Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Influencing behaviour change in general practice - Part 2 - motivational interviewing approaches.

BACKGROUND Behaviour change toward achieving a healthy lifestyle is important for all Australians, and general practitioners have a key role to play in assisting patients to make these changes. OBJECTIVE This is the second of two articles on influencing behaviour change in general practice. This article deals with the 'how to' of motivational interviewing in the general practice setting. DISCUSSION Motivational interviewing can help build motivation, commitment and confidence to change. General practitioners can use motivational interviewing to help their patients achieve their health goals. Motivational interviewing is not about a set of techniques and questions; it is about creating a climate that facilitates change; it is more about listening than telling, evoking rather than instilling. Motivational interviewing can be done in the brief periods available in consultations over time.
ACK-based broadcast protocol for vehicular ad hoc networks

This paper proposes a new vehicular broadcast protocol that can operate in a dense as well as in sparse highway traffic scenarios. ACK-CAST is a distributed multihop broadcast protocol that relies on acknowledgment messages from one-hop neighbors to select next rebroadcasting vehicle in VANETs. The performance of the proposed scheme was compared with SERVUS. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme performs better in terms of efficiency, reliability and scalability.
Full-Reference Objective Quality Assessment of Tone-Mapped Images

In this paper we present a novel method for full-reference image quality assessment (IQA) of tone-mapped images displayed on standard low dynamic range (LDR) displays. Due to the dynamic range compression caused by the tone-mapping process a mixture of several artifacts and distortions may be produced in the tone-mapped images. This makes the quality assessment of the tone-mapped images very challenging. Due to the diversity of such artifacts and distortions we propose a “bag of features” (BOF) approach to tackle this problem. Specifically in the proposed method a number of different perceptually relevant quality-related features are first extracted from a given tone-mapped image and its reference HDR image. These features are designed such that they capture different aspects and attributes of the tone-mapped image such as its structural fidelity naturalness and overall brightness. A support vector regressor is then trained based on the extracted features and it is used for measuring the visual quality of a tone-mapped image. Our experimental results indicate that the proposed method achieves high accuracy as compared to several existing methods.
Notice of RetractionCallus Induction and In Vitro Plantlet Re-Generation of Dioscorea panthaica

Dioscorea panthaica Prain et Burkill is a traditional Chinese herb and field cultivation as the major source of this plant becomes hard to meet the increasing demand in the market. Moreover, the propagation through rhizome is both costly and causing low yield and poor quality. Here, in order to providing commercial grade seedlings through in vitro propagation, we have studied callus formation, organ differentiation and plantlet regeneration. The in vitro establishment and propagation of mature D.panthaica plant were firstly reported in present paper. Our results suggested that leaves were the best explants for callus induction, and the optimal medium were as followed: MS with 2.0 mg/L 2,4-D and 2.0 mg/L BA for callus induction; MS with 1.0 mg/L BA, 0.5 mg/L NAA, 2% sucrose at pH 6.4 for shoot differentiation; and MS with 0.5 mg/L BA, 0.1 mg/L NAA, 3% sucrose at pH 6.8 for root formation.
Games of Stochastic Automata

The collective behavior of variable-structure stochastic automata in competitive game situations is investigated. It is demonstrated that when the automata use optimal or ? -optimal reinforcement schemes, the Von Neumann value is achieved for games against nature as well as for two-player zero-sum games having a saddle point. Computer simulations of the latter games also indicate that in the absenice of a saddle point the value of the game oscillates about the Von Neunmann value in mixed strategies.
UB-CQA: A user attribute based community question answering system

Intelligent Community Question Answering (CQA) system is a popular research topic in Natural Language Processing (NLP) area. Recently, the development of distributed data mining has significantly improved the efficiency of the searching and sorting operations in CQA database. However, problems are left unanswered such as how to choose the best answer among multiple candidates for a single question. To solve this issue, we design a CQA system called UB-CQA. First, in database refinement part, we construct an optimized and structured database by the best answer choosing method leveraging user attribute provided by the response provider. Second, in human-computer part, the UB-CQA is able to search and provide a more satisfying answer to users by similarity calculation and re-ranking method leveraging text categorization information. Empirical evaluations show that the best answer choosing and the candidate question re-ranking methods bring great improvements in accuracy and reliability.
Dental stem cells in tooth regeneration and repair in the future

ABSTRACT Introduction: Human dental stem cells can be obtained from postnatal teeth, extracted wisdom teeth or exfoliated deciduous teeth. Due to their differentiation potential, these mesenchymal stem cells are promising for tooth repair. Therefore, the development of dental tissue regeneration represents a suitable but challenging, target for dental stem cell therapies. Areas covered: In this review, the authors provide an overview of human dental stem cells and their properties for regeneration medicine. Numerous preclinical studies have shown that dental stem cells improve bone augmentation and healing of periodontal diseases. Clinical trials are ongoing to validate the clinical feasibility of these approaches. Dental stem cells are also important for basic research. Expert opinion: Dental stem cells offer numerous advantages for tooth repair and regeneration. Data obtained from different studies are encouraging. In the next few years, investigations on dental stem cells in basic research, pre-clinical research and clinical studies will pave the way to optimizing patient-tailored treatments for repair and regeneration of dental tissues.
Prevalence of Candida on the tongue and intertriginous areas of psoriatic and atopic dermatitis patients

Data in the literature regarding the prevalence of Candida in psoriatic and atopic dermatitis patients are controversial. We conducted a prospective study to determine the prevalence of Candida on the tongue, axillae and groin of psoriatic patients when compared with atopic dermatitis patients and normal controls. During the period 2003–2005, data were collected from 100 psoriatic patients, 100 patients with atopic dermatitis and 100 normal controls. Fungal test specimens for Candida were collected from the axillae, groin and tongue of each patient. There was no increase in the prevalence of Candida in intertriginous area of either psoriatic or atopic dermatitis patients. However, the prevalence of Candida on the tongue was significantly higher in psoriatic patients (32%) compared with atopic dermatitis (18%) (P = 0.024) and higher, although not significantly, than in normal controls (21%) (P = 0.08). Our study did not reveal higher prevalence of Candida in the axillae and groin of either psoriatic or atopic dermatitis patients. There was a higher prevalence of Candida on the tongue of psoriatic patients. The Candida of the tongue was asymptomatic and did not correlate with age, gender, type of psoriasis or severity of the disease, therefore we conclude that this is clinically irrelevant.
A Synergistic Approach for Distributed Symbolic Execution Using Test Ranges

Symbolic execution is a systematic program analysis technique that has received a lot of attention in the research community. However, scaling symbolic execution continues to pose a major challenge. This paper introduces Synergise, a novel two-fold integration approach. One, it integrates distributed analysis and constraint re-use to enhance symbolic execution using feasible ranges, which allow sharing of constraint solving results among different workers without communicating or sharing potentially large constraint databases (as required traditionally). Two, it integrates complementary techniques for test input generation, e.g., search-based generation and symbolic execution, for creating higher quality tests using unexplored ranges, which allows symbolic execution to re-use tests created by another technique for effective distribution of exploration of previously unexplored paths.
miR-29 Modulates Wnt Signaling in Human Osteoblasts through a Positive Feedback Loop*

Differentiation of human mesenchymal stem cells into osteoblasts is controlled by extracellular cues. Canonical Wnt signaling is particularly important for maintenance of bone mass in humans. Post-transcriptional regulation of gene expression, mediated by microRNAs, plays an essential role in the control of osteoblast differentiation. Here, we find that miR-29a is necessary for human osteoblast differentiation, and miR-29a is increased during differentiation in the mesenchymal precursor cell line hFOB1.19 and in primary cultures of human osteoblasts. Furthermore, the promoter of the expressed sequence tag containing the human miR-29a gene is induced by canonical Wnt signaling. This effect is mediated, at least in part, by two T-cell factor/LEF-binding sites within the proximal promoter. Furthermore, we show that the negative regulators of Wnt signaling, Dikkopf-1 (Dkk1), Kremen2, and secreted frizzled related protein 2 (sFRP2), are direct targets of miR-29a. Endogenous protein levels for these Wnt antagonists are increased in cells transfected with synthetic miR-29a inhibitor. In contrast, transfection with miR-29a mimic decreases expression of these antagonists and potentiates Wnt signaling. Overall, we demonstrate that miR-29 and Wnt signaling are involved in a regulatory circuit that can modulate osteoblast differentiation. Specifically, canonical Wnt signaling induces miR-29a transcription. The subsequent down-regulation of key Wnt signaling antagonists, Dkk1, Kremen2, and sFRP2, by miR-29a potentiates Wnt signaling, contributing to a gene expression program important for osteoblast differentiation. This novel regulatory circuit provides additional insight into how microRNAs interact with signaling molecules during osteoblast differentiation, allowing for fine-tuning of intricate cellular processes.
Input-Output Analysis and Decentralized Optimal Control of Inter-Area Oscillations in Power Systems

Local and inter-area oscillations in bulk power systems are typically identified using spatial profiles of poorly damped modes, and they are mitigated via carefully tuned decentralized controllers. In this paper, we employ non-modal tools to analyze and control inter-area oscillations. Our input-output analysis examines power spectral density and variance amplification of stochastically forced systems and offers new insights relative to modal approaches. To improve upon the limitations of conventional wide-area control strategies, we also study the problem of signal selection and optimal design of sparse and block-sparse wide-area controllers. In our design, we preserve rotational symmetry of the power system by allowing only relative angle measurements in the distributed controllers. For the IEEE 39 New England model, we examine performance tradeoffs and robustness of different control architectures and show that optimal retuning of fully-decentralized control strategies can effectively guard against local and inter-area oscillations.
A finite element method to correct deformable image registration errors in low-contrast regions

Image-guided adaptive radiotherapy requires deformable image registration to map radiation dose back and forth between images. The purpose of this study is to develop a novel method to improve the accuracy of an intensity-based image registration algorithm in low-contrast regions. A computational framework has been developed in this study to improve the quality of the ‘demons’ registration. For each voxel in the registration's target image, the standard deviation of image intensity in a neighborhood of this voxel was calculated. A mask for high-contrast regions was generated based on their standard deviations. In the masked regions, a tetrahedral mesh was refined recursively so that a sufficient number of tetrahedral nodes in these regions can be selected as driving nodes. An elastic system driven by the displacements of the selected nodes was formulated using a finite element method (FEM) and implemented on the refined mesh. The displacements of these driving nodes were generated with the ‘demons’ algorithm. The solution of the system was derived using a conjugated gradient method, and interpolated to generate a displacement vector field for the registered images. The FEM correction method was compared with the ‘demons’ algorithm on the computed tomography (CT) images of lung and prostate patients. The performance of the FEM correction relating to the ‘demons’ registration was analyzed based on the physical property of their deformation maps, and quantitatively evaluated through a benchmark model developed specifically for this study. Compared to the benchmark model, the ‘demons’ registration has the maximum error of 1.2 cm, which can be corrected by the FEM to 0.4 cm, and the average error of the ‘demons’ registration is reduced from 0.17 to 0.11 cm. For the CT images of lung and prostate patients, the deformation maps generated by the ‘demons’ algorithm were found unrealistic at several places. In these places, the displacement differences between the ‘demons’ registrations and their FEM corrections were found in the range of 0.4 and 1.1 cm. The mesh refinement and FEM simulation were implemented in a single thread application which requires about 45 min of computation time on a 2.6 GHz computer. This study has demonstrated that the FEM can be integrated with intensity-based image registration algorithms to improve their registration accuracy, especially in low-contrast regions.
Idiopathic polypoidal choroidal vasculopathy in a patient with atrophic age related macular degeneration

Editor,—Since the initial description by Stern and colleagues in 1985,1 the clinical entity now known as idiopathic polypoidal choroidal vasculopathy (IPCV)2 has been increasingly recognised. Although it was initially described in black, middle aged, hypertensive women,1 it is now widely accepted that IPCV can affect men and women of any race, and may represent a significant proportion of patients with age related macular degeneration (AMD). 34 In this report, the case of a patient with atrophic AMD and evidence of IPCV is presented. To my knowledge, the co-existence of IPCV and atrophic AMD has not been previously reported. ### CASE REPORT An 80 year old white woman presented complaining of sudden deterioration in vision in her left eye. Her ocular history was remarkable for atrophic AMD. Visual acuity was measured at 6/6 in the right eye and counting fingers in the left eye. On fundus examination of the right eye diffuse soft confluent drusen, …
IDENTIFICATION OF 1.4 MILLION ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI IN THE MID-INFRARED USING WISE DATA

We present an all-sky sample of ≈1.4 million active galactic nuclei (AGNs) meeting a two-color infrared photometric selection criteria for AGNs as applied to sources from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer final catalog release (AllWISE). We assess the spatial distribution and optical properties of our sample and find that the results are consistent with expectations for AGNs. These sources have a mean density of ≈38 AGNs per square degree on the sky, and their apparent magnitude distribution peaks at g ≈ 20, extending to objects as faint as g ≈ 26. We test the AGN selection criteria against a large sample of optically identified stars and determine the “leakage” (that is, the probability that a star detected in an optical survey will be misidentified as a quasi-stellar object (QSO) in our sample) rate to be ≤4.0 × 10−5. We conclude that our sample contains almost no optically identified stars (≤0.041%), making this sample highly promising for future celestial reference frame work as it significantly increases the number of all-sky, compact extragalactic objects. We further compare our sample to catalogs of known AGNs/QSOs and find a completeness value of ≳84% (that is, the probability of correctly identifying a known AGN/QSO is at least 84%) for AGNs brighter than a limiting magnitude of R ≲ 19. Our sample includes approximately 1.1 million previously uncataloged AGNs.
Void Aware Position Based Opportunistic Routing for QoS in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

The unique anywhere, anytime wireless communication support offers, tremendous potential for the next generation of applications in a Mobile Ad-hoc Network (MANET). The Quality of Service (QoS) has been the ever demanding task of wireless communication to satisfy the application requirements. Geographical routing employs a greedy forwarding technique to deliver the packets to the destination and to owe the communication void, it fails to render the expected level of QoS. Opportunistic routing technique effectively utilizes the advantages of broadcasting nature of the wireless medium and selects a set of forwarding candidates instead of relying on a greedy node. To improve the efficiency of QoS routing in sparse and highly dynamic network topology, this paper proposes the Void-Aware Position based Opportunistic Routing (VAPOR). The VAPOR maintains 2-hop neighbor information to take a routing decision, but it is limited to 1-hop information when the node density is high. It efficiently balances the storage overhead and communication delay due to void and it increases the network throughput even under a sparse network. To provide a certain assurance level for packet reachability, VAPOR decides the potential forwarders based on the forwarding probability that measures link stability, capacity, and connectivity factor. It adaptively favors a path that avoids frequent link failure and unreliable link usage. By limiting the propagation area of duplicate packets, VAPOR reduces wastage of network resources, and ittakes the advantage of concurrent batch forwarding to avoid further duplication and unnecessary delay.
THE VULNERABLE ELDERS SURVEY: A TOOL FOR IDENTIFYING VULNERABLE OLDER PEOPLE IN THE COMMUNITY

this time, a relapsing polychondritis was diagnosed according to standard criteria (Table 1), and the patient was started on corticosteroids (prednisone 50 mg/d). 3 Symptoms subsided and temperature normalized within 5 days, and the patient was discharged on methotrexate (7.5 mg/wk) and prednisone. Relapsing polychondritis should always be suspected in the presence of inflamed cartilage of the ears, nose, or throat. Cases characterized by the preferential involvement of noncartilaginous sites should be accurately distinguished from other rheumatological and immune-mediated diseases. In the presence of consistent clinical findings, older age should not be regarded as an exclusion criterion. Indeed, both the present case report and the largest available studies demonstrate that polychondritis can occur in older people and even in the old old. 3,6 Polychondritis should be suspected if no clear explanation or effective therapy for select common geriatric problems (for example arthritis, laryngotracheal symptoms, vertigo and ocular inflammation) is found. A careful ear, nose, and throat examination could help identify this commonly misdiagnosed condition.
Shifting Perspectives: A Process Model for Sense Making Under Uncertainty

This paper proposes that, in the context of generating actionable knowledge, uncertainties pertaining to big data streams should be recognized, categorized and accounted for at the appropriate level of knowledge management process models. Arguing that sensemaking from big data sources is a complex series of processes extending beyond just the application of sophisticated analytics, this paper proposes a big data reengineering (BDR) framework to guide requisite categorization, contextualization and remediation processes. The authors discuss the characteristics that uncertainty presents to organizations using big data streams as potential knowledge sources – surfacing relationships between the underlying knowledge flows and uncertainty and presenting typologies that categorize the effects of several common sources of uncertainty. These typologies also serve to provide guidance to transformation agent(s) regarding appropriate actions ultimately aimed at the generation of actionable knowledge.
Translating Evidence Into Practice at the End of Life: Information Needs, Access, and Usage by Hospice and Palliative Nurses

Information literacy is important for evidence-based nursing and quality patient care. Hospice/palliative nurses are often unaffiliated with academic institutions and may experience barriers accessing information. The project’s goals were to identify nurses’ (1) access to evidence-based resources, (2) information literacy skills, and (3) training needs. The research design was a descriptive assessment. Members of the Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association in 4 states received the assessment in collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh. The methodology yielded data on information needs, access, and literacy skills. Data analysis included frequency distributions, cross tabulations, and a &khgr;2 test. Of the respondents, 69% worked clinically. The need for drug or disease information occurred in 89% to 100% of respondents across sites. Respondents knew of PubMed in 28% to 70% of sites. Evidence databases were unavailable in 7% to 39% of settings. The most frequent source of information was colleagues (74%), followed by Internet searches (70%). About 43% of respondents felt confident using health literacy strategies. The greatest training needs were finding quality nursing information (79%), reliable patient education (65%), and evidence for practice/quality improvement (64%). There is a large need for quality nursing, patient, and evidence-based information in hospice environments. Hospice nurses access the Internet, although evidence/database access is often lacking or unknown, making it suboptimal.
EXEMPLAR-BASED HUMAN INTERACTION RECOGNITION : FEATURES AND KEY POSE SEQUENCE MODEL

Due to intra-class variation, camera jitter, background clutter, etc, human activity recognition is a challenging task in computer vision. We propose an exemplar-based key pose sequence model for human interaction recognition. In our model, an activity is modelled with a sequence of key poses, important atomic-level actions performed by the actors. We employ a strict temporal ordering of the key poses for each actor, an exemplar representation is used to model the variability in the instantiation of key poses. To utilize interaction information, spatial arrangements between the actors are included in the model. Quantitative results that form a new state-of-the-art on the benchmark UT-Interaction dataset are presented. Results on a subset of the TRECVID dataset are also promising.