Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Supporting Diabetes Self-Care in Underserved Populations

Purpose The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of an innovative intervention that utilized a certified medical assistant with specific diabetes training to work with a multidisciplinary diabetes care team to help provide basic diabetes education and self-care support in low-income minority populations with type 2 diabetes. Methods Enrolled participants were randomized to either the medical assistant coaching (MAC) group (N = 25) or the treatment as usual (TAU) group (N = 25). Deidentified data was obtained on a matched no contact control (NCC) group (N = 50). Results Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) comparisons revealed no significant differences between the 3 groups on A1C, but a trend was observed. A1Cs decreased across time for the MAC group, while increasing for the TAU and NCC groups. ANCOVA comparisons also indicated that the MAC group experienced significantly greater increases in perceived empowerment and a larger, although non-significant, reduction in perceived diabetes related problems than the TAU group. Conclusions This randomized controlled pilot study suggests that the inclusion of a medical assistant self-care coach as part of the diabetes care team holds promise in improving outcomes and should be further examined in a large-scale study.
Simultaneous multiple mycotoxin quantification in feed samples using three isotopically labeled internal standards applied for isotopic dilution and data normalization through ultra-performance liquid chromatography/electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry.

RATIONALE Mycotoxins are typically present in grain and are also concentrated in distillers dried grains with solubles (DDGS), common feed ingredients for food animals. The diversity of mycotoxins and feed matrices has made the routine detection and quantification of mycotoxins in feed both complex and prohibitively expensive. METHODS Ultra-performance liquid chromatography/electrospray ionization triple quadrupole detection (UPLC/ESI-TQD) (tandem mass spectrometry, MS/MS) with (13) C-labeled isotopic dilution was used to analyze internal standard isotopologues of three mycotoxin molecules, as well as 29 other structurally differing mycotoxin molecules from four common feed matrices: corn, wheat, barley, or DDGS. Mycotoxins were extracted via a single-step procedure using a mixture of acetonitrile/water/formic acid. Labeled isotopologues were used as a surrogate to account for extraction quality and as internal standards for the evaluation of the feed matrix signal suppression/enhancement (SSE) contributed by each mycotoxin and by each matrix. The SSE was corrected by matrix-matched calibration with blank certified reference feed material. RESULTS The limits of detection for individual mycotoxins in buffer ranged from 0.01 to 206.7 µg/mL but could increase by up to four times depending on the matrix effect. The accuracy and precision were enhanced by the use of isotopically labeled standards. The recoveries were somewhat negatively affected by the SSE contributed by each matrix. Each mycotoxin was successfully detected and assigned to one of four SSE categories: high (-66%), intermediate (-48%), low (-19%) signal suppression and signal enhancement (> +300%). CONCLUSIONS An improved LC/MS method was validated, which offers a practical and economical means for large-scale detection and quantification of multiple mycotoxins in common animal-feed matrices, including DDGS.
Diabetes Management in the Nursing Home

Purpose Diabetes mellitus is a disease with debilitating potential. Growing numbers of elderly individuals are being admitted to under-resourced nursing homes with this often complicated, time-intensive, and costly diagnosis. The purpose of this systematic review of the literature was to determine the trends in diabetes management in nursing homes over the last decade including the use of clinical practice guidelines and the evaluation of management outcomes. Methods Ten medical, nursing, psychological, legal, and business databases were searched for articles written in English between 2000 and 2010 addressing diabetes management in nursing homes or long-term care settings. They were analyzed to determine diabetes management characteristics, use of clinical practice guidelines, resident outcomes associated with different regimens, and implications for improved management and outcomes. Results A total of 20 studies from 6 countries, primarily the United States, including both qualitative and quantitative designs and a combined sample of 779 707 residents, met the inclusion criteria. The majority of the studies described frequencies of various management practices and found rare clinical practice guideline adherence. Conclusion A severe lack of research relating management practices to health and quality-of-life outcomes was evident as was a lack of the voice of the resident in determining the diabetes regimen. Clear implications were found for improvement in diabetes management education for residents, families, and all health care providers in this setting.
Collision-induced dissociation of aflatoxins.

RATIONALE The aflatoxin mycotoxins are particularly hazardous to health when present in food. Therefore, from an analytical point of view, knowledge of their mass spectrometric properties is essential. The aim of the present study was to describe the collision-induced dissociation behavior of the four most common aflatoxins: B1, B2, G1 and G2. METHODS Protonated aflatoxins were produced using atmospheric pressure chemical ionization (APCI) mass spectrometry (MS) combined with high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). For the tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) experiments nitrogen was used as the collision gas and the collision energies were varied in the range of 9-44 eV (in the laboratory frame). RESULTS The major APCI-MS/MS fragmentations of protonated aflatoxins occurred at 30 eV collision energy. The main fragmentation channels were found to be the losses of a series of carbon monoxide molecules and loss of a methyl radical, leading to the formation of radical-type product ions. In addition, if the aflatoxin molecule contained an ether- or lactone-oxygen atom linked to a saturated carbon atom, loss of a water molecule was observed from the [M + H](+) ion, especially in the case of aflatoxins G1 and G2. CONCLUSIONS A relatively small modification in the structure of aflatoxins dramatically altered the fragmentation pathways and this was particularly true for aflatoxins B1 and B2. Due to the presence of a C = C double bond connected to the ether group in aflatoxin B1 no elimination of water was observed but, instead, formation of radical-type product ions occurred. Fragmentation of protonated aflatoxin B1 yielded the most abundant radical-type cations.
Error bound for reduced system model by Pade approximation via the Lanczos process

Recently, there has been a great deal of interest in using the Pade Via Lanczos (PVL) technique to analyze the transfer functions and impulse responses of large-scale linear circuits. In this paper, a matrix-based derivation of the error between the original circuit transfer function and the reduced-order transfer function generated using the PVL technique is presented. This error measure may be used for the development of an automated termination of the Lanczos process in the PVL technique and achieve the desired accuracy of the approximate transfer function. PVL coupled with such an error bound will be referred to as the PVL-WEB algorithm.
On the Convergence of Multipath Fading Channel Gains to the Rayleigh Distribution

The gain of a multipath propagation scenario is addressed by this work and it is shown that the convergence to the Rayleigh distribution depends on some conditions on the path gains, which are not always satisfied. These conditions confirm the convergence to the Rayleigh distribution for some well known scenarios. However, counter-examples are also exhibited where this convergence does not hold. Furthermore, the role of the Central Limit Theorem (often advocated in the literature to prove convergence to the Rayleigh distribution) is critically discussed by showing that the Lindeberg condition may not hold. Finally, it is shown that the amplitude and phase of the asymptotic gain are independent and the phase is uniformly distributed over [0, 2π).
Analysis of mexicanolide- and phragmalin-type limonoids from Heynea trijuga using high-performance liquid chromatography/electrospray tandem mass spectrometry.

RATIONALE Limonoids, a class of tetranortriterpenoids, exhibit various biological effects, including acting as potent antifeedants and insect growth-regulators against various pests. The analysis of phragmalin- and mexicanolide-type limonoids by collision-induced dissociation tandem mass spectrometry (CID-MS/MS) has not been reported. METHODS A high-performance liquid chromatography/electrospray ionization (HPLC/ESI)-MS/MS method was developed to investigate the fragmentation patterns of [M+NH4 ](+) ions for nine reference phragmalin- and mexicanolide-type limonoids. The method was also used in the identification of limonoid compounds in botanic extracts of Heynea trijuga. RESULTS The losses of side chains and the furan part were the major fragmentation patterns. However, there was variation in the relative abundances of product ions resulting from the same fragmentation pathways. A total of 89 phragmalin- and mexicanolide-type limonoids in botanic extracts of Heynea trijuga were detected and 50 of these compounds were identified or tentatively characterized based on elemental constituents, fragmentation pathways, and the profile of the major product ions of reference compounds. In addition, the isomers could be tentatively distinguished. CONCLUSIONS An HPLC/ESI-MS/MS method was developed and could be used to simultaneously identify and screen phragmalin- and mexicanolide-type limonoids in botanic extracts of Heynea trijuga.
Random Access Preamble Design and Detection for 3GPP Narrowband IoT Systems

Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) is an emerging cellular technology that will provide improved coverage for massive number of low-throughput low-cost devices with low device power consumption in delay-tolerant applications. A new single tone signal with frequency hopping has been designed for NB-IoT physical random access channel (NPRACH). In this letter, we describe this new NPRACH design and explain in detail the design rationale. We further propose possible receiver algorithms for NPRACH detection and time-of-arrival estimation. Simulation results on NPRACH performance including detection rate, false alarm rate, and time-of-arrival estimation accuracy are presented to shed light on the overall potential of NB-IoT systems.
US Trends in Receipt of Appropriate Diabetes Clinical and Self-care From 2001 to 2010 and Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Care

Purpose The purpose of this study was to examine trends in the receipt of 8 recommended diabetes clinical and self-care indicators from 2001 to 2010 and assess racial/ethnic disparities in care. Methods This observational study examined receipt of A1C tests, annual eye and foot exams, flu vaccination, diabetes self-management education (DSME), exercise, self-monitoring of blood glucose (SMBG), and self feet examinations among US adults with diabetes using national survey data from 2001 to 2010. Analyses included estimating proportions for each indicator by year, testing differences in magnitude of change from 2001 to 2010 by race/ethnicity, and regression models to assess changes in care over time and factors associated with care. Results There were significant increases from 2001 to 2010 in A1C tests, annual foot exams, flu shots, DSME, and SMBG but declines in eye and self feet exams. DSME was positively associated with receipt of several care indicators. However, only half of respondents received DSME. White and black non-Hispanics, respectively, experienced improvements in at least 3 indicators. Hispanics experienced a significant increase in exercise but were consistently less likely than whites to receive or engage in most care. Conclusions While improvements in several indicators were observed, patterns varied by race/ethnicity, with Hispanics falling short on most measures. DSME was strongly associated with most care and demonstrates the potential to improve receipt of recommended care by increasing DSME participation. With the Affordable Care Act (ACA), health professionals have a prime opportunity to leverage ACA provisions to increase access to recommended services, including DSME.
Characterisation of glycoproteins using a quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometer configured for electron transfer dissociation.

RATIONALE Electron transfer dissociation (ETD) within ion trapping mass spectrometers has proven to be a useful tool for the characterisation of post-translational modifications. In this study, we describe the implementation of ETD upon a modified quadrupole time-of-flight (Q-ToF) system and methods for the analysis of glycoproteins. METHODS Liquid chromatography electrospray ionisation mass spectrometry (LC/ESI-MS) was performed using a hybrid quadrupole/ion mobility/oa-ToF mass spectrometer equipped with ETD functionality. 1,4-Dicyanobenzene reagent anions necessary for the ETD reaction were generated from a glow discharge region located within the ESI source block. ETD reactions occurred in the stacked ring travelling wave ion guide (located after the quadrupole mass filter and prior to the oa-ToF mass analyser). LC/ETD was performed upon 'super-charged' tryptic glycopeptide ions produced from the recombinant monoclonal antibody trastuzumab. LC/ETD was also performed on ions from the smaller glycopeptides obtained from erythropoietin. RESULTS ETD performed upon the quadruply 'super-charged' N-linked glycopeptide ions of trastuzumab and the triply charged O-linked glycopeptide ions of erythropoietin provided both glycosylation site assignments and full sequence information, respectively. Tandem mass (MS/MS) spectra employing collision-induced dissociation (CID) were dominated by oxonium product ions hampering full peptide sequence characterisation. CONCLUSIONS LC/ETD on the Q-ToF system proved effective at characterising a number of different N-linked glyco-forms of the tryptic peptide, EEQYNSTYR, from trastuzumab as well as glyco-forms from the O-linked tryptic peptide, EASIPPDAASAAPLR, from erythropoietin. The data demonstrates that the glycopeptide site heterogeneity of trastuzumab and erythropoietin can be accurately characterised. In addition, the post-column mixing of the super-charging reagent, m-NBA, is an effective method to increase the precursor ion charge state and to improve ETD reaction efficiency.
Single-image superresolution based on local regression and nonlocal self-similarity

Abstract. The challenge of learning-based superresolution (SR) is to predict the relationships between low-resolution (LR) patches and their corresponding high-resolution (HR) patches. By learning such relationships from external training images, the existing learning-based SR approaches are often affected by the relevance between the training data and the LR input image. Therefore, we propose a single-image SR method that learns the LR-HR relations from the given LR image itself instead of any external images. Both the local regression model and nonlocal patch redundancy are exploited in the proposed method. The local regression model is employed to derive the mapping functions between self-LR-HR example patches, and the nonlocal self-similarity gives rise to a high-order derivative estimation of the derived mapping function. Moreover, to fully exploit the multiscale similarities inside the LR input image, we accumulate the previous reconstruction results and their corresponding LR versions as additional example patches for the subsequent estimation process, and adopt a gradual magnification scheme to achieve the desired zooming size step by step. Extensive experiments on benchmark images have validated the effectiveness of the proposed method. Compared to other state-of-the-art SR approaches, the proposed method provides photorealistic HR images with sharp edges.
The challenges of establishing and researching a sustained nurse home visiting programme within the universal child and family health service system

This paper reflects on the challenges and strategies used to conduct a sustained nurse home visiting randomised trial within the universal child and family health service system in Australia. The Maternal Early Childhood Sustained Home-visiting (MECSH) programme is a complex multilevel intervention acting in parallel at the individual and organisational levels, addressing change in individuals and families, as well as the structural and social factors that affect the individuals, particularly families’ access to support and services. MECSH is targeted towards 20–25% of the population who are at risk of poorer maternal and child health and development outcomes. Establishing the intervention within the service system and conducting the research trial simultaneously presented many challenges. The researchers encountered both technical and ethical problems. The role of researchers as disinterested, objective scientists was constantly challenged. We argue that the MECSH trial was a hybrid research model, testing both efficacy and effectiveness, in a participatory framework. Hybrid research can help to generate evidence of the effectiveness of multilevel interventions in more timely ways, but requires greater investment in the time and resources to conduct the research. We see that such investment would pay dividends in the simultaneous development, testing and embedding of effective interventions for families and sustainable capacity for services.
The Comparison of Clinical Assessment Tools for the Foot Posture

It is important to assess foot posture when investigating the relationship between lower extremity dysfunctions and foot types. Although several measurements of static foot posture have been used, there is no consensus regarding clinical measurements for foot posture. The aim of this study is to explore the differences among navicular drift (NDt), foot posture index (FPI), arch index (AI), dorsal arch height ratio (DAHR), normal navicular height truncated (NNHt) and to discover the most effective measurement. After foot types were classified by navicular drop test (NDp), clinical measurements of NDt, FPI, AI, DAHR, and NNHt were performed on 64 subjects` feet. ANOVA analysis was used for the variance of the difference between the NDp and the five kinds of clinical measurements, and the level of significance was set at а=. 05. The results showed that all five clinical measurements demonstrated significant differences with navicular drop. In post-hoc, FPI and NNHt showed significant differences in all foot types. The five clinical measurements are suitable the classification of foot types through the NDp. Therefore, it could be possible to assess correct and objective foot posture by using FPI and NNHt.
Dynamic regulation of mobile 3G/HSPA uplink buffer with Receiver-side Flow Control

We show that the performance of downloads in a 3G/HSPA mobile network can be significantly degraded by a concurrent upload that saturates the uplink buffer on the mobile device. In particular, we found in some instances that download speeds can be reduced by over an order of magnitude from 2,000 kbps to 100 kbps. To mitigate this problem, we propose a new algorithm called Receiver-side Flow Control (RSFC) that regulates the uplink buffer on 3G/HSPA data senders. It uses a feedback loop to monitor the available upload capacity and dynamically adjusts the TCP receiver window (rwnd) accordingly. We evaluated RSFC on the 3G/HSPA networks of three different mobile ISPs and show that for one of them, RSFC can improve the download throughput from less than 400 kbps to up to 1,400 kbps. In the presence of a concurrent upload, RSFC can also reduce website load times from more than 2 minutes to less than 1 minute 90% of the time. Our technique is compatible with existing TCP implementations and can easily be deployed at 3G web proxies without requiring any modification to existing mobile devices.
Phylogeny of Elatinaceae and the Tropical Gondwanan Origin of the Centroplacaceae(Malpighiaceae, Elatinaceae) Clade

The flowering plant family Elatinaceae is a widespread aquatic lineage inhabiting temperate and tropical latitudes, including ∼35(-50) species. Its phylogeny remains largely unknown, compromising our understanding of its systematics. Moreover, this group is particularly in need of attention because the biogeography of most aquatic plant clades has yet to be investigated, resulting in uncertainty about whether aquatic plants show histories that deviate from terrestrial plants. We inferred the phylogeny of Elatinaceae from four DNA regions spanning 59 accessions across the family. An expanded sampling was used for molecular divergence time estimation and ancestral area reconstruction to infer the biogeography of Elatinaceae and their closest terrestrial relatives, Malpighiaceae and Centroplacaceae. The two genera of Elatinaceae, Bergia and Elatine, are monophyletic, but several traditionally recognized groups within the family are non-monophyletic. Our results suggest two ancient biogeographic events in the Centroplacaceae(Malpighiaceae, Elatinaceae) clade involving western Gondwana, while Elatinaceae shows a more complicated biogeographic history with a high degree of continental endemicity. Our results indicate the need for further taxonomic investigation of Elatinaceae. Further, our study is one of few to implicate ancient Gondwanan biogeography in extant angiosperms, especially significant given the Centroplacaceae(Malpighiaceae, Elatinaceae) clade's largely tropical distribution. Finally, Elatinaceae demonstrates long-term continental in situ diversification, which argues against recent dispersal as a universal explanation commonly invoked for aquatic plant distributions.
Dissociating the Neural Mechanisms of Visual Attention in Change Detection Using Functional MRI

We investigated using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) the neural processes associated with performance of a change-detection task. In this task, two versions of the same picture are presented in alternation, separated by a brief mask interval. Even when the two pictures greatly differ (e.g., as when a building is in different locations), subjects report that identification of the change is difficult and often take 30 or more seconds to identify the change. This phenomenon of change blindness provides a powerful and novel paradigm for segregating components of visual attention using fMRI that can otherwise be confounded in short-duration tasks. By using a response-contingent event-related analysis technique, we successfully dissociated brain regions associated with different processing components of a visual change-detection task. Activation in the calcarine cortex was associated with task onset, but did not vary with the duration of visual search. In contrast, the pattern of activation in dorsal and ventral visual areas was temporally associated with the duration of visual search. As such, our results support a distinction between brain regions whose activation is modulated by attentional demands of the visual task (extrastriate cortex) and those that are not affected by it (primary visual cortex). A second network of areas including central sulcus, insular, and inferior frontal cortical areas, along with the thalamus and basal ganglia, showed phasic activation tied to the execution of responses. Finally, parietal and frontal regions showed systematic deactivations during task performance, consistent with previous reports that these regions may be associated with nontask semantic processing. We conclude that detection of change, when transient visual cues are not present, requires activation of extrastriate visual regions and frontal regions responsible for eye movements. These results suggest that studies of change blindness can inform understanding of more general attentional processing.