Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Using pharmacoepidemiologic methods to study pharmacotherapy in pregnancy: Application to opioid maintenance therapy and 17-OHPC for prevention of preterm birth

We used pharmacoepidemiologic methods to overcome barriers innate to studying medication use in pregnancy. We applied these methods to two topics of high public health relevance: 1) optimal opioid maintenance therapy aimed at decreased neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS), and 2) directing treatment with 17-OHPC for recurrent preterm delivery to women most likely to benefit. Using a clinical dataset of women exposed to methadone or buprenorphine at Magee-Womens Hospital, Pittsburgh, PA (2013-2015, n=716), we performed a probabilistic bias analysis informed from an internal validation cohort to account for unmeasured confounding by maternal addiction severity. The historical increased risk of NAS associated with methadone compared with buprenorphine was not entirely attributable to maternal addiction severity [conventional adjRR: 1.3 (1.1, 1.5); bias adjRR: 1.2 (1.0, 1.4)]. Next, using an inverse probability weighted marginal structural model, we found that the association between treatment and NAS was mediated to a considerable degree through preterm birth (~25%). Because infants born preterm have lower rates of NAS, and methadone is associated with increased rates of preterm delivery, the increased risk of NAS associated with methadone was stronger among term births. For every 100 infants born to treated mothers, methadone was associated with 14 excess cases of NAS overall, which increased to 17 excess cases among term births [adjRD: 16.7 (9.3, 24.0)]. To study 17-OHPC, we built models inclusive of significant interactions between obstetric history factors to predict the risk of recurrent spontaneous preterm delivery (sptd) in a cohort derived from the NICHD MFM Omega-3 trial. This randomized controlled trial found no significant effect of omega-3 supplementation on recurrent sptd in addition to administration of 17-OHPC. Using the treated women in this trial (n=754) and an externally validated predictive model, we found that risk of recurrence increased with earliest gestational ages of prior delivery only in women with ≥2 previous spontaneous preterm deliveries. These findings support the argument that more information, beyond having one previous spontaneous preterm delivery, is needed to target therapy to those most likely to benefit. This is of utmost public health importance as preterm birth remains the primary contributor to neonatal morbidity and mortality.
A Comparison of Measures for Extracting Domain-Specific Lexicons for English Education

特定分野の英語を効率的に学習するためには, その分野に特徴的な語彙を選定し, その語彙を学習するのが効果的である. しかし, 人手による語彙の選定は, コストが高く, かつ, その質は, 選定者の主観や経験に大きく依存する. そのため, 特徴的な単語を機械的に抽出することにより, 語彙の選定作業のコストを低くし, かつ, 客観的な語彙選定を助けることは重要である. このような背景の下, 本稿では, 特徴的な単語が抽出可能かという観点から, 各種統計的尺度の有効性, および, 各種尺度を統合した複合尺度の有効性を比較検討した. その結果, 主に以下のことが, 明らかになった. まず, 英語教育用に選定された単語リストとの一致という観点からは, 複合尺度の有効性が示された. また, 各種の単独尺度の中では, 補完類似度が有効であった. 更に, 各種尺度により抽出される単語は, それぞれ, 異なったレベルにおける学習者に有効であると考えられることが分かった.
A randomized study comparing instruments for measuring health-related quality of life in _HIV-infected patients

Objective: To compare the feasibility, reliability, validity and sensitivity to change of the MOS-HIV and MQOL-HIV in order to determine their suitability for use in clinical research. Methods: Five hundred and fifty-eight HIV-infected patients and 80 healthy blood donors were randomly assigned to receive the MOS-HIV or MQOL-HIV. Test-retest reliability was assessed in 98 clinically stable patients, and responsiveness in 296 patients initiating or switching anti-retroviral treatment. Feasibility was assessed using mean time of administration and percentage of missing responses. Reliability was assessed using Cronbach‚s agr; and the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC). Construct validity was assessed by correlating questionnaire scores with EuroQol-5D scores, number of symptoms, CD4 cell count and viral load. The area under the curve (AUC) was used for discrimination between patients and healthy donors, and HRQoL scores were compared across disease stage. Responsiveness was assessed by calculating the standardized effect size (SES). Results: Mean administration time was 16 minutes for both questionnaires. On the MOS-HIV 18.9% patients had missing responses compared with 33.6% on the MQOL-HIV. Cronbach‚s agr; values were higher for MOS-HIV sub-scales (0.78-0.89) than MQOL-HIV sub-scales (0.44-0.82), and neither instrument showed good test-retest reliability (ICC values of 0.24-0.85 for MOS-HIV versus 0.48-0.82 for MQOL-HIV). AUC values for the MOS-HIV were 0.6-0.86, compared with 0.5-0.79 for the MQOL-HIV, and the MOS-HIV had higher correlations with symptoms _(r_=_-0.28 to 0.79) and EuroQol scores (r_=_0.4-0.66) than the MQOL-HIV _(r_=_-0.15 to 0.42 and r_=_-0.11 to 0.59, respectively). Neither instrument discriminated well between disease stages. Eight of 11 MOS-HIV sub-scales and the Mental Health Summary Score were responsive to change (SES, 0.18-0.36), compared with six of 10 MQOL-HIV sub-scales and MQOL Index (SES, 0.16-0.27). Conclusions: Neither instrument demonstrated completely satisfactory psychometric properties for use in clinical research, although the MOS-HIV performed slightly better on feasibility and validity and the MQOL-HIV on test-retest reliability.
Saints and their Symbols: Recognizing Saints in Art and in Popular Images

Images that tell the story of salvation illustrate saints in various scenes. They are often depicted by an emblem or icon. It used to be that we knew enough about the saints to recognize them in images or artworks without much trouble, but it is becoming a struggle. Saints and Their Symbols is a solution. It is a guide for recognizing and understanding the saints. This text explains such things as why so many of the saints appear in images with Jesus and the Virgin Mary, yet remain unnamed, which symbols are associated with each saint, and what their roles were in Christian salvation. With full-color images and biographical information about the saints, it is a work of popular religious culture and anthropology.
Infant Hearing Detection Programs: Accountability and Information Management

It is impossible to discuss hea l thca re without ei ther implicit or explicit assumpt i o n s a b o u t its p h i l o s o p h y . We will b e explicit. It is no longer socially conscientious, reasonable, or practical to propose to optimize quality of care without considering cost. As no ted by Finitzo (1995), we must become the stewards of our nation's healthcare dollars. There is a finite fund to expend. If any program or service uses more of this fund than is necessary, a n o t h e r aspect of heal thcare will suffer. Persistent abuse will lead to ques t ions abou t the worth of the offending program. As a developing program in h e a l t h c a r e , In fan t H e a r i n g De tec t ion (IHD) is particularly vulnerable to this examination. We must, therefore, be accountable. We must reflect a genuine consideration for bo th quality maximizat ion and cost minimization. This quality/cost issue is a problem of bivariate optimization. There are two ways to dea l with bivar ia te op t imiza t ion . T h e most appealing is to have a weighted value for the "worth" of an outcome (quality) and the "worth" of funds (cost). We then evaluate programmatic designs objectively based on their total worth. Those that have the h ighes t wor th will be f u n d e d . W h e n we reach the end of our funds, remaining programs of lower worth will be eliminated. It is unlikely we will ever reach consensus as to the "worth" of a right arm or of allowing an infant the opportunity to develop with functional auditory input. Such issues are tightly b o u n d with our individual morals, experiences , and self-images. Weight ing factors would have to be dictated rather than agreed upon. In the absence of such weighting factors, the al ternative a p p r o a c h is stepwise optimization. Each program is expected to come to an op t imum. Within a p rog ram, first you choose either quality or cost. Then you select, from all possible a p p r o a c h e s , those that best and nearly equally optimize your cho ice . F r o m this subset , you t h e n select the approach that has the best effect on the second variable. If healthcare were a stat ic field a n d we were o m n i s c i e n t , we would do this once. Since this is not the case, reexamination is essential to assure that programs remain as cost effective as possible. Our job as steward is never completed.
EAGLE does Space Efficient LTL Monitoring

We briefly present a rule-based framework, called EAGLE, that has been shown to be capable of defining and implementing finite trace monitoring logics, including future and past time temporal logic, extended regular expressions, real-time and metric temporal logics (MTL), interval logics, forms of quantified temporal logics, and so on. In this paper we show how EAGLE can perform linear temporal logic (LTL) monitoring in an efficient way. For an initial formula of size m, we establish upper bounds of O(m22m logm) and O(m422m log2 m) for the space and time complexity, respectively, of single step evaluation over an input trace. This bound is close to the lower bound O(2 √ m) for future-time LTL presented in [16]. EAGLE has been successfully used, in both LTL and metric LTL forms, to test a real-time controller of an experimental NASA planetary rover. Copyright c © 2003, University of Manchester. All rights reserved. Reproduction (electronically or by other means) of all or part of this work is permitted for educational or research purposes only, on condition that no commercial gain is involved. Recent preprints issued by the Department of Computer Science, Manchester University, are available on WWW via URL http://www.cs. man.ac. uk/preprints/index.html or by ftp from ftp.cs. man.ac. uk in the directory pub/preprints. This author is most grateful to RIACS/USRA and to the UK’s EPSRC under grant GR/S40435/01 for the partial support provided to conduct this research. This author is grateful for the support received from RIACS to undertake this research while participating in the Summer Student Research Program at the NASA Ames Research Center.
Design and prototyping of a /spl Sigma//spl Delta/ decimator filter for DECT standard

Deals with the design and prototyping of a decimation filter for DECT standard. Efficient implementation is obtained with a careful design of the filter and an FPGA structure oriented VHDL modelling, reducing power computation and routing needs. A filter prototype has been implemented in a programmable Altera circuit FLEX10K20.
Management of congenital complete atrioventricular block in a 3-year-old boy in natural history in a tertiary centre: a case report

Pacing in children is mainly performed in the setting of congenital or post-surgical complete heart block and less frequently in some surgical patients with sinus node dysfunction. The indications, anatomical variations, and the technical skills required for pacing children are different compared to those for adults. We report the case of a 3-year-old boy presenting with a congenital complete atrioventricular block and underwent epicardial permanent pacing.
Personafying academic librarians’ social media presence

Zohoorian-Fooladi, N. , & Abrizah, A. (2014). Personifying academic librarians’ social media presence. Malaysian Journal of Library and Information Science, Vol.19, no. 3: 13-26. Persona is an approach for system designer to group users based on their common characteristics and personafying refers to the configuration of a concept or practice in the form of a persona. The objective of the study is to explain how persona method can be helpful to illustrate academic librarians’ social media presence with respect to their awareness, current practices and readiness. The study uses qualitative research design in a form of case study to understand how librarians know, use and implement social media in the delivery of library services. Data was gathered through interviews with 26 academic librarians and three focus groups sessions of librarians from three research intensive universities in Malaysia. Findings show that librarians illustrate different behaviour to show how their social media awareness, practices and readinessdetermine the personas into which they were grouped: Skaters, Sliders, Shufflers and Starters. This stream of research on the personas method will provide library managers with results that can be useful to show librarian’ behaviour in using social media, and how library management can use it todesign library services to reach out to wider audiences. Moreover, library managers can direct subordinate librarians to become more active and participatory in creating their social media presence. It is hoped that the method presented in this paper would be easy to perceive and be translatable into practice.
Preliminary design tool of conventional/coaxial/tandem helicopters

The thesis has the purpose of implementing a tool for a preliminary design of a helicopter. The tool is asoftware developed in Matlab and executes the calculations based on two theories: momentum and blade element. With this tool the flight performancescan be calculated, from hover to maximum forward speed, of three types of helicopter:conventional, coaxial and tandem. For sizing of each rotor configuration, the power required, forward velocities, range and endurance can be calculated
Software Side Channel Attack on Memory Deduplication

Applications on multi-tenant cloud computing Applicable by normal user or administrator. 1.Secret communication to other virtual machine for user-level optimization. ・ To prevent a conflict of interest on a processor, or to allocate VMs on same processor. 2. Detection of forbidden applications or unsecure applications. 3. To confirm erasure of important data from memory. “sshd” is not running on victim VM Attacker knows sshd is running on other VM
James McNeill Whistler: Drawings, Pastels and Watercolours: A Catalogue Raisonné

Painter, etcher, draughtsman, lithographer, watercolourist, and author of critical essays and aphorisms, James McNeill Whistler had a tremendous influence on the art and aesthetics of his era. Born in Massachusetts in 1834, he settled in London when he was 25 years old and for the next four decades produced hundreds of highly acclaimed (and sometimes highly criticised) works, often concentrating on two or more media at the same time. His prodigious output and proficiency, along with his eccentricities, polemics, and arguments with critics, won him wide recognition. This catalogue raisonne of Whistler's drawings, pastels and watercolours makes available many of his works that have never before been exhibited or published and demonstrates the wide range of his art. His drawings reveal the everyday working out of his ideas and note the world as it passed by Whistler with vigour and humour. The pastels include sensitive portraits, vigorous studies of models in the studio, and detailed views of Venetian palaces. The watercolours, perhaps his finest works, catch the subtle colours of northern skies and ever-changing seascapes. The catalogue raisonne begins with an introductory essay on Whistler's life and includes over 1700 entries and 1600 illustrations. Every extant work by Whistler, and many now missing, have been catalogued and reproduced, many in colour.
Robust and applicable handwriting biometrics

Handschrift bevat kenmerken die kunnen verraden wie de schrijver is, Dat komt van pas wanneer de politie wil achterhalen wie de schrijver is van bijvoorbeeld een handgeschreven dreigbrief of een mogelijk valse zelfmoordbrief. Het is ook nuttig voor geschiedenisonderzoek. want veel historische bronnen zijn handgeschreven en soms is het mogeJijk om iets te leren over onze geschiedenis door te achterhalen welke documenten door dezelfde persoon geschreven moeten zijn. Het vergelijken van handschrift geheurt traditioneel nog met de hand, door experts, op basis van hun kennis en ervaring. Hoewel zij doorgaans zeer kundig zijn zitten hier wel twee nadelen aanl: deze aanpak is niet objectief en het is tijclrovend werk. Deze tekortkomingen kunnen goed worden gecompenseerd door de computer. want die heeft tegengcstelde kwaliteiten: algoritmes kunnen onbevooroordeeld en razendsnel een enorne hoeveelheid metingen verricbten. Het ligt dus voor de hand om de traditionele handschriftvergelijking te verrijken met een slim stuk gereedschap in de vorm van een computerprogramma dat handschrift kan vergelijken en daa uitsparken over kan denl. Zulke' programmatuur noemen we systemen voor handschriftbiometrie. Er zijn twee typen: schrijververificatie en schrijveridentifiatie. Een systeem voor schrijververificatie bepaalt of twee documenten van dezelfde hand zijn; dit kan worden gebruikt om de uitspraak van handschriftdeskundigen te onderbouwen of juist te ontkrachten. Een systeem yoor schrijveridentificatie zoekt op basis van een document in een bestaande collectie documenten naar documenten met vergelijkbaar handschrift en levert daarbij de identileit van de schrijvers daarvan. Dit kan worden gebruikt door de politie om mogelijke daders te vinden, of door historici om documen te groeperen die mogelijk van dezelfde hand zijn. In hoofdstuk 1 wordt de basis van zulke systemen voor voor handschriftbiometrie toegelicht. Bestaande systemen presteren prima op handschrift dat is geschreven in laboratoriumcondities, maar er is weinig bekend over de prestaties in realistische omstandigheden. In praktijk kan handschrift moeilijkhedenl bevatten zoals een tekort aan tekst. doorgestreepte woorden en verdraaid handsrhrift.
Digital Transformation in Healthcare - the case of a Chinese Medicine Inquiring System

The unique philosophy, diagnosis, and treatment methods of Chinese Medicine (CM) suggest that Health Informatics developments in this domain could benefit by adopting a more suitable synthesis, specifically, incorporating Hegelian and Kantian inquiring systems with the support from Singerian, Lockean, and Leibnizian inquiring systems, and key concepts of Knowledge Management. Directed by qualitative methodology with Case Study and Design Science methods, the specific CM inquiring system, a Patient Management System (PMS) prototype, was constructed. It is anticipated that this experiment provides suggestions and reference to Health Informatics implementations in CM. This paper focuses on the design and building of the PMS.
Physicians’ Perspectives on Ethically Challenging Situations: Early Identification and Action

Background: Limited information on risk factors for ethically difficult clinical situations exists. Identifying common factors in these situations could encourage a more proactive, system-wide approach to ethical issues, which could mitigate patient and family suffering, providers’ moral stress, and costly ethical conflicts. Methods: Quantitative and qualitative data analyses were performed on physician responses to an online survey that queried physician perceptions about ethically complex situations in a large academic medical center and community hospital. Results: Representing 30 specialties, 114 physicians responded. The most frequently encountered situation was working with patients who lacked capacity for decision making. End-of-life treatment decisions and family adamancy were ranked as the most intense situations. Interactional risk factors such as different moral perspectives and poor communication were most prominent (53.9%); patient and family risk factors were also described (33%). Physicians identified early and frequent communication with seriously ill patients and their families as the primary protection against ethical conflict. Ethics skill-building, good teamwork, and creating an ethics-minded culture were also featured as important preventive measures. Pressure from others to take morally uncomfortable action was most often cited as a source of moral stress. The pressure of limited time to address ethical issues was also frequently mentioned. These pressures could progress to ethical conflicts, which often compounded moral stress. A majority of physicians reported willingness to work with nurses on ethically difficult situations. Conclusions: Physicians are very aware of ethical complexities in their clinical practice and take their moral responsibilities very seriously. Communicating effectively with patients, families, and other health care team members and advocating for adequate resources, including ethics resources, are important avenues to mitigate ethical conflicts.
Effects of Quercetin and Chronic (Training) Exercise on Oxidative Stress Status in Animals with Streptozotocin-Induced Diabetes

Increasing evidence in both experimental and clinical studies suggests that oxidative stress is involved in the pathogenesis and progression of diabetic tissue damage. This study investigated the effects of chronic exercise training associated with chronic oral administration of Quercetin on blood glucose levels and oxidative stress status in streptozotocin-induced diabetic Wistar rats. Adult male Wistar rats were divided into seven groups: Group I: non-diabetic, sedentary control rats; Group II: non-diabetic, trained control rats; Group III: non-diabetic, trained control rats treated with Quercetin; Group IV: diabetic, sedentary control rats; Group V: diabetic, trained control rats; Group VI: diabetic, sedentary rats treated with Quercetin; Group VII: diabetic, trained rats treated with Quercetin. Quercetin was administered via an intragastric tube (0.6 ml/rat), at a dose of 20 mg/kg body weight/day for 4 weeks after the induction of diabetes mellitus. Diabetes was induced by a single i.p. injection of streptozotocin (40 mg/kg body weight). Animals were sacrificed at the end of a 4-week swimming training program (1 hour/day, 5 days/week, 4 weeks). The glycemic profile, oxidative status (lipid peroxidation and protein oxidation) and antioxidant levels (superoxide dismutase, catalase and reduced glutathione) were evaluated. When compared to diabetic sedentary rats, the animals submitted to chronic exercise presented significantly lower glycaemic values, and significantly increased oxidative stress levels. The diabetic, trained rats treated with Quercetin presented significantly lower glycaemic values accompanied by a remarkable reduction of oxidative markers. The results suggested that chronic exercise training associated with Quercetin administration could lower blood glucose levels and reduce oxidative stress in in streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats.
Skew minimization techniques for 256M-bit synchronous DRAM and beyond

A major issue in designing a high speed synchronous DRAM (SDRAM) is how to minimize skews, most of which are generated due lo unequal read/write data paths, different enable/disable times between column select lines (CSLs), unequal distribution of clock and unequal cell conditions. In this paper, we will present various circuit techniques for minimization of the skews to achieve the irtaxiiiium intemal clock frequency of a 256M-hit SDRAM.
An improved approach to the hidden Markov model decomposition of speech and noise

The author addresses the problem of automatic speech recognition in the presence of interfering noise. The novel approach described decomposes the contaminated speech signal using a generalization of standard hidden Markov modeling, while utilizing a compact and effective parametrization of the speech signal. The technique is compared to some existing noise compensation techniques, using data recorded in noise, and is found to have improved performance compared to existing model decomposition techniques. Performance is comparable to existing noise subtraction techniques, but the technique is applicable to a wider range of noise environments and is not dependent on an accurate endpointing of the speech. <<ETX>>