Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Psychic and social consequences of women in relation to memories of a stillborn child: a pilot study.

Prevalence and determinants of long-term psychosocial morbidity among women giving birth to a stillborn child are largely unknown. Few, if any, systematic epidemiologic studies are available. In this pilot study we investigated one alternative way to collect data from relevant patient populations and formulated some hypotheses. Moreover, questions found unhelpful in this context were identified, e.g., whether the mother had bathed her dead child or not. Fruitful hypotheses found worthwhile testing were, among others: the risk of long-term anxiety-related symptoms is reduced if (1) the woman has seen her stillborn child, (2) she has an ultrasonic or photographic picture of the child, and (3) she has gone through a ritual, primarily burial of the child; moreover, (4) divorce may be a social consequence of the intrauterine loss of a child.
Using Electronic Meeting Technology to Support Economic Policy Development in New Zealand: Short-Term Results

This paper describes an application of group support technology to a series of economic policy-making meetings. The meetings were part of a national study aiming to upgrade New Zealand's competitive position in global markets. The aim of the research is to determine if electronic meeting technology could support an economic development process where participants came from a variety of backgrounds (e.g., business competitors, different ethnic groups) and where meeting urgency and efficiency were of prime importance. A multiple case approach was adopted. The meetings were organized and facilitated by the coordinator of the national study. Research data were gathered by observing the meetings, by questionnaires administered to participants, and by interviews with the coordinator and his staff. Analysis of these data indicates that participants felt that the meetings were both very effective and efficient. Implications for using group support technology for economic policy development are discussed.
Reliability of CHROMagar® O157 for the detection of enterohaemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC) O157 but not EHEC belonging to other serogroups

CHROMagar® O157 is designed for the rapid isolation and identification of enterohaemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC), particularly O157, characterized by pink colonies. Five hundred and eighty‐five E. coli strains, including O157, O111 and O113 serogroups, from many sources were examined on CHROMagar® O157. Enterohaemorrhagic E. coli O157 could readily be isolated and recognized uniquely by typical pink colonies. Some other EHEC also produced pink colonies, whereas O113 and many other EHEC strains were blue and indistinguishable from Shiga‐like toxin‐negative strains of E. coli.
Prediction of Hypothyroidism Disease by Data Mining Technique

Background: Hypothyroidism is one of the endocrine diseases found in human being, it is not a immediate fatal disease, but progress in chronic status that lead to other diseases. Several machine learning techniques were applied to hypothyroidism for the prediction of hypothyroid medical diseases. Methods: The dataset used for UCI repository which has 3163 observations with 151 belongs to category hypothyroid disease. Considered with two missing data method, four imbalance data method and two kinds of classification models by using serval evaluation indexes to find a better model. Results: After comparison of these models, query_on_thyroxine and lithium were ignored and TBG was reconsidered in the model. A new RF imputation method was used. Finally, all variables model have 100% accuracy but cost time and money, only use TSH, FTI, TBG, TT4 and age variables model also can keep 0.9988 AUC, which will more useful in real case. Conclusion: Both all variables mode and five variables model have very high accuracy than previous studies, a nonparametric ensemble model is suggest in this case. But there also have some limitations like out-of-date data, hypothyroidisms type were not considered.
Effect of Variable Biquadratic Exchange Coupling on the Magnetic Hysteresis of Uniaxial Antiferromagnetic Co/Ru/Co Films

We investigated biquadratic exchange coupling strength in sputtered uniaxial antiferromagnetic Co/Ru/Co trilayers, which can be tuned by applying a magnetic field perpendicular to the sample surface during deposition. The perpendicular field induces a columnar grain structure that results in a perpendicular magnetic anisotropy for single Co layers. The perpendicular magnetic anisotropy is detected by combined magnetization and Brillouin light scattering measurements. In trilayers, increasing the perpendicular field during deposition results in a monotonic increase of the biquadratic exchange coupling strength, so these samples provide an experimental realization of the effect of variable biquadratic coupling strength on magnetic hysteresis behavior. The hard-axis remanence is a direct measure of biquadratic exchange coupling strength, which we demonstrated both by experiment and by a Stoner-Wohlfarth model that includes the relevant magnetic parameters.
Understanding and Prediction of User Behavior in Online Social Networks : the Case of GitHub

Along with the continuous development of Internet technology, Online Social Networks (OSNs) have gradually become the most popular platforms for content creation, information sharing and communications between users on the Internet. Understanding and prediction of user behavior in OSNs are essentially valuable. In the past few decades, machine learning is widely used and has become incredibly powerful in user behavior prediction. However, few researchers have considered the combination of machine learning and network analysis, especially using the hidden network information as features for prediction problem. In this thesis, we propose a novel method for user activity prediction by using machine learning algorithms as well as network properties from Github. The prediction is based on previous activities of not only the user him/herself but also his/her neighbors on GitHub. The results of prediction and performance evaluation demonstrate that the neighbor activity information from both one-layer and two-dimension networks of GitHub indeed can help to improve the performance of predicting a user’s active level. Additionally, the massive analysis of how our methods can help to improve the prediction accuracy is given from both the network and time series analysis perspective. Understanding and Prediction of User Behavior in Online Social Networks: the Case of GitHub
Initial severity rating of idiopathic clubfeet is an outcome predictor at age two years

This study was performed to determine if rating the severity of clubfeet before Ponseti treatment was predictive of the outcomes at age two years. Four hundred and seventy-nine idiopathic clubfeet (323 patients) were numerically rated for severity using Dimeglio classification. Eighty-six feet rated moderate, 305 feet rated severe, and 88 feet rated very severe. Outcomes were classified as Good (plantigrade foot with or without a tendoachilles lengthening), Fair (limited surgery), or Poor (posteromedial release). Significant correlation existed between initial severity of the foot and outcomes, with moderate better than severe and very severe, and severe better than very severe. Initial numerical severity rating strongly correlated with the probability of a good outcome (P<0.0001). Evaluating the severity of clubfeet before Ponseti treatment provides prognostic information for parents.
A Promising Novel Therapy for Achilles Peritendinitis:Double-Blind Comparison of Glycosaminoglycan Polysulfate and High-Dose Indomethacin

In this double-blind trial in 60 recreational athletes suffering from Achilles peritendinitis, we compared the effect of local injections of glycosaminoglycan polysulfate (GAGPS) with oral indomethacin (IM) administered over a 2-week period. Orthotic devices were prescribed in 66% of the cases to control biomechanical errors. The results after 1-year follow-up showed that GAGPS had a good overall therapeutic effect on two-thirds of the patients compared to one-third of the IM treated. In the patients with symptoms lasting longer than 3 months, IM had an effect in only 12% while GAGPS was beneficial in 59%. Twenty-five cases of non-responders and relapses underwent a crossover treatment. Those who received IM in this second period did not benefit from this treatment while those who received GAGPS showed a moderate to good effect in 8/17 (47%) after a 2-week follow-up. A different mode of action is suggested as an explanation of the encouraging results.
Elementary school curriculum reform in Turkey

This paper aims to examine the nature of the new elementary school curriculum in Turkey. In particular, the authors provide a coherent picture of the fundamentals, basic elements and the classroom implications of the new curriculum development initiative in five content areas: mathematics, science, social science, life science, and Turkish. This paper discusses the fundamental principles underlying the curriculum reform, including social, individual, economical, and historical and cultural aspects. In addition, the paper addresses the main motivators: Turkey’s integration with the European Union, major issues with Turkish students’ academic performance in national and international arenas which led the curriculum change. It is believed that the implementation of the new curriculum will give new insights to the policy makers, classroom teachers, students, parents and other related parties. The results of the implementation of the curriculum will open new opportunities for researchers to identify the strengths and drawbacks for further improvements.
Relationship Between H5N2 Avian Influenza Viruses Isolated from Wild and Domestic Ducks in British Columbia, Canada

Abstract In the summer of 2005 a Canadian national surveillance program for influenza A viruses in wild aquatic birds was initiated. The program involved collaboration between federal and provincial levels of government and was coordinated by the Canadian Cooperative Wildlife Health Centre. The surveillance plan targeted young-of-the-year Mallards along with other duck species at six sampling locations along the major migratory flyways across Canada. Beginning in early August, cloacal swabs were taken from 704 ducks on two lakes adjacent to one another near Kamloops, British Columbia. The swabs were screened for the presence of influenza A RNA using a real-time reverse transcription–polymerase chain reaction (RRT-PCR) assay that targets the M1 gene. Swab samples that gave positive results underwent further testing using H5- and H7-specific RRT-PCR assays. One hundred and seventy-four cloacal swab specimens gave positive or suspicious results for the presence of an H5 virus. A portion of these (28/35) were confirmed using an H5-specific conventional reverse transcription–polymerase chain reaction assay and an H5 virus was eventually isolated from 24/127 swab specimens. Neuraminidase typing revealed the presence of H5N2 and H5N9 viruses. In mid-November of 2005 an H5N2 virus was detected in a commercial duck operation in the lower mainland of British Columbia, approximately 120 km from where the H5N2-positive wild ducks were sampled. Molecular genetic analysis of the H5N2 viruses isolated from wild and domestic ducks was carried out to determine their kinship.
Levels of distress in breast cancer survivors approaching discharge from routine hospital follow‐up

Hospital‐based breast cancer follow‐up provides reassurance to patients despite limited evidence for clinical efficacy. Although alternative models of hospital/community‐based follow‐up have yielded encouraging results, traditional hospital follow‐up continues to be offered to all patients. Survival rates continue to rise; consequently, more patients are likely to require support, as many have a limited understanding of the long‐term physical and emotional consequences of cancer and its treatment. We examine levels of psychological distress in breast cancer patients in follow‐up 2 years or more from diagnosis.
Visual Exploration of Media Transparency for Data Journalists: Problem Characterization and Abstraction

Today, journalists increasingly deal with complex, large, and heterogeneous datasets and, thus, face challenges in integration, wrangling, analysis, and reporting these data. Besides, the lack of money, time, and skills influence their journalistic work. Information visualization and visual analytics offer possibilities to support data journalists. This paper contributes to an overview of a possible characterization and abstraction of certain aspects of data-driven journalism in Austria. A case study was conducted based on the dataset of media transparency in Austria. We conducted four semistructured interviews with Austrian data journalists, as well as an exploratory data analysis of the media transparency dataset. To categorize our findings we used Munzner s analytical framework and the Data-User-Task Design Triangle by Miksch and Aigner.
A wideband capacitively fed suspended plate antenna for wearable wireless sensors

A suspended shorted patch capacitively fed using an inverted L-shape feed is a compact antenna for wearable wireless sensors. A short microstrip line was printed on the sensor PCB to connect the antenna to a transceiver chip. The shorting of the suspended patch was done using printed silver ink on the side wall of a 22mm × 6mm × 6mm block of polycarbonate plastic that suspends the mounted patch. Based on the required bandwidth, the height of the plastic block can be decreased to 2 mm. The simulated 10 dB bandwidth of the antenna, was 98% (2.2 GHz-6.44 GHz) for a 6 mm high polycarbonate block. The size of the sensor including the elevated antenna was 35mm × 22mm × 9mm. The antenna features an upward directional radiation pattern which decreases the electromagnetic coupling between the human body and the antenna. The simulated total radiation efficiency of antenna is more than 90% in free space which drops to 70% at 2.4 GHz and 80% at 5.8 GHz when the sensor is located next to a voxel model of the human body and simulated maximum gain of antenna was 2.3 dBi at 2.4 GHz, 3.5 dBi at 3.5 GHz and 4.6 dBi at 5.8 GHz respectively.
Direct analysis of bacterial viability in endotracheal tube biofilm from a pig model of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus pneumonia following antimicrobial therapy.

Confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) helps to observe the biofilms formed in the endotracheal tube (ETT) of ventilated subjects and to determine its structure and bacterial viability using specific dyes. We compared the effect of three different treatments (placebo, linezolid, and vancomycin) on the bacterial biofilm viability captured by CLSM. Eight pigs with pneumonia induced by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) were ventilated up to 96 h and treated with linezolid, vancomycin, or placebo (controls). ETT images were microscopically examined after staining with the live/dead(®) BacLight(™) Kit (Invitrogen, Barcelona, Spain) with a confocal laser scanning microscope. We analyzed 127 images obtained by CLSM. The median ratio of live/dead bacteria was 0.51, 0.74, and 1 for the linezolid, vancomycin, and control groups, respectively (P = 0.002 for the three groups); this ratio was significantly lower for the linezolid group, compared with the control group (P = 0.001). Images showed bacterial biofilm attached and non-attached to the ETT surface but growing within secretions accumulated inside ETT. Systemic treatment with linezolid is associated with a higher proportion of dead bacteria in the ETT biofilm of animals with MRSA pneumonia. Biofilm clusters not necessarily attach to the ETT surface.
Unbiased S-D Threshold Optimization, Initial Query Degradation, Decay, and Incrementality, for Adaptive Document Filtering

We develop further the S-D threshold optimization method. Specifically, we deal with the bias problem introduced by receiving relevance judgements only for documents retrieved. The new approach estimates the parameters of the exponential-Gaussian score density model without using any relevance judgements. The standard expectation maximization (EM) method for resolving mixtures of distributions is used. In order to limit the number of documents that need to be buffered, we apply nonuniform document sampling, emphasizing the right tail (high scores) of the total score distribution. For learning filtering profiles, we present a version of Rocchio's method which is suitable and efficient for adaptive filtering. Its main new features are the initial query degradation and decay, while it is fully incremental in query updates and in calculating document score statistics. Initial query degradation eliminates gradually the contribution of the initial query as the number of relevant training documents increases. Decay considers relevant instances (documents and/or initial query) of the near past more heavily than those of the early past. This is achieved by the use of half-life, i.e. the age that a training instance must be before it is half as influential as a fresh one in training/updating a profile. All these new enhancements are consistent with the initial motivation of Rocchio's formula. We, moreover, use a form of term selection for all tasks (which in adaptive tasks is applied repeatedly), and query zoning for batch filtering and routing.
A model-based approach to access and congestion control in communication networks

This paper presents a design procedure for access and congestion control in communication networks. Motivated by an analysis of the characteristics of communication networks, the proposed approach makes use of model-based control methodologies. The design procedure is then applied to the problems of access control in satellite networks and congestion control in packet networks. The resulting schemes, easily obtained with the aim of providing full link utilization and congestion avoidance, respectively, are equal to two well-known protocols, validating the proposed design procedure.
Survey on ontologies for affective states and their influences

Human behavior is impacted by emotion, mood, personality, needs and subjective well-being. Emotion and mood are human affective states while personality, needs and subjective well-being are inﬂuences on those affective states. Ontologies are a method of representing real-world knowledge, such as human affective states and their inﬂuences, in a format that a computer can process. They allow researchers to build systems that harness affective states. By unifying terms and meanings, ontologies enable these systems to communicate and share knowledge with each other. In this paper, we survey existing ontologies on affective states and their inﬂuences. We also provide the psychological background of affective states, their inﬂuences and representational models. The paper discusses a total of 20 ontologies on emotion, one ontology on mood, one ontology on needs, and 11 general purpose ontologies and lexicons. Based on the analysis of existing ontologies, we summarize and discuss the current state of the art in the ﬁeld.
The iCub humanoid robot : an open platform for research in embodied cognition

We report about the iCub, a humanoid robot for research in embodied cognition. At 104 cm tall, the iCub has the size of a three and half year old child. It will be able to crawl on all fours and sit up to manipulate objects. Its hands have been designed to support sophisticate manipulation skills. The iCub is distributed as Open Source following the GPL/FDL licenses. The entire design is available for download from the project homepage and repository (http://www.robotcub.org). In the following, we will concentrate on the description of the hardware and software systems. The scientific objectives of the project and its philosophical underpinning are described extensively elsewhere [1].
A kalman filter approach to sensor-based robot control

A means of controlling a sensor-based industrial robot using the C programming language is presented. A special purpose C function is described that allows robot move instructions to be qualified by desired sensor readings and uses the total applied correction to update the estimate of pre-taught locations using a Kalman filter. The system allows rapid specification of sensory feedback tasks and is demonstrated on a current industrial research problem; namely the lay-up of carbon-fiber profiles for assembly into satellite antenna dishes.
Influence maximization in social networks with user attitude modification

The aim of influence maximization problem is to find a k-size seed set that has the maximum influence. In previous works the modification of user's attitude is seldom paid attention to. However from the psychology research, we know that people's opinions are affected by their friends. Base on this, we present a new Linear Threshold model with Instant Opinions (LT-IO). We devise an attitude function Atu that describes node u's attitude at time t, and the broadcast attitude which is the attitude when a node becomes active. To simulate information propagation in real world, we define a trust threshold η to justify whether a node follows or opposes the influence from its neighbor. We propose a heuristic algorithm IMLT-IOA to solve our problem, prove its submodularity and monotonicity and then obtain its approximation ratio which is (1 - 1/e). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that focuses on the influence maximization with user's attitude modification. To verify our IMLT-IOA algorithm, we conduct extensive experiments on a large data collection obtained from real social networks, the results show that IMLT-IOA reduces the running time and meanwhile keeps effectiveness comparing to other algorithms.
Role of Platelet Rich Plasma in Orthopedic Surgery

Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) is a new technology focused on enhancing the healing response after injury of different tissue types. PRP is prepared by withdrawal of patients’ peripheral blood and centrifugation to obtain a highly concentrated sample of platelets, which undergo degranulation to release growth factors with healing properties. It also contains plasma, cytokines, thrombin, and other growth factors that are implicated in wound healing and have inherent biological and adhesive properties. The prepared concentrate is then injected back into the patient at the site of morbidity. This may be intralesional, intra-articular, or surrounding the involved tissue bed. PRP preparations have been used therapeutically in various medical fields with a more recent evolution and promising results in the field of orthopaedic surgery. In cases of tendon, ligament, muscle,cartilage disorders, bone repair, Acl reconstruction, planter fasciitis, intervertebral disc degeneration and osteoarthritis that have failed conservative treatment measure.
Identification of temporal order in three-tone sequences.

Well‐trained subjects identified with remarkable accuracy the temporal order of three contiguous pure tones of different frequencies, presented as a single sequence. For a given set of three frequencies covering a one‐octave span, the minimum duration of each component tone necessary for absolute identification of a sequence was 2–7 msec on the average. A total frequency range narrower than 1/3–2/3 octave depressed the identifiability of temporal order, whereas increasing the frequency range beyond this limit had no appreciable effect. Simple harmonic relation between the three components was associated with higher identification performace than was a complex harmonic relation. In general, those temporal orders in which the frequency change was unidirectional were more easily identified than the others. Also, the highest and the lowest of the three tones in final position were recognized more often than any of the sequences and were, most probably, used by the observers as cues for the identification of s.