Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Framework for Designing Sustainable Telemedicine Information Systems in Developing Countries

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework for designing sustainable telemedicine information systems in developing countries.Design/methodology/approach – Both quantitative and qualitative research methods were used. Primary data were collected from two hospitals in Uganda using a self‐administered questionnaire and an interview guide. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze survey data, while content analysis method was used to analyze interview responses. The framework was developed based on Hevner et al.'s design science framework.Findings – The key requirements for designing sustainable telemedicine information systems in developing countries were identified as the need for speed, ease of use and affordability.Research limitations/implications – This study was theoretical in nature. Although primary data were used, the researchers were unable to carry out a series of practical tests of this framework with prototype systems on a cross‐section of users.Practical implications – De.
Evaluation of the conformational free energies of loops in proteins

In this paper we discuss the problem of including solvation free energies in evaluating the relative stabilities of loops in proteins. A conformational search based on a gas‐phase potential function is used to generate a large number of trial conformations. As has been found previously, the energy minimization step in this process tends to pack charged and polar side chains against the protein surface, resulting in conformations which are unstable in the aqueous phase. Various solvation models can easily identify such structures. In order to provide a more severe test of solvation models, gas phase conformations were generated in which side chains were kept extended so as to maximize their interaction with the solvent. The free energies of these conformations were compared to that calculated for the crystal structure in three loops of the protein E. coli RNase H, with lengths of 7, 8, and 9 residues. Free energies were evaluated with a finite difference Poisson‐Boltzmann (FDPB) calculation for electrostatics and a surface area‐based term for nonpolar contributions. These were added to a gas‐phase potential function. A free energy function based on atomic solvation parameters was also tested. Both functions were quite successful in selecting, based on a free energy criterion, conformations quite close to the crystal structure for two of the three loops. For one loop, which is involved in crystal contacts, conformations that are quite different from the crystal structure were also selected. A method to avoid precision problems associated with using the FDPB method to evaluate conformational free energies in proteins is described. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Study on exploratory factor analysis in measurement information extraction and reconstruction

In order to explore the potential association of various factors in actual measurement data, the principle of exploratory factor analysis was discussed in the paper and its application for the measurement information mining was explored to implement the synthesis and simplification of original multivariate plane data. Firstly, the correlation analysis of original variable and the extraction of common factors were executed. Secondly, the factor matrix was calculated to obtain the physical significance of common factors. Finally, the factor score coefficient matrix was obtained by virtue of the regression analysis, which can combine and synthesize the relevant variable to realize the extraction and reconstruction of measurement information. The simulation experiment testified the validity of the model. However, the reasonable selection of the extraction method of common factor and the quantitative criterion still need further research.
Quercetin 3-Glucoside Protects Neuroblastoma (SH-SY5Y) Cells in Vitro against Oxidative Damage by Inducing Sterol Regulatory Element-binding Protein-2-mediated Cholesterol Biosynthesis*

The flavonoid quercetin 3-glucoside (Q3G) protected SH-SY5Y, HEK293, and MCF-7 cells against hydrogen peroxide-induced oxidative stress. cDNA microarray studies suggested that Q3G-pretreated cells subjected to oxidative stress up-regulate the expression of genes associated with lipid and cholesterol biosynthesis. Q3G pretreatment elevated both the expression and activation of sterol regulatory element-binding protein-2 (SREBP-2) only in SH-SY5Y cells subjected to oxidative stress. Inhibition of SREBP-2 expression by small interfering RNA or small molecule inhibitors of 2,3-oxidosqualene:lanosterol cyclase or HMG-CoA reductase blocked Q3G-mediated cytoprotection in SH-SY5Y cells. By contrast, Q3G did not protect either HEK293 or MCF-7 cells via this signaling pathway. Moreover, the addition of isopentenyl pyrophosphate rescued SH-SY5Y cells from the inhibitory effect of HMG-CoA reductase inhibition. Last, Q3G pretreatment enhanced the incorporation of [14C]acetate into [14C]cholesterol in SH-SY5Y cells under oxidative stress. Taken together, these studies suggest a novel mechanism for flavonoid-induced cytoprotection in SH-SY5Y cells involving SREBP-2-mediated sterol synthesis that decreases lipid peroxidation by maintaining membrane integrity in the presence of oxidative stress.
Significance of the time period between diagnosis of muscle invasion and radical cystectomy with regard to the prognosis of transitional cell carcinoma of the urothelium in the bladder

Objective: Standard treatment of muscle-infiltrated transitional cell carcinoma (TCC) of the urothelium consists of radical cystectomy. In some cases there is a delay between the initial diagnosis and a definitive treatment being administered. The objective of this study was to determine the effect of the time window between evidence of muscle invasion and radical cystectomy on the pathological stage and progression-free survival. Material and Methods: Between February 1992 and August 2002, 239 radical cystectomies were carried out as a result of TCC of the bladder. In a total of 189 patients (79%), cystectomy was carried out due to muscle-infiltrated TCC with no evidence of distant metastases (≥T2, M0). The time between the diagnosis of muscle invasion and cystectomy was determined for all of these patients, who were then divided into two groups on the basis of a 3-month cut-off period. Univariate and multivariate analyses were used to determine the effect of the time period on clinical factors and progression-free survival. Results: The average age of the patients was 63 (range 35–80) years. A median follow-up of 40 months showed a progression-free survival rate of 49% after 5 years. The average time between the diagnosis of muscle invasion and cystectomy was 1.8 (0.3–12.1) months. For a time window of >3 months, 30/42 patients (72%) showed signs of extravesical tumor growth and/or tumor-positive lymph nodes, compared to 89/147 patients (60%) (p = 0.198) for a time window of ≤3 months. In terms of the distribution of tumor stages according to the time groups, there were significantly more pT4 stage tumors in patients with delayed cystectomy (p = 0.009). Patients with a time interval of ≤3 months between diagnosis of muscle invasion and cystectomy had a significantly better progression-free survival rate (55%) than those with a longer time window (34%) (p = 0.04). In contrast to lymph node status, clinical stage, pathological tumor stage and differentiation level, the prognostic relevance of the time window fell just short of the significance level in Cox's multivariate regression analysis (p = 0.057). Lymph node status (p < 0.001) and pathological tumor stage (p = 0.05) were the only independent prognostic parameters which could be used to predict progression-free survival. Conclusion: Patients with a time window of >3 months between diagnosis of muscle invasion and radical cystectomy were associated with an advanced pathological stage and a poorer progression-free survival. These results underline the need for early cystectomy within the 3-month period between diagnosis of muscle invasion and cystectomy.
POTENTIAL DEVELOPMENTS OF EXPERT SYSTEMS USING INFORMATION ABOUT EXPLICIT AND TACIT KNOWLEDGE

Carrying out activities in any field of knowledge (economy, medicine, chemistry, biology, systems engineering etc.) have always need a sort of information or knowledge volume, as regards those activities, needing a succession of decisions and choice between two or more alternatives. Moreover, the performance in any field of knowledge needs some scenarios issuance, regarding some critical indicators that define a short issue. The intelligent systems technology has in view the solving of some complex issues in different fields that need the human expertise, being though restricted in the situation of concrete applications. Either we talk about human intelligence or artificial intelligence (emulation of intelligence by the help of computer), an intelligent system should be able to transform data into information and information into knowledge. The optimal exploitation of the two informational resources (knowledge bases and databases) needs the designing of each of the two components as a natural extension of the other, all within an integrated system.
Behavior of borderline tumors with particular interest to persistence, recurrence, and progression to invasive carcinoma: a prospective study.

PURPOSE Borderline tumors account for 10% to 20% of epithelial ovarian tumors, and their prognosis is outstanding; nevertheless, a mortality of up to 20% has been reported, particularly in earlier reports. There is a lack of information about the actual mortality and the rate of progression into invasive carcinoma in large and prospectively accrued populations. PATIENTS AND METHODS All women with borderline ovarian tumors undergoing primary surgery in our department or referred within 3 months from surgery performed elsewhere from 1982 to 1997 were prospectively accrued and observed. RESULTS We studied 339 women (83.4% stage I, 7.9% stage II, and 8.5% stage III). The median age at diagnosis was 39 years. A total of 150 women underwent radical surgery, and 189 underwent fertility-sparing surgery. After surgery, 13 women had macroscopic residual disease. With a median follow-up of 70 months, 317 women are alive with no clinical disease (eight with documented subclinical persistence of implants), three are alive with clinical disease, two died of disease, 10 died of other reasons, and seven women have been lost to follow-up. The recurrence of disease was higher after fertility-sparing surgery (35 of 189 cases) than after radical surgery (seven of 150 cases); nevertheless, all but one woman with recurrence of borderline tumor or progression to carcinoma after conservative surgery were salvaged. We observed seven progressions (2.0%) into invasive carcinoma, five in serous tumors (2.4%), and two in mucinous tumors (1.6%). The disease-free survival is 99.6% in stage I patients, 95.8% in stage II, and 89% in stage III. CONCLUSION The survival of patients with borderline tumors is higher than previously described in some retrospective studies. Conservative surgery is safe and may be proposed to several patients with early and disseminated disease after thorough discussion of all therapeutic options. Progression to carcinoma is approximately 2% and may be observed in both mucinous and serous tumors.
A Review of Interpersonal-Psychodynamic Group Psychotherapy Outcomes for Adult Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse

Abstract This article discusses the use of interpersonal-psychodynamic group treatments for survivors of childhood sexual abuse. Empirically based interpersonal-psychodynamic group outcome studies are reviewed according to efficacy and effectiveness models of treatment outcome research. To facilitate the evaluation and comparison of clinically significant change across studies, effect size indicators were calculated when descriptive data were reported. Findings suggest that interpersonal-psychodynamic group therapy is an effective treatment approach for many survivors of childhood sexual abuse. Implications for future research are considered.
Electrical promontory testing in differential diagnosis of sensori‐neural hearing impairment

The possibility of rehabilitation of sensory deafness by a peripherally implantable prosthesis makes it very important to differentiate sensory from neural hearing impairment. We do this by a technique which we call electrical promontory testing, which includes measuring the electrical potentials generated in the auditory system and stimulating the inner ear electrically.
Volunteering predicts health among those who value others: two national studies.

OBJECTIVE The purpose of these studies was to examine the role of positive views of other people in predicting stress-buffering effects of volunteering on mortality and psychological distress. METHOD In Study 1, stressful life events, volunteering, and hostile cynicism assessed in a baseline Detroit-area survey (N = 846) predicted survival over a 5-year period, adjusting for relevant covariates. In Study 2, stressful life events, volunteering, and world benevolence beliefs assessed in a baseline national survey (N = 1,157) predicted psychological distress over a 1-year period, adjusting for distress at baseline. RESULTS In Study 1, a Cox proportional hazard model indicated that for individuals low in cynicism, stress predicted mortality at low levels of volunteering but not at high levels of volunteering. This effect was not present among those high in cynicism. In Study 2, multiple regression analysis revealed that among individuals high in world benevolence beliefs, stress predicted elevated distress at low levels of volunteering but not at high levels of volunteering. This effect was absent for those lower in world benevolence beliefs. CONCLUSIONS Consistent with prior research on helping behavior, these studies indicate that helping behavior can buffer the effects of stress on health. However, the results of these studies indicate that stress-buffering effects of volunteering are limited to individuals with positive views of other people. Not all individuals may benefit from volunteering, and health-promotion efforts seeking to draw on health benefits of helping behavior may need to target their approach accordingly.
An investigation of the phenomenon of non‐consensual sex among Maori men who have sex with men

Instances of non‐consensual sex (NCS) among men are highly under‐reported. The research that has been conducted into this issue shows, however, that men who have sex with men experience higher rates of NCS than do other men and that these men are likely not to report that they have been subjected to NCS largely because there are no support systems in place for them. For a long time, there has been an expectation that while men might perpetrate acts of sexual violence against women, they cannot be the victims of such acts. These factors are compounded for Maori men who experience NCS. These men report that they suffer a range of long‐term health effects and that they are unable to access culturally appropriate services to help overcome the effects of these negative health outcomes. At the same time, Maori men report that they have managed to find support within their cultural networks. Support services for Maori men who experience NCS need to be established and they need to incorporate appropriate cultural components into their processes and services.
An Iterative Method for Pricing American Options Under Jump-Diffusion Models

We propose an iterative method for pricing American options under jump-diffusion models. A finite difference discretization is performed on the partial integro-differential equation, and the American option pricing problem is formulated as a linear complementarity problem (LCP). Jump-diffusion models include an integral term, which causes the resulting system to be dense. We propose an iteration to solve the LCPs efficiently and prove its convergence. Numerical examples with Kou@? s and Merton@? s jump-diffusion models show that the resulting iteration converges rapidly.
Effects of mode of inhalation of carbon monoxide and of normobaric oxygen administration on carbon monoxide elimination from the blood

1 The half-life of carbon monoxide (CO) in blood was studied retrospectively in 26 fire victims and in 19 cases of CO poisoning. Normobaric oxygen therapy was administered via mechanical ventilation in 19 fire victims, and by facial mask to the rest of the casualties. 2 Arterial pH was significantly lower (P < 0.05) and PaO2 significantly greater (P<0.01) in the mechanically ventilated fire victims compared to the spontaneously breathing fire victims. 3 The blood CO half-lives were 91 ± 38 min for the 26 fire victims and 87±40 min for the 19 pure CO intoxica tions. 4 The blood CO half-lives were 92 ± 40 min for the 19 mechanically ventilated fire victims and 87 ± 37 min for the 26 spontaneously breathing subjects. 5 We conclude that the elimination of CO from blood was a slow process with no significant effects on the blood CO half-life of either the cause of the CO poisoning or the mode of normobaric oxygen therapy. These data suggest that enhancement of the elimination of carbon monoxide by normobaric oxygen in both pure CO poisoning and fire victims is more difficult to achieve and more complex than has previously been reported.
Coattention-Based Neural Network for Question Answering

Machine comprehension (MC) and question answering (QA) are related NLP tasks which have seen increased interest with the recent release of the Stanford Question Answering Dataset (SQuAD). In this paper, we explore a neural architecture for the QA task which is based largely on the coattention encoder proposed by Xiong et al. [1]. After encoding the data with a context-aware representation of the question and question-aware representation of the context, we decode using simple linear decoders to construct the final probability distributions for the answer location within the context paragraph. Our best single model achieves an F1 score of 70.0% on the withheld test dataset, while an ensemble achieves 74.1% F1.
Habitat associations of herbaceous plants in Yasuní National Park, Amazonian Ecuador: a study of Heliconia.

The abundance, diversity, and distribution of herbaceous plants within tropical forests are often neglected in favor of woody tree and liana species, even though the herbaceous understory layer of these forests plays a major role in nutrient cycling and frequently encompasses a greater species diversity than trees. In a 50-ha permanent lowland Amazonian rain forest plot in Yasuní National Park, Ecuador, a census of six species of Heliconia (Heliconiaceae) was carried out in a stratified random manner across three topographic habitat types: valley, slope and ridge. Distribution patterns consistent with habitat niche partitioning were observed for the two most abundant species on the plot: Heliconia stricta was found predominantly in valley habitat and H. velutina in ridge habitat. Further, H. velutina was the only species to be present at high abundance and frequency in ridge habitat, suggesting that it can succeed in the drier ridge conditions and may even have better drought tolerance than the five other Heliconia species. Such habitat associations consistent with niche partitioning have been found in tree species within the plot, and likely contribute to the coexistence of these six closely related herbaceous species in this forest.
The Psychology of the Employment Relationship: An Analysis Based on the Psychological Contract

On esquisse des perspectives conduisant a des changements dans les relations de travail et a la necessite d’elaborer un cadre conceptuel convenant au monde actuel. La notion de contrat psychologique represente un modele utile et l’on resume plusieurs etudes qui ont l’ont adoptee pour aborder certains aspects des relations de travail. A partir de ces investigations, on montre que le contrat psychologique doit etre elargi pour accorder davantage de poids au contexte et a ce qui est decrit comme relevant du contenu meme de ce contrat, a savoir les idees d’equite et de confiance qui resident au cœur des relations de travail. On presente un programme pour de futures recherches exploitant ce modele. Developments are outlined that are leading to changes in employment relations and to the need for a conceptual framework that has contemporary relevance. It is proposed that the psychological contract provides a useful framework, and different studies that have adopted the psychological contract to study aspects of employment relations are outlined. Building on these, it is argued that the psychological contract needs extending to give greater weight to context and to what is described as the state of the psychological contract, incorporating issues of fairness and trust that lie at the heart of employment relations. Based on this model, an agenda for future research is presented.
The relationship between preoperative endometrial thickness, the anteroposterior diameter of the uterus and clinical outcome following transcervical resection of the endometrium

The objective of this study was to identify whether the endometrial thickness, or the anteroposterior diameter of the uterus as assessed by transvaginal ultrasonography (TVS), could be used to predict the clinical outcome following transcervical resection of the endometrium (TCRE).
Viability mutations induced by ethyl methanesulfonate in Drosophila melanogaster.

MUKAI and YAMAZAKI ( 1964, 1968) discovered a coupling-repulsion effect in Drosophila melanogaster. If mutant polygenes are located in only one of the homologous chromosomes, they show overdominance-this has been called the “coupling effect. ” On the other hand, if mutant polygenes are located in both homologous chromosomes, they are deleterious in the heterozygous condition in comparison to their wild-type alleles and their degree of dominance (h in the Wrightian fitness model) is largethis has been called the “repulsion effect. ” If this finding becomes generally accepted, the mechanism of maintenance of genetic variability with respect to fitness in populations will need to be reevaluated. In fact, MTJKAI (1968a,b) has already proposed a model for the maintenance of genetic variability in populations on the basis of the coupling-repulsion effect. Since this effect is significant for understanding the genetic load problem and since it is a difficult phenomenon to understand on the basis of our present knowledge of molecular genetics, it is necessary to examine the generality of this phenomenon over different lines and different species of Drosophila. Any experimental techniques which would simplify or hasten such investigations would be highly useful. LEWIS and BACHER (1 968) published an effective feeding method for inducing mutations in Drosophila melanogaster using ethyl methanesulfonate (this was orally presented by DR. E. B. LEWIS at the Eighth Drosophila Research Conference held at the University of Chicago in May, 1966). If EMS induces many polygenic mutants affecting viability and if their characteristics are similar to those of spontaneous mutant polygenes, the generality of the coupling-repulsion effect could be examined very easily. Thus, an EMS experiment was conducted using the same experimental materials and methods as those of MUKAI and YAMAZAKI ( 1964,1968). The results are reported in this article.