Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparative effectiveness of basal-bolus versus premix analog insulin on glycemic variability and patient-centered outcomes during insulin intensification in type 1 and type 2 diabetes: a randomized, controlled, crossover trial.

CONTEXT In patients with diabetes, intraday glucose variability might predict health outcomes independently from glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1c). OBJECTIVE Our objective was to evaluate patient satisfaction (PS), quality of life (QoL), glycemic control, and variability during insulin intensification to HbA1c below 7.0%. PATIENTS, DESIGN, AND SETTING Eighty-two type 1 and 306 insulin-treated type 2 diabetes patients (47% male; age 54±11 yr; HbA1c=7.8±0.7%) participated in this multicenter, randomized, crossover trial at 52 U.S. centers. INTERVENTIONS Interventions included insulin glargine plus premeal glulisine (n=192) vs. twice-daily premix 75/25 or 70/30 analog insulin (n=196) for 12 wk and crossed to the alternate arm for 12 wk. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Main outcome measures included PS and QoL questionnaires, 3-d continuous glucose monitoring (CGM), and HbA1c every 4-8 wk. RESULTS Mean±se HbA1c change was -0.39±0.09% for glargine-glulisine and -0.05±0.09% for premix (P<0.0001). The PS net benefit scale (0-100) improved from 51.1 to 60.5±1.2 for glargine-glulisine and worsened to 45.4±1.2 for premix (P<0.0001). The PS regimen acceptance scale was comparable (P=0.33). Overall QoL favored glargine-glulisine (P<0.001), as did perceived health (P<0.0001), symptom distress (P<0.0001), general health perceptions (P<0.01), and psychosocial (P<0.02). CGM daily glucose mean, daily glucose sd (glycemic variability), and percent time over 140 mg/dl were lower for glargine-glulisine by 13.1±2.7 mg/dl, 5.9±1.4 mg/dl, and 7.3±1.6%, respectively (all P<0.0001), with no difference in CGM percent time below 70 mg/dl (P=0.09). Symptomatic hypoglycemia rates were comparable. HbA1c, mean CGM daily glucose, and glycemic variability were independent predictors of PS net benefit. CONCLUSIONS Patient satisfaction was impacted more positively by improved QoL, reduced glucose variability, and better glycemic control with a basal-bolus regimen than negatively by the burden of additional injections, thereby facilitating insulin intensification and the ability to achieve HbA1c below 7.0%.
Predicting Preference Tags to Improve Item Recommendation

Collaborative filtering (CF) based recommender systems identify and recommend interesting items to a given user based on the user’s past rating activity. These systems improve their recommendations by identifying user preferences and item related information from external sources, like reviews written by users, or concept tags shared by users about these items. These preferences are often reflected through a multi-criterion rating. In this study, we seek to improve recommender systems by integrating user preferences as side information within standard neighborhoodbased and matrix factorization based methods. We assume that a user’s choice of tags for an item provides additional information about the user’s personal preference and additional features about the item. Since, querying users to provide tags and multi-criteria rating imposes an additional burden on the user base, we propose using collective classification to predict tags for both the users and items. We also investigate the use of active learning approaches integrated within the collective classification framework when tag information (users or items) is limited. Our experimental results on several real world datasets show the advantages of using tag-based information within the recommender systems. We are also able to show the effectiveness of collective classification algorithms in estimating user preferences and item features. Keywords— Tag-based Recommendation System, Active Learning, Collective Classification
A case study template to support experimental design in Augmentative and Alternative Communication and Assistive Technology

Abstract Purpose: The field of Augmentative and Alternative Communication/Assistive Technology (AAC/AT) has an extensive literature of non-experimental case descriptions. This limits the generalisation of findings. The current study aimed to develop a template to contribute to single case experimental design specifically for the field of enquiry. Method: A qualitative case study methodology was adopted to construct and evaluate the content and structure of the case study template. Participants represented relevant stakeholder groups. Data were collected through template evaluations and focus groups. Data were analysed using Framework Analysis. Results: Across stakeholder groups, results produced a consensus on AAC/AT terminology, content and detail that may usefully inform single case experimental design. Conclusions: This is a complex area of rehabilitation that can best support its service users and service commissioners by using tools that facilitate collaborative working. The findings suggest that it is possible to produce a data collection tool that is acceptable to all stakeholder perspectives. Implications for Rehabilitation Augmentative and Alternative Communication/Assistive Technology should consider what types of data it is typically collecting and reporting. Augmentative and Alternative Communication/Assistive Technology could benefit from greater collaboration across stakeholder perspectives. Augmentative and Alternative Communication/Assistive Technology can contribute to effective single case experimental design methodologies. Adoption of case study guidelines may ensure consistent and sufficient data collection.
`Well, you go there to get off'

This paper examines normative feminist care scholarship through the lens of a sexual bathhouse. At first glance, a space dedicated to casual sexual pleasure seems at odds with feminist care. Drawing on the Toronto Women's Bathhouse (TWB) as a case study, this paper argues that bathhouse spaces can exemplify feminist care norms. At the same time, as a casual sexual space oriented towards personal autonomy, carefree conduct, and self-care, TWB also challenges certain feminist care assumptions. Drawing on these challenges, in the light of wider problems with normative care theorizing, particularly the sanitization and idealization of personal relationships, the paper seeks to revision care along non-normative lines.
Modern education: a tragedy of the commons

The primary objective of this paper is to suggest a mechanism by which current trends in public education, in particular the rise of externally defined numerical metrics of achievement to define school success, operate to shape school policy, curriculum and practice. Here, we argue that the modern school’s focus on the cognitive dimension of learning in combination with the extensive use of standardized tests as primary evidence of a quality education exploit students as a particular kind of commodity: one that is held in common. This opens the door for a pernicious set of predictable outcomes, known collectively as ‘tragedies of the commons’, first described by the ecologist Garrett Hardin in 1968. From our perspective as researchers, we first describe how a tragedy of the commons can arise in schools. Next, we present a description of a tragedy of the commons at a particular school, illustrating how the school deals with external accountability pressures as would be predicted by the logic of the tragedy of the commons, and how these pressures shape school policy, curriculum and practice. Finally, we suggest how these pressures might be attenuated by purposefully building a strong sense of school community that fosters communication and trust.
Discretization of the induced-charge boundary integral equation.

Boundary-element methods (BEMs) for solving integral equations numerically have been used in many fields to compute the induced charges at dielectric boundaries. In this paper, we consider a more accurate implementation of BEM in the context of ions in aqueous solution near proteins, but our results are applicable more generally. The ions that modulate protein function are often within a few angstroms of the protein, which leads to the significant accumulation of polarization charge at the protein-solvent interface. Computing the induced charge accurately and quickly poses a numerical challenge in solving a popular integral equation using BEM. In particular, the accuracy of simulations can depend strongly on seemingly minor details of how the entries of the BEM matrix are calculated. We demonstrate that when the dielectric interface is discretized into flat tiles, the qualocation method of Tausch [IEEE Trans Comput. -Comput. -Aided Des. 20, 1398 (2001)] to compute the BEM matrix elements is always more accurate than the traditional centroid-collocation method. Qualocation is not more expensive to implement than collocation and can save significant computational time by reducing the number of boundary elements needed to discretize the dielectric interfaces.
The Relationship between College Students' Executive Functioning and Study Strategies

Working from a cognitive perspective, a range of studies have supported the relationship between study strategies and academic performance of college students (e.g., Peverly, Brobst, Graham, & Shaw, 2003). In particular, self-regulatory processes comprised of learner-directed activities geared toward promoting academic achievement have been linked to the use of study strategies and to the achievement of academic goals (Zimmerman, 2002). Similarly, the neuropsychological construct of executive functioning describes independent and purposive behavior as comprised of skills in goal setting, planning, organizing and executing (Lezak, 1995). The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship of executive functioning as measured by the Executive Functioning Rating Scale (Lott & Petersen, 1998) and self-regulatory processes and strategy use as measured in the LASSI (Weinstein, Palmer, & Schulte, 1987). A secondary goal was to examine the relationship of executive functioning to students' perceptions of life problems. Simultaneous multiple regression procedures indicated a good fit between the two constructs. Executive functioning was also related to students' perceptions of life problems. Implications for educators and support professionals as well as for further research are included.
Evaluation of a Method Using Three Genomic Guided Escherichia coli Markers for Phylogenetic Typing of E. coli Isolates of Various Genetic Backgrounds

ABSTRACT Genotyping and characterization of bacterial isolates are essential steps in the identification and control of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections. Recently, one novel genotyping method using three genomic guided Escherichia coli markers (GIG-EM), dinG, tonB, and dipeptide permease (DPP), was reported. Because GIG-EM has not been fully evaluated using clinical isolates, we assessed this typing method with 72 E. coli collection of reference (ECOR) environmental E. coli reference strains and 63 E. coli isolates of various genetic backgrounds. In this study, we designated 768 bp of dinG, 745 bp of tonB, and 655 bp of DPP target sequences for use in the typing method. Concatenations of the processed marker sequences were used to draw GIG-EM phylogenetic trees. E. coli isolates with identical sequence types as identified by the conventional multilocus sequence typing (MLST) method were localized to the same branch of the GIG-EM phylogenetic tree. Sixteen clinical E. coli isolates were utilized as test isolates without prior characterization by conventional MLST and phylogenetic grouping before GIG-EM typing. Of these, 14 clinical isolates were assigned to a branch including only isolates of a pandemic clone, E. coli B2-ST131-O25b, and these results were confirmed by conventional typing methods. Our results suggested that the GIG-EM typing method and its application to phylogenetic trees might be useful tools for the molecular characterization and determination of the genetic relationships among E. coli isolates.
Quantitative Trait Loci Controlling Refractoriness to Plasmodium falciparum in Natural Anopheles gambiae Mosquitoes From a Malaria-Endemic Region in Western Kenya

Natural anopheline populations exhibit much variation in ability to support malaria parasite development, but the genetic mechanisms underlying this variation are not clear. Previous studies in Mali, West Africa, identified two quantitative trait loci (QTL) in Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes that confer refractoriness (failure of oocyst development in mosquito midguts) to natural Plasmodium falciparum parasites. We hypothesize that new QTL may be involved in mosquito refractoriness to malaria parasites and that the frequency of natural refractoriness genotypes may be higher in the basin region of Lake Victoria, East Africa, where malaria transmission intensity and parasite genetic diversity are among the highest in the world. Using field-derived F2 isofemale families and microsatellite marker genotyping, two loci significantly affecting oocyst density were identified: one on chromosome 2 between markers AG2H135 and AG2H603 and the second on chromosome 3 near marker AG3H93. The first locus was detected in three of the five isofemale families studied and colocalized to the same region as Pen3 and pfin1 described in other studies. The second locus was detected in two of the five isofemale families, and it appears to be a new QTL. QTL on chromosome 2 showed significant additive effects while those on chromosome 3 exhibited significant dominant effects. Identification of P. falciparum-refractoriness QTL in natural An. gambiae mosquitoes is critical to the identification of the genes involved in malaria parasite transmission in nature and for understanding the coevolution between malaria parasites and mosquito vectors.
Prisons for Women, 1790-1980

Until recently, women's institutions and their inmates have received little attention in the literature on prisons. This neglect in part stems from the fact that over time women have comprised but a small fraction of the total prisoner population. Yet it is also the product of two common assumptions: that the development of the women's prison system and experiences of its inmates closely resemble those of men; or that, if different, the evolution of the women's prison system and female experience of incarceration are irrelevant to mainstream penology just because they can shed little light on the nature of the prison system as a whole. Neither assumption is correct. During the first stage in the development of the women's prison system (1790-1870), female penal units outwardly resembled male penitentiaries, but in some respects their inmates received inferior care. During the second stage (1870-1935), strenuous and often successful efforts were made to establish an entirely new type of prison, the women's reformatory, in which women would receive care more appropriate to their "feminine" nature. Yet by institutionalizing differential treatment, the reformatories legitimated a tradition of providing care that, from our current perspective, was inherently unequal. In the third stage (1935 to the present), the women's prison system continued to evolve in ways which perpetuated the older traditions of differential treatment. The women's prison system is not, then, merely a miniature version of that for men. Nor is the history of the incarceration of women irrelevant to understanding of the prison system as a whole. The older, questionable generalizations, however, may be safely replaced with another: despite variations in its causes and character, the fact of differential care of female prisoners has remained a constant across time in this country.
The Study of Urban Violence: Some Implications of Laboratory Studies of Frustration and Aggression

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This is a slightly revised version of a paper delivered at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, September, 1967. The research reported in this paper has been sponsored by grants GS 1228 and GS 1737 from the National Science Foundation. N The frustration-aggression hypothesis is the easiest and by far the most popular explanation of social violence whether political turmoil, the hot summers of riot and disorder, or robberies and juvenile delinquency. We are all familiar with this formulation, and there is no need to spell out once again the great number of economic, social, and psychological frustrations that have been indicted as the source of aggression and domestic instability. Espoused in the social world primarily by political and economic liberals, this notion contends that the cause of civil tranquility is best served by eliminating barriers to the satisfaction of human needs and wants. Indeed, in the version that has attracted the greatest attention, the
Linguistic Knowledge-driven Approach to Chinese Comparative Elements Extraction

The BI ( 比 )-structure, which highlights a contrasting characteristic between two items, is the key comparative sentence structure in Chinese. In this paper, we explore the methods of extracting the 6 constituents of the BI-structure. Previous studies are often restricted to probabilistic classification methods, where the feature used hardly embodies linguistic knowledge, therefore unintuitive. As an alternative, we propose the use of two linguistic knowledge-driven approaches, namely the POS chunking-based and TBL-based methods. The first model effectively captures grammatical restrictions over POS sequential patterns. The second model set up on new and lesser templates performs better than Brill’s (1995). Experimental results show that the proposed models are simple and effective methods for Chinese comparative element extraction task.
An Ultra-low-supply Dual-band VCO for Wireless Sensor Networks

Aggressive scaling down reduces the supply voltage of digital integrated circuits continuously. In order to realize Systems-On-a-Chip (SOC), analog and RF circuits should also work under the reduced voltage. For Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), low supply is important for communication nodes as the supply voltage must be low enough under a single solar cell as power source. Besides, the future transceiver system for WSN must be able to adapt itself to various applications and environments, so multi-mode is the trend. In multi-mode systems, it would be ideal to use a signal oscillator which can generate multiple frequencies. Therefore, a Ultra-low-supply Dual-band Voltage-Controlled Oscillator (UDVCO) is proposed here. The presented UDVCO can be dynamically switched between two bands near 2.4-GHz and the 5-GHz. Its minimal operating voltage is 0.5 V by connecting the substrate of the cross-coupled NMOSFETs to the supply. A mathematical model is built for the low-supply VCOs, whose accuracy is validated by SpectreRF simulation. A series of LC tank is used as a noise filter for both the two bands. The chip is fabricated in the 0.18-µm CMOS HJTC technology. Our measurement results show that the low-frequency band can be tuned from 2.01 GHz to 2.08 GHz and the phase noise is about −82.17 dBc/Hz@1MHz; while the high-frequency band ranging from 3.24 GHz to 3.44 GHz and the phase noise is about −74.33 dBc/Hz@1MHz.
Concurrent and longitudinal relations between children's playground behavior and social preference, victimization, and bullying.

Prior research with contrived play groups suggests that how children interact with one another can influence their social relationships, but few studies have been carried out to determine if this is the case in naturalistic settings. This study examined the concurrent and longitudinal links between four observational measures of 8- to 9-year-old children's (N = 89) playground behaviors/peer contacts (Alone, Conversation, Group Size, and Network) and three sociometric measures of their peer relationships (Social Preference, Bully, and Victim). The latter were assessed at 2 points within a school year, the first corresponding with the playground observations and the second 5 months later. Several of the concurrent correlations were found to be significant. For boys, Group Size was positively correlated with Bully Score and Social Preference Score, but negatively correlated with Victim Score; and time Alone was positively correlated with Victim Score. For girls, time Alone was positively correlated with Victim Score; Network was negatively correlated with Bully Score but positively correlated with Social Preference Score; and Group Size was positively correlated with Social Preference Score. The longitudinal analyses indicated that for boys, elevated levels of time Alone and, separately, Conversation, predicted the highest increases in Victim Score. For girls, low levels of time Alone predicted the sharpest increases in Social Preference Score. There was also some marginally significant evidence, p < . 06, that among girls, high levels of time Alone predicted the greatest increases in Bully Score, and high levels of Conversation predicted the greatest increases in Social Preference Score. The theoretical and practical importance of these links between children's nonaggressive playground behaviors and their emerging peer relationships are discussed.
Rule-Based Item Bank Construction and Evaluation Within the Linear Logistic Framework

In cognition research, item writing rules are consid ered a necessary prerequisite of item banking. A set of 636 items was constructed using prespecified cognitive operations. An evaluation of test data from some 7,400 examinees revealed 446 homogeneous items. Some items had to be discarded because of printing flaws, and others because of operation complexion or other well-describable reasons. However, cognitive operations explained item difficulty parameters quite well; further cross-validation research may contribute to an item writing approach which attempts to bring psychological theory and psychometric models closer together. This will eventually free item construction from item writer idiosyncrasies.
Degradation of Fructans and Production of Propionic Acid by Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron are Enhanced by the Shortage of Amino Acids

Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron is commonly found in the human colon and stabilizes its ecosystem by catabolism of various polysaccharides. A model of cross-talk between the metabolism of amino acids and fructans in B. thetaiotaomicron was proposed. The growth of B. thetaiotaomicron DSM 2079 in two defined media containing mineral salts and vitamins, and supplemented with either 20 or 2 amino acids, was studied in an isothermal microcalorimeter. The polyfructans inulin (from chicory) and levan (synthesized using levansucrase from Pseudomonas syringae), two fructooligosaccharide preparations with different composition, sucrose and fructose were tested as substrates. The calorimetric power-time curves were substrate specific and typically multiauxic. A surplus of amino acids reduced the consumption of longer oligosaccharides (degree of polymerization > 3). Bacterial growth was not detected either in the carbohydrate free medium containing amino acids or in the medium with inulin as a sole carbohydrate. In amino acid-restricted medium, fermentation leading to acetic acid formation was dominant at the beginning of growth (up to 24 h), followed by increased lactic acid production, and mainly propionic and succinic acids were produced at the end of fermentation. In the medium supplemented with 20 amino acids, the highest production of d-lactate (82 ± 33 mmol/gDW) occurred in parallel with extensive consumption (up to 17 mmol/gDW) of amino acids, especially Ser, Thr, and Asp. The production of Ala and Glu was observed at growth on all substrates, and the production was enhanced under amino acid deficiency. The study revealed the influence of amino acids on fructan metabolism in B. thetaiotaomicron and showed that defined growth media are invaluable in elucidating quantitative metabolic profiles of the bacteria. Levan was shown to act as an easily degradable substrate for B. thetaiotaomicron. The effect of levan on balancing or modifying colon microbiota will be studied in further experiments.