Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
P071: Emergency physician attitudes and perceived barriers to take-home naloxone programs in Canadian emergency departments

Introduction: Unintentional overdose is the leading cause of injurious death among Americans aged 25-64 years. A similar epidemic is underway in Canada. Community-based opioid overdose education and naloxone distribution (OOEND) programs distribute take-home naloxone kits to people at risk of overdose in several cities across Canada. Due to the high rate of drug-related visits, recurrent opioid prescribing, and routine encounters with opioid overdose, Emergency Departments (ED) may represent an under-utilized setting to deliver naloxone to people at risk of opioid overdose or likely to witness overdose. The goal of this study was to identify Canadian emergency physician attitudes and perceived barriers to the implementation of take-home naloxone programs. Methods: This was an anonymous web-based survey of physician and trainee members of the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians. Survey questions were developed by the research team and piloted for face validity and clarity. Two reminder emails were sent to non-responders at 2-week intervals, per the modified Dillman method. Respondent demographics were collected and Likert scales used to assess attitudes and barriers to the prescription of naloxone from the ED. Results: A total of 347/1658 CAEP members responded (20.9%). Of the respondents, 62.1% were male and residents made up 15.6%. The majority (48.2%) worked in Ontario and 55.7% worked in an urban tertiary centre. Overall attitudes to OOEND were strongly positive: 86.6% of respondents identified a willingness to prescribe naloxone from the ED. Perceived barriers included allied health support for patient education (56.4%), access to follow-up (40.3%), and inadequate time in the clinical encounter (37.7%). In addition to people at risk of overdose, 78% of respondents identified that friends and family members may benefit from OOEND programs. Conclusion: Canadian emergency physicians are willing to prescribe take-home naloxone to at-risk patients, but better systems and tools are required to facilitate opioid overdose education and naloxone distribution implementation. This data will inform the development of these programs, with emphasis on allied health support, training and education.
Diaphragmatic ultrasound as a predictor of successful extubation from mechanical ventilation: thickness, displacement, or both?

Background: Best predictor of successful extubation after mechanical ventilation is a matter of debate. Objective: The aim of this study was to assess whether the degree of diaphragm thickening and/or diaphragm displacement (DD) as measured by means of ultrasound during a weaning trial can predict extubation outcomes. Methods: Thirty patients who were planned for weaning after being intubated and mechanically ventilated were prospectively enrolled in the study between January and June 2015. The rapid-shallow breathing index (RSBI) was subsequently calculated, and diaphragmatic ultrasound was then carried out to assess DD and diaphragm thickening during tidal inspiration. The primary outcome was extubation success or failure. Results: Of the 30 patients included in the study, 15 were male. The mean age of patients was 59.17+13.17 years. The median duration of intubation before weaning was 4 days. There was a significant difference between mean inspiratory and expiratory diaphragmatic thickness (TDI) (t=9.66, P<0.001). An receiver operating characteristic curve was constructed for the end inspiratory TDI, end expiratory TDI, delta TDI, DD, and RSBI. The RSBI performed better than all other parameters, with an area under the curve of 0.968. A cut-off value of 73.5 had 87% sensitivity and 100% specificity for predicting extubation success. All other parameters had an area under the curve less than 0.7. (0.559, 0.624, 0.655, and 0.512 for end inspiratory TDI, end expiratory TDI, delta TDI, and diaphragmatic displacement, respectively). Conclusion: Sonographically measured TDI performed better than displacement in predicting value for weaning outcome. In a respiratory ICU, however, the RSBI seems to be a more reliable and accurate tool for the purpose and should be considered in every weaning protocol. Whether TDI can be evaluated using low-frequency ultrasound probes needs to be validated by further studies.
MCP-1-2518 A>G and CCR2 V64I polymorphisms in Turkish patients with lung cancer

In the current study, we aimed to investigate the possible role of MCP-1 -2518 A>G and CC chemokine receptor 2 (CCR2) V64I polymorphisms in patients with lung cancer. Sixty-five patients with lung cancer (57 with NSCLC and 8 with SCLC) and 57 healthy controls were enrolled. Polymerase chain reactionrestriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) method was used. Genotype distribution of monocyte chemoattractant protein 1 (MCP-1) -2518 A>G polymorphism in lung cancer patients was as follows: 30 for AA, 30 for AG and 5 for GG genotype. Frequency of minor G allele in patients and controls were found as 30.8% and 23.7%, respectively. In patients, genotype distribution of CCR2 V64I polymorphism was as follows: 47 for GG, 16 for GA, and 2 for AA. Frequency of minor A allele was found in patients and controls as 15.4% and 19.2%, respectively. Genotype distribution and allele frequencies of MCP-1 and CCR2 polymorphism were not statistically different between patients and controls (p values >0.05 for both polymorphisms). In lung cancer patients, there was no significant association between smoking status and MCP-1 and CCR2 polymorphisms. Similarly, no significant association was found between distant organ metastasis and both gene polymorphisms. Our findings suggest that MCP- 1 -2518 A>G and CCR2 V64I polymorphisms are not associated with genetic susceptibility to lung cancer and lung cancer metastasis.
Mixed-Method Impact Evaluation of a Mobile Phone Application for Nutrition Monitoring in Indonesia

Child malnutrition (includes both under- and overweight) remains a challenge. Routine growth monitoring is a common practice that aims to: detect children at risk of malnutrition; direct essential resources when children have growth faltering; track nutrition trends; determine eligibility for counselling and other specific services; and help to make child malnutrition more visible to the child’s caregivers the community and government. The quality and usefulness of growth monitoring is often limited by poor data quality long delays between data collection and dissemination that prevent timely response and shortcomings in the interpretation and use of the data. The full potential of growth monitoring is often underused both to increase knowledge and improve practices at community level and to inform decision-making for better nutrition. The use of mobile phone technology may offer innovative opportunities to strengthen community-based growth monitoring and make it more effective for tackling child malnutrition. Despite global enthusiasm for using mobile phones for nutrition monitoring and surveillance systems there are only very few studies that have critically assessed their application. Together with World Vision Indonesia and World Vision Canada the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) aimed to fill this evidence gap and evaluate the piloting of a mobile phone application for community-based growth monitoring. For this evaluation a mobile phone application was integrated into the existing national growth monitoring system delivered through the integrated health posts (posyandu) programme over a period of 12 months (January 2015 to January 2016) in rural (Sikka) as well as urban (North and East Jakarta) sites in Indonesia. The objectives were: 1. To assess the impact of the mobile phone application on data accuracy and hence accuracy of growth monitoring status classification of children compared to the traditional paper-based system. 2. To assess the impact of the mobile phone application on timeliness and hence timeliness of data submission from community to sub-district level compared to the traditional paper-based system. 3. To assess the impact of the mobile phone application on real-time responsiveness and hence the practice of giving feedback to caregivers compared to the traditional paper-based system. (excerpt)
Cancer Patients with Bone Metastases: Do They Differ in Psychological Distress from Patients with Metastases in Other Sites?

Introduction Most studies of psychological distress in patients with bone metastases combine ali types of metastases and focus discussion on symptoms relevant to the primary site of the cancer, for example, impotence and incontinence (prostate cancer) or breathlessness (lung cancer) (l-4). Yet bone metastases occur in more than half of ali cancer patients and are a common source of discomfort (5). This paper follows earlier research (6) and is part of a larger study of 25 cancer patients who agreed to in-depth qualitative interviews. Respondents were drawn from a psycho-oncology clinic in northem Israel. Interviews lasting 2 to 3 hours were conducted at home by trained interviewers, taped and transcribed. A sample of six interviews with patients with bone metastases was selected for this paper and used heuristically (7). Data analysis included open, axial and selective coding (8). This procedure was used to develop categories of information, to interconnect the categories, and to build a story that connects the categories, and ends with a discursive set of theoretical propositions (9). Discussion is based on the coping model (10), and explores the author's preliminary conclusion that the psychological distress of patients with bone metastases is mainly similar to that of patients with other types of cancer (6). It seeks to examine any differences from the broader population of cancer patients.
Carbonic anhydrase 1 : a study of colon specific gene regulation.

The function of carbonic anhydrase in the colon is principally that of electroneutral sodium chloride reabsorption and short chain fatty acid uptake. Three carbonic anhydrase genes are expressed in the intestine and carbonic anhydrase 1 (CAl) is specific to the colon. The CAl gene has two promoters which act in a mutually exclusive manner, generating high levels of CA l in colon epithehal cells and in erythroid cells. This thesis describes an investigation of the regulation of human CAl in the colon, with a focus on a region of the colon promoter marked by a colon-specific DNasel hypersensitive site. Using a panel of deletion fragments and DNA/protein binding assays, an element which binds a colon-specific factor has been identified. In addition, it has been shown that mutation of the core motif of this element, 5'-TTTTACAA-3', abolishes protein binding. Comparison with transcription factor binding sites identified in other intestinal genes, suggests that the protein binding to the CAl motif is the homeodomain transcription factor, Cdx2. This finding is supported by results from DNA/protein binding and immunosupershift assays. Two Cdx2 binding sites have been identified in both the human and mouse CAl colon promoters. The biological significance of Cdx2 binding to these sites has been investigated by co-transfection studies in cultured cells. Expression of Cdx2 in cells transfected with CAl colon promoter/reporter gene constructs led to an upregulation of reporter gene expression. This activation was both orientation and distance independent; indicating that these elements behave as enhancer sequences in the CAl gene promoter. However, there is evidence to suggest that only the 3' Cdx2 binding site is functional in vivo. These studies have also revealed that Cdx2 may be involved in complex regulatory mechanisms, since it seems that Cdx2 can also bind to TATA boxes of gene promoters, including the CAl promoter. The human homologue of Cdx2 has been cloned from a human jejunum cDNA library and the sequence compared with rodent Cdx2. The homeodomains of Cdx2 and other caudal-type proteins have also been compared. The human CDX2 gene has been assigned to chromosome 13ql213.
Simple Approaches to Analyzing Self-Controlled Case Series (SCCS) Data

ABSTRACT Adverse events that occur at moderate rates can be identified during the development of vaccines. When large populations are vaccinated, new rare adverse events can be observed. Determining whether an observed adverse event is related to a vaccine poses statistical issues. Cohort studies can be biased when comparing vaccinated and unvaccinated cohorts. In self-controlled case series designs, each case acts as his or her own control, eliminating the potential bias between vaccinated and unvaccinated participants in a cohort study. The comparison is whether there is an excess of events close to the time of vaccination versus later in time from the vaccination. In this design, one must specify a time point where the excess risk from the vaccine is thought to be over. We explore the effect of misspecifying this time point and develop analysis methods that do not require the specification of the time point. Power and Type I error rates of different analysis methods are simulated.
Drug use and profile of individuals arrested on drug-related charges in Taiwan

A total of 931 urine specimens and associated donor profile data resulting from drug-related arrests made between January and July 2002 were collected from 12 cities/counties throughout Taiwan. Urine specimens were screened on a REMEDi HS drug profiling system. Drug use findings and profile data were subjected to pattern analysis. Results indicated a drug positive rate of 74%, with 39 drugs identified. Opiates and amphetamines were the major drugs of abuse, with detection rate of 40% and 38%, respectively. Drug users were found in all age categories (from 12 to 57 years old), and were predominantly male (M/F ratio ＞5). Most arrests were made in residences or along roadways (92%-95% of total arrests). A large number of those arrested had quit school before completing junior high school and many had records of multiple arrests. By contrast, club drugs (MDMA/ketamine) were found in our sample group at lower rates (10% and 5%, respectively). Club drug users tended to be younger (mostly under 27 years old), better educated, and with a smaller gender gap (M/F ratio ＜3.5). Club drug users were identified only in four relatively urbanized cities counties and many arrests were for first offenses. Benzodiazepines (BZ) were found throughout the sample, with a detection rate of l8%. The profile identified for BZ users is similar to that of opiate and amphetamine users, although a higher ratio of BZ users (14%) were arrested in recreational places.
Scalable Estimation of Invariant Sets for Mixed-Integer Nonlinear Systems using Active Deep Learning

Set invariance is a crucial property for ensuring safe and feasible performance of closed-loop systems under state and input constraints. Classical set-theoretic methods for constructing reachable and invariant sets are generally inadequate in handling complex system dynamics and may not be scalable to high-dimensional systems. This paper presents a sample-efficient approach for data-driven estimation of invariant sets for constrained nonlinear systems that can exhibit a mixture of continuous, discrete, and/or switching-mode behavior. The approach relies on learning an oracle that verifies if a given system state is feasible. Thus, the invariant set construction problem is converted to a classification problem that can be effectively solved with deep learning. We also present an active learning algorithm to improve the sample efficiency of deep learning-based estimation of the feasibility oracle. Randomized verification is then used to provide probabilistic guarantees for set invariance. The proposed approach does not impose any assumptions on the structure of system dynamics, and is particularly suitable when the feasibility test for control invariance requires solving (expensive) mixed-integer nonlinear programs. The approach is illustrated on a benchmark problem.
Estimation of Vehicle Position and Velocity in Lane Coordinate using IMU-Camera Sensor Fusion

Research for the development of autonomous driving technology has been actively did now days. Control an autonomous vehicle, longitudinal and lateral control are required. In ADAS/Autonomous driving control, it is necessary to accurately measure and estimate the state of a vehicle. Vehicle lateral dynamics model can estimate vehicle lateral velocity in vehicle coordinate. But in order for a vehicle to keep and change in its lane, it is necessary to know the vehicle’s position and velocity information within the lane. If the lateral velocity of a vehicle on lane coordinate is estimated through this study, it will be possible to utilize the results of this study to vehicle lateral control in ADAS systems and autonomous driving systems such as lane-keeping assistance, and lane-following assistance. So this study propose lateral dynamics model can estimate vehicle lateral position and velocity on lane coordinate. Also show estimation result using proposed estimator in this study.
A Leader-following Rendezvous Control Design for the Cucker-Smale Model on the Infinite Cylinder

The collective behavior of multi-agent systems on Riemannian manifolds have attracted increasing interest. In this paper, we consider a leader-following rendezvous problem for the Cucker-Smale model on the infinite cylinder, which is a special kind of Riemannian manifold. By using the covariant derivative, the parallel transport, and the geodesic on the infinite cylinder, we design a feedback control law for the Cucker-Smale model such that the positions of all followers asymptotically track the trajectory of the moving leader. We also provide a numerical simulation to verify and illustrate the theoretical results.
Implicit Channel Coordination to Tackle Starvation Attacks in 5G and Wi-Fi Coexistence Systems

Due to the scarcity of spectrum bands, 5G and Wi-Fi systems are embracing coexistence in the unlicensed 5 and 6 GHz bands to support high data rate demands and growing number of users. To provide fair and effective coexistence in shared frequency bands, both technologies rely on carrier sensing. However, differences in sensing thresholds creates an unfair advantage for 5G nodes who access the shared wireless medium more aggressively and degrade the data rate and latency of Wi-Fi nodes. We show in this paper that an adversary who intends to deny service to Wi-Fi can stealthily exploit this unfairness to drastically reduce the spectrum occupancy and data rate of Wi-Fi nodes. We then propose a novel implicit channel coordination (ICC) approach to mitigate the attack and improve sharing fairness. In ICC, Wi-Fi nodes influence 5G gNB into choosing a precoding matrix that nearly nullifies downlink signals at Wi-Fi nodes. We demonstrate our starvation attack on a USRP testbed and further evaluate our proposed ICC approach using simulations. We show that ICC doubles the data rate of a Wi-Fi network subject to an active attack.
Informed Guided Rapidly-exploring Random Trees*-Connect for Path Planning of Walking Robots

In this paper, we deal with the problem of full-body path planning for walking robots. The state of walking robots is defined in multi-dimensional space. Path planning requires defining the path of the feet and the robot's body. Moreover, the planner should check multiple constraints like static stability, self-collisions, collisions with the terrain, and the legs' workspace. As a result, checking the feasibility of the potential path is time-consuming and influences the performance of a planning method. In this paper, we verify the feasibility of sampling-based planners in the path planning task of walking robots. We identify the strengths and weaknesses of the existing planners. Finally, we propose a new planning method that improves the performance of path planning of legged robots.
Wide Area Route Prediction Scheme by Integrating Multiple Radars

The authors are considering using millimeter waves to improve the power efficiency of 5G networks. Millimeter wave can transmit large volumes of data with low delay and high efficiency. However, since millimeter waves have strong straightness, there is a problem of blocking. Therefore, as a measure to effectively avoid blocking, we are considering using radar to predict the route of the terminal and switching to macro communication that covers a wide area before entering the blocking area. In order to realize this scheme, wide-area and accurate route prediction is required, but it is difficult to satisfy sufficient performance with a single radar device, so the authors integrated multiple radars using a Kalman filter. We confirmed the performance of the scheme with a testbed and found that it has become possible to predict a wide area route while maintaining accuracy.
Health literacy during ageing and implications for health behaviour

Ageing involves rising challenges for health and well-being. At the same time, older age has been associated with having low health literacy. Health literacy is essential for comprehension of the complex information that older adults need to make health decisions. Health literacy and its health behavioural outcomes during ageing have never been examined longitudinally. This thesis reviews the literature and uses data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing to address these gaps. Study 1, a systematic review and meta-analysis, shows that health literacy skills based on active learning may decline with age, while vocabulary-based skills are stable with age. Study 2 shows that health literacy declines in about one-fifth of English adults aged over 50 years, and that cognitive function and decline mostly explain ageing-related health literacy decline. Men, ethnic minorities, and adults with no education and in low occupational classes are the most vulnerable to losing health literacy during ageing. Study 3 demonstrates that sustained Internet use and engagement in social activities may help to prevent ageing-related health literacy decline, independently of cognitive decline. Study 4 shows that low health literacy is a barrier to participation in colorectal cancer screening, an effect mostly explained by cognitive function around the time of screening. Study 5 explores the relationships between health literacy and health behaviours over eight years, finding that health literacy may help to promote sustained regular physical activity during ageing, independently of cognitive function and physical health. Results demonstrate that health literacy is sensitive to ageing, and that cognitive function and decline play a significant role in health literacy performance at older ages. Health literacy appears to be a resource that is maintained during ageing by socially advantaged adults through specific social practices, and they use it to improve and protect their health. Limitations and future research directions are discussed.
Optimal planetary landing with pointing and glide-slope constraints

This paper studies a vertical powered descent problem in the context of planetary landing, considering glide-slope and thrust pointing constraints and minimizing any final cost. After stating the Max-Min-Max or Max-Singular-Max form of the optimal control deduced from the Pontryagin Maximum Principle, it theoretically analyzes the optimal trajectory for a more specific problem formulation to show that there can be at most one contact or boundary interval with the state constraint on each Max or Min arc.