Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention and Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation to Reduce Heavy Drinking: A Double-Blind Sham-Controlled Randomized Trial.

BACKGROUND Mindfulness-based relapse prevention (MBRP) and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) have independently shown benefits for treating alcohol use disorder (AUD). Recent work suggests tDCS may enhance mindfulness. The combination of MBRP and tDCS may provide synergistic benefits and may target both behavioral and neurobiological dysfunctions in AUD. The goal of this double-blind sham-controlled randomized trial was to examine the efficacy of a rolling group MBRP treatment combined with tDCS among individuals interested in reducing their drinking. METHODS Individuals who were interested in reducing their alcohol use (n = 84; 40.5% female; mean age = 52.3; 98.9% with current AUD) were randomized to receive active (2.0 milliamps) or sham (0.0 milliamps) anodal tDCS (5 cm × 3 cm electrode) of the right inferior frontal gyrus with the 5 cm × 3 cm cathodal electrode applied to the left upper arm, combined with 8 weeks of outpatient MBRP rolling group treatment. Assessments were conducted at baseline, posttreatment, and 2 months following treatment. The primary outcome was drinks per drinking day, and secondary outcomes were percent heavy drinking days, self-reported craving, alcohol cue reactivity in an alcohol cue task, and response inhibition in a stop signal reaction time task. RESULTS Results indicated significant reductions in drinks per drinking day over time, B(SE) = -0.535 (0.16), p = 0.001, and a significant dose effect for number of groups attended, B(SE) = -0.259 (0.11), p = 0.01. There were also significant effects of time and dose for number of groups attended on secondary outcomes of percent heavy drinking days and alcohol cue reactivity. There were no effects of active versus sham tDCS on primary or secondary outcomes. CONCLUSIONS Findings from the current study provide initial support for the effectiveness of rolling group MBRP as an outpatient treatment for drinking reduction. The current study did not find additive effects of this tDCS protocol in enhancing MBRP among individuals with drinking reduction goals.
Circle the wagons: measuring the strength of consumers’ brand defense

ABSTRACT Customers are frequently connecting to other consumers resulting in both positive and negative comments. Despite widespread use of negative comments, it is common to see consumers defending their brands or products. However, less is known on what brand defense is and how to measure brand defense. Across three studies, we conceptualise and develop a scale to measure brand defense. Brand defense is conceptualised as the act of defending, forgiving, and advocating the brand. The results show that the scale is reliable, valid, and distinct from other brand measures, including brand love, brand trust, and brand loyalty. Results indicate that managers can work toward developing the kind of consumer-brand relationships that would promote brand defense; to combat negative publicity prevalent in the social media landscape in order to sustain brand reputation. Directions for future research and managerial implications of the new construct are discussed.
Shared neural mechanisms between imagined and perceived egocentric motion – A combined GVS and fMRI study

Many cognitive and social processes involve mental simulations of a change in perspective. Behavioral studies suggest that such egocentric mental rotations rely on brain areas that are also involved in processing actual self-motion, thus depending on vestibular input. In a combined galvanic vestibular stimulation (GVS) and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) study, we investigated the brain areas that underlie both simulated changes in self-location and the processing of vestibular stimulation within the same individuals. Participants performed an egocentric mental rotation task, an object-based mental rotation task, or a pure lateralization task during GVS or sham stimulation. At the neural level, we expected an overlap between brain areas activated during vestibular processing and egocentric mental rotation (against object-based mental rotation) within area OP2 and the Posterior Insular Cortex (PIC), two core brain regions involved in vestibular processing. The fMRI data showed a small overlap within area OP2 and a larger overlap within the PIC for both egocentric mental rotation against object-based mental rotation and vestibular processing. GVS did not influence the ability to perform egocentric mental rotation. Our results provide evidence for shared neural mechanisms underlying perceived and simulated self-motion. We conclude that mental rotation of one’s body involves neural activity in the PIC and area OP2, but the behavioral results also suggest that those mental simulations of one’s body might be robust to modulatory input from vestibular stimulation.
OVERVIEW OF GRINDING SYSTEMS AND MV DRIVE TECHNOLOGIES IN MINES

Mining of ore has become technology driven operation today. The mined ore needs to be processed at site so that further operations are convenient and cost effective and high volumes are processed. Grinding of ore is one of the most important and power intensive operation in mining. In order to process the ore at faster rate, sizes of mills have gone bigger and bigger. While mill diameters have touched 42 feet, at the same time power required has gone upto 38 MW per system. Because of huge processing requirements, mills have migrated from geared to gearless and accordingly changes in mechanical systems, drive motors and power converter technologies have thrown a bigger challenge. Scaling up the equipment also has major requirement of robust mechanical design to reduce maintenance and ensure reliable operation. This paper focuses on overview of various grinding systems, drive and converter technologies and other aspects like design, operation and maintenance. Comprehensive literature survey conducted and systems which are being used today are compared with respect to cost, efficiency and drawbacks. Also possible advanced technologies with respect to improvement in Drive is also suggested.
A call to action to inform patient‐centred approaches to obesity management: Development of a disease‐illness model

Patient‐centred care is an essential component of high‐quality health care, shown to improve clinical outcomes and patient satisfaction, and reduce costs. While there are several authoritative models of obesity pathophysiology and treatment algorithms, a truly patient‐centred model is lacking. We describe the development of a patient‐centric obesity model. A disease‐illness framework was selected because it emphasizes each patient's unique experience while capturing biomedical aspects of the disease. Model input was obtained from an accumulation of research including contributions from experts in obesity and patient‐reported outcomes, qualitative research with adults living in the United States, and two targeted literature searches. The model places the patient with obesity at its core and links pathologic imbalances of energy intake and expenditure to environmental, sociodemographic, psychological, behavioural, physiological and medical health determinants. It highlights relationships between obesity signs and symptoms, comorbid conditions, impacts on health‐related quality of life, and some barriers to obesity management that must be considered to attain better outcomes. Providers need to evaluate patients holistically, understand what changes each patient is motivated to make, and recognize what challenges might impede weight reduction, improvements in comorbid conditions, signs and symptoms, and health‐related quality of life before pursuing individualized treatment goals. Patients living with obesity who do lose weight perceive benefits beyond weight loss. Ideally, this model will increase awareness of the complex, heterogeneous impacts of obesity on patients' well‐being and recognition of obesity as a chronic disease, and prompt a call to action among stakeholders to improve quality of care.
A Deep Neural Network-Based Method for Early Detection of Osteoarthritis Using Statistical Data

A large number of people suffer from certain types of osteoarthritis, such as knee, hip, and spine osteoarthritis. A correct prediction of osteoarthritis is an essential step to effectively diagnose and prevent severe osteoarthritis. Osteoarthritis is commonly diagnosed by experts through manual inspection of patients’ medical images, which are usually collected in hospitals. Checking the occurrence of osteoarthritis is somewhat time-consuming for patients. In addition, the current studies are focused on automatically detecting osteoarthritis through image-based deep learning algorithms. This needs patients’ medical images, which requires patients to visit the hospital. However, medical utilization and health behavior information as statistical data are easier to collect and access than medical images. Using indirect statistical data without any medical images to predict the occurrence of diverse forms of OA can have significant impacts on pro-active and preventive medical care. In this study, we used a deep neural network for detecting the occurrence of osteoarthritis using patient’s statistical data of medical utilization and health behavior information. The study was based on 5749 subjects. Principal component analysis with quantile transformer scaling was employed to generate features from the patients’ simple background medical records and identify the occurrence of osteoarthritis. Our experiments showed that the proposed method using deep neural network with scaled PCA resulted in 76.8% of area under the curve (AUC) and minimized the effort to generate features. Hence, this methos can be a promising tool for patients and doctors to prescreen for possible osteoarthritis to reduce health costs and patients’ time in hospitals.
Simulating the Impacts of Hybrid Campus and Autonomous Electric Vehicles as GHG Mitigation Strategies: A Case Study for a Mid-Size Canadian Post-Secondary School

This paper presents how a post-secondary institution like University of British Columbia’s Okanagan (UBCO) campus can reduce its carbon footprint and be aligned with the government’s target through promoting virtual campus and autonomous electric vehicles (AEVs). Different virtual campus scenarios are developed: online classes only, working-from-home only, and a hybrid of both. In the case of AEVs, alternative penetration rates for levels 2 and 5 are considered. A total of 50 scenarios are tested using a sub-area transport simulation model for UBCO, which is extracted from the regional travel demand forecasting model. The results suggest that a 40% AEV penetration rate coupled with fully in-person classes reduces GHG by ~36% compared to the 2018-level, which will help UBCO to achieve their 2030 emission reduction target and be aligned with the provincial target. The 50% AEV and 10% hybrid virtual campus reduces emissions by ~48%, which is aligned with the 2040 provincial target. A fully virtual campus will help to reach the 2050 provincial target by reducing GHG by ~76%. The results further demonstrate that level 5 AEVs produce lesser emissions than level 2 at a lower AEV penetration rate for the fully in-person campus scenario. At higher penetration rates, level 5 performs better only if it is coupled with 10% of students, faculties and staffs attending virtual campus scenario.
Efficient Modulation and Processing Method for Closed-Loop Fiber Optic Gyroscope with Piezoelectric Modulator

This paper presents a simple method for compensating the Sagnac phase shift in an interferometric fiber-optic gyroscope (I-FOG) with a piezoelectric modulator. The common advantages of I-FOGs with closed-loop compensation are linearized output characteristics and insensitivity to the light source power, including its time and thermal-induced fluctuations. Whereas closed-loop operation is normally achieved via ramp modulation requiring an electro-optic modulator, all-fiber architectures with a piezoelectric modulator are mostly limited to open loop. Nevertheless, such setups can more conveniently utilize a less expensive single-mode fiber with depolarized light and do not require any custom-made components. The proposed method allows us to combine the advantages of both approaches. Closed-loop compensation is ensured by adding further sinusoidal modulation to the common biasing modulation, such that the Sagnac phase shift is compensated solely at the sampling instants. We describe and experimentally demonstrate the proposed approach, utilizing a test setup to compare our closed-loop solution with open-loop operation. The results denote that the method provides a cost-efficient manner of performance improvement compared to the open-loop I-FOGs based on a piezoelectric modulator.
Adjustable Speed Induction Motor Drive Fed by 13-Level Cascaded Inverter and 54-Pulse Converter

In this article, a 13-level asymmetric configured cascaded H-bridge (CHB) inverter is used with a 54-pulse ac–dc converter to feed a medium voltage indication motor (IM). A thorough analysis is carried out to design an isolated multiwinding transformer (MWT) based 54-pulse converter. Accordingly, the main aim of this converter is to extract the power from the grid as per the power quality standard. Moreover, a higher number of voltage levels in CHB inverter are used to adhere the power quality due to asymmetric dc supplies, having a 1:2:3 voltage ratio. Hence, a 13-level CHB-MLI is implemented with nine dc voltage sources. The converters of this drive system ensure that the quality of the grid currents and drive currents are excellent and meet the IEEE 519 power quality successfully. A nearest-level control technique is implemented to generate the switching logic for a 13-level CHB- CHB inverter. Simulated results demonstrate the performance of a 298.4 kW induction motor drive in steady-state and dynamic state. A validation study is conducted on an experimental setup with a 7.5 kW IM at steady and dynamic states. Test results show a good agreement in terms of total harmonics distortions, power loss, and efficiency.
RETRACTED ARTICLE: Long non-coding RNA SNHG16 reduces hydrogen peroxide-induced cell injury in PC-12 cells by up-regulating microRNA-423-5p

Abstract We, the Editors and Publisher of the journal Artificial Cells, Nanomedicine, and Biotechnology, have retracted the following article: Haochuan Liu, Bing Chen and Qingsan Zhu, (2019). Long non-coding RNA SNHG16 reduces hydrogen peroxide-induced cell injury in PC-12 cells by up-regulating microRNA-423-5p. Artificial Cells, Nanomedicine, and Biotechnology. 47:1, 1444–1451, DOI: 10.1080/21691401.2019. 1600530 Since publication, the authors noticed that an inappropriate cell line was used. As this error directly impacts the reported results and conclusions the authors alerted the issue to the Editor and Publisher and all have agreed to retract the article to ensure correction of the scholarly record. We have been informed in our decision-making by our policy on publishing ethics and integrity and the COPE guidelines on retractions. The retracted article will remain online to maintain the scholarly record, but it will be digitally watermarked on each page as ‘Retracted’.
Assessment of Community Pharmacist’s Practice and Patient Counselling Toward Acute Diarrhea Treatment in Khartoum Locality: A Simulated Patient Study

Background Acute diarrhea is one of the most common health problems globally as a minor ailment, it is widely managed by community pharmacists (CPs). Professional patient counseling provided in community pharmacies is essential to decide about acute diarrhea and avoid treatment failure properly. Objective To assess CPs’ history-taking practice, medication dispensing, and patient counseling in response to acute diarrhea in adults. Methods A cross-sectional, covert simulated patient (SP) study was conducted in 235 community pharmacies in the Khartoum locality. Two scenarios were used, one scenario assesses afterwards compliance to treatment guidelines and patient counseling, and second scenario determines afterwards if pharmacists referred patients to medical consultation. Six final-year pharmacy students were involved as SPs. All encounters were audio-recorded by SP. Then the investigator filled the checklist that was intended to evaluate the overall practice of pharmacists. Results As planned, 235 pharmacies were visited twice, resulting in a total of 470 visits (visit completion rate: 100%). In history taking, the most asked questions were the patient’s age (89.8% for scenario 1 and 88.5% for scenario 2). Followed by the presence of blood in the stool (25.5% for scenario 1 and 28.1% for scenario 2). In scenario 1, loperamide was the most dispensed medication (81.3%), while oral rehydration solution (ORS) was dispensed in 0.9% of the visits. In counseling, verbal and written instructions were provided in 47.7% of the visits. Duration of medications was mentioned in 3.8%, advice about fluid intake was offered in 7.2% of the visits. In scenario 2, 17% of the pharmacists managed patient history well to refer patients to medical consultation, while 42.6% recommended referral after sufficient information was provided by the SP. Conclusion CPs’ practice in counseling toward acute diarrhea was poor; referral to medical consultation was below expectation. The current CPs dispensing practices need improvement; thus, professional education should be encouraged.
Minimally invasive versus conventional extracorporeal circulation circuits in patients undergoing coronary artery bypass surgery: a propensity-matched analysis

Objectives: Minimally invasive extracorporeal circulation circuits provide several advantages compared to conventional extracorporeal circulation circuits. We compared the results of a minimally invasive extracorporeal circulation system with those of conventional extracorporeal circulation system, in patients undergoing isolated coronary artery bypass grafting. Methods: We identified 753 consecutive patients who underwent coronary artery bypass grafting at our centre between October 2014 and September 2016. These patients were divided into two groups: a minimally invasive extracorporeal circulation group (M, n = 229) and a conventional extracorporeal circulation group (C, n = 524). Baseline parameters, details of cardiac surgery as well as postoperative complications and outcomes were compared by means of a propensity-matched analysis of 180 matched pairs. Results: The median EuroSCORE II was 1.3%. Transfusion requirement of packed red blood cells (p = 0.002) was lower in Group M compared to conventional extracorporeal circulation systems. There were no differences in hospital mortality or in rates of adverse events between the matched groups. Total in-hospital mortality of the cohort was 1.7%. Conclusion: The use of minimally invasive extracorporeal circulation is associated with a significantly lower use of blood products after isolated coronary revascularisation. There were no differences concerning duration of surgery, complication rates and mortality between the groups. Therefore, the application of minimally invasive extracorporeal circulation systems should be considered as preferred technique in isolated coronary artery bypass grafting procedures.
Heart rate variability monitoring for emotion and disorders of emotion

Background: Emotion is composed of cognitive processing, physiological response and behavioral reaction. Heart rate variability (HRV) refers to the fluctuations between consecutive heartbeat cycles, and is considered as a non-invasive method for evaluating cardiac autonomic function. HRV analysis plays an important role in emotional study and detection. Objective: In this paper, the physiological foundation of HRV is briefly described, and then the relevant literature relating to HRV-based emotion studies for the performance of HRV in different emotions, emotion recognition, the evaluation of emotional disorders, HRV biofeedback, as well as HRV-based emotion analysis and management enhanced by wearable devices, are reviewed. Significance: It is suggested that HRV is an effective tool for the measurement and regulation of emotional response, with a broad application prospect.
Intrinsic planar polarity mechanisms influence the position-dependent regulation of synapse properties in inner hair cells

Significance The wide dynamic range of sound encoding enables perception of sounds varying over six orders of magnitude, thought to be collectively achieved by distinct classes of type I spiral ganglion neurons (SGNs) contacting each inner hair cell (IHC). These synaptic contacts have been shown to vary according to the SGN firing properties along the modiolar–pillar axis. It has also been shown that the IHCs spatially segregate active zones (AZs) with different Ca2+-influx properties, proposing an attractive candidate mechanism for the diverse sound encoding properties among SGNs. Our study, combining confocal/STED immunofluorescence microscopy, patch-clamp, and Ca2+ imaging, proposes that Gαi and LGN, involved in planar polarity mechanisms at the IHC apex, contribute to establish the spatial gradient of IHC AZ properties. Encoding the wide range of audible sounds in the mammalian cochlea is collectively achieved by functionally diverse type I spiral ganglion neurons (SGNs) at each tonotopic position. The firing of each SGN is thought to be driven by an individual active zone (AZ) of a given inner hair cell (IHC). These AZs present distinct properties according to their position within the IHC, to some extent forming a gradient between the modiolar and the pillar IHC side. In this study, we investigated whether signaling involved in planar polarity at the apical surface can influence position-dependent AZ properties at the IHC base. Specifically, we tested the role of Gαi proteins and their binding partner LGN/Gpsm2 implicated in cytoskeleton polarization and hair cell (HC) orientation along the epithelial plane. Using high and superresolution immunofluorescence microscopy as well as patch-clamp combined with confocal Ca2+ imaging we analyzed IHCs in which Gαi signaling was blocked by Cre-induced expression of the pertussis toxin catalytic subunit (PTXa). PTXa-expressing IHCs exhibited larger CaV1.3 Ca2+-channel clusters and consequently greater Ca2+ influx at the whole-cell and single-synapse levels, which also showed a hyperpolarized shift of activation. Moreover, PTXa expression collapsed the modiolar–pillar gradients of ribbon size and maximal synaptic Ca2+ influx. Finally, genetic deletion of Gαi3 and LGN/Gpsm2 also disrupted the modiolar–pillar gradient of ribbon size. We propose a role for Gαi proteins and LGN in regulating the position-dependent AZ properties in IHCs and suggest that this signaling pathway contributes to setting up the diverse firing properties of SGNs.