Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Clinical profiles and outcomes of acute aortic dissection in a predominantly Hispanic population

Background Acute aortic dissection (AAD) is a life-threatening cardiovascular condition with high morbidity and mortality. We sought to assess clinical profiles as well as outcomes of AAD in a predominantly Hispanic population and to explore the relationship between this condition and uncontrolled/untreated hypertension in this community. Material/Methods This was a single-center, retrospective, cross-sectional study of patients admitted with AAD over a 10 years period. Results Fifty-nine cases of AAD were included in the analysis. The group of Hispanics with AAD had more females (48.3%, p=0.002), more dyslipidemia and coronary artery disease (p=0.006 and 0.05, respectively), and a tendency to be older and have more hypertension and diabetes compared to non-Hispanics. Although 70.2% of all patients had hypertension, only 52.5% of them were being treated; of those, only 66.7% achieved optimal blood pressure control prior to presentation. Only 47.4% received beta-blockers for blood pressure control in the acute setting. Longer length of in-hospital stay was associated with older age, higher troponin and creatine kinase levels, and presence of hypertension. In-hospital death occurred in 10 (17%) patients and mortality was significantly associated with higher serum creatinine (p=0.01). Conclusions Hispanic patients with AAD were more likely to be female, of older age, and have more cardiovascular risk factors in comparison to non-Hispanics. In addition, significant under-treatment of hypertension in this population and underutilization of beta-blockers for blood pressure control in the acute settings was evident. Better prevention and timely treatment may improve outcomes for this condition in this population.
Patient trust in the physician: relationship to patient requests.

BACKGROUND Patient trust is a key component of the patient-physician relationship. A previous qualitative study has suggested that a low level of trust is associated with unfulfilled requests. OBJECTIVE Our aim was to test the hypothesis that patients with a low level of trust will be more likely to report that requested or needed services were not provided during an office visit. METHODS An observational study was carried out of office visits by 732 patients of 45 physicians (16 family physicians, 18 general internists and 11 cardiologists), within two managed care settings. Participants were consecutive, English-speaking patients, age 18 and older who had a significant health concern. Visit questionnaires were completed by 68% of patients known to be eligible. Post-visit measures included services requested (information, examination, prescription, test or referral); services provided; and requested or needed services not provided during the visit. Measures at 2-week follow-up included patient satisfaction, intended adherence to advice, interval contacts with the health system and symptom improvement. RESULTS After adjustment for patient and physician characteristics, patient trust in the physician was not associated with the likelihood that a service was requested or provided during the visit, with the exception that prescription of a new medication was more frequent among patients with higher trust. In contrast, patients with low trust prior to the visit consistently were more likely to report that a needed or requested service was not provided (P < 0.001 for all services). Patients with a low level of trust were less satisfied with their care (P < 0.001), were less likely to intend to follow the doctor's advice (P < 0.001) and were less likely to report symptom improvement at 2 weeks (P = 0.03). CONCLUSIONS Patients with a lower level of trust in their physician are more likely to report that requested or needed services are not provided. Understanding this relationship may lead to better ways of responding to patient requests that preserve or enhance patient trust, leading to better outcomes.
Feedback in family interviewing

52 Social work interviews are complex trans actions that may provide clues to under standing change in clients. Bartlett, Briar, Greenwood, and Gordon suggest that the interview process should be investigated so that elements of professional practice may be identified.1 Whereas counseling was once characterized by free association and nondirective techniques, it now includes such constructs as aggressive intervention, confrontation, and feedback. For many years social workers did not provide specific information to clients about themselves. However, this is not characteristic of con temporary practice. The concept of feedback is not well de fined as it applies to interviews. Feedback may be communicated both verbally and nonverbally. In its simplest form, it rep resents one person's attempt to communi cate information to another. Although the information may be provided surrepti tiously through questions or inferential statements, its most direct form is the de clarative statement. When a social worker uses a declarative statement to communi
A comparison of Dietary Habits and Influencing Factors for Vegetable Preferences of Adolescents in Gyeongnam Province

Objectives: A higher consumption of vegetables is emphasized as the core component of most dietary guidelines. Thus, this research investigated the dietary habits and influencing factors of vegetable preferences of adolescents. Methods: This study was conducted by using a self-administered questionnaire. 400 students from two high schools in Gyeongnam (193 boys, 207 girls) participated in the survey. The questionnaire consisted of the following variables: dietary habit, dietary action guide and factors based on Social Cognitive Theory (SCT). Results: The dietary habits of subjects showed significant differences depending on whether they prefer vegetables or not. The subjects in the group who liked vegetables had better dietary habits than the other group. Also, the study determined that the most important reason for liking or disliking vegetables is due to the taste. In the practice of dietary guidelines, the group of subjects who liked vegetables followed dietary guidelines more closely than the other group (p < 0.001). When the factors based on SCT were analyzed, personal factors showed significant differences between the groups: outcome expectation (p < 0.001), self-efficacy (p < 0.001) and affective attitude (p < 0.001). Personal factors and rated vegetable preferences showed a significant correlation in multiple regression analysis (F=42.015, p < 0.001). Conclusions: These results showed that vegetable preference is associated with a key point of desirable dietary habits among subjects. In order to increase vegetable preference or consumption, it is important to focus on strengthening not only self- efficacy of students, but also affective attitude of vegetable. Korean J Community Nutr 20(4): 259~272, 2015
DeltaJ 1.5: delta-oriented programming for Java 1.5

Delta-oriented programming (DOP) is a modular, yet flexible approach to implement software product lines. In DOP, a product line is implemented by a set of deltas, which are containers of modifications to a program. A delta-oriented product line is specified by its code base, i.e., the set of delta modules, and a product line declaration specifying the set of possible product variants. In this paper, we present DOP for Java 1.5 extending previous proof-of-concept realizations of DOP for simple core Java-like languages. The novel prototypical implementation DeltaJ 1.5 provides full integrated access to the object-oriented features of Java. The extensions include delta operations to fully integrate the Java package system, to declare and modify interfaces, to explicitly change the inheritance hierarchy, to access nested types and enum types, to alter field declarations, and to unambiguously remove overloaded methods. Furthermore, we improve the specification of the product line declaration by providing a separate language. We have evaluated DeltaJ 1.5 using a case study.
Factors That Influence School Board Policy Making

Purpose: This article examines factors that affect school board policy making about student diversity within two southern urban-suburban school districts experiencing changing demographics: Jefferson County Public Schools and the Wake County Public School System. Both districts have a history of voluntary integration efforts, and research shows that racially diverse countywide districts can make integration more feasible. However, as courts constrain mechanisms used in policies to establish/maintain racial integration, it is crucial to examine how school boards make policy decisions while navigating the politics of their communities and competing conceptions surrounding racial diversity. Research Method/Approach: This study employed qualitative case study methods to understand under what circumstances school boards are creating policy, paying particular attention to the local sociopolitical and geographic contexts. Data collected consisted of 37 interviews with school district officials and community stakeholders. Mainstream and specialty media articles, legal documents, and policy documents from the districts or other governmental bodies also helped frame the local contexts. Findings and Lessons Learned: The two districts in our study illustrate political and legal factors that create complex environments to pursue school-level diversity even in districts with a long history of diversity policies. Our study also illustrates the difficult role of the superintendent and school boards in leading diverse communities with different histories and experiences as they navigate the local politics of diversity amid a variety of competing policy goals. We conclude with implications including the importance of remaining vigilant about student diversity efforts and perfecting technical details to minimize politicization about diversity policies.
Genetic factors influencing risk to orofacial clefts: today’s challenges and tomorrow’s opportunities

Orofacial clefts include cleft lip (CL), cleft palate (CP), and cleft lip and palate (CLP), which combined represent the largest group of craniofacial malformations in humans with an overall prevalence of one per 1,000 live births. Each of these birth defects shows strong familial aggregation, suggesting a major genetic component to their etiology. Genetic studies of orofacial clefts extend back centuries, but it has proven difficult to define any single etiologic mechanism because many genes appear to influence risk. Both linkage and association studies have identified several genes influencing risk, but these differ across families and across populations. Genome-wide association studies have identified almost two dozen different genes achieving genome-wide significance, and there are broad classes of ‘causal genes’ for orofacial clefts: a few genes strongly associated with risk and possibly directly responsible for Mendelian syndromes which include orofacial clefts as a key phenotypic feature of the syndrome, and multiple genes with modest individual effects on risk but capable of disrupting normal craniofacial development under the right circumstances (which may include exposure to environmental risk factors). Genomic sequencing studies are now underway which will no doubt reveal additional genes/regions where variants (sequence and structural) can play a role in controlling risk to orofacial clefts. The real challenge to medicine and public health is twofold: to identify specific genes and other etiologic factors in families with affected members and then to devise effective interventions for these different biological mechanisms controlling risk to complex and heterogeneous birth defects such as orofacial clefts.
Oral health related quality of life--views of the public in the United Kingdom.

OBJECTIVE This study was designed to determine the United Kingdom public's perception of how oral health affects quality of life (QoL) and to determine socio-demographic variations in these perceptions. RESEARCH DESIGN The vehicle for this study was the ONS Omnibus Survey in the UK. A random probability sample of 2,668 eligible addresses was selected from the British Postcode Address File. Setting The data were collected by qualitative, face-to-face interviews with respondents, nation-wide, in their homes, about how their oral health status affected their QoL. PARTICIPANTS 1,778 adults aged 16 years or older across the UK took part in the study. RESULTS 75% (1,340) believed their oral health either enhanced or reduced their QoL. Most frequently, this was perceived as being the result of its effect on eating. comfort and appearance. Other ways in which QoL was affected are also presented. Sociodemographic variations were apparent. For example, people from higher socio-economic backgrounds believed that their oral health enhanced their QoL to a greater degree (OR=1.46, CI=1.20, 1.78) than the lower socio-economic groups. Women claimed that their oral health had a greater negative effect on QoL than did men (OR=1.36, CI=1.11, 1.64). Younger people (16-64 years old) reported that their oral health status reduced and enhanced QoL more than older adults (65 years and over) (OR=1.59, CI=1.23, 2.04). CONCLUSIONS The study shows that the UK public perceives oral health as affecting their QoL in a variety of physical, social and psychological ways and that significant socio-demographic variations exist in these perceptions.
High-Accuracy Robot Indoor Localization Scheme Based on Robot Operating System Using Visible Light Positioning

Visible light positioning (VLP) is widely believed to be a cost-effective answer to the growing demand for service-based indoor positioning. Meanwhile, high accuracy localization is very important for mobile robots in various scenes including industrial, domestic and public transportation workspace. In this paper, an indoor robot VLP localization system based on Robot Operating System (ROS) is presented for the first time, aiming at promoting the application of VLP in mature robotic system. On the basis of our previous researches, we innovatively designed a VLP localization package which contains the basic operation control of the robots, the features extraction and recognition of the LED-ID, cm-level positioning, and robust dynamic tracking algorithms. This package exploited the proposed lightweight algorithm, distributed framework design, the loose coupling characteristics of the ROS, and the message communication methods among different nodes. What's more, an efficient LED-ID detection scheme is proposed to ensure the lightweight and accuracy of the positioning. A prototype system has been implemented on a Turtlebot3 Robot11Experiment Demonstration is available at: https://kwanwaipang.github. io/Image/ROS.mp4. Experimental results show that the proposed system can provide robot indoor positioning accuracy within 1 cm and an average computational time of only 0.08 s.
Distributed Linear Block Coding for Cooperative Wireless Communications

Performance of wireless communications systems is degraded by fading, typically combated via spatial diversity by multiple transmit and receiver antennas. Practical limitations may limit their use; thus, cooperative transmissions have been proposed to introduce diversity without the need for multiple antennas. We propose a novel cooperative scheme that performs distributed coding of user data. It needs each user transmit on one single channel and allows large flexibility between rate and diversity. A trade-off is increased complexity as more users are required to be decoded simultaneously by the base station. We present construction of the distributed code for different choices of rates and diversity orders by means of simple linear block codes, resulting in reduced complexity for decoding operations. Achieved diversity order is bounded by the minimum distance of the implemented distributed code. Performance of the scheme is studied via analytical bounds and numerical simulations.
Détection séquentielle de signaux transitoires : application à la surveillance d'un réseau d'eau potable. (Sequential detection of transient signals : application to the monitoring of drinking water supply network)

Cette these s'inscrit dans le cadre du projet “Vigires'eau” finance par l’ANR a travers le programme Concepts, Systemes et Outils pour la Securite Globale (ANR-CSOSG, Projet ANR-08-SECU-013-02). Elle traite du probleme epineux de la detection sequentielle d'un signal transitoire dans les systemes a securite critique. Pour ces systemes, la detection d'un changement doit s'effectuer, d’une part, avec un retard de detection inferieur a une valeur prescrite, et d’autre part, avec la probabilite de non detection minimale sous contrainte de la probabilite de fausse alarme. Les criteres d'optimalite et les algorithmes presents dans la litterature ne sont pas adaptes a ce type de detection. Nous proposons donc dans cette these un nouveau critere d'optimalite qui vise a minimiser la pire probabilite de detection manquee sous contrainte de la pire probabilite de fausse alarme. Pour resoudre le probleme de detection conformement au nouveau critere d’optimalite, nous introduisons un algorithme de detection appele CUSUM a Fenetre Limitee de Seuils Variables. Apres avoir analyse les performances statistiques de cet algorithme, nous procedons a l’optimisation de ce dernier. L’algorithme obtenu est ensuite applique a un cas concret de controle de systeme a securite critique qui est celui de la surveillance d'un reseau de distribution d'eau potable. Cette surveillance est d'importance capitale dans le sens ou toute contamination, qu'elle soit accidentelle ou intentionnelle entrainerait un probleme de sante publique.
AcrAB Efflux Pump Plays a Role in Decreased Susceptibility to Tigecycline in Morganella morganii

ABSTRACT Transposon mutagenesis of a clinical isolate of Morganella morganii, G1492 (tigecycline MIC of 4 μg/ml), yielded two insertion knockout mutants for which tigecycline MICs were 0.03 μg/ml. Transposon insertions mapped to acrA, which is constitutively overexpressed in G1492, suggesting a role of the AcrAB efflux pump in decreased susceptibility to tigecycline in M. morganii.
Revealing dynamics of helicase translocation on single-stranded DNA using high-resolution nanopore tweezers

Significance DNA helicases are enzymes that use energy from ATP hydrolysis to move along nucleic acid tracks and unwind double-stranded DNA. Helicases are involved in every aspect of DNA metabolism and are therefore vital to maintaining genomic integrity. Using the single-molecule technique single-molecule picometer-resolution nanopore tweezers (SPRNT), which measures the position of DNA through the biological membrane protein MspA as an enzyme moves along the DNA, we monitored the kinetics of the helicase Hel308 at 1,000 times better temporal resolution than was previously possible. We derived a detailed mechanism for how ATP hydrolysis coordinates the motion of Hel308 along single-stranded DNA that can likely be applied to other structurally similar helicases and showed that the DNA sequence in Hel308 affects its kinetics. Enzymes that operate on DNA or RNA perform the core functions of replication and expression in all of biology. To gain high-resolution access to the detailed mechanistic behavior of these enzymes, we developed single-molecule picometer-resolution nanopore tweezers (SPRNT), a single-molecule technique in which the motion of polynucleotides through an enzyme is measured by a nanopore. SPRNT reveals two mechanical substates of the ATP hydrolysis cycle of the superfamily 2 helicase Hel308 during translocation on single-stranded DNA (ssDNA). By analyzing these substates at millisecond resolution, we derive a detailed kinetic model for Hel308 translocation along ssDNA that sheds light on how superfamily 1 and 2 helicases turn ATP hydrolysis into motion along DNA. Surprisingly, we find that the DNA sequence within Hel308 affects the kinetics of helicase translocation.
How Should Research Contribute to Instructional Improvement? The Case of Lesson Study

Lesson study, a Japanese form of professional development that centers on collaborative study of live classroom lessons, has spread rapidly in the United States since 1999. Drawing on examples of Japanese and U.S. lesson study, we propose that three types of research are needed if lesson study is to avoid the fate of so many other once-promising reforms that were discarded before being fully understood or well implemented. The proposed research includes development of a descriptive knowledge base; explication of the innovation’s mechanism; and iterative cycles of improvement research. We identify six changes in the structure and norms of educational research that would enhance the field’s capacity to study emerging innovations such as lesson study. These changes include rethinking the routes from educational research to educational improvement and recognizing a “local proof route”; building research methods and norms that will better enable us to learn from innovation practitioners; and increasing our capacity to learn across cultural boundaries.
Nuclear Receptors in Regulation of Mouse ES Cell Pluripotency and Differentiation

Embryonic stem (ES) cells have great therapeutic potential because they are capable of indefinite self-renewal and have the potential to differentiate into over 200 different cell types that compose the human body. The switch from the pluripotent phenotype to a differentiated cell involves many complex signaling pathways including those involving LIF/Stat3 and the transcription factors Sox2, Nanog and Oct-4. Many nuclear receptors play an important role in the maintenance of pluripotence (ERRβ, SF-1, LRH-1, DAX-1) repression of the ES cell phenotype (RAR, RXR, GCNF) and also the differentiation of ES cells (PPARγ). Here we review the roles of the nuclear receptors involved in regulating these important processes in ES cells.
Dangerous gender performances: 'hydraulic masculinity' as a norm for young male drivers

The paper discusses data from focus groups carried out as part of the Transforming Drivers project in partnership with NRMA Motoring and Services, focusing on the significance of gender in shaping young people's relationships to cars. Little analysis from a socio-cultural framework has been applied to the specific practices and experiences afforded by cars as they exist within a broader driving culture, especially for younger people. It is important therefore to link larger social categories such as gender with the ways in which gender is expressed through cars. Analysis of focus group discussions showed distinct differences in the ways in which young men and women 'perform' in cars and how cars are a significant aspect of their evolving identities. Employing the idea of 'hydraulic masculinities' from the work of Linley Walker, the paper will outline the concept, relating it to the focus group data and indicating the involvement of danger in this form of masculinity as it is expressed through cars. The importance of age and gender as a social norm significantly shaping young men's relationship to cars is emphasised. Suggestions are made in conclusion, as to how gender performance might be appropriately addressed in road safety. (a) For the covering entry of this conference, please see ITRD abstract no. E215375.