Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Extent of Solution-Focused Psychotherapy and Self-Efficacy in Enhancing Professional Competence of Secondary School Counsellors in Enugu Education Zone of Enugu State, Nigeria

This study investigated the extent to which Solution-Focused Psychotherapy and Selfefficacy enhances professional competence of secondary school counsellors in Enugu Education Zone Enugu of state. Two research questions were raised to guide the study. The descriptive survey research design was adopted for the study. The population for the study is the 59 school counsellors serving in the 31 government own secondary schools in Education Zone of Enugu State. The population is small and manageable so no sampling was done. A selfstructured instrument developed by the researchers called SolutionFocused Psychotherapy and Self-Efficacy Scale (SFPSE-S). 11 items was used to collect data from the study. It was validated by three experts and its internal consistency ascertained using Cranach Alpha reliability estimate. Mean, grand mean and standard deviation were used to analyze the data collected. It was found among others that solution-focused psychotherapy and self-efficacy enhances secondary school counsellors in Enugu Education Zone of Enugu State, Nigeria to a great extent. It was recommended that seminars be organized for secondary school counsellors on the implications of solution-focused psychotherapy as effective interventions towards enhancing professional competency of secondary school counsellors.
Activation Sharing with Asymmetric Paths Solves Weight Transport Problem without Bidirectional Connection

One of the reasons why it is difﬁcult for the brain to perform backpropagation (BP) is the weight transport problem, which argues forward and feedback neurons cannot share the same synaptic weights during learning in biological neural networks. Recently proposed algorithms address the weight transport problem while providing good performance similar to BP in large-scale networks. However, they require bidirectional connections between the forward and feedback neurons to train their weights, which is observed to be rare in the biological brain. In this work, we propose an Activation Sharing algorithm that removes the need for bidirectional connections between the two types of neurons. In this algorithm, hidden layer outputs (activations) are shared across multiple layers during weight updates. By applying this learning rule to both forward and feedback networks, we solve the weight transport problem without the constraint of bidirectional connections, also achieving good performance even on deep convolutional neural networks for various datasets. In addition, our algorithm could signiﬁcantly reduce memory access overhead when implemented in hardware.
Operational floating current conveyor: characteristics, modelling and applications

A new five-port general purpose analogue building block, termed as an operational floating current conveyor (OFCC), is described. The OFCC combines the features of current feedback (CFB) operational amplifier, second generation current conveyor and operational floating conveyor (OFC). A simple implementation scheme of the OFCC is described and its terminal operational characteristics are used to yield a working model. The OFCC is then used as a single block to realize the four main amplifier types and the current conveyors (CCII+ and CCII-). Computer simulation results are presented and discussed. <<ETX>>
Retrospective Evaluation of Platelet-Leukocyte Indices and Cardiac Surgical Outcomes in Acyanotic Heart Disease Patients with Pulmonary Hypertension (REPLICA-PH)

Introduction Acyanotic congenital heart disease (ACHD) patients with pulmonary hypertension (PH) are prone to postoperative complications, and characterization of the risk profile continues to fail in identifying inflammatory predilection. Our objective is to investigate the role of platelet-leukocyte indices (neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio [NLR], platelet-lymphocyte ratio [PLR], and systemic immune-inflammation index [SII] [neutrophil × platelet/lymphocyte]) in predicting poor outcomes following cardiac surgery in ACHD cohort with preoperative PH. Methods This single-center, retrospective risk-predictive study included ACHD patients undergoing surgical correction at our tertiary cardiac center between January 2015 and December 2019. Standard institutional perioperative management protocol was followed, and poor postoperative outcome was defined as ≥ 1 of: low cardiac output syndrome, new-onset renal failure, prolonged mechanical ventilation (MV > 24 hours), stroke, sepsis, and/or death. Results One hundred eighty patients out of 1,040 (17.3%) presented poor outcome. On univariate analysis, preoperative factors including right ventricular systolic pressure (RVSP) (PH-severity marker), congestive heart failure, albumin, NLR, PLR, SII, and aortic cross-clamping (ACC) and cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) times predicted poor outcome. However, on multivariate analysis, RVSP, NLR, SII, and ACC and CPB times emerged as independent predictors. An NLR, SII prognostic cutoff of 3.33 and 860.6×103/mm3 was derived (sensitivity: 77.8%, 78.9%; specificity: 91.7%, 82.2%; area under the curve: 0.871, 0.833). NLR and SII values significantly correlated with postoperative MV duration, mean vasoactive-inotropic scores, and length of intensive care unit and hospital stay (P<0.001). Conclusion Novel parsimonious, reproducible plateletleukocyte indices present the potential of stratifying the risk in congenital cardiac surgical patients with pre-existing PH.
Scoping review of online postal sexually transmitted infection services: access, usage and clinical outcomes

Background: There has been considerable expansion in online postal self-sampling STI services in many parts of the UK, driven by increasing demand on sexual health services and developments in diagnostics and digital health provision. This shift in service delivery has occurred against a backdrop of reduced funding and service fragmentation and the impact is unknown. We explored characteristics of people accessing and using online postal self-sampling (OPSS) services for STIs in the UK, the acceptability of these services, and their impact on sexual health inequalities. Methods: A scoping review was conducted of studies published in English-language based on pre-agreed inclusion/exclusion criteria, between 01/01/2010 to 07/07/2021. Nine databases were searched, and 23 studies that met the eligibility criteria were included. Studies were appraised using the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool. Results: Study designs were heterogenous, including quantitative, qualitative and mixed method analyses. The majority were either evaluating a single site/self-sampling provider, exploratory or observational and of variable quality. Few studies collected comprehensive user demographic data. Individuals accessing OPSS tended to be asymptomatic, of White ethnicity, women, over 20 years, and from less deprived areas. OPSS tended to increase overall STI testing demand and access, although return rates for blood samples was low, as was test positivity. There were varied results on whether services reduced time to treatment. OPSS services were acceptable to the majority of users. Qualitative studies showed the importance of trust, confidentiality, discretion, reliability, convenience and improved patient choice. Conclusion: OPSS services appear highly acceptable to users. However, uptake appears to be socially patterned and some groups that bear a disproportionate burden of poor sexual health in the UK are under-represented among users. Current provision of online self-sampling could widen health inequalities, particularly where other options for testing are limited. Work is needed to fully evaluate the impact and cost-effectiveness of OPSS services.
Surgical Planning and Optimization of Patient-Specific Fontan Grafts with Uncertain Post-Operative Boundary Conditions and Anastomosis Displacement

Objective: Fontan surgical planning involves designing grafts to perform optimized hemodynamic performance for the patient's long-term health benefit. The uncertainty of post-operative boundary conditions (BC) and graft anastomosis displacements can significantly affect optimized graft designs and lead to undesirable outcomes, especially for hepatic flow distribution (HFD). We aim to develop a computation framework to automatically optimize patient-specific Fontan grafts with the maximized possibility of keeping post-operative results within clinical acceptable thresholds. Methods: The uncertainties of BC and anastomosis displacements were modeled using Gaussian distributions according to prior research studies. By parameterizing the Fontan grafts, we built surrogate models of hemodynamic parameters taking the design parameters and BC as input. A two-phase reliability-based robust optimization (RBRO) strategy was developed by combining deterministic optimization (DO) and optimization under uncertainty (OUU) to reduce computational cost. Results: We evaluated the performance of the RBRO framework by comparing it with the DO method in four cases of Fontan patients. The results showed that the surgical plans computed from the proposed method yield up to 79.2% improvement in the reliability of the HFD than those of the DO method (p<0.0001). The mean values of indexed power loss (iPL) and the percentage of non-physiologic wall shear stress (%WSS) for the optimized surgical plans met the clinically acceptable thresholds. Conclusion: This study demonstrated the effectiveness of our RBRO framework to address the uncertainties of BC and anastomosis displacements for Fontan surgical planning. Significance: The technique developed in this paper demonstrates a significant improvement in the reliability of the predicted post-operative outcomes for Fontan surgical planning. This planning technique is immediately applicable as a building block to enable technology for optimal long-term outcomes for pediatric Fontan patients and can also be used in other pediatric and adult cardiac surgeries.
Vehicle Trajectory Prediction with Lane Stream Attention-Based LSTMs and Road Geometry Linearization

It is essential for autonomous vehicles at level 3 or higher to have the ability to predict the trajectories of surrounding vehicles to safely and effectively plan and drive along trajectories in complex traffic situations. However, predicting the future behavior of vehicles is a challenging issue because traffic vehicles each have different drivers with different driving tendencies and intentions and they interact with each other. This paper presents a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) encoder–decoder model that utilizes an attention mechanism that focuses on certain information to predict vehicles’ trajectories. The proposed model was trained using the Highway Drone (HighD) dataset, which is a high-precision, large-scale traffic dataset. We also compared this model to previous studies. Our model effectively predicted future trajectories by using an attention mechanism to manage the importance of the driving flow of the target and adjacent vehicles and the target vehicle’s dynamics in each driving situation. Furthermore, this study presents a method of linearizing the road geometry such that the trajectory prediction model can be used in a variety of road environments. We verified that the road geometry linearization mechanism can improve the trajectory prediction model’s performance on various road environments in a virtual test-driving simulator constructed based on actual road data.
The Southern Ocean diatom Pseudo-nitzschia subcurvata flourished better under simulated glacial than interglacial ocean conditions: Combined effects of CO2 and iron

The ‘Iron Hypothesis’ suggests a fertilization of the Southern Ocean by increased dust deposition in glacial times. This promoted high primary productivity and contributed to lower atmospheric pCO2. In this study, the diatom Pseudo-nitzschia subcurvata, known to form prominent blooms in the Southern Ocean, was grown under simulated glacial and interglacial climatic conditions to understand how iron (Fe) availability (no Fe or Fe addition) in conjunction with different pCO2 levels (190 and 290 μatm) influences growth, particulate organic carbon (POC) production and photophysiology. Under both glacial and interglacial conditions, the diatom grew with similar rates. In comparison, glacial conditions (190 μatm pCO2 and Fe input) favored POC production by P. subcurvata while under interglacial conditions (290 μatm pCO2 and Fe deficiency) POC production was reduced, indicating a negative effect caused by higher pCO2 and low Fe availability. Under interglacial conditions, the diatom had, however, thicker silica shells. Overall, our results show that the combination of higher Fe availability with low pCO2, present during the glacial ocean, was beneficial for the diatom P. subcurvata, thus contributing more to primary production during glacial compared to interglacial times. Under the interglacial ocean conditions, on the other hand, the diatom could have contributed to higher carbon export due to its higher degree of silicification.
The neutrophil protein CD177 is a novel PDPN receptor that regulates human cancer-associated fibroblast physiology

The cancer-associated fibroblast (CAF) marker podoplanin (PDPN) is generally correlated with poor clinical outcomes in cancer patients and thus represents a promising therapeutic target. Despite its biomedical relevance, basic aspects of PDPN biology such as its cellular functions and cell surface ligands remain poorly uncharacterized, thus challenging drug development. Here, we utilize a high throughput platform to elucidate the PDPN cell surface interactome, and uncover the neutrophil protein CD177 as a new binding partner. Quantitative proteomics analysis of the CAF phosphoproteome reveals a role for PDPN in cell signaling, growth and actomyosin contractility, among other processes. Moreover, cellular assays demonstrate that CD177 is a functional antagonist, recapitulating the phenotype observed in PDPN-deficient CAFs. In sum, starting from the unbiased elucidation of the PDPN co-receptome, our work provides insights into PDPN functions and reveals the PDPN/CD177 axis as a possible modulator of fibroblast physiology in the tumor microenvironment.
Infecciones en pacientes colonizados con bacterias gramnegativas resistentes a carbapenémicos en una ciudad media española

RESUMEN Objetivo Debido a que existen pocos estudios sobre las implicaciones clínicas de la colonización por bacterias gramnegativas resistentes a carbapenémicos (BRC) se analizó ésta en frotis rectales (FR) y faríngeos (FF) y su relación con la capacidad de predecir infección/colonización. Material y métodos Se realizó un estudio transversal, retrospectivo de los pacientes adultos hospitalizados entre enero del 2016 y diciembre del 2019. Los aislamientos fueron caracterizados mediante MicroScan y espectrometría de masas, aplicando los puntos de corte EUCAST 2018. La detección de carbapenemasas se realizó mediante PCR y secuenciación Sanger; se asignó el secuenciotipo mediante MLST. La relación genética entre los aislados se hizo mediante electroforesis de campo pulsado usando las enzimas Xbal, Spel o Apal. Resultados . Se detectaron 308 (86,03 %) FR y 50 (13,97%) FF positivos, teniendo el FR una sensibilidad del 85%, especificidad del 100%, VPP 100% y VPN 97%. En los FR se aislaron: 44% (n=135) Acinetobacter baumannii, 26% (n=80) Enterobacterales (20 KPC, 29 OXA-48, 22 VIM, 2 IMP, 7 NDM), 17% (n=53) Pseudomonas aeruginosa y 13% (n=40) Stenotrophomonas maltophilia. En los FF se aislaron un 44% (n=22) S. maltophilia, 40% (n=20) A. baumannii, 8% (n=4) P. aeruginosa y 8% (n=4) Enterobacterales (3 VIM, 1 OXA). De los pacientes con tomas simultáneas de FR y FF, 41 (40,6%) tuvieron positividad en ambos frotis, 45 (44,6%) sólo en FR y 15 (14,9%) sólo en FF. En el 81,3% (n=13) de los episodios la colonización precedió a la infección, existiendo asociación entre infección y colonización (p<0,001; χ2) y en todos en los que se conservó la información del pulsotipo los aislados de las muestras clínicas y de los frotis fueron similares. Conclusiones La probabilidad de predecir la infección a través del colonizado por BRC en diferentes muestras clínicas es factible, teniendo el FR una mayor sensibilidad para detectar colonización.
Cardiogenic Shock Among Patients with and without Acute Myocardial Infarction in a Latin American Country: A Single-Institution Study

Background: Latin America has limited information about the full spectrum cardiogenic shock (CS) and its hospital outcome. This study sought to examine the temporal trends, clinical features and outcomes of patients with CS in a coronary care unit of single Mexican institution. Methods: This was a retrospective study of consecutive patients hospitalized with CS in a Mexican teaching hospital between 2006–2019. Patients were classified according to the presence or absence of acute myocardial infarction (AMI). Results: Of 22,747 admissions, 833 (3.7%) exhibited CS. Among patients with AMI (n = 12,438), 5% had AMI–CS, and in patients without AMI (n = 10,309), 2.3% developed CS (non-AMI–CS). Their median age was 63 years and 70.5% were men. Cardiovascular risk factors were more frequent among the AMI–CS group, whereas a history of heart failure was greater in non-AMI–CS patients (70.1%). In AMI-CS patients, the median delay time was 17.2 hours from the onset of AMI symptoms to hospital admission. Overall, the median left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) was 30%. Patients with CS at admission showed end-organ dysfunction, evidenced by lactic acidosis, renal impairment, and elevated liver transaminases. Of the 620 AMI–CS patients, the main cause was left ventricular dysfunction in 71.3%, mechanical complications in 15.2% and right ventricular infarction in 13.5%. Among the 213 non-AMI–CS patients, valvular heart disease (49.3%) and cardiomyopathies (42.3%) were the most frequent etiologies. In-hospital all-cause mortality rates were 69.7% and 72.3% in the AMI–CS and non-AMI–CS groups, respectively. Among AMI–CS patients, renal dysfunction, diabetes, older age, depressed LVEF, absence of revascularization and the use of mechanical ventilation were independent predictors of in-hospital mortality. However, in the non-AMI–CS group, only low LVEF and high lactate levels proved significant. Conclusions: This study demonstrates differences in the epidemiology of CS compared to high-income countries; the high mortality reflects critically ill patients and the lack of contemporary effective therapies in the population studied.
Towards women-inclusive ecology: Representation, behavior, and perception of women at an international conference

Conferences are ideal platforms for studying gender gaps in science because they are important cultural events that reflect barriers to women in academia. Here, we explored women’s participation in ecology conferences by analyzing female representation, behavior, and personal experience at the 1st Meeting of the Iberian Society of Ecology (SIBECOL). The conference had 722 attendees, 576 contributions, and 27 scientific sessions. The gender of attendees and presenters was balanced (48/52% women/men), yet only 29% of the contributions had a woman as last author. Moreover, men presented most of the keynote talks (67%) and convened most of the sessions. Our results also showed that only 32% of the questions were asked by women, yet the number of questions raised by women increased when the speaker or the convener was a woman. Finally, the post-conference survey revealed that attendees had a good experience and did not perceive the event as a threatening context for women. Yet, differences in the responses between genders suggest that women tended to have a worse experience than their male counterparts. Although our results showed clear gender biases, most of the participants of the conference failed to detect it. Overall, we highlight the challenge of increasing women’s scientific leadership, visibility and interaction in scientific conferences and we suggest several recommendations for creating inclusive meetings, thereby promoting equal opportunities for all participants.
Examining potential gender bias in automated-job alerts in the Spanish market

Numerous field experiments based on the correspondence testing procedure have documented that gender bias influences personnel selection processes. Nowadays, algorithms and job platforms are used for personnel selection processes because of their supposed neutrality, efficiency, and costs savings. However, previous research has shown that algorithms can exhibit and even amplify gender bias. The present research aimed to explore a possible gender bias in automated-job alerts generated in InfoJobs, a popular job platform in Spain. Based on the correspondence testing procedure, we designed eight matched resumes in which we manipulated the gender of the candidate for two different professional sectors (female-dominated vs. male-dominated) and two different levels of age (24 vs. 38). We examined the 3,438 offers received. No significant differences were observed in the automated-job alerts received by female and male candidates as a function of occupation category, salary, and the number of long-term contracts included in the alerts. However, we found significant differences between the female-dominated and the male-dominated sectors in all the mentioned variables. Some limitations and implications of the study are discussed. The data and materials for this research are available at the Open Science Framework, https://osf.io/kptca/.
Electromagnetic Interference’s Effect on the Performance of Electro-Hydraulic Control System

The performance of engineering machinery and equipments will be affected under the environment of unstable electromagnetic fields. In the magnetic field, with focusing on the proportional solenoid of a certain engineering machinery hydraulic proportional control system, the internal changes of characteristics in the magnetic field lead to the changes of force output characteristics through output changes in air gap magnetic flux, and the instantaneous output performance is affected by electromagnetic interference. The electromagnetic environment’s effect on the changes of electro-hydraulic control system is determined by implementation of the proportional solenoid electromagnetic interference. The result shows that the control performance of mechanical hydraulic control system becomes unstable, and the anti-electromagnetic interference capacity of electromagnetic sensitive element in the electro-hydraulic control system should be improved.
Tunable dual-band resonators for communication systems

This paper proposes the design of tunable dual-band resonators for multi-band multi-standard systems. The main objective is to provide frequency tunability in the second resonance while maintaining the first resonance fixed. To this end, two tunable resonators are proposed: the capacitive-loaded stepped-impedance resonator and the capacitive-loaded hole resonator. The work is divided into two main parts. In the first part, an in-depth analysis of the capacitive-loaded stepped-impedance resonator (SIR) structure is done; it provides analytical closed-form design equations that ease the resonator design in contrast to the several approaches available in the literature to date. The analysis is also particularized to the case of the capacitive-loaded constant-section resonator and extended to the capacitive-loaded hole resonator. In addition, a study of the quality factor in capacitively tuned SIRs is also provided. In the second part, resonators are integrated in three dual-band tunable filters, one based on the capacitive-loaded constant-section resonator, another one on the capacitive-loaded SIR, and finally on the capacitive-loaded hole resonator. Two of these filters demonstrate operation in wireless local-area network frequency bands, with a fixed first band at 2.45 GHz and a second band which can be tuned between 5.75 and 5.25 GHz.