Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Increased Standardised Incidence Ratio of Malignant Pleural Mesothelioma in Taiwanese Asbestos Workers: A 29-Year Retrospective Cohort Study

Objective. This paper aimed to determine the standardised incidence ratio (SIR) of malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) in workers exposed to asbestos in Taiwan. Methods. All workers employed in asbestos-related factories and registered by the Bureau of Labour Insurance between 1 March, 1950, and 31 December, 1989, were included in the study and were followed from 1 January, 1980, through 31 December, 2009. Incident cases of all cancers, including MPM (ICD-9 code: 163), were obtained from the Taiwan Cancer Registry. SIRs were calculated based on comparison with the incidence rate of the general population of Taiwan and adjusted for age, calendar period, sex, and duration of employment. Results. The highest SIR of MPM was found for male workers first employed before 1979, with a time since first employment more than 30 years (SIR 4.52, 95% CI: 2.25–8.09). After consideration of duration of employment, the SIR for male MPM was 5.78 (95% CI: 1.19–16.89) for the workers employed for more than 20 years in asbestos-related factories. Conclusions. This study corroborates the association between occupational asbestos exposure and MPM. The highest risk of MPM was found among male asbestos workers employed before 1979 and working for more than 20 years in asbestos-related factories.
First trimester depression scores predict development of gestational diabetes mellitus in pregnant rural Appalachian women

Abstract Gestational diabetes (GDM) occurs in up to 9% of pregnancies. Perinatal depression affects up to 20% of women during pregnancy, and can extend into the postpartum period. A number of studies have linked depression and diabetes, however, whether this applies to GDM or which might come first is less understood. The purpose of this study was to examine the potential relationship between depression identified in the first trimester of pregnancy and the subsequent development of GDM. Women without pre-existing Type I/II diabetes (n = 1021) were evaluated for depression during the first trimester of pregnancy, and medical records were reviewed to identify a positive history of diabetes. Women identified as depressed during the first trimester were more likely to have GDM compared to those not depressed. After controlling for demographic factors and weight-related variables level of depression in the first trimester still predicted later GDM development. Depression identified in early pregnancy may predict increased risk of subsequent GDM development. Due to the numerous maternal, fetal and neonatal complications associated with GDM, early recognition is essential to promote the best possible outcomes for mother and infant. Recognizing depression as a possible risk factor for GDM development could lead to earlier screening and preventative measures.
Adherence to antiretroviral therapy.

INTRODUCTION The goal of HAART is to achieve maximal and durable suppression of virus replication. Adherence plays a very important role in success of antiretroviral therapy. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES To find out the rate of adherence and factors that influence adherence to antiretroviral therapy (ART). MATERIAL AND METHODS The present study was conducted in the Department of Medicine in a tertiary care hospital from November 2007 to September 2009. Patients attending ART centre OPD and started on ART for at least 6 months were included in the study. A pretested proforma and MMAS adherence questionnaire of every patient was used for data collection. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression analysis was done to identify factors associated with adherence. OBSERVATIONS AND RESULTS A total of 300 patients attending ART OPD and satisfying inclusion criteria were studied. Adherence rate of >95% was reported by 290 (97%) patients. On MMAS scale 78% of the patients were found adherent to the treatment. On multivariate analysis factors such as age, addictions, difficulty in remembering treatment, finding treatment to be difficult, taking traditional medicines and having no one to remind about medicines were found to be associated with nonadherence. The most common reason for nonadherence were missing pills while travelling or being out of home. CONCLUSIONS Adherence to antiretroviral treatment in the ART centre is high. During counseling sessions giving up addictions, avoiding traditional medicines, addressing the apprehensions about treatment, and identifying reminder systems should be emphasized. The patients should be advised to carry medications while traveling and when away from home.
A Multicenter Study on Central Venous Catheter-Associated Infections in Italy

Abstract In a 1-year multicenter study the microbial colonization of 1154 central venous catheters (CVCs) was investigated. Catheters explanted either from immunocompromised or immunocompetent patients were collected and analyzed by five clinical microbiology laboratories located in Ancona, Aviano, Catania, Pavia and Rome, Italy. A further aim was to investigate, by scanning electron microscopy, the features of currently used catheters, both new and explanted from patients, analyzing their surface quality, the influence of the host protein biofilm on their microbial colonization, the modifications caused by their permanence in the body and the relationship between these factors and the occurrence of infections.
Rapid High-Throughput Assessment of Aerobic Bacteria in Complex Samples by Fluorescence-Based Oxygen Respirometry

ABSTRACT A simple method has been developed for the analysis of aerobic bacteria in complex samples such as broth and food homogenates. It employs commercial phosphorescent oxygen-sensitive probes to monitor oxygen consumption of samples containing bacteria using standard microtiter plates and fluorescence plate readers. As bacteria grow in aqueous medium, at certain points they begin to deplete dissolved oxygen, which is seen as an increase in probe fluorescence above baseline signal. The time required to reach threshold signal is used to either enumerate bacteria based on a predetermined calibration or to assess the effects of various effectors on the growth of test bacteria by comparison with an untreated control. This method allows for the sensitive (down to a single cell), rapid (0.5 to 12 h) enumeration of aerobic bacteria without the need to conduct lengthy (48 to 72 h) and tedious colony counts on agar plates. It also allows for screening a wide range of chemical and environmental samples for their toxicity. These assays have been validated with different bacteria, including Escherichia coli, Micrococcus luteus, and Pseudomonas fluorescens, with the enumeration of total viable counts in broth and industrial food samples (packaged ham, chicken, and mince meat), and comparison with established agar plating and optical-density-at-600-nm assays has been given.
APA: towards an automatic tool for prosodic analysis

In this paper a tool for the speech signal prosodic analysis is described. The system APA (Automatic Prosodic Analysis) is based on a tool for speech segmentation into syllabic units and on their description in terms of pitch, energy and duration. A particular linear stylization of the fundamental frequency function is proposed, which helps in describing efficiently intonation movements at phrase level. Finally the energy information, together with the f0 information, are used to find intonation boundary markers in order to segment speech into tone units. A general description of the tool is provided and recent results are reported. Future works in this field are also announced.
Effects of experience-based grouping on processes and outcomes of employee training

In this study, we sought to determine if various processes and outcomes of training would be affected by discrepancies in trainees' levels of work experience. The study consisted of a field experiment, in which forty-nine inexperienced and twenty-one experienced university resident assistants (RAs) were trained in conflict mediation, under either a homogeneous condition, in which all trainees were inexperienced, or a heterogeneous condition, in which experienced and inexperienced RAs were evenly represented. Inexperienced RAs in the two conditions were compared on the basis of participation levels, satisfaction with the content and process of training, gains in self-confidence and knowledge of subject matter, and transfer of learning to workplace situations. Inexperienced RAs were found to experience greater comfort in contributing to the training process under the homogeneous condition than under the heterogeneous condition ( F = 4.43, p <.05). The remaining variables were not affected by the composition of the training group.
Extinction and Renewal of Conditioned Sexual Responses

Introduction Extinction involves an inhibitory form of new learning that is highly dependent on the context for expression. This is supported by phenomena such as renewal and spontaneous recovery, which may help explain the persistence of appetitive behavior, and related problems such as addictions. Research on these phenomena in the sexual domain is lacking, where it may help to explain the persistence of learned sexual responses. Method Men (n = 40) and women (n = 62) participated in a differential conditioning paradigm, with genital vibrotactile stimulation as US and neutral pictures as conditional stimuli (CSs). Dependent variables were genital and subjective sexual arousal, affect, US expectancy, and approach and avoid tendencies towards the CSs. Extinction and renewal of conditioned sexual responses were studied by context manipulation (AAA vs. ABA condition). Results No renewal effect of genital conditioned responding could be detected, but an obvious recovery of US expectancy following a context change after extinction (ABA) was demonstrated. Additionally, women demonstrated recovery of subjective affect and subjective sexual arousal. Participants in the ABA demonstrated more approach biases towards stimuli. Conclusions The findings support the context dependency of extinction and renewal of conditioned sexual responses in humans. This knowledge may have implications for the treatment of disturbances in sexual appetitive responses such as hypo- and hypersexuality.
Robust Dual Clustering with Adaptive Manifold Regularization

In recent years, various data clustering algorithms have been proposed in the data mining and engineering communities. However, there are still drawbacks in traditional clustering methods which are worth to be further investigated, such as clustering for the high dimensional data, learning an ideal affinity matrix which optimally reveals the global data structure, discovering the intrinsic geometrical and discriminative properties of the data space, and reducing the noises influence brings by the complex data input. In this paper, we propose a novel clustering algorithm called robust dual clustering with adaptive manifold regularization (RDC), which simultaneously performs dual matrix factorization tasks with the target of an identical cluster indicator in both of the original and projected feature spaces, respectively. Among which, the <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$l_{2,1}$ </tex-math><alternatives><inline-graphic xlink:href="zhang-ieq1-2732986.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula>-norm is used instead of the conventional <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$l_{2}$</tex-math><alternatives> <inline-graphic xlink:href="zhang-ieq2-2732986.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula>-norm to measure the loss, which helps to improve the model robustness by relieving the influences by the noises and outliers. In order to better consider the intrinsic geometrical and discriminative data structure, we incorporate the manifold regularization term on the cluster indicator by using a particularly learned affinity matrix which is more suitable for the clustering task. Moreover, a novel augmented lagrangian method (ALM) based procedure is designed to effectively and efficiently seek the optimal solution of the proposed RDC optimization. Numerous experiments on the representative data sets demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed method compares to the existing clustering algorithms.
Healing Web-Based Services on Cloud Using Strategies

Exceptions cause temporal failures of Web-based systems to deliver continuous and responsive end-to-end services. On cloud platforms, resource provisioning and administration become less explicit, which entails techniques that can act on exceptions according to known strategies. In this paper, we propose a middleware-based approach that encompasses a healing process that links available strategies to exceptions. Our solution is implemented as an embedded middleware called Exception Healing Manager (EHM). The EHM ensures non-intrusive service recovery and improves overall service response time. This approach is demonstrated by a loan broker service running on Amazon EC2.
Targeted disruption of FSCN2 gene induces retinopathy in mice.

PURPOSE To investigate the morphology and function of photoreceptors in mice with mutation of the FSCN2 gene. METHODS A mouse line was generated carrying the 208delG mutation (point mutation, or p-type) and another with replacement of exon 1 by the cDNA of a green fluorescent protein (GFP knock-in, or g-type). The expression of retinal mRNA was determined by reverse transcription (RT)-polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and in situ hybridization performed on retinal sections. Morphologic analyses of the retinas were performed by light microscopy (LM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and functional analyses by electroretinogram (ERG). RESULTS mRNA of FSCN2 was not detected in the retinal mRNA extracted from FSCN2p/p and FSCN2g/g mice. Both FSCN2(+/p) and FSCN2(+/g) mice had progressive photoreceptor degeneration with increasing age detected by LM and structural abnormalities of the outer segment (OS) detected by TEM. Both FSCN2(+/p) and FSCN2(+/g) mice had depressed rod and cone ERGs that worsened with increasing age. CONCLUSIONS These results indicate that haploinsufficiency of the FSCN2 gene may hamper maintenance and/or elongation of the OS disks and result in photoreceptor degeneration, as in human autosomal dominant retinitis pigmentosa.
Performance Comparison of Graphics Processors to Reconfigurable Logic: A Case Study

A systematic approach to the comparison of the graphics processor (GPU) and reconfigurable logic is defined in terms of three throughput drivers. The approach is applied to five case study algorithms, characterized by their arithmetic complexity, memory access requirements, and data dependence, and two target devices: the nVidia GeForce 7900 GTX GPU and a Xilinx Virtex-4 field programmable gate array (FPGA). Two orders of magnitude speedup, over a general-purpose processor, is observed for each device for arithmetic intensive algorithms. An FPGA is superior, over a GPU, for algorithms requiring large numbers of regular memory accesses, while the GPU is superior for algorithms with variable data reuse. In the presence of data dependence, the implementation of a customized data path in an FPGA exceeds GPU performance by up to eight times. The trends of the analysis to newer and future technologies are analyzed.
Doing Gender, Doing Leadership. A Phenomenological Study of Women in Leadership Positions in Kigali, Rwanda

Rwanda is often used as a showcase for promoting gender equality in the context of Sub-Saharan Africa. As a result of the progressive policies of the Rwandan government, women hold many high positions in the public and private sector and constitute the highest proportion in the world in a national parliament. However, there is evidence that patriarchal tendencies are still endemic in Rwandan society. Taking into consideration this unique context, the purpose of this study was to investigate how women in leadership positions in Kigali locate themselves as women and leaders and experience performing multiple roles in their private and professional lives. The theory of doing gender was employed in order to better understand this phenomenon. The study utilised phenomenological methodology, focusing on the women’s experiences and perceptions. The results painted an image of a Rwandan woman leader as being extremely committed, strong, and determined to overcome the persisting bias against women in leadership positions. Moreover, the study showed that the participants find it incredibly challenging to manage their roles as career professionals and a housewives, which contributes to an ever-present feeling of guilt for not devoting enough attention to their families.
Effects on performance and energy reduction by file relocation based on file-access correlations

Many recent advanced applications of information systems require large amounts of data to be stored in multiple hard disk drives (HDDs). The placement of data in these drives is quite influential in reducing energy consumption while retaining the performance of the system. Several approaches have been proposed in which frequently accessed files are concentrated into a limited number of drives to enable spin-down of the other drives. However, the placement of infrequently accessed data in these drives is also significant because energy consumption during spin-up to access these data cannot be ignored, particularly when files tending to be used together are placed on many different drives. In this paper, we propose a novel method named PLECO (Placement of files for Latency and Energy Consumption Optimization), which aims to place correlated files into the same drive to reduce power consumption and improve the performance of the system. We simulated and evaluated the proposed method, and these results indicate that our proposal can reduce both the energy consumption and the access latency by up to 32% and 92%, respectively, compared with a baseline system.
Staring at Economic Aggregators through Information Lenses

It is hard to exaggerate the role of economic aggregators — functions that summarize numerous and / or heterogeneous data — in economic models since the early XX th century. In many cases, as witnessed by the pioneering works of Cobb and Douglas, these functions were information quantities tailored to economic theories, i.e. they were built to fit economic phenomena. In this paper, we look at these functions from the complementary side: information. We use a recent toolbox built on top of a vast class of distortions coined by Bregman, whose application field rivals metrics’ in various subfields of mathematics. This toolbox makes it possible to find the quality of an aggregator (for consumptions, prices, labor, capital, wages, etc.), from the standpoint of the information it carries. We prove a rather striking result. From the informational standpoint, well-known economic aggregators do belong to the optimal set. As common economic assumptions enter the analysis, this large set shrinks, and it essentially ends up exactly fitting either CES, or Cobb-Douglas, or both. To summarize, in the relevant economic contexts, one could not have crafted better some aggregator from the information standpoint. We also discuss global economic behaviors of optimal information aggregators in general, and present a brief panorama of the links between economic and information aggregators.
Characterization of an epibody. An antiidiotype that reacts with both the idiotype of rheumatoid factors (RF) and the antigen recognized by RF

Recently, an antiidiotype to human monoclonal IgM anti-IgG autoantibodies (rheumatoid factors) was found to react also with human IgG. This peculiar antiidiotype was called an 'epibody'. We describe the induction of a similar epibody by immunization with a synthetic peptide (corresponding to one hypervariable region of the IgM-RF Glo). The results confirm the existence of epibodies, and provide the possible molecular basis of the epibody phenomenon.
Simulation in healthcare education: A best evidence practical guide. AMEE Guide No. 82

Over the past two decades, there has been an exponential and enthusiastic adoption of simulation in healthcare education internationally. Medicine has learned much from professions that have established programs in simulation for training, such as aviation, the military and space exploration. Increased demands on training hours, limited patient encounters, and a focus on patient safety have led to a new paradigm of education in healthcare that increasingly involves technology and innovative ways to provide a standardized curriculum. A robust body of literature is growing, seeking to answer the question of how best to use simulation in healthcare education. Building on the groundwork of the Best Evidence in Medical Education (BEME) Guide on the features of simulators that lead to effective learning, this current Guide provides practical guidance to aid educators in effectively using simulation for training. It is a selective review to describe best practices and illustrative case studies. This Guide is the second part of a two-part AMEE Guide on simulation in healthcare education. The first Guide focuses on building a simulation program, and discusses more operational topics such as types of simulators, simulation center structure and set-up, fidelity management, and scenario engineering, as well as faculty preparation. This Guide will focus on the educational principles that lead to effective learning, and include topics such as feedback and debriefing, deliberate practice, and curriculum integration – all central to simulation efficacy. The important subjects of mastery learning, range of difficulty, capturing clinical variation, and individualized learning are also examined. Finally, we discuss approaches to team training and suggest future directions. Each section follows a framework of background and definition, its importance to effective use of simulation, practical points with examples, and challenges generally encountered. Simulation-based healthcare education has great potential for use throughout the healthcare education continuum, from undergraduate to continuing education. It can also be used to train a variety of healthcare providers in different disciplines from novices to experts. This Guide aims to equip healthcare educators with the tools to use this learning modality to its full capability.
OVERCOMING LIMITATIONS OF COOPERATIVE LEARNING AMONG COMMUNITY COLLEGE STUDENTS

Two limitations are commonly associated with cooperative learning. First, community college faculty often express uncertainty about how to evaluate the teamwork skills that their students demonstrate during group work. Faculty would like to be effective judges of what happens during a group project but they are seldom close enough to witness the interaction process and, even when present, cannot tell how the initiatives of some team members affect others. The Interpersonal Intelligence Inventory (III) can be used to assess the interpersonal skills among community college students. The III provides information to faculty about what occurs during team interaction from the students point of view and gives anonymous feedback to students from peers detailing their personal strengths and limitations. A second limitation of cooperative learning involves the provision of tasks that enable students to practice the teamwork skills they are expected to learn. A new model of learning and instruction, Collaboration-Integration Theory (CIT) broadens the base for curriculum by incorporating the cultural, ethnic, and generational resources students rely on outside of school. The method of instruction for implementing CIT is known as Cooperative Learning Exercises and Roles (CLEAR). This approach ensures that students move from a passive to an active role, makes the collaborative process a focus for group work, allows everyone a chance to offer a unique contribution to the thinking of peers, reduces student boredom by differentiating roles, and allows sufficient observation of individual behavior to support fair peer evaluation.