Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Influence of vitamin C and E supplementation on the eradication rates of triple and quadruple eradication regimens for Helicobacter pylori infection.

BACKGROUND/AIMS In our study, we aimed to assess the effect of vitamin E and C supplementation to triple and quadruple Helicobacter pylori eradication regimens. MATERIALS AND METHODS Four hundred patients with H. pylori infection were classified into four groups. Patients in group A (n=100) received amoxicillin, clarithromycin, and lansoprazole for 2 weeks. In group B, patients (n=100) received vitamins C and E for a month, in addition to amoxicillin, clarithromycin, and lansoprazole for 2 weeks. Patients in group C (n=100) received amoxicillin, clarithromycin, lansoprazole, and bismuth subcitrate for 2 weeks, whereas those in group D (n=100) received vitamins C and E for a month, in addition to amoxicillin, clarithromycin, lansoprazole, and bismuth subcitrate for 2 weeks. H. pylori eradication was assessed with the C14 urea breath test 2 months after the end of the therapy. The eradication rate was assessed using per-protocol (PP) and intention-to-treat (ITT) analyses. RESULTS Three hundred forty-eight patients finished the study. The eradication of H. pylori was achieved in 63 of 84 patients (75%) by PP and 63 of 100 (63%) by ITT analysis in group A, 60 of 84 (71.4%) by PP and 60 of 100 (60%) by ITT analysis in group B, 72 of 89 (80.9 %) by PP and 72 of 100 (72%) by ITT analysis in group C, and 76 of 91 (83.5%) by PP and 76 of 100 (76%) by ITT analysis in group D. There was no remarkable change between groups A and B (p>0.05). Similar results were also found between groups D and C (p>0.05). CONCLUSION This study revealed that supplementing vitamins C and E to either the triple or quadruple therapies did not provide an additional advantage for achieving significantly higher eradication rates for H. pylori.
Use of a systematic risk analysis method to improve safety in the production of paediatric parenteral nutrition solutions

Background: Until recently, the preparation of paediatric parenteral nutrition formulations in our institution included re-transcription and manual compounding of the mixture. Although no significant clinical problems have occurred, re-engineering of this high risk activity was undertaken to improve its safety. Several changes have been implemented including new prescription software, direct recording on a server, automatic printing of the labels, and creation of a file used to pilot a BAXA MM 12 automatic compounder. The objectives of this study were to compare the risks associated with the old and new processes, to quantify the improved safety with the new process, and to identify the major residual risks. Methods: A failure modes, effects, and criticality analysis (FMECA) was performed by a multidisciplinary team. A cause-effect diagram was built, the failure modes were defined, and the criticality index (CI) was determined for each of them on the basis of the likelihood of occurrence, the severity of the potential effect, and the detection probability. The CIs for each failure mode were compared for the old and new processes and the risk reduction was quantified. Results: The sum of the CIs of all 18 identified failure modes was 3415 for the old process and 1397 for the new (reduction of 59%). The new process reduced the CIs of the different failure modes by a mean factor of 7. The CI was smaller with the new process for 15 failure modes, unchanged for two, and slightly increased for one. The greatest reduction (by a factor of 36) concerned re-transcription errors, followed by readability problems (by a factor of 30) and chemical cross contamination (by a factor of 10). The most critical steps in the new process were labelling mistakes (CI 315, maximum 810), failure to detect a dosage or product mistake (CI 288), failure to detect a typing error during the prescription (CI 175), and microbial contamination (CI 126). Conclusions: Modification of the process resulted in a significant risk reduction as shown by risk analysis. Residual failure opportunities were also quantified, allowing additional actions to be taken to reduce the risk of labelling mistakes. This study illustrates the usefulness of prospective risk analysis methods in healthcare processes. More systematic use of risk analysis is needed to guide continuous safety improvement of high risk activities.
Developing Cross-Cultural Competencies in Management Education via Cognitive-Behavior Therapy

Developing cross-cultural competencies associated with global leadership effectiveness in students has proven to be a difficult task for management educators. We delineate the primary cross-cultural competencies that influence effectiveness in global leadership and propose a pedagogical framework based on the principles of cognitive-behavior therapy to develop these competencies in traditional classroom settings. We conclude by discussing research implications of cognitive-behavior therapy for the fields of global leadership and management education.
Ranking domain objects by wisdom of web pages

Collaborative ranking is a way to utilize the wisdom of crowd to recommend objects. It has shown to be very popular and effective in many domains. However, the wisdom of crowd is not easy to be obtained. It requires an active community and takes time to form the true wisdom. In this paper, we introduce an approach to exploit the wisdom of web pages for ranking domain objects as a substitute when the wisdom of crowd is not ready yet or not available at all. We evaluate our work on three real world datasets. The results show that web-page collaborative ranking is a promising way to imitate the wisdom of crowd.
TRANSCRIBING MULTILINGUAL BROADCAST NEWS USING HYPOTHESIS DRIVEN LEXICAL ADAPTATION

This paper describes first results of our DARPA-sponsored efforts toward recognizing and browsing foreign language, more specifically, Serbo-Croatian broadcast news. For Serbo-Croatian as well as many other than the most common well studied languages, the problems of broadcast quality recognition are complicated by 1. ) the lack of available acoustic and language data, and 2. ) the excessive vocabulary growth in heavily inflected languages that lead to unacceptable OOV-rates. We present a Serbo-Croatian large vocabulary system that achieves a 74% recognition rate, despite limited training data. Our system achieves this rate by a multipass strategy that dynamically adapts the recognition dictionary to the speech segment to be recognized by generating morphological variations (Hypothesis Driven Lexical Adaptation).
The development of an all-in-focus algorithm for endoscopy

Generally, the operation of an endoscope requires a skillful operator, due to the difficulty of focusing on the target region. To support such a task, a vision system that can produce clear endoscopic images to easily understand the target region, is required. In this paper, we propose an all-in-focus image creation algorithm which uses the original one, developed for microscopic image, and assuming that the target area is static, but we extend its application to endoscopic images. Through several experiments, we confirm the effectiveness of our proposed algorithm.
Making results fit into 40 characters: a study in document rewriting

With the increasing popularity of mobile and hand-held devices, automatic approaches for adapting results to the limited screen size of mobile devices are becoming more important. Traditional approaches for reducing the length of textual results include summarization and snippet extraction. In this study, we investigate document rewriting techniques which retain the meaning and readability of the original text. Evaluations on different document sets show that i) rewriting documents considerably reduces document length and thus, scrolling effort on devices with limited screen size, and ii) the rewritten documents have a higher readability.
A Model for Usage-Based Testing of Event-Driven Software

Event-driven software is very diverse, e.g., in form of Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs), Web applications, or embedded software. Regardless of the application, the challenges for testing event-driven software are similar. Most event-driven systems allow a huge number of possible event sequences, which makes exhaustive testing infeasible. As a possible solution, usage-based testing has been proposed for several types of event-driven software. However, previous work has always focused on one type of event-driven software. In this paper, we propose a usage-based testing model for event-driven software in general. The model is divided into three layers to provide a maximum of platform independence while allowing interoperability with existing platform dependent solutions.
GESTALT IN INTERPERSONAL SKILLS TRAINING: OUT OF THE TWILIGHT

The development of Gestalt thinking, especially the work of Fritz Perls, is reviewed. It is suggested that the Gestalt process has been marred in the past by placing too much power with the therapist. Gestalt can be used more appropriately in Interpersonal Skills Training by giving more real involvement to the learner.
An Analysis of Work Engagement Among Workers With Mental Disorders Recently Integrated to Work

The purpose of this study is to determine the validity of the work engagement construct among mentally ill workers and to develop a nomological network delineating the relationship of work engagement with its antecedents, and its consequences in this specific population. Three hundred and ten people with mental disorders employed in Italian social enterprises accepted to take part in this longitudinal study and filled out the Utrecht Work Engagement scale (UWES-9) and questionnaires on severity of symptoms perceived, social support from coworkers and supervisor, and occupational self-efficacy. Individuals who were still eligible at the 12-month follow-up phase of the study completed a questionnaire on future working plans. Confirmatory factor analysis and path analysis were used to validate the UWES-9 and test its nomological network. The results indicated how work engagement, as well as its drivers, impacted important work outcomes, such as to work in the open labor market, in workers with mental disorders.
Creating the semi‐living: on politics, aesthetics and the more‐than‐human

Though geographers have remarked on the aesthetic and political character of a technoscientific biology, there has been an accompanying tendency, following disciplinary trends and social theory more broadly, to read these as being separate issues at the analytic as well as substantive level. Whereas the former becomes read as a matter of artistic practice and appreciation, or visual appraisal, the latter is considered to be the exercise of power through discipline and regulation. Here, I draw upon Ranciere’s The Politics of Aesthetics (2007, Continuum, London) to make a stronger claim for the role of the aesthetic, wherein a political regime is understood to be comprised of a ‘distribution of the sensible’ that orders what can be seen and what can be said about it, that determines who has the ability to see and to speak, that organises the properties of spaces and the possibilities of time, and that locates the identity of the quick and the dead within a grid of intelligibility. Political struggle is necessarily aesthetic insofar as it is an attempt to reconfigure the place not only of particular groups, but also the social order within which they are embedded. For Ranciere, artistic practices are but particular ways of making and doing; they can have a distinctly political function, however, in the way that they reorder the relations among spaces and times, subjects and objects. To animate this discussion I draw on examples from critical BioArt that address the more-than-human world of Semi-Living Objects. From overt manifesto to ironic commentary, the practices, understandings and artefacts that comprise BioArt work to challenge the political, economic, cultural and ethical contexts within which a modern-day technoscientific biology operates.
Functionally Inert HIV-Specific Cytotoxic T Lymphocytes Do Not Play a Major Role in Chronically Infected Adults and Children

The highly sensitive quantitation of virus-specific CD8+ T cells using major histocompatibility complex–peptide tetramer assays has revealed higher levels of cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) in acute and chronic virus infections than were recognized previously. However, studies in lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus infection have shown that tetramer assays may include measurement of a substantial number of tetramer-binding cells that are functionally inert. Such phenotypically silent CTLs, which lack cytolytic function and do not produce interferon (IFN)-γ, have been hypothesized to explain the persistence of virus in the face of a quantitatively large immune response, particularly when CD4 help is impaired. In this study, we examined the role of functionally inert CTLs in chronic HIV infection. Subjects studied included children and adults (n = 42) whose viral loads ranged from <50 to >100,000 RNA copies/ml plasma. Tetramer assays were compared with three functional assays: enzyme-linked immunospot (Elispot), intracellular cytokine staining, and precursor frequency (limiting dilution assay [LDA]) cytotoxicity assays. Strong positive associations were observed between cell numbers derived by the Elispot and the tetramer assay (r = 0.90). An even stronger association between tetramer-derived numbers and intracellular cytokine staining for IFN-γ was present (r = 0.97). The majority (median 76%) of tetramer-binding cells were consistently detectable via intracellular IFN-γ cytokine staining. Furthermore, modifications to the LDA, using a low input cell number into each well, enabled LDAs to reach equivalence with the other methods of CTL enumeration. These data together show that functionally inert CTLs do not play a significant role in chronic pediatric or adult HIV infection.
Logical Correlation-Based Sleep Scheduling for WSNs in Ambient-Assisted Homes

This paper proposes a logical correlation-based sleep scheduling mechanism (LCSSM) to implement energy-efficient wireless sensor networks (WSNs) in ambient-assisted homes (AAHs). LCSSM analyzes sensory data generated by different human behaviors to detect the logical correlations between sensor nodes in an AAH. By utilizing the particular logical correlations of an AAH to predict its usage status, LCSSM deactivates sensor nodes accordingly to save energy when they are not expected to sense any valuable event. Evaluation results based on real life-logs have validated that LCSSM not only reduces the energy consumption of WSNs significantly, but also retains their quality of sensing successfully, e.g., with a moderate assumption on the duty cycling ratio and hardware configuration of sensor nodes, LCSSM successfully senses 98.7% valuable events with an average of 37.0% usual energy consumption, and extends the life time of WSNs by 63.4%.
Learning beyond the known

In this paper issues related to adult learning, such as self-directed and experiential learning are shown to hold a trace of the unknown, which has implications for psychotherapy training and practice. The unknown is traced through the problematic of individualistic approaches that restrict the emergence of unknowns by limiting possibility of the other, hindering recognition of our own cultural position and seeking to avoid anxiety. Learning is also shown to have links with experiences of change and loss, having in common the generation of anxiety, seen as both the driving force to know and the need to close down unknowing. Subsequently, learning is viewed as involving the potential to repeat the already known as well as opening up the possibility for something new. Psychoanalysis and continental philosophy are shown, in different ways, to help our understanding of the reasons for the anxiety occurring in times of transition, also showing the way fragmentary experiences act as a reminder of death. It is proposed that the relational aspects of learning are an important factor in learning to tolerate the anxiety and adult learning is thus seen as requiring possibility of the other, in relationship, in order to permit the unknown.
A Case Study of the New York City 2012-2013 Influenza Season With Daily Geocoded Twitter Data From Temporal and Spatiotemporal Perspectives

Background Twitter has shown some usefulness in predicting influenza cases on a weekly basis in multiple countries and on different geographic scales. Recently, Broniatowski and colleagues suggested Twitter’s relevance at the city-level for New York City. Here, we look to dive deeper into the case of New York City by analyzing daily Twitter data from temporal and spatiotemporal perspectives. Also, through manual coding of all tweets, we look to gain qualitative insights that can help direct future automated searches. Objective The intent of the study was first to validate the temporal predictive strength of daily Twitter data for influenza-like illness emergency department (ILI-ED) visits during the New York City 2012-2013 influenza season against other available and established datasets (Google search query, or GSQ), and second, to examine the spatial distribution and the spread of geocoded tweets as proxies for potential cases. Methods From the Twitter Streaming API, 2972 tweets were collected in the New York City region matching the keywords “flu”, “influenza”, “gripe”, and “high fever”. The tweets were categorized according to the scheme developed by Lamb et al. A new fourth category was added as an evaluator guess for the probability of the subject(s) being sick to account for strength of confidence in the validity of the statement. Temporal correlations were made for tweets against daily ILI-ED visits and daily GSQ volume. The best models were used for linear regression for forecasting ILI visits. A weighted, retrospective Poisson model with SaTScan software (n=1484), and vector map were used for spatiotemporal analysis. Results Infection-related tweets (R=.763) correlated better than GSQ time series (R=.683) for the same keywords and had a lower mean average percent error (8.4 vs 11.8) for ILI-ED visit prediction in January, the most volatile month of flu. SaTScan identified primary outbreak cluster of high-probability infection tweets with a 2.74 relative risk ratio compared to medium-probability infection tweets at P=. 001 in Northern Brooklyn, in a radius that includes Barclay’s Center and the Atlantic Avenue Terminal. Conclusions While others have looked at weekly regional tweets, this study is the first to stress test Twitter for daily city-level data for New York City. Extraction of personal testimonies of infection-related tweets suggests Twitter’s strength both qualitatively and quantitatively for ILI-ED prediction compared to alternative daily datasets mixed with awareness-based data such as GSQ. Additionally, granular Twitter data provide important spatiotemporal insights. A tweet vector-map may be useful for visualization of city-level spread when local gold standard data are otherwise unavailable.
Mental Health, Poverty, and Agency in Managua, Nicaragua: A Gendered Perspective

The Global Burden of Disease Unit estimates that mental and neurological disorders will soon cause almost 15% of people's disabilities worldwide and that women are twice as likely to experience major depression, and have a higher prevalence of other common mental disorders (CMD) (World Health Organization, 2006). The high correlation between CMD and poverty predicts higher rates of CMD in developing nations (Chant, 2003). Utilizing feminist theory and an adapted Beiser (2006) model, this study examines gender role, social support, and self-esteem as predictors of mental health among 227 adults in Managua, Nicaragua. Respondents exhibited high levels of CMD, but women's scores were significantly higher. Self-esteem was negatively correlated to CMD and the only significant predictor of CMD. The findings highlight the substantive agency of “oppressed” women even when they lack formal power within traditional power structures. The importance of culturally and contextually appropriate measurement and theory are discussed.
Electric Power Network State Tracking From Multirate Measurements

This paper proposes a novel tracking state estimator to process both fast-rate synchronized phasor and slow-rate supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) measurements. The former are assumed to be in limited number. The latter are exploited as and when they arrive to the control center. In order to restore observability, after each execution of the tracking state estimator, forecast SCADA measurements are used as pseudo-measurements in the next estimation. An event detection analysis allows assessing if the system is in quasi-steady-state. If so, an innovation analysis is performed to identify and eliminate erroneous SCADA measurements. The system state is computed by Hachtel’s augmented matrix method. The option of exploiting time-tagged SCADA measurements is also considered. The method is illustrated through detailed dynamic simulations of a test system evolving toward voltage collapse, with and without emergency control.
Managing knowledge exchange and identification in age diverse teams

Purpose – This paper aims to examine the impact of individual and group-level variables on knowledge exchange and identification in age diverse teams. From a diversity perspective, influences of age-related diversity perceptions and diversity beliefs (level 1) are compared with effects of objective age diversity (level 2). From a management perspective, the paper goes beyond age diversity and investigates the incremental effects of team and individual characteristics from a team learning perspective. Design/methodology/approach – Questionnaire data of 516 team members and their supervisors in 73 organizational teams were analyzed in a multilevel approach. Findings – Objective age diversity had a negative effect on knowledge exchange and identification. Beyond that, age-related diversity perceptions and positive diversity beliefs on the individual level predict the effect of objective diversity. Relativizing the impact of diversity, individual characteristics (knowing the team experts, clear understanding .
Prototyping Energy Harvesting Active Networked Tags : Phase II MICA Mote-based Devices

With the convergence of ultra-low-power communications and energy-harvesting technologies, networking self-sustainable ubiquitous devices is becoming practical. Hence, we have been recently developing new devices referred to as Energy Harvesting Active Networked Tags (EnHANTs). These small, flexible, and energetically self-reliant tags can be seen as a new class of devices in the domain between RFIDs and sensor networks. EnHANTs are made possible by the advances in ultra-low-power ultra-wideband (UWB) communications and in organic semiconductor-based energy harvesting materials. They will enable novel tracking applications, such as continuous monitoring of objects and locating misplaced items. In this demo we present Phase II EnHANT prototypes. Phase II prototypes are based on MICA2 motes integrated with an energy sensing module and an energy harvesting module. The prototypes base their communication decisions on the parameters of their energy modules, thus demonstrating energy harvesting-adaptive communications. A custom monitoring system is used to interactively demonstrate prototypes’ adjustments to environmental energy availability conditions.