Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Assessing Mental Models of Emergencies Through Two Knowledge Elicitation Tasks

Objective: The goals of this study were to assess the risk identification aspect of mental models using standard elicitation methods and how university campus alerts were related to these mental models. Background: People fail to follow protective action recommendations in emergency warnings. Past research has yet to examine cognitive processes that influence emergency decision-making. Method: Study 1 examined 2 years of emergency alerts distributed by a large southeastern university. In Study 2, participants listed emergencies in a thought-listing task. Study 3 measured participants’ time to decide if a situation was an emergency. Results: The university distributed the most alerts about an armed person, theft, and fire. In Study 2, participants most frequently listed fire, car accident, heart attack, and theft. In Study 3, participants quickly decided a bomb, murder, fire, tornado, and rape were emergencies. They most slowly decided that a suspicious package and identify theft were emergencies. Conclusion: Recent interaction with warnings was only somewhat related to participants’ mental models of emergencies. Risk identification precedes decision-making and applying protective actions. Examining these characteristics of people’s mental representations of emergencies is fundamental to further understand why some emergency warnings go ignored. Application: Someone must believe a situation is serious to categorize it as an emergency before taking the protective action recommendations in an emergency warning. Present-day research must continue to examine the problem of people ignoring warning communication, as there are important cognitive factors that have not yet been explored until the present research.
Reward maximization in a non-stationary mobile robot environment

In this paper, we present an approach to reward maximization in a non-stationary mobile robot environment. The approach works within the constraints of limited local sensing and limited a prior knowledge of the environment. It is based on the use of augmented Markov models (AMMs), which are essentially Markov chains having additional statistics associated with states and state transitions. We have developed an algorithm that constructs AMMs on-line and in real-time with little computational and space overhead, making it practical to maintain multiple models of the interaction dynamics between a robot and its environment during the execution of a task. For the purposes of reward maximization in a non-stationary environment, these models monitor events at increasing intervals of time and provide statistics used to discard redundant or outdated information while reducing the probability of conforming to noise. This approach has been successfully implemented with a real mobile robot performing a mine collection task. In the context of this task, we rst present experimental results validating our reward maximization criterion in a stationary environment. We then incorporate our algorithm for redundant/outdated information reduction using multiple models and apply the approach to a non-stationary environment with an abrupt change.
Current realities and future vision: Developing an interprofessional, integrated health care workforce

ABSTRACT This article shares findings from an interprofessional symposium that took place in Boston in the spring of 2015. Educators and practitioners from various disciplines shared challenges, successes, and ideas on best interprofessional collaboration (IPC) and curricula development. The findings include the importance of patient-and-family-centered care, which includes the patient and his/her family in the decision-making process; increased education regarding IPC in universities and major hospitals; and educational opportunities within health care systems.
CodY of Streptococcus pneumoniae: Link between Nutritional Gene Regulation and Colonization

ABSTRACT CodY is a nutritional regulator mainly involved in amino acid metabolism. It has been extensively studied in Bacillus subtilis and Lactococcus lactis. We investigated the role of CodY in gene regulation and virulence of the human pathogen Streptococcus pneumoniae. We constructed a codY mutant and examined the effect on gene and protein expression by microarray and two-dimensional differential gel electrophoresis analysis. The pneumococcal CodY regulon was found to consist predominantly of genes involved in amino acid metabolism but also several other cellular processes, such as carbon metabolism and iron uptake. By means of electrophoretic mobility shift assays and DNA footprinting, we showed that most of the targets identified are under the direct control of CodY. By mutating DNA predicted to represent the CodY box based on the L. lactis consensus, we demonstrated that this sequence is indeed required for in vitro DNA binding to target promoters. Similar to L. lactis, DNA binding of CodY was enhanced in the presence of branched-chain amino acids, but not by GTP. We observed in experimental mouse models that codY is transcribed in the murine nasopharynx and lungs and is specifically required for colonization. This finding was underscored by the diminished ability of the codY mutant to adhere to nasopharyngeal cells in vitro. Furthermore, we found that pcpA, activated by CodY, is required for adherence to nasopharyngeal cells, suggesting a direct link between nutritional regulation and adherence. In conclusion, pneumococcal CodY predominantly regulates genes involved in amino acid metabolism and contributes to the early stages of infection, i.e., colonization of the nasopharynx.
Gender and Educational Differences in Perception of Domestic Violence Against Women Among Libyan Migrants in Manchester

Domestic violence against women (DVAW) is a worldwide phenomenon and refers to any act committed against women that results in physical and psychological harm, and coercion, loss of liberty, and deprivation. There is a dearth of research and information about the extent and prevalence of domestic violence among Libyan communities. The aim of the study was to explore community knowledge of, and attitudes toward, DVAW and to improve our understanding of the factors that influence knowledge, attitudes, and responses, particularly educational and gender differences. Using snowball sampling, we analyzed 20 semistructured interviews with Libyans living in Manchester, United Kingdom. We found gender and education-influenced participants’ perception of DVAW. Men in general did not recognize DVAW as a serious social problem; noticeably, they saw it as a personal and family issue. Knowing attitudes toward DVAW is necessary for government and communities’ prevention policies as attitudes influence perpetration of DVAW.
Application of Venovenous Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation for Severe Acute Respiratory Failure: Situations, Issues, and Trends

Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) is a type of extracorporeal life support (ECLS), and technological advances have expanded the use of this technique from the confines of the operating room by producing a compact system that could revolutionize the treatment of different types of respiratory failure. [1] The use of ECMO for severe acute respiratory failure (ARF) has evolved over the past two decades, and venovenous‐ECMO (VV‐ECMO) has been found to be safe and successful, especially during the H1N1 influenza epidemic, with good survival rates. ECMO has been used as salvage or rescue therapy for acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) by providing oxygenation, CO2 removal, or both. It is not curative for ARDS and is used mainly as a bridge until the lungs recover from the underlying disease or as a bridge to lung transplantation for severe irreversible lung diseases.
Identifying the Functional Flexion-extension Axis of the Knee: An In-Vivo Kinematics Study

Purpose This study aimed to calculate the flexion-extension axis (FEA) of the knee through in-vivo knee kinematics data, and then compare it with two major anatomical axes of the femoral condyles: the transepicondylar axis (TEA) defined by connecting the medial sulcus and lateral prominence, and the cylinder axis (CA) defined by connecting the centers of posterior condyles. Methods The knee kinematics data of 20 healthy subjects were acquired under weight-bearing condition using bi-planar x-ray imaging and 3D-2D registration techniques. By tracking the vertical coordinate change of all points on the surface of femur during knee flexion, the FEA was determined as the line connecting the points with the least vertical shift in the medial and lateral condyles respectively. Angular deviation and distance among the TEA, CA and FEA were measured. Results The TEA-FEA angular deviation was significantly larger than that of the CA-FEA in 3D and transverse plane (3.45° vs. 1.98°, p < 0.001; 2.72° vs. 1.19°, p = 0.002), but not in the coronal plane (1.61° vs. 0.83°, p = 0.076). The TEA-FEA distance was significantly greater than that of the CA-FEA in the medial side (6.7 mm vs. 1.9 mm, p < 0.001), but not in the lateral side (3.2 mm vs. 2.0 mm, p = 0.16). Conclusion The CA is closer to the FEA compared with the TEA; it can better serve as an anatomical surrogate for the functional knee axis.
The Power of Magic

This chapter explores the theories used in this study. Focusing especially on agency and fear theories, this chapter provides an in depth look at what the emotion of fear entails and how it affects human behavior. A common response to fearful situations involves casting anomalous dangers into recognizable creatures. Thus, motivated by their fears and empowered through their actions (agency), one viable resource available to women and men in seventeenth-century New England to protect themselves from these creatures and dangerous situations was the use of magical objects that may be specifically associated with gender activity areas.
Application of Empirical Mode Decomposition for Ultrasonic Testing of Coarse-grained Materials

In ultrasonic testing of coarse-grained materials, signal to noise ratio (SNR) of testing signals is reduced seriously for the structure noise, and echoes from defects are difficult to be identified. In order to improve the SNR and the reliability of ultrasonic testing of coarse-grained materials, empirical mode decomposition (EMD) is introduced to process the testing signal here. Signal envelope can be formed by using cubic spline interpolation, and nonlinear and non-stationary signal can be decomposed self-adaptive into the sum of several intrinsic mode functions (IMF) by using characteristic time scale of the signals, and then higher order and tendency of the original signals can be obtained. The denoising experiment with low SNR simulated signal are achieved according to the feature of EMD, and SNR is enhanced more by comparison with the wavelet analysis method. And testing signal collected from coarse-grained materials is used to finish denoising experiment, and it is shown from the experiment result that the EMD has better adaptive ability in decomposing noise-polluted signals and less empirical information is required in the denoising process. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.11591/telkomnika.v11i9. 3286
CPX-351 in acute myeloid leukemia: can a new formulation maximize the efficacy of old compounds?

ABSTRACT Introduction: The management of Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) (with the exception of acute promyelocytic leukemia) has remained largely unchanged over the past 40 years. In particular, patients defined as high-risk, according to the 2017 European Leukemia Net recommendations, represent a subgroup with poor response to current therapies that are frequently associated with high-grade toxicity and potentially fatal complications. Areas covered: Preliminary results from an ongoing phase III clinical trial suggest that CPX-351 could represent an interesting treatment option in both induction and ‘bridge-to-transplant’ settings. In particular, 60- to 75-year-old patients with secondary AML, when treated with CPX-351, exhibit superior overall survival (HR = 0.69; P = 0.005; median OS 9.56 vs. 5.95 months), event free survival (HR = 0.74; P = 0.021), and composite response rate (47.7% vs. 33.3%; P = 0.016) as compared to standard ‘7 + 3’ therapy. Herein, we detail the main pharmacological features of CPX-351 and review updated results of clinical trials investigating its employment in AML. Expert commentary: Novel liposome-based drugs display a high therapeutic index and represent a promising alternative to unencapsulated drugs, especially when high-risk features complicate the use of standard treatments. Further efforts in both understanding AML biology and improving nanodrug design are needed.
Enhanced susceptibility of obese mice to glycidamide‐induced sperm chromatin damage without increased oxidative stress

Diet‐induced obesity is known to impair male reproduction and may aggravate the male reproductive toxicity of the food contaminant acrylamide. Exposure of male mice to acrylamide induces paternally mediated pre‐ and post‐implantation losses because of spermatozoal toxicity and these effects are potentiated in mice fed a high‐fat diet. Glycidamide – an acrylamide metabolite – is the primary mediator of reproductive effects in males. The mechanisms causing the interaction between diet and acrylamide are not clear. However, diet‐induced obesity is associated with oxidative stress in male reproductive tissues which might contribute to increased germ cell susceptibility. In this study, we investigated whether a moderate diet‐induced obesity regimen could interfere with glycidamide‐induced spermatozoal toxicity and increase oxidative stress. For this purpose, sperm chromatin integrity, oxidised DNA and protein levels, transcript levels of oxidative stress responsive genes and glycidamide‐induced DNA and haemoglobin adducts were analysed in samples from male mice exposed to a high‐fat diet for 6 weeks in combination with a single glycidamide exposure 7 days prior to sacrifice. We found that glycidamide‐induced sperm DNA fragmentation was markedly higher in obese than in lean mice. However, the levels of oxidised DNA and/or protein in blood, liver and testicular tissue was lower in obese than in lean mice. Accompanying the reduced level of oxidised macromolecules, the transcript levels of several oxidative stress‐related genes were altered in the liver and testis from obese mice suggesting induction of an antioxidant response in these animals. The haemoglobin‐glycidamide adduct levels were higher in obese than in lean animals, whereas obesity did not seem to increase the level of glycidamide‐induced DNA adducts. These findings show that a moderate diet‐induced obesity regimen may potentiate glycidamide‐induced sperm cells toxicity and suggest that the increase in glycidamide‐induced sperm toxicity observed in obese mice does not depend on overt oxidative stress.
Online Large-Margin Training of Syntactic and Structural Translation Features

Minimum-error-rate training (MERT) is a bottleneck for current development in statistical machine translation because it is limited in the number of weights it can reliably optimize. Building on the work of Watanabe et al., we explore the use of the MIRA algorithm of Crammer et al. as an alternative to MERT. We first show that by parallel processing and exploiting more of the parse forest, we can obtain results using MIRA that match or surpass MERT in terms of both translation quality and computational cost. We then test the method on two classes of features that address deficiencies in the Hiero hierarchical phrase-based model: first, we simultaneously train a large number of Marton and Resnik's soft syntactic constraints, and, second, we introduce a novel structural distortion model. In both cases we obtain significant improvements in translation performance. Optimizing them in combination, for a total of 56 feature weights, we improve performance by 2.6 Bleu on a subset of the NIST 2006 Arabic-English evaluation data.
Large-Scale Brain Networks Supporting Divided Attention across Spatial Locations and Sensory Modalities

Higher-order cognitive processes were shown to rely on the interplay between large-scale neural networks. However, brain networks involved with the capability to split attentional resource over multiple spatial locations and multiple stimuli or sensory modalities have been largely unexplored to date. Here I re-analyzed data from Santangelo et al. (2010) to explore the causal interactions between large-scale brain networks during divided attention. During fMRI scanning, participants monitored streams of visual and/or auditory stimuli in one or two spatial locations for detection of occasional targets. This design allowed comparing a condition in which participants monitored one stimulus/modality (either visual or auditory) in two spatial locations vs. a condition in which participants monitored two stimuli/modalities (both visual and auditory) in one spatial location. The analysis of the independent components (ICs) revealed that dividing attentional resources across two spatial locations necessitated a brain network involving the left ventro- and dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex plus the posterior parietal cortex, including the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) and the angular gyrus, bilaterally. The analysis of Granger causality highlighted that the activity of lateral prefrontal regions were predictive of the activity of all of the posteriors parietal nodes. By contrast, dividing attention across two sensory modalities necessitated a brain network including nodes belonging to the dorsal frontoparietal network, i.e., the bilateral frontal eye-fields (FEF) and IPS, plus nodes belonging to the salience network, i.e., the anterior cingulated cortex and the left and right anterior insular cortex (aIC). The analysis of Granger causality highlights a tight interdependence between the dorsal frontoparietal and salience nodes in trials requiring divided attention between different sensory modalities. The current findings therefore highlighted a dissociation among brain networks implicated during divided attention across spatial locations and sensory modalities, pointing out the importance of investigating effective connectivity of large-scale brain networks supporting complex behavior.
Computational evaluation of TKR stability using feedback‐controlled compressive loading

Pre‐clinical assessment of stability in total knee replacement is crucial for developing preferred implant performance. Current total knee replacement patients often experience joint instability that the human body addresses with compensatory strategies. Specifically, an increased quadriceps‐hamstrings co‐contraction serves to increase joint stability through an increased compressive force across the tibiofemoral joint. The aim of this study is to introduce a novel method to evaluate total knee replacement by determining the compressive loading required to achieve natural knee stability. Four current total knee replacement geometries in both their cruciate‐retaining and posterior‐stabilized forms are modeled in a finite‐element framework. The finite‐element model is initially validated experimentally using traditional knee laxity testing with a constant compressive load and anterior‐posterior displacement or internal‐external rotation. Model predictions of constraint are in reasonable agreement with experimental results (average root mean square errors: 0.46 Nm, 62.5 N). The finite‐element model is subsequently interfaced with a feedback controller to vary the compressive force that the implant requires in order to match experimental natural knee internal‐external and anterior‐posterior stability at different flexion angles. Results show that the lower constraint total knee replacement designs require on average 66.7% more compressive load than the higher constraint designs to achieve natural knee constraint. As expected, total knee replacement stability and compressive load requirements to replicate natural kinematics vary with inclusion of tibiofemoral ligaments. The current study represents a novel approach to evaluate stability in existing total knee replacement geometries and to design implants that better restore natural knee mechanics. © 2018 Orthopaedic Research Society. Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Orthop Res 36:1901–1909, 2018.
Clustering Approach for Colour Image Enhancement using Stationary Wavelet Transformation

enhancement is a technique that enhances the perceptual quality of the images and restraining other information on it. The images with enhanced perceptual quality are needed in various areas of application such as remote sensing, medical and aerial image analysis. In this study a robust colour image enhancement technique is proposed by exploiting Stationary Wavelet Transform (SWT), HSV (Hue, Saturation and Value) colour model, k-means clustering, hill climbing and Histogram Equalization (HE) techniques. A visible improvement in the image quality for human contrast perception is achieved by this proposed approach and the objective assessment also provides satisfactory results. General Terms Clustering, Enhancement, Signal Decomposition. KeywordsWavelet Transformation, Hill climbing algorithm, Clustering approach, HSV colour model.
Traditional and innovative echocardiographic parameters for the analysis of right ventricular performance in comparison with cardiac magnetic resonance.

AIMS Right ventricle fractional area change (RVFAC), tissue Doppler and M-mode measurements of tricuspid systolic motion [tricuspid Sm and tricuspid annular plane systolic excursion (TAPSE)], and 3D echocardiography are the current non-invasive methods for the quantification of RV systolic function; RV deformation analysis by speckle-tracking echocardiography (STE) has recently allowed the analysis of RV performance. Using cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) as the reference standard, this study aimed at exploring the correlation between the traditional (fractional shortening, s'RV, TAPSE) and innovative (strain) echocardiographic parameters and RV ejection fraction (RVEF) measured by CMR. METHODS AND RESULTS CMR and transthoracic echo-Doppler were performed in 63 patients referred for clinical assessment. Twenty-one presented the suspicion of myocarditis, 8 presented idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy, 10 hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, 10 arrhythmogenic right ventricular dysplasia (ARVD), 5 infiltrative cardiomyopathy, and 9 other reasons. RVEF was measured by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). RVFAC, tricuspid S', and TAPSE were calculated in all patients. RV longitudinal strain (RVLS) by STE was assessed by averaging RV free-wall segments (free-wall RVLS) and by averaging all segments (global RVLS). The ROC analysis was applied for the assessment of diagnostic accuracy. Good correlations were found for TAPSE, tricuspid S', and global RVLS with RVEF (r = 0.45, r = 0.52, and r = -0.71, respectively; P = 0.01 for all). Close correlations between free-wall RVLS and RVFAC with RVEF were found (r = -0.86 and r = 0.77, respectively; P < 0.0001 for both). Furthermore, free-wall RVLS demonstrated the highest diagnostic accuracy [area under curve (AUC) 0.92] and good sensitivity and specificity of 96 and 93%, respectively, to predict reduced RVEF <45%, using a cut-off value of less than -17.0%. CONCLUSION In a heterogeneous group of patients referred to CMR evaluation, conventional (TAPSE, FAC, and tricuspid S') and novice (2D speckle-tracking-derived longitudinal strain) parameters of RV systolic function were compared and correlated with RVEF measured by MRI. All tested parameters were found to be independent predictors of reduced RVEF (<45%), but the strongest correlation was seen for the RV free-wall longitudinal strain.