficient DC-DC boosting converter. Results of simulation and measurement validate that an enhanced efficiency of more than 5% is achieved over ultralow power ranges from −20dBm to −10dBm and the output DC voltage sustains with its amplitude more than 0.7V at incident power of −10dBm.
An improved current reconstruction technique for internal field assessment of dielectric phantoms

In this research, an inverse source reconstruction method is proposed for internal field evaluation of dielectric phantoms. We aims at the cost reduction and accuracy improvement of dosimetric measurement including specific absorption rate (SAR) assessment. The current reconstruction employs the continuity condition at the boundary of dielectric surface to improve the reconstruction accuracy. It is shown that this method works for internal field evaluation of a lossy dielectric sphere by numerical test.
Vision-Based Mid-Air Unistroke Character Input Using Polar Signatures

Hand-gesture-based commands may replace touch and electromechanical input panels to make public interactive response systems (IRS) more accessible. This work presents a prototype framework for vision-based mid-air unistroke character input, which can be adapted as an interface for the IRS. At first, we developed an acquisition module that effectively spots the legitimate gesture trajectory by implementing pen-up and pen-down actions using depth thresholding and velocity tracking. The extracted trajectory is recognized through a novel, fast, and easy to implement the equipolar signature (EPS) technique. Apart from resistance to rotation, scale, and translation variations, EPS exhibits neutrality to stroking directions as well. On the three self-collected datasets comprising of digits, alphabets, and symbols, the EPS scheme obtains over 96.5% accurate results with an average of 30-ms running time. The proposed scheme is also validated on an open dataset DAIR (Dataset for AIR Handwriting), where it achieves 95.5% mean accuracy with 24.3-ms recognition time per gesture. The developed approach is compared with benchmark schemes to justify its accuracy and speed.
Real-time model predictive control of the Ćuk converter

A recently developed method for real-time hybrid model predictive control (HMPC) of switching converters is extended to the Ćuk converter. Specifically, an integral quadratic performance index is used for stored energy and power flow regulation. The discrete-time HMPC problem is solved in real time using an active set optimization. Experimental results show that the control performs well in both steady state and transient operation (buck and boost) over a wide range of operating points.
Antimicrobial Use in Patients With Positive Intravascular Catheter Cultures A Six-Month Prospective Survey in a Teaching Hospital

Abstract Review of medical records revealed that, of 190 intravascular catheters sent for culture during the study period, 50 were positive. Of these 50, 11 (22%) were sent for culture as a routine procedure without special clinical indications. Of the remaining 39 cultures, only 11 (28%) had clinical impact in the patient's management. Ten of the 50 therapeutic interventions were inappropriate. Restricting cultures to patients who may have catheter-related infection is likely to lead to significant cost savings.
Content Based Document Information Retrieval System

: The procedure with advancement of information surge has made it hard to get significant information on the web. In this proposed system, the necessity for practical Information Retrieval (IR) strategy has been extended. Document data contains huge information user can easily get the information by using only title and keywords of document or information. We propose a fast and effective content-based document information retrieval system that retrieves the information from the actual content of a document. In proposed system we use model of Latent Dirichlet Allocation that is used to extract major keywords for a given document. To improve the performance of system we use MongoDB database for the effective documents indexing. B-tree based indexing of MongoDB makes our system flexible, effective and fast than the previous system.
Phosphoproteomics of Klebsiella pneumoniae NTUH-K2044 Reveals a Tight Link between Tyrosine Phosphorylation and Virulence*

Encapsulated Klebsiella pneumoniae is the predominant causative agent of pyogenic liver abscess, an emerging infectious disease that often complicates metastatic meningitis or endophthalmitis. The capsular polysaccharide on K. pneumoniae surface was determined as the key to virulence. Although the regulation of capsular polysaccharide biosynthesis is largely unclear, it was found that protein-tyrosine kinases and phosphatases are involved. Therefore, the identification and characterization of such kinases, phosphatases, and their substrates would advance our knowledge of the underlying mechanism in capsule formation and could contribute to the development of new therapeutic strategies. Here, we analyzed the phosphoproteome of K. pneumoniae NTUH-K2044 with a shotgun approach and identified 117 unique phosphopeptides along with 93 in vivo phosphorylated sites corresponding to 81 proteins. Interestingly, three of the identified tyrosine phosphorylated proteins, namely protein-tyrosine kinase (Wzc), phosphomannomutase (ManB), and undecaprenyl-phosphate glycosyltransferase (WcaJ), were found to be distributed in the cps locus and thus were speculated to be involved in the converging signal transduction of capsule biosynthesis. Consequently, we decided to focus on the lesser studied ManB and WcaJ for mutation analysis. The capsular polysaccharides of WcaJ mutant (WcaJY5F) were dramatically reduced quantitatively, and the LD50 increased by 200-fold in a mouse peritonitis model compared with the wild-type strain. However, the capsular polysaccharides of ManB mutant (ManBY26F) showed no difference in quantity, and the LD50 increased by merely 6-fold in mice test. Our study provided a clear trend that WcaJ tyrosine phosphorylation can regulate the biosynthesis of capsular polysaccharides and result in the pathogenicity of K. pneumoniae NTUH-K2044.
Crystallographic Fragment‐Based Drug Discovery: Use of a Brominated Fragment Library Targeting HIV Protease

A library of 68 brominated fragments was screened against a new crystal form of inhibited HIV‐1 protease in order to probe surface sites in soaking experiments. Often, fragments are weak binders with partial occupancy, resulting in weak, difficult‐to‐fit electron density. The use of a brominated fragment library addresses this challenge, as bromine can be located unequivocally via anomalous scattering. Data collection was carried out in an automated fashion using AutoDrug at SSRL. Novel hits were identified in the known surface sites: 3‐bromo‐2,6‐dimethoxybenzoic acid (Br6) in the flap site and 1‐bromo‐2‐naphthoic acid (Br27) in the exosite, expanding the chemistry of known fragments for development of higher affinity potential allosteric inhibitors. At the same time, mapping the binding sites of a number of weaker binding Br‐fragments provides further insight into the nature of these surface pockets.
Factors affecting the climate of hospital patient safety: a study of hospitals in Saudi Arabia.

PURPOSE The purpose of this paper is to describe three organizational dimensions that influence hospital patient safety climate, also showing and discussing differences between organizational types. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH Surveys were conducted in four types of Saudi Arabian hospitals. Resultant information was analyzed using factor analysis and multiple-regression. FINDINGS Management support, a proper reporting system and adequate resources were found to influence the hospital patient safety climate. RESEARCH LIMITATIONS/IMPLICATIONS The cross-sectional hospital survey took place in a country that is radically redesigning its healthcare system. Major changes including hospital privatisation and healthcare insurance systems may have significant effects on hospital organizational climates. ORIGINALITY/VALUE Improving a hospital's patient safety climate is critical for decreasing errors and providing optimal services. Although much patient safety research has been published, the organizational climate in non-Western countries has not been studied. The paper provides a unique Saudi Arabian hospital perspective and suggests that three dimensions influence the patient safety climate. Hospital managers are encouraged to improve these critical dimensions to positively develop their patient safety climate.
Route-specific cardiorespiratory and neuromuscular changes following organophosphorous poisoning in rats.

Organophosphorous compounds cause a variety of physiological effects. The effect of various routes of administration of these compounds on the pathophysiology is still an open question. The present study addresses the effect of two organophosphorous compounds, namely diisopropyl fluorophosphate and methylisopropyl phosphonofluoridate, given by two different routes (i.v. and s.c.), on physiological parameters in anaesthetized and artificially ventilated rats. Both organophosphorous compounds produced a dose-dependent rise in blood pressure, bradycardia and twitch potentiation after i.v. administration. These effects are mediated by muscarinic as well as alpha-adrenoreceptors and are not affected by adrenalectomy. However, after s.c. administration, both organophosphorous compounds produced a dose-dependent transient hypotension and bradycardia, mediated by muscarinic receptors, without affecting other physiological parameters. The results indicate the route-specific effects of these compounds on the cholinergic-catecholaminergic interactions in rats.
Exact Model Order ESPRIT Technique for Harmonics and Interharmonics Estimation

Harmonic, which is becoming more and more important day by day in the emerging power system, is one of the most critical power quality parameters. In this paper, the estimation of signal parameters via rotational invariance technique (ESPRIT)-based method is proposed with an accurate model order (the number of frequency components) estimate for power system harmonic and interharmonics detection. It is demonstrated that, even for high noise signal, the proposed algorithm is able to accurately estimate the number of frequency components present in the signal. The proposed method is capable of estimating the accurate values of frequency, amplitude, and phase angle of the distorted current or voltage signals for a wide range of sampling frequency and measurement noise. The robustness of the proposed method has been tested on several simulated synthetic signals and measured experimental signals for different nonlinear loads.
The performance relation of spatial indexing on hard disk drives and solid state drives

Spatial indexing is a core aspect in spatial databases and Geographic Information Systems. Commonly, spatial indices like the R-tree and the R*-tree consider Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) as the main storage device in data management. On the other hand, flash memories in the form of Solid State Drives (SSDs) have widely been adopted in data servers. Due to their unique characteristics like the erase-before-update operation and the asymmetry between read and write costs, the impact of spatial indexing on SSDs needs to be studied. In this paper, we conduct an experimental evaluation in order to analyze the performance relation of spatial indexing on HDDs and SSDs. As a result, we show experimentally that spatial indices originally designed for HDDs should be redesigned for SSDs in order to take into account the unique characteristics of SSDs. We also propose guidelines to improve the performance of spatial indexing on SSDs by considering these characteristics.