Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Exploring the Impact of Primary Care Physician Burnout and Well-Being on Patient Care: A Focus Group Study

Supplemental digital content is available in the text. Objectives The aims of the study were (1) to explore whether primary care physicians (general practitioners [GPs]) perceive burnout and well-being to impact on the quality and safety of patient care and (2) to determine potential mechanisms behind these associations. Method Five focus groups with 25 practicing GPs were conducted in England, either in the participants’ practice or in a private meeting room outside of their workplace. An interview schedule with prompts was followed with questions asking how participants perceive GP burnout and poor well-being could impact on patient care delivery. Audio recordings were transcribed verbatim and analyzed using thematic analysis. Results General practitioners believed that poor well-being and burnout affect the quality of care patients receive through reducing doctors’ abilities to empathize, to display positive attitudes and listening skills, and by increasing the number of inappropriate referrals made. Participants also voiced that burnout and poor well-being can have negative consequences for patient safety, through a variety of mechanisms including reduced cognitive functioning and decision-making abilities, a lack of headspace, and fatigue. Furthermore, it was suggested that the relationship between well-being/burnout and mistakes is likely to be circular. Conclusions Further research is needed to ascertain the validity of these perceptions. If found, physicians, healthcare organizations, and policy makers should examine how they can improve physician well-being and prevent burnout, because this may be a route to ensure high-quality and safe patient care.
SEMANTIC SEGMENTATION OF AERIAL IMAGERY VIA MULTI-SCALE SHUFFLING CONVOLUTIONAL NEURAL NETWORKS WITH DEEP SUPERVISION

Abstract. In this paper, we address the semantic segmentation of aerial imagery based on the use of multi-modal data given in the form of true orthophotos and the corresponding Digital Surface Models (DSMs). We present the Deeply-supervised Shuffling Convolutional Neural Network (DSCNN) representing a multi-scale extension of the Shuffling Convolutional Neural Network (SCNN) with deep supervision. Thereby, we take the advantage of the SCNN involving the shuffling operator to effectively upsample feature maps and then fuse multiscale features derived from the intermediate layers of the SCNN, which results in the Multi-scale Shuffling Convolutional Neural Network (MSCNN). Based on the MSCNN, we derive the DSCNN by introducing additional losses into the intermediate layers of the MSCNN. In addition, we investigate the impact of using different sets of hand-crafted radiometric and geometric features derived from the true orthophotos and the DSMs on the semantic segmentation task. For performance evaluation, we use a commonly used benchmark dataset. The achieved results reveal that both multi-scale fusion and deep supervision contribute to an improvement in performance. Furthermore, the use of a diversity of hand-crafted radiometric and geometric features as input for the DSCNN does not provide the best numerical results, but smoother and improved detections for several objects.
AWARD NUMBER: W81XWH-14-1-0184 TITLE: Hyaluronan-Based Therapy for Metastatic Prostate Cancer PRINCIPAL

Title: Hyaluronic Acid-Based Nanoplatform for Prostate Cancer Therapy World Molecular Imaging Congress (WMIC) 2015 Meeting, September 2-5, 2014, Honolulu, Hawaii Session Date/Time: September 5, 2015 from 1:45 PM to 2:45 PM d) Inventions, Patent Applications, and/or Licenses
Address strategies in a British academic setting

The English system of address constitutes an exception among the European languages, in that it does not have a grammatical distinction between a formal pronoun of address and an informal one. Rather, English speakers exploit lexical strategies (i.e. nominal vocatives). This study aims to shed light on the address strategies used by students and members of the teaching staff in academic interactions, with reference to the University of Reading (UK). Data from semi-structured interviews and video-recordings outline an unmarked pattern of asymmetry between the parties, in which students mainly employ formal vocatives towards lecturers (title+surname, honorifics), while lecturers frequently use first names and other informal expressions. Reciprocal informal vocatives, by contrast, emerges as a marked practice, which is resisted or delayed in time. This asymmetrical distribution of forms questions classical models and previous research on address and calls for the necessity of new components for the understanding of the phenomenon.
Examining the coexistence of Splachnaceae mosses in Newfoundland peatlands

Coexistence amongst highly similar species has captured the imagination of many ecologists. In my work I've endeavoured to answer the question of how Splachnum ampullaceum and Splachnum pensylvanicum coexist in peatlands in Newfoundland. I've employed individual based simulation modelling in conjunction with machine learning to answer if coexistence is facilitated most by dispersal differences or by competitive similarity. Experimental work examined dispersal differences and competitive ability directly. I found that coexistence is facilitated primarily by temporal niche separation via differing phenology, and substrate availability. My experimental work shows spore dispersal is dependent on distance to nearest moss population with no evidence of species-specific differences. The competitive ability of the two species was shown to vary according to moisture with potential facilitation effects at high population densities. Together the results show that the two Splachnaceae are more dissimilar than they appear, with niche separation along temporal and hydrological axes.
Urbanisation supplements ecosystem functioning in disturbed estuaries

Humans have urbanised and fragmented landscapes across the globe, with detrimental impacts to biodiversity, habitats and food webs in most biomes. Urbanisation might also modify the provision of ecological functions, but these putative effects of landscape transformation are rarely measured. Coastal cities are typically located near estuaries, and we tested for potential impacts of these on ecological functions. Our study used 22 estuaries in eastern Australia as model systems to examine how urbanisation shapes the consumption of carrion by fish, a pivotal ecological function in estuaries. Fish assemblages varied among estuaries according to the extent of shoreline hardening, and this was correlated with changes in the rate of carrion consumption. In estuaries with low levels of shoreline hardening and abundant remnant mangroves, most carrion was consumed by toadfishes (Tetraodontidae). By contrast, in moderately urban estuaries (i.e. where 20‐60% of shorelines had been hardened with artificial structures) yellowfin bream (Sparidae) replaced toadfish and performed the bulk of the scavenging function. Bream are particularly effective scavengers that utilize artificial structures as habitat for both foraging and sheltering. We show that by augmenting habitat for an important species of scavenger, the moderate addition of urban structures to estuarine shorelines also helped to supplement a key ecological function in estuaries. Urbanisation impacts diversity in all ecosystems, but many opportunistic species flourish in urban habitats. Identifying and conserving taxa that perform important roles in urban environments is now a critical conservation challenge for maintaining ecological functions across disturbed landscapes. ; Related dataset: http://dx.doi. org/10.4227/39/5af10f130304a
Timing of breeding and offspring number covary with plumage colour among Gyrfalcons Falco rusticolus

Plumage colour variation exists among Gyrfalcons throughout their Arctic and sub-Arctic circumpolar distribution, ranging from white through silver and grey to almost black. Although different colour variants coexist within many populations, a few geographical regions, such as northern Greenland, possess a single variant, suggesting that local environments may influence plumage colour variation. In central-west Greenland (66.5–67.5°N), where multiple colour variants exist, white male Gyrfalcons fathered significantly earlier clutches than grey males. No significant association was observed between female colour and lay date. However, significantly more offspring were produced by both male and female white Gyrfalcons than by grey variants when controlling for lay date, and silver Gyrfalcons produced an intermediate number of offspring for both sexes. This pattern was further supported by breeding plumage colour pairings. Grey females paired with grey males nested significantly later in the season and produced fewer offspring than those paired with white males, whereas no difference in lay date or offspring number was found between white males paired with white or with grey females. The difference in the number of offspring produced at each nest-site was also inversely correlated with the distance to the nearest neighbouring nest, and grey males nested in closer proximity to other nests compared with white and silver colour variants. These results suggest that factors associated with territory occupancy and timing of breeding may regulate reproductive success differently between colour variants, with directional selection favouring light-coloured Gyrfalcons and resulting in earlier lay date and a high frequency of white plumage colour variants in this population. Although gene flow exists between our study population and those further north (>75°N), white Gyrfalcons prevail where the breeding season duration is even shorter, suggesting that nesting chronology in combination with genetic drift may play an important role in influencing plumage colour polymorphism among Gyrfalcon populations.
Consider This: Training, Wages, and the Enforceability of Covenants Not to Compete

Using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation, the author examines the effect of noncompete enforceability on employee training and wages. An increase from no enforcement of noncompetes to mean enforceability is associated with a 14% increase in training, which tends to be firm-sponsored and designed to upgrade or teach new skills. In contrast to theoretical expectations, the results show no evidence of a relationship between noncompete enforceability and self-sponsored training. Despite the increases in training, an increase from non-enforcement of noncompetes to mean enforceability is associated with a 4% decrease in hourly wages. Consistent with reduced bargaining power, noncompete enforceability is associated with a reduction in the return to tenure, and less-educated workers experience additional wage losses in the face of increased enforceability relative to more-educated workers. Suggestive evidence indicates that policies that tie the enforceability of noncompetes to the worker receiving additional consideration in exchange for signing a noncompete are associated with higher wages.
Analyzing the compositional properties of word embeddings

We present an in-depth analysis of various word embeddings in terms of their compositionality. Measuring the quality and usefulness of single word embeddings[10] and their compositional representations is a notoriously difficult task often tackled by small tests using handpicked data. Understanding the compositional effectiveness on real data can help improve models which use word embedding composition, such as attention mechanisms [1] as well as document representations [9]. In our analysis, we evaluate using multiple methods for word embedding composition and test these methods on a dictionary based dataset. This gives us the ability to evaluate word embeddings quantitatively, as well as give direction to architecture considerations for neural networks in which these word embeddings are composed. Additionally our dataset could be used for further research into the compositionality of word embeddings.
A characterization of restrictions of Fourier-Stieltjes transforms

In 1934 (c.f. [3]), Bochner established this result for the case when E is the entire real line. Our result also generalizes a theorem of Krein. Indeed Krein proved (c.f. [1] pp. 154-159) that (1) and (2) are equivalent for the case when E is an interval and φ is a continuous function defined on E. Now if we assume that E is closed and of uniformly positive measure, (meaning that if U is an open subset of R with U Π E nonempty, then the measure of U Π E is positive), and if φeC(E) and satisfies (1), then our result implies that (2) holds for all xeE. (i.e. φ = β | E ΐor some finite measure μ on R). (It is trivial that (2) implies (1) under these hypotheses. ) Note finally that it E is a closed subset of Γ, the circle group, of uniformly positive measure, and if ψ e C(E) and satisfies (2), then φeA(E). That is, φ can be extended to a function defined on all of Γ, with absolutely convergent Fourier series. (We identify T with the real numbers modulo 1; in this case, the polynomials of condition (2) are almost-periodic functions defined on the integers. ) We obtain our main result by first proving the result mentioned in the above paragraph in Theorem 3; next by establishing the analogue of the main result for T in Theorem 4, and finally by passing from the circle to the real line in §3.
Characterization of Optical and Electrical Properties of Transparent Conductive Boron-Doped Diamond thin Films Grown on Fused Silica

A conductive boron-doped diamond (BDD) grown on a fused silica/quartz has been investigated. Diamond thin films were deposited by the microwave plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (MW PECVD). The main parameters of the BDD synthesis, i.e. the methane admixture and the substrate temperature were investigated in detail. Preliminary studies of optical properties were performed to qualify an optimal CVD synthesis and film parameters for optical sensing applications. The SEM micro-images showed the homogenous, continuous and polycrystalline surface morphology; the mean grain size was within the range of 100-250 nm. The fabricated conductive boron-doped diamond thin films displayed the resistivity below 500 mOhm cm-1 and the transmittance over 50% in the VIS-NIR wavelength range. The studies of optical constants were performed using the spectroscopic ellipsometry for the wavelength range between 260 and 820 nm. A detailed error analysis of the ellipsometric system and optical modelling estimation has been provided. The refractive index values at the 550 nm wavelength were high and varied between 2.24 and 2.35 depending on the percentage content of methane and the temperature of deposition
CREI Working Paper no . 3 / 2008 FAIRNESS OF NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE IN ITALY : A BIVARIATE CORRELATED RANDOM EFFECTS MODEL by Antonello Maruotti

In this paper we consider a possible way of measuring equity in health as the absence of systematic disparities in health (or in the major social determinants of health) between groups with different levels of underlying social advantage/disadvantage. Starting from the fairness approach developed by the World Health Organization, we propose to extend the analysis of fairness in financing contribution through a generalized linear mixed models framework by introducing a bivariate correlated random effects model. We aim at analyzing the burden of health care payment on Italian households by modeling catastrophic payments and impoverishment due to health care expenditures. For this purpose, we describe a bivariate model for binary data, where association between the outcomes is modeled through outcome-specific latent effects which are assumed to be correlated; we show how model parameters can be estimated in a finite mixture context. By using such model specification, the fairness of the Italian national health service is investigated.
Dynamic detection of the communication pattern in shared memory environments for thread mapping

The threads of parallel applications cooperate in order to fulfill their tasks, thereby communication is performed among themselves. The communication latency between the cores in a multiprocessor architecture differs depending on the memory hierarchy and the interconnections. With the increase in the number of cores per chip and the number of threads per core, this difference between the communication latencies is increasing. Therefore, it is important to map the threads of parallel applications taking into account the communication between them. In parallel applications based on the shared memory paradigm, the communication is implicit and occurs through accesses to shared variables, which makes difficult to detect the communication pattern between the threads. Traditional approaches use simulation to monitor the memory accesses performed by the application, requiring modifications to the source code and drastically increasing the overhead. In this master thesis, we introduce two novel light-weight mechanisms to find the communication pattern of threads. The first mechanism makes use of the information about shared cache lines provided by cache coherence protocols. The second mechanism makes use of the Translation Lookaside Buffer (TLB) to detect which memory pages each core is accessing. Both our mechanisms rely entirely on hardware features, which makes the thread mapping transparent to the programmer and allows it to be performed dynamically by the operating system. Moreover, no time consuming task, such as simulation, is required. We evaluated our mechanisms with the NAS Parallel Benchmarks (NPB) and obtained accurate representations of the communication patterns. We generated thread mappings from the detected communication patterns using a mapping algorithm. Mapping is a NP-Hard problem. Therefore, in order to achieve a polynomial complexity, we designed a heuristic method based on the Edmonds graph matching algorithm. Running the applications with these mappings resulted in performance improvements of up to 15.3% compared to the original scheduler of the operating system. The number of cache misses, cache line invalidations and snoop transactions were reduced by up to 31.9%, 41% and 65.4%, respectively.
An Image Edge Detection Method Based on Improved Ant Colony Algorithm

This paper raises an improved ant colony algorithm, for the detection of weak edge of complex background image, considering edge positioning accuracy, edge pixels, edge continuity and interference edges. This algorithm is improved in two aspects: first, we improved the expression of pheromone; second, we improved the calculation of Heuristic information. Compared with traditional Canny detector indicates, the improved method is proved to be accurate in edge detection, good continuity and less interference by experiment.
Hydro‐biogeochemical coupling beneath a large polythermal Arctic glacier: Implications for subice sheet biogeochemistry

[1] We analyze the interannual chemical and isotopic composition of runoff from a large, high Arctic valley glacier over a 5 year period, during which drainage evolved from a long-residence-time drainage system feeding an artesian subglacial upwelling (SGU) at the glacier terminus to a shorter-residence-time drainage system feeding an ice-marginal channel (IMC). Increased icemelt inputs to the SGU are thought to have triggered this evolution. This sequence of events provides a unique opportunity to identify coupling between subglacial hydrology and biogeochemical processes within drainage systems of differing residence time. The biogeochemistry of the SGU is consistent with prolonged contact between meltwaters and subglacial sediments, in which silicate dissolution is enhanced, anoxic processes (e.g., sulphate reduction) prevail, and microbially generated CO2 and sulphide oxidation drive mineral dissolution. Solute in the IMC was mainly derived from moraine pore waters which are added to the channel via extraglacial streams. These pore waters acquire solute predominantly via sulphide oxidation coupled to carbonate/silicate dissolution. We present the first evidence that microbially mediated processes may contribute a substantial proportion (80% in this case) of the total glacial solute flux, which includes coupling between microbial CO2-generation and silicate/carbonate dissolution. The latter suggests the presence of biofilms in subglacial/ice-marginal sediments, where local perturbation of the geochemical environment by release of protons, organic acids, and ligands stimulates mineral dissolution. These data enable inferences to be made regarding biogeochemical processes in longer-residence-time glacial systems, with implications for the future exploration of Antarctic subglacial lakes and other wet-based ice sheet environments.
Regional and local maize seed exchange and replacement in the western highlands of Guatemala

Regional distributions of crop diversity are important to take into account for the spatial design of in situ, farmer-participatory interventions in crop genetic management. Regional seed flows are an important factor in shaping geographical distributions of crop diversity. This study contributes to the insight in these seed flows, focusing on maize (Zea mays L.) in Chimaltenango, an area in the western highlands of Guatemala. A social survey of 257 households on different aspects of seed management produced information on cultivar naming, seed sources, reasons and causes of the discontinuation of seed lots, and important explanatory variables associated with different seed sources. A small portion of the reported seed lots originated from regional seed sources. The main motivation of regional seed exchange and the discontinuation of seed lots was to achieve change in plant characteristics of the crop, especially to obtain lower plants and shorter growing cycles. It is argued that farmer selection fails to achieve such change, and in fact leads to an equilibrium with high plants and long growing cycles. Seed exchange functions as an escape to this trend. Other factors of influence on seed exchange are altitude and ethnicity. The study also highlights the issue of geographical directionality in seed exchange patterns.
Metal salts rented in silicamicrocapsules as inorganic phase change materials for textile usage

Pure inorganic silica capsules were prepared using polyethoxysiloxane (PAOS) as a cross-linker, and the capsules contain inorganic hydrated salt inside. During this work, six different hydrated inorganic salts evaluated to be used as inorganic phase change materials (namely: calcium nitrate tetrahydrate (Ca(NO3)2.4H2O), calciumchloride hexahydrate (CaCl2.6H2O), sodium sulphate decahydrate (Na2SO4.10H2O), disodium hydrogen phosphate dodecahydrate (Na2HPO4.12H2O), ferric nitrate nonahydrate (Fe(NO3)3.9H2O), and manganese (II) nitrate hexahydrate (Mn(NO3)2.6H2O)) in silica-based micro-capsules. Inorganic phase change materials have been studied for their application in textiles. The best results are achieved for sodium sulphate decahydrate, and disodium hydrogen phosphate dodecahydrate, respectively. The microcapsules, which show good phase change property, were embedded in a film of the polypropylene at the extruding stage. The basic mechanical properties of the new material do not differ from those of the pure polypropylene.