Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Challenges related to the analytical process in realist evaluation and latest developments on the use of NVivo from a realist perspective

ABSTRACT Realist evaluation (RE) is a research design increasingly used in program evaluation, that aims to explore and understand the influence of context and underlying mechanisms on intervention or program outcomes. Several methodological challenges, however, are associated with this approach. This article summarizes RE key principles and examines some documented challenges and solutions when analyzing RE data, including the development of Context-Mechanism-Outcome configurations. An analytic method using NVivo features is also presented. This method makes it possible to respond to certain analytic difficulties associated with RE by facilitating the identification of patterns and ensuring transparency in the analytical process.
Energy Optimization of Large-Scale AGV Systems

We propose an efficient optimization method, which addresses several performance criteria, such as makespan, maximum lateness, and the sum of tardiness for an automated guided vehicle (AGV) system, together with its energy consumption. We show that the most important factors in energy consumption of AGVs are their cruise velocities and traveled distances. We also demonstrate that optimizing the productivity-related performance criteria also reduces energy consumption through less traveled distance. It also allows for the reduction of the cruise velocity, which leads to more energy savings. Our experiments demonstrate that the optimization method outperforms the existing traffic controller with respect to the performance criteria and reduces energy consumption. The proposed method can reduce the energy consumption by around 38%, while the values of makespan, lateness, and tardiness remain better than those obtained from the existing traffic controller. An important advantage of this article is that the evaluations are based on collected data from a real large-scale manufacturing plant. Note to Practitioners—It is commonly believed that reduction of speed, for example, due to safety reasons in critical areas, in automated guided vehicle (AGV) systems leads to lower system efficiency. However, it has been shown that speed management is an effective strategy to reduce the energy consumption of mobile robots and robot stations. If one seeks to utilize the existing slacks in the schedule of the AGVs, it should be possible to reduce energy consumption without affecting system efficiency. It can, furthermore, be combined with better scheduling to even improve performance measures, such as makespan, while reducing energy. In this article, we propose an optimization method that seeks to minimize the number of performance measures, such as makespan, maximum lateness, and sum of tardiness for a real AGV system designed by AGVE, which operates at Volvo Cars, Gothenburg, Sweden. We also show that the optimization method allows for reduction of cruise speed, while the mentioned performance measures are still better than the one obtained from the original traffic controller. We will also show the importance of taking into account the temperature of the drive system of the AGVs when performing energy measurements.
Theophylline as an add-on to thrombolytic therapy in acute ischaemic stroke (TEA-Stroke): A randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled, two-centre phase II study

Introduction Early reperfusion of brain tissue at risk of injury (penumbra salvage) is crucial in treating acute ischaemic stroke. Neuroprotective agents may extend the time window for the reperfusion. The vasoactive agent theophylline redistributes the perfusion to ischaemic brain tissue and thus reduces brain damage, brain tissue oedema and mortality in animal stroke models. Furthermore, treatment with theophylline has been shown to result in considerable and rapid clinical improvement, albeit only temporary, in some stroke patients. We hypothesize that treatment with theophylline will improve the collateral supply in acute ischaemic brain tissue and thus facilitate reperfusion despite proximal vessel occlusion. The primary study objective is to evaluate whether theophylline is safe and efficient in acute ischaemic stroke patients as an add-on to thrombolytic therapy. Methods The TEA-Stroke Trial is a two-centre, proof of concept phase II clinical study with a randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled design. One hundred and twenty patients with acute ischaemic stroke and significant perfusion–diffusion mismatch, as determined by magnetic resonance imaging, are randomized 1:1 to either theophylline or placebo as an add-on to standard thrombolytic therapy. Study outcome The dual primary outcome measures include penumbra salvage (penumbral tissue not developing into infarcted tissue) and clinical improvement at the 24-h follow-up. Discussion Results from studies of theophylline in stroke animal models, clinical case series and randomized clinical trials are controversial. A Cochrane analysis from 2004 concluded that there was not enough evidence to assess whether theophylline is safe and improves outcomes in patients with acute ischaemic stroke. The TEA-Stroke Trial will clarify whether theophylline as an add-on to standard thrombolytic therapy improves penumbra salvage with a reduced risk of reperfusion damage, reduced final infarct size, and improved clinical outcome.
PROFILE OF PATIENTS WITH DIABETES MELLITUS IN THE EMERGENCY UNIT OF A UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL

This cross-sectional study aimed to identify the profile of patients with diabetes mellitus cared for by the Emergency Room of a university hospital in the interior of São Paulo, Brazil, in 2009. The probabilistic sample was composed of 247 patients. A structured form addressing sociodemographic and clinical variables and those related to nursing orientation provided at discharge was used to collect data. The results show that patients admitted to the unit were predominantly women (53.4%), Caucasian (79.8%), with a low educational level (76.6%), and aged between 58 and 77 years old (50.2%); 62 years old on average with a standard deviation of 15.3 years. Regarding demand for care, the most prevalent diagnoses were cardiovascular (22.3%) and cerebrovascular (13%) conditions. Diabetes was considered the secondary reason for being admitted to the service, while the primary reason was related only to the patients’ main complaints. The length of hospitalization was four days on average, with a median of nine days and a standard deviation of 21.7 days. The nursing orientations recorded in the discharge records were restricted to return visits. Cooperation between primary healthcare and hospital networks needs to be improved to decrease avoidable demand of patients with diabetes for the emergency room.
Parents' Demand for Sugar Sweetened Beverages for Their Pre‐School Children: Evidence from a Stated‐Preference Experiment

Consumption of sugar sweetened beverages exhibits strong associations with weight gain, obesity, and dental caries, especially in young children. The aim of this article is to estimate price elasticities for parents' sugar-sweetened beverages consumption choices with respect to their pre-school children and to estimate elasticities with respect to nutritional attribute labels across sugar-sweetened beverages. Our results show that 1% increase in the price of fizzy drink, juice and cordial would reduce pre-school children's consumption of each drink by 0.80%, 0.51%, and 0.34% respectively. Such price effects on children's consumption do not substantially differ between high and low-income respondents but the effect on the children's Fizzy Drink consumption is significantly larger for respondents from large households than those from small households and are significantly lower than the price effects on the consumption of the rest of the family for Juice and Cordial. The marginal effects of demand with respect to nutritional attribute labels of sugar-sweetened beverages matter for Juice and Cordial, and are strongest for low-income families; however, these effects do not substantially differ between large and small-household respondents.
Faster Multiscale Capsule Network With Octave Convolution for Hyperspectral Image Classification

Recently proposed capsule networks have revealed powerfulness in various visual tasks. However, the traditional CNNs adopted in the capsule layer of the capsule network have the problem of high parameter redundancy. In this letter, we propose a faster multiscale capsule network with octave convolution (MSOctCaps) for hyperspectral image classification. In the proposed MSOctCaps, we design multiple kernels of different sizes with parallel convolution to extract deep multiscale features. To feasibly reduce the redundancy of parameters and achieve high accuracy, the octave convolution is explored in the capsule layer, instead of the traditional convolution, which improves the accuracy of the capsule layer above predicted by the capsule layer below. The comparison experiments with six state-of-the-arts on two challenging contest data sets demonstrate the proposed MSOctCaps is able to produce competitive advantages in terms of both classification accuracy and computational time.
A Study on Game Review Summarization

Game reviews have constituted a unique means of interaction between players and companies for many years. The dynamics appearing through online publishing have significantly grown the number of comments per game, giving rise to very interesting communities. The growth has, in turn, led to a difficulty in dealing with the volume and varying quality of the comments as a source of information. This work studies whether and how game reviews can be summarized, based on the notions pre-existing in aspect-based summarization and sentiment analysis. The work provides suggested pipeline of analysis, also offering preliminary findings on whether aspects detected in a set of comments can be consistently evaluated by human users.
Regulatory Mechanisms Underlying the Differentiation of Mesenchymal Stem Cells to Endothelial Cells

Cardiovascular disease is the foremost cause of mortality in the United States. Myocardial infarction often results from atherosclerotic occlusion of coronary arteries. Coronary angioplasty is performed to restore cardiac blood flow and function. Angioplasty is the most widely used interventional technique for coronary occlusion events. However, long term benefits are curtailed by vascular endothelium injury. Endothelial denudation often leads to the processes of thrombosis, inflammation, and restenosis that subject patients to reoccurrence of myocardial infarction. The current clinical therapies prescribed to patients with coronary artery disease are a combination of drugs used to control blood pressure, lipid levels and glucose levels. Unfortunately, none of these treatment regimens are designed to repair or replace damaged endothelium. |Bone marrow (BM)-derived mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) can differentiate into endothelial cells (ECs) in the presence of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) — 165 in vitro. Translational models have demonstrated that differentiated BM-derived MSCs can be transplanted into the site of angioplasty-induced endothelial injury. However, re-endothelialization by VEGF-induced BM-derived MSCs remains a complex clinical challenge. Following intracoronary or transendocardial delivery of the BM-derived MSCs, only ~10% of the differentiating cells engraft, and the majority of those persist as immature ECs. Currently, the mechanisms underlying EC-engraftment and re-endothelialization are not well understood. In patients undergoing coronary intervention, the mechanical process involved in performing angioplasty itself is known to stimulate atherogenesis. The goal of this study is to decipher a potential role of angioplasty-induced atherogenic mediators on the differentiation of BM-derived MSCs into ECs. The central hypothesis of these studies is that pro-atherogenic mediators, which are triggered after an angioplasty, inhibit VEGF-165-induced differentiation of BM-derived MSCs into ECs. |In this study, immunofluorescence was used to examine the expression levels of atherogenic mediators in left circumflex artery (LCX) samples from microswine. Microswine designated for angioplasty were maintained on a high cholesterol diet. After six months, the animals were subjected to angioplasty. Control microswine maintained on the same high cholesterol diet received no angioplasty. Atherogenic mediators interleukin (IL)-6, tumor necrosis factor (TNF) α, and Angiotensin (Ang) II were discovered to be upregulated at the interventional site. Subsequent experiments were performed to decipher the molecular mechanism governing VEGF-induced differentiation. Fluorescence activated cell sorting (FACS) analysis revealed that naive BM-derived MSCs cultured in differentiation media containing VEGF demonstrated increased expression of EC-specific markers—Von Willebrand factor(vWF), platelet endothelial cell adhesion molecule (PECAM)-1, and vascular endothelial(VE)-cadherin), VEGF R2, Sox18, and enhanced…
Secondary Side Cascaded Winding-Coupled Bidirectional Converter With Wide ZVS Range and High Conversion Gain

In this article, a secondary side cascaded bidirectional dc–dc converter (SSC-BDC) is proposed with the winding-coupled structure for the bidirectional operations of power flow, which features high voltage gain, full range of soft switching, low current ripple in low voltage side, and extended duty cycle range. Derived from a current-fed dual active bridge converter, the interleaved buck/boost circuit in the primary side is cascaded with the secondary side of full-bridge circuit through the winding coupled inductor to achieve high voltage gain. The differential voltage is designed to generate the bias current to realize soft switching of the eight power switches within a wide range of load variation. Meanwhile, pulse width modulation (PWM) plus phase-shift modulation is used to eliminate backflow power and increase conversion efficiency. The operation principle, steady-state analysis, and comparison result are presented in detail. Finally, a 1-kW experimental prototype is constructed to verify the feasibility of the SSC-BDC, and the correctness of the theoretical analyses is validated by experimental results.
A hybrid optimized learning‐based compressive performance of concrete prediction using GBMO‐ANFIS classifier and genetic algorithm reduction

High performance concrete (HPC) is a type of concrete that cannot be produced using conventional methods. The exact percentage of materials used in the production of this concrete is one of the challenges facing civil engineers so that if ingredients are not in proportion, the strength of concrete is undermined. In the present study, attempts have been made to find an intelligent model to predict the quality of HPC. As a result of regression analysis, the automatic recognition would be affected by inferential estimation. Hence, to increase classification accuracy, first extracted feature is rearranged based on expectation–maximization clustering algorithm and then feature vector size is reduced using genetic algorithm. The proposed classification is adaptive neuro‐fuzzy inference system, which is optimized by Gases Brownian Motion Optimization and able to predict outputs at an acceptable level in limited reiterations. The split ratio of data during learning and testing steps was 0.9 and 0.1, as measured by K‐fold cross‐validation method. Computation of criteria such as mean square error and mean absolute percentage error in the algorithm indicated the desirable performance of the proposed method.
On the Bound of Energy Consumption in Cellular IoT Networks

Billions of sensors are expected to be connected to the Internet through the emerging Internet of Things (IoT) technologies. Many of these sensors will primarily be connected using wireless technologies powered using batteries as their sole energy source which makes it paramount to optimize their energy consumption. In this paper, we provide an analytic framework of the energy-consumption profile and its lower bound for an IoT end device formulated based on Shannon capacity. We extend the study to model the average energy-consumption performance based on the random geometric distribution of IoT gateways by utilizing tools from stochastic geometry and real measurements of interference in the ISM-band. Experimental data, interference measurements and Monte-Carlo simulations are presented to validate the plausibility of the proposed analytic framework, where results demonstrate that the current network infrastructures performance is bounded between two extreme geometric models. This study considers interference seen by a gateway regardless of its source.
Measuring the impact of financial crisis on quality of life in Europe

Improving and monitoring Quality of Life is becoming one of the most important goals of European Union policies. However, its measurement is complex and multi-faceted, as an individual's current and future state of wellbeing depends upon a great number of variables. Moreover, there is no doubt that crisis impacted differentially in European countries. Against this background, the aim of this article is to provide a better understanding of the changes in quality of life in European countries and the role of receiving contexts in influencing these outcomes. In order to achieve it, the paper proposes a multidimensional and fuzzy approach to measure Quality of Life and investigate the evolution of different dimensions of quality life over time by use a propensity score method for isolating the effect of crisis from the net change.
Prediction and Characterization of RXLR Effectors in Pythium Species

Being widely existed in oomycetes, the RXLR effector features conserved RXLR-dEER motifs in its N terminal. Every known Phytophthora or Hyaloperonospora pathogen harbors hundreds of RXLRs. In Pythium species, however, none of the RXLR effectors has been characterized yet. Here, we developed a stringent method for de novo identification of RXLRs and characterized 359 putative RXLR effectors from nine tested Pythium species. Phylogenetic analysis revealed a single superfamily formed by all oomycetous RXLRs, suggesting they descent from a common ancestor. RXLR effectors from Pythium and Phytophthora species exhibited similar sequence features, protein structures and genome locations. In particular, the mosquito biological agent P. guiyangense contains a significantly larger RXLR repertoire than the other eight Pythium species examined, which may result from gene duplication and genome rearrangement events as indicated by synteny analysis. Expression pattern analysis of RXLR-encoding genes in the plant pathogen P. ultimum detected transcripts from the vast majority of predicted RXLRs with some of them being induced at infection stages. One such RXLRs showed necrosis-inducing activity. Furthermore, all predicted RXLRs were cloned from two biocontrol agents P. oligandrum and P. periplocum. Three of them were found to encode effectors inducing defense response in Nicotiana benthamiana. Taken together, our findings represent the first complete synopsis of Pythium RXLR effectors, which provides critical clues on their evolutionary patterns as well as the mechanisms of their interactions with diverse hosts. Author summary Pathogens from the Pythium genus are widespread across multiple ecological niches. Most of them are soilborne plant pathogens whereas others cause infectious diseases in mammals. Some Pythium species can be used as biocontrol agents for plant diseases or mosquito management. Despite that phylogenetically close oomycete pathogens secrete RXLR effectors to enable infection, no RXLR protein was previously characterized in any Pythium species. Here we developed a stringent method to predict Pythium RXLR effectors and compared them with known RXLRs from other species. All oomycetous RXLRs form a huge superfamily, which indicates they may share a common ancestor. Our sequence analysis results suggest that the expansion of RXLR repertoire results from gene duplication and genome recombination events. We further demonstrated that most predicted Pythium RXLRs can be transcribed and some of them encode effectors exhibiting pathogenic or defense-inducing activities. This work expands our understanding of RXLR evolution in oomycetes in general, and provides novel insights into the molecular interactions between Pythium pathogens and their diverse hosts.
Assessment of influence of the program of physical rehabilitation on results of the six-minute test of walking at children with recurrent bronchitis

Purpose: to estimate efficiency of the carried out program of physical rehabilitation of children with recurrent bronchitis in the conditions of sanatorium. Material & Methods: 109 children of the younger school age are examined. The six-minute test of walking was carried out for the research of functional and adaptation opportunities, and the degree of loading is also estimated on the Borg scale. The obtained data were processed by the adequate methods of mathematical statistics. Results: the improvement of level of the studied indicators at children of the main and control groups is noted after the termination of the course of physical rehabilitation. However, statistically the best dynamics of indicators of length of distance, index of adaptation, index of adaptation of restoration of rhythm and points on the Borg scale are revealed among children of the main groups. Conclusions: the developed and introduced program of physical rehabilitation was more effective in comparison with the standard one.
A Novel Magnetic Equivalent Circuit Model for the Corner of Inductor Core

The accurate calculation of inductance is the most basic problem of inductor design. Based on finite element method (FEM) analysis of the flux density distribution in the corner of the core, a local corner magnetic equivalent circuit (MEC) model is proposed for a core-type inductor. In this model, the corner is divided into three parallel branches, and the joint part of the corner and the core limb are divided into two branches, one of which is continuously divided into three branches. In addition, a flux leakage branch of the core window inner corner is modeled. These branches form a local corner MEC by series and parallel to describe the flux distribution of the corner. The calculation results show that, in the local corner MEC model, the core flux density distribution is consistent with the FEM simulation. The maximum relative error of the inductance is less than 6% and the average relative error is less than 4% compared to the physical prototype measured data with the range of current from 20 A to 1000 A, which shows that the local corner MEC model has a high accuracy inductance calculation.