Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Theory-informed design of values clarification methods : A cognitive psychological perspective on patient treatment decision making

Healthcare decisions, particularly those involving weighing benefits and harms that may significantly affect quality and/or length of life, should reflect patients’ preferences. To support patients in making choices, patient decision aids and values clarification methods (VCM) in particular have been developed. VCM intend to help patients to determine the aspects of the choices that are important to their selection of a preferred option. Several types of VCM exist. However, they are often designed without clear reference to theory, which makes it difficult for their development to be systematic and internally coherent. Our goal was to provide theory-informed recommendations for the design of VCM. Process theories of decision making specify components of decision processes, thus, identify particular processes that VCM could aim to facilitate. We conducted a review of the MEDLINE and PsycINFO databases and of references to theories included in retrieved papers, to identify process theories of decision making. We selected a theory if (a) it fulfilled criteria for a process theory; (b) provided a coherent description of the whole process of decision making; and (c) empirical evidence supports at least some of its postulates. Four theories met our criteria: Image Theory, Differentiation and Consolidation theory, Parallel Constraint Satisfaction theory, and Fuzzy-trace Theory. Based on these, we propose that VCM should: help optimize mental representations; encourage considering all potentially appropriate options; delay selection of an initially favoured option; facilitate the retrieval of relevant values from memory; facilitate the comparison of options and their attributes; and offer time to decide. In conclusion, our theory-based design recommendations are explicit and transparent, providing an opportunity to test each in a systematic manner. 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
The Impact of Political Culture on Firms' Choice of Exploitation–Exploration Internationalization Strategy

This article discusses the impact of political culture on the exploitation–exploration internationalization strategies of firms. In particular, we propose that four dimensions of political culture – nationalism, internationalism, patriotism, and cosmopolitanism – influence firms’ willingness to explore new opportunities and/or to exploit existing products and capabilities across borders. We suggest that firms in nationalist home country cultures are more likely to pursue exploitation strategies, whereas those in cosmopolitan cultures are more likely to pursue exploration strategies. For firms embedded in patriotic or internationalist cultures, a mix of exploitation and exploration internationalization strategies might be the more likely choice. We conclude that these political culture dimensions may be useful to understand and predict many firm-level strategic choices, such as the type of internationalization strategy pursued, the choice of foreign entry mode and location, and decisions concerning the management of foreign subsidiaries.
Improving Models for Air-Sea Gas Exchange using measurements of Noble Gas ratios in a Wind-Wave Tank

5 Chapter 1: Introduction and Background 1. Noble Gases as Chemical Tracers. 6 2. GEMS for Continuous Noble Gas Measurements. 7 3. Methods for Quantifying Air-Sea Gas Exchange. 7 4. Noble Gases as Quantifiers for Air-Sea Gas Exchange. 9 5. Wind-Wave Tanks in Air-Sea Exchange Studies. 13 6. Our Experiment: Noble Gas Tracers in a Wind-Wave Tank. 14
MINUTIAE LOCAL STRUCTURES FOR FINGERPRINT INDEXING AND MATCHING

Human beings use specific characteristics of people such as their facial f eatures, voice and gait to recognize people who are familiar to us in our daily life. The fact that many of the physiological and behavioral characteristics are sufficiently distinctive and can be used f or automatic identification of people has led to the emergence of biometric recognitionas a prominent research field in recent years. Several biometric technologies have been developed and successfully d eplo ed around the world such as fingerprints, face, iris, palmprint, hand geometry, and signature. Out of all these biometric traits, fingerprints are the most popular because of their ease of capture, distin ctiveness and persistence over time, as well as the low cost and maturity of sensors and algorithms. This thesis is focused on improving the efficiency of fingerprint recognitio n systems using local minutiae based features. Initially, we tackle the problem of large scale finger print matching called fingerprint identification. Large size of databases (sometimes containing billio ns of fingerprints) and significant distortions between different impressions of the same finger ar e some of the major challenges in identification. A naive solution involves explicit comparison of a probe fing erprint image/template against each of the images/templates stored in the database. A better approac h to speed up this process is to index the database, where a light-weight comparison is used to reduce th e database to a smaller set of candidates for detailed comparison. In this thesis, we propose a novel hash-based indexing method to speed u fingerprint identification in large databases. For each minutia point, its local neighborhood information is c mputed with features defined based on the geometric arrangements of its neighboring minutiae points . The features proposed are provably invariant to distortions such as translation, rotation and scalin g. These features are used to create an affine invariant local descriptor called an Arrangement Vector , which completely describes the local neighborhood of a minutiae point. To account for missing and spur ious minutiae, we consider subsets of the neighboring minutiae and hashes of these structures are us ed in the indexing process. Experiments conducted on FVC 2002 databases show that the approach is quite effective and gives better results than the existing state-of-the-art approach using similar affin e features. We then extend our indexing framework to solve the problem of matching of two fingerprints. We extend the proposed arrangement vector by adding more features to it an d making it more robust. We come up with a novel fixed-length descriptor for a minutia that captures its distin ct ve local geometry. This distinctive representation of each minutiae neighborhood allows us to co mpare two minutiae points and determine their similarity. Given a fingerprint database, we then use uns upervised K-means cluster-
Surgical site infection at Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center, Tanzania

The title of this study is “Surgical site infections at Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center, Tanzania”. Hanne Eriksen conducted the study under supervision of Egil Lingaas, Salum Kondo and Samuel Chugulu. Support of this study was given by loans from “Statens lanekasse” and funding from EWS stiftelsen and “Lise og Arnifinn Hejes Fond”. An article from this study is being submitted to Journal of Hospital Infection Control. The study received ethical clearance from the “Regional komite for medisinsk forskningsetikk, helse regionen Vest” and from the administration at Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center (KCMC). Background: Surgical site infections (SSI) are the most common infection among surgical patients. SSI causes patient morbidity and mortality. Local nosocomial infection surveillance and prevention programs are reported to be highly cost effective Objectives: The main objective was to identify the incidence of SSI and its related risk factors. Other objectives were to identify the aetiological agents, their resistance pattern, and also to see if the rates of SSI would be influenced by feedback to the staff concerning both SSI rates found and observations concerning hygienic practices. Design and settings: A five-month prospective surveillance study of SSI, an indicator of healthcare quality, was conducted at the department of general surgery at KCMC, Tanzania. The study started 20 of July 2000 and ended the 20 of December 2000. SSI were classified according to Centers for Disease Control (CDC) criteria and identified by active bedside surveillance and post discharge follow up. Results: There were 396 operations on 388 patients included into this study. This study showed that 19.4% (77 patients) developed SSI. Twenty eight (36.4%) of these infections were apparent only after discharge from hospital. Another finding was that 87% of those who developed SSI had received antibiotic prophylaxis. Significant risk factors for developing SSI during hospital stay were: operations classified as contaminated or dirty, operations lasting for more than 50 minutes, and longer preoperative stays. The only risk factor significantly associated with the development of SSI after discharge was having undergone a cleancontaminated operation. Staphylococcus aureus was the most frequently isolated microorganism, followed by Escherichia coli and Klebsiella spp. Most of the pathogens identified were multi-resistant, an exception being S. Aureus (54.5% of the isolates were sensitive to all the tested antibiotics). Conclusion: This study has shown that the incidence of SSI and the prevalence of antibiotic resistance in this teaching and tertiary level care hospital is high. The risk factors were similar to those reported in countries with more resources. Infection prevention measures should be re-evaluated.
A Survey on Cryptography and Steganography

Cryptography is an area, which is developed to provide security for the sender and receiver to transmit and receive confidential data through an insecure channel by a means of process called encryption / decryption. Cryptography ensures that the message should be sent without any alternation and only the authorized person can be able to open and read the message. A number of cryptographic techniques are developed for achieving secure communication. There are basically two techniques of cryptography symmetric and asymmetric steganography. Steganography can be defined as the study of invisible communication that usually deals with the ways of hiding the existence of the communicated message. The main objectives of steganography are undetectability, robustness (resistance to various image processing methods and compression) and capacity of the hidden data. This paper includes the detailed survey on the steganography techniques and encryption algorithm with their merits and demerits.
Internet Addiction among Adolescents in Malaysia : The Prevalence and its Association with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder ( ADHD ) Symptoms

Objective: As Internet use becomes ubiquitous among adolescents, Internet addiction turns out to be as a potential problem in adolescents. The aim of this cross-sectional study was to examine the prevalence of internet addiction and its associated factors among the adolescents in Malaysia. Methods: The association between internet addiction and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms was also examined in this cross-sectional study, which was conducted at four secondary schools in Malaysia. In this study, Malaysian Version of Internet Addiction Test (MVIAT), Conners-Wells Adolescent Self-report: Short Form (CASS:S), The Conners Teachers Rating Scale: Short Form (CTRS:S) and The Conners’ Parents Rating Scale: Short For (CPRS: S) were used. Results: The results demonstrated 28.6% of the subjects were addicted to the internet and there was a positive association with ADHD symptoms. Male gender, early age of first internet use, longer total time of internet use are associated with internet addiction problem among the adolescents. Internet addiction has become highly prevalent among the adolescent in Malaysia. Conclusions: It is important to provide support for this group of adolescent with internet use problem. Measure to prevent the worsening of the situation and future research on the causal factors of internet addiction such as ADHD is needed.
Mood disorders in elderly patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is a major cause of morbidity, disability and mortality in old age. The disease is characterized by shortness of breath, impaired ventilatory function and easy fatiguability. These are the most distressing and disabling symptoms of COPD, limiting exercise tolerance, interfering with basic activities of daily living and often, in turn, impairing quality of life.
Methodology for global geodetic time series estimation: A new tool for geodynamics

A method of automatically combining geodetic network solutions to produce station coordinate time series with realistic computed errors has been developed and tested and is being applied on a weekly basis to Global Positioning System (GPS) global and regional networks of the International GPS Service. Our techniques include modified Helmert blocking, stochastic modeling to minimize frame bias, Monte Carlo simulation, variance component estimation, and multiparameter data snooping. An 18-month time series evaluation of 150 globally distributed stations demonstrates that our combined weekly solution is more complete, precise, and reliable than any contributing solution. Our method of attaching regional networks without perturbing the global network solution, rather than combining normal equations, improves the quality measures. The median RMS of station position residuals with respect to a constant velocity model is 2.4 mm in latitude, 3.0 mm in longitude, and 7.2 mm in height. Our solution has since been incorporated into the reference frame ITRF96 (International Terrestrial Reference Frame 1996), showing a RMS coordinate difference of 5.4 mm, the lowest of all contributing solutions. As an independent test, the RMS difference with the ITRF94 is 4.5 mm in horizontal and 8.1 mm in height. As a second external test, the station velocity solution was used to estimate plate tectonic Euler vectors, which were then compared with the NUVEL-1A model and found to differ at a level consistent with the computed errors. Given a few more years of data, our error model predicts solutions that will be sufficiently precise to rigorously test NUVEL-1A or its successors.
Filling the Ontology Space for Coalition Battle Management Language

The Coalition Battle Management Language is a language for representing and exchanging plans, orders, and reports across live, constructive and robotic forces in multi-service, multi-national and multiorganizational operations. Standardization efforts in the Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization seek to define this language through three parallel activities: (1) specify a sufficient data model to unambiguously define a set of orders using the Joint Command, Control, and Consultation Information Exchange Data Model (JC3IEDM) as a starting point; (2) develop a formal grammar (lexicon and production rules) to formalize the definition of orders, requests, and reports; (3) develop a formal battle management ontology to enable conceptual interoperability across software systems. This paper focuses on the third activity, development of a formal battle management ontology, by describing an ontology space for potential technical approaches. An ontology space is a notional three dimensional space with qualitative axes representing: (1) the Ontological Spectrum; (2) the Levels of Conceptual Interoperability Model; and (3) candidate representation sources that can contribute to conceptual interoperability for the Coalition Battle Management Language. The first dimension is the Ontological Spectrum, which shows increasing levels of semantic formalism using various ontology representation artifacts. The second dimension is the Levels of Conceptual Interoperability Model, which describes varying levels of interoperability that can be attained across systems. The third dimension is a survey of likely candidate sources to provide the representation elements required for interoperability. This third dimension will be further described in relation to the artifact capabilities of the second dimension and the conceptual interoperability capabilities of the first dimension to highlight what is possible for ontological representation in C-BML with existing sources, and what needs to be added. The paper identifies requirements for building the ontology artifacts (starting with a controlled vocabulary) for conceptual interoperability, the highest level described in the LCIM, and gives a path ahead for increasingly logical artifacts.
Impact of Therapeutic Electrical Stimulation of Sacral Surface Considering Individual Anatomical Sacral Variations on Early Recovery Urinary Continence after Radical Prostatectomy

Objectives: To investigate the effect of electrical stimulation of different anatomical variations of sacral surface on early recovery of urinary continence after radical prostatectomy. Methods: Twenty of 53 consecutive patients who underwent prostatectomy by a single surgeon were enrolled in this study. Ten patients were prospectively randomized to two groups; five patients in Sacral foramena stimulation group received postoperative surface electrical stimulation of sacral foramina area while five patients in control group did not received any electrical stimulation. Selection of remaining ten patients depended on sacral hiatus anatomical variations, assessed by plan X-rays. Of the ten patients, five patients with sacral hiatus subtotals were grouped under SHS1 while 5 patients with sacral hiatus totals were grouped as SHS2. Electrical stimulation for each group began 7 days after catheter removal, thrice a week for 8 weeks. Each of the 24 treatment sessions for each group composed of 20 minutes for sacral electrical stimulation. Continence was evaluated at baseline, 4 and 8 weeks using the 24-hour pad test and according to the incontinence section of the International Continence Society questionnaire. Results: After 2 weeks of treatment, the mean leakage weight was comparable between SFS group and SHS1 group while it was significantly lowered in SHS2 as compared to SFS and SHS1 groups. Comparing mean leakage weight at 8 weeks revealed further significant reduction in SHS2 group than in SFS and SHS1 groups. Moreover, percentage of continent patients was highest in SHS2 group after 8 weeks of treatment followed by SHS1, SFS and control respectively. Conclusions: Electrical stimulation of sacral hiatus surface area may provide better stimulation for sacral nerve than sacral foramena surface area and appears to be effective treatment for early recovery of urinary continence after radical prostatectomy.
Sparse Active Triangulation Grids for Respiratory Motion Management

In radiation therapy, tracking the patient’s non-rigid torso deformation during dose delivery holds potential to improve accuracy and efficiency using model-based tumor motion compensation. Conventional solutions rely on a 1-D respiration surrogate and are subject to model uncertainties. Instead, the proposed system acquires sparse 3-D measurement grids and recovers a multi-dimensional surrogate.
Basic Definitions and Operations for Gestalt Algebra

The gestalt algebra is a mathematical construction designed to capture the perceptual structure of complex patterns. Such patterns occur e.g. in aerial images of urban terrain. The principles of gestalt construction – namely proximity, good continuation, similarity and symmetry – are used in a recursive way to describe image or scene data using terms following an algebraic definition. Such description can be used for recognition, matching, or data mining.
Selective Culture of Human Skeletal Myoblasts by Brefeldin A

Purification of skeletal muscle myoblasts from other cells such as fibroblasts is essential in basic research and cell-based regenerative medicine. In this report a simple non-serological method is proposed to purify desmin-positive myoblasts using Brefeldin A. Ordinary passaged human skeletal muscle-derived cells were cultured for 3 days with five exocytic pathway inhibitors (Brefeldin A, Monensin, AACOCF3, Exo-1 and Golgicide A). The myoblasts identified by desmin exhibited relatively superior growth compared to the other cells, both in 7 15 ng/mL of Brefeldin A and in 850 – 2500 ng/mL of Golgicide A. In the case of 10 ng/mL Brefeldin A, the cell numbers increased 6.7-fold in desmin-positive cells and 2.4-fold in desmin-negative cells while they increased 11.7-fold and 15.6-fold in absence of Brefeldin A, respectively. In addition, 7-day cultures in 10 ng/mL Brefeldin A of four independent cell strains suggested that moderate starting purities resulted in high purities over 90%, while extremely low starting purities (< 1%) did not support stable purifications. Lastly, a strain purified through a 7-day culture with 10 ng/mL Brefeldin A was subjected to myotube induction culture. Fluorescent imaging using a confocal microscope revealed their ability to form multinucleated myotubes and myofibers with sarcomeric structures. In conclusion, the purification of desmin-positive cells by culturing human skeletal musclederived cells with Brefeldin A provides a simple method to obtain purified myoblasts for use in basic research and cell-based regenerative medicine.
On Derivation Trees of Indexed Grammars —An Extension of the uvwxy-Theorem—

In this paper, the uvwxy-theorem of context-free languages is extended to the case of indexed languages. Applying the extended theorem, it is shown that the finiteness problem for the indexed languages is solvable and certain languages such as {anl\n^l} and {($ w)lwl |w;e {a, &}*} are not indexed languages.
Almost Unsupervised Content Filtering Using Topic Models

One important way to help users deal effectively with document repositories is to automatically filter out those parts of the documents which are irrelevant to his/her goal at hand. While such a goal-driven content-filtering system is an ambitious target, we propose an almost unsupervised approach to separate useless (irrelevant) sentences in a document from useful (relevant) sentences. We automatically construct a topic model using a standard algorithm [2], manually divide the topics into useful and useless, then aggregate all useful topics into a single useful topic and all useless topics into a single useless topic and then automatically assign a label, “useful” or “useless” to each sentence, depending on whether it is “closer” to the aggregated useful or useless topic. We illustrate the approach on a real-life dataset of IT infrastructure support (ITIS) tickets containing highly noisy problem descriptions and solutions to remove all sentences not relevant as solution steps. We experimentally demonstrate that our results, apart from requiring minimal user intervention, improve over other content-filtering approaches. The approach can be generalized to remove useless sentences (from any perspective) from other types of documents.
Financial Frictions, the Phillips Curve and Monetary Policy

How does the presence of financial frictions alter the Phillips curve and the conduct of optimal monetary policy? I investigate this question in a tractable small-scale New Keynesian DSGE model with a financial accelerator. The accelerator amplifies shocks, decreases the slope of the Phillips curve and renders forward-looking behavior more relevant for current macroeconomic dynamics. I show analytically that these three factors imply an inflationary bias of discretionary monetary policy relative to the standard model and a stabilization bias relative to commitment policy. A conservative central banker who places a larger weight on inflation stabilization than society is able to reduce both biases and closely mimics the optimal policy under commitment. The required degree of inflation conservatism increases in the degree to which financial frictions are present.