Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
National Study of Chronic Disease Self-Management

Introduction. The adult population is increasingly experiencing one or more chronic illnesses and living with such conditions longer. The Chronic Disease Self-Management Program (CDSMP) helps participants cope with chronic disease-related symptomatology and improve their health-related quality of life. Nevertheless, the long-term effectiveness of this evidence-based program on older adults as compared to the middle-aged populations has not been examined in a large-scale, national rollout. Method. We identified baseline characteristics of CDSMP participants aged 65 years or older (n = 687, M = 74.8 years) in the National Study of CDSMP from 2010 to 2012. Comparisons were made to middle-aged participants aged 50 to 64 (n = 325, M = 58.3 years). Assessments were conducted at baseline and 12-month follow-up. Linear and generalized linear mixed models were performed to assess changes in primary and secondary outcomes, controlling the key sociodemographics and number of chronic conditions. Results. All primary outcomes (i.e., social/role activities limitation, depression, communication with doctors) significantly improved in both the older and middle-aged cohorts. Although improvements in illness symptomatology (e.g., fatigue, pain, shortness of breath, and sleep problems) were similar across both cohorts, only the middle-aged cohort benefitted significantly in terms of overall quality of life and unhealthy mental health days. Effect sizes were larger among the middle-aged population who were also more likely to enter the program in poorer health and be from minority backgrounds. Conclusions. The current study documented improved health outcomes but more so among the middle-aged population. Findings suggest the importance of examining how age and interacting life circumstances may affect chronic disease self-management.
From the Southern Association for Vascular Surgery Detrimental effects of mechanical stretch on smooth muscle function in saphenous veins

Objective: This study evaluated the smooth muscle functional response and viability of human saphenous vein (HSV) grafts after harvest and explored the effect of mechanical stretch on contractile responses of porcine saphenous vein (PSV). Methods: The contractile responses (stress, 10 N/m) of deidentified, remnant HSV grafts to depolarizing potassium chloride and the agonist norepinephrine were measured in a muscle organ bath. Cellular viability was evaluated using a methyl thiazole tetrazolium (MTT) assay. A PSV model was used to evaluate the effect of radial, longitudinal, and angular stretch on smooth muscle contractile responses. Results: Contractile responses varied greatly in HSV harvested for autologous vascular and coronary bypass procedures (0.04198 0.008128 10 N/m to 0.1192 0.02776 10 N/m). Contractility of the HSV correlated with the cellular viability of the grafts. In the PSV model, manual radial distension of >300 mm Hg had no impact on the smooth muscle responses of PSV to potassium chloride. Longitudinal and angular stretch significantly decreased the contractile function of PSV by 33.16% and 15.26%, respectively (P < .03). Conclusions: There is considerable variability in HSV harvested for use as an autologous conduit. Longitudinal and angular stretching during surgical harvest impairs contractile responsiveness of the smooth muscle in saphenous vein. Avoiding stretch-induced injuries to the conduits during harvest and preparation for implantation may reduce adverse biologic responses in the graft (eg, intimal hyperplasia) and improve patency of autologous vein graft bypasses. ( J Vasc Surg 2011;53:454-60.)
LTE Access Network Planning and Optimization: A Service-Oriented and Technology-Specific Perspective

With the emergence of new technologies and services, it is very important to accurately identify the factors that affect the design of the wireless access network and define how to take them into account to achieve optimally performing and cost-efficient networks. Till now, most existing efforts have been focused the basic access capability. This article describes a way to deal with the trade-offs generated during the LTE Access network design, and presents a service-oriented optimization framework that offers a new perspective for this process with consideration of the technical and economic factors of this kind of networks. We propose a mixed integer programming model with the use of the method of the Pareto front and Multiobjective Tabu Search. An example of deployment is presented.
Joint Configuration of Routing and Medium Access Parameters in Wireless Networks

In this paper, we study the joint configuration of routing and medium access control (MAC) parameters in fixed wireless networks. Due to the complexity of the problem, we consider a simple slotted ALOHA MAC protocol for link layer operation. We model the link rate of the slotted ALOHA system under a saturation assumption and use a signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR) based interference model via the concept of conflict set. We formulate a joint routing and MAC (JRM) optimization problem to determine the optimal maxmin throughput of the flows and the optimal configuration of routing and MAC parameters. The JRM optimization problem is a non-convex optimization problem and we solve it by an iterated optimal search technique. We validate our approach via simulation and illustrate the potentially high throughput gains that can be obtained by using our joint configuration technique.
Exploring the Link Between Alcohol and Marijuana Use and Teen Dating Violence Victimization Among High School Students

Background. Adolescence is a developmental period when dating behavior is first initiated and when the risk of abuse by or against a dating partner begins to emerge. It is also one in which experimentation with alcohol and illicit substances typically begins. The current study examined the association between recent alcohol use and recent marijuana use and the experience of physical and verbal teen dating violence (TDV) victimization while considering the potential influence of school contextual variables. Method. Data came from 27,758 high school students attending 58 Maryland public high schools. Hierarchical linear modeling was used to identify student- and school-level predictors associated with TDV. Results. Results indicated that approximately 11% of students reported experiencing physical TDV and 11% of students reported experiencing verbal TDV over the past year. In addition, 33% of students reported recent alcohol use and 21% reported recent marijuana use. Hierarchical linear modeling results revealed that students who reported frequent recent alcohol or recent marijuana use were at increased odds of experiencing physical (adjusted odds ratio [AOR]alcohol = 2.80, p < .001; AORmarijuana = 2.03, p < .001) or verbal TDV (AORalcohol = 2.63, p < .001; AORmarijuana = 2.20, p < .001) victimization compared to students who reported little or no alcohol or marijuana use. School support was a protective factor for both physical TDV (AOR = 0.74, p < .001) and verbal TDV (AOR = 0.76, p < .001) victimization. Conclusions. Findings suggested that prevention efforts to address alcohol and marijuana use may have an effect on TDV victimization. Results also highlight the potential utility of enhancing student perceptions of school support as an approach for reducing TDV victimization.
Visual Optics and Refraction: A Clinical Approach.

The last decade has seen a rapid increase in the use of intraocular lenses for the management of aphakia. New materials, new lens forms, new techniques, and revised indications are put forward almost daily, and the ophthalmologist has often to keep a cool head during this bombardment. This comprehensive, well-illustrated book goes a long way towards sorting out some of the confusion that has been created by these rapid developments and is to be thoroughly recommended. Its value is enhanced by the excellence of its illustrations. There are photographs and simple diagrams throughout, so that the book serves not only as a discussion on the history and basic principles of intraocular lens implantation but also as a manual of surgery describing the different operative techniques that need be applied for the individual lens forms. Although the author's bias towards intraocular lenses is obvious, the contraindications and complications are discussed fairly and in depth, and the bibliography is comprehensive. One has come to expect high standards from German ophthalmic textbooks, and this volume is no exception. It should be essential reading for all eye surgeons, not only those committed to this new branch of surgery.
Fuzzy Bag-of-Words Model for Document Representation

One key issue in text mining and natural language processing is how to effectively represent documents using numerical vectors. One classical model is the Bag-of-Words (BoW). In a BoW-based vector representation of a document, each element denotes the normalized number of occurrence of a basis term in the document. To count the number of occurrence of a basis term, BoW conducts exact word matching, which can be regarded as a hard mapping from words to the basis term. BoW representation suffers from its intrinsic extreme sparsity, high dimensionality, and inability to capture high-level semantic meanings behind text data. To address the aforementioned issues, we propose a new document representation method named fuzzy Bag-of-Words (FBoW) in this paper. FBoW adopts a fuzzy mapping based on semantic correlation among words quantified by cosine similarity measures between word embeddings. Since word semantic matching instead of exact word string matching is used, the FBoW could encode more semantics into the numerical representation. In addition, we propose to use word clusters instead of individual words as basis terms and develop fuzzy Bag-of-WordClusters (FBoWC) models. Three variants under the framework of FBoWC are proposed based on three different similarity measures between word clusters and words, which are named as <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\text{FBoWC}_{\rm mean}$</tex-math></inline-formula>, <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\text{FBoWC}_{\rm max}$</tex-math></inline-formula>, and <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\text{FBoWC}_{\rm min}$</tex-math></inline-formula>, respectively. Document representations learned by the proposed FBoW and FBoWC are dense and able to encode high-level semantics. The task of document categorization is used to evaluate the performance of learned representation by the proposed FBoW and FBoWC methods. The results on seven real-word document classification datasets in comparison with six document representation learning methods have shown that our methods FBoW and FBoWC achieve the highest classification accuracies.
Mitigation of tracheobronchomalacia with 3D-printed personalized medical devices in pediatric patients

Patient-specific, image-based design coupled with 3D biomaterial printing produced personalized implants for treatment of collapsed airways in patients with tracheobronchomalacia. Printing in 4D: Personalized implants The 3D printing revolution is in full swing, with frequent reports of printed kidneys and jaws, dolls and cars, food, and body armor. The new challenge is to make 3D materials evolve in the fourth dimension: time. Such “4D” materials could change in response to temperature, light, or even stress, making them adaptable and enduring. In pediatric medicine, 4D implants become particularly relevant; as the patient grows, so, too, should the material. Morrison et al. used 3D printing technology with a safe, bioresorbable polymer blend to create splints for three pediatric patients with tracheobronchomalacia (TBM)—a condition of excessive collapse of the airways during normal breathing. Currently available fixed-size implants can migrate and require frequent resizing. Thus, the authors used imaging and computational models to design the splints for each TBM patient’s individual geometries, structuring the implants to accommodate airway growth and prevent external compression over a period of time, before being resorbed by the body. In all three patients (one with two airways splinted), the 4D devices were implanted without issue. All four implants were stable and functional after 1 month, and one implant has remained in place, keeping the airway open for over 3 years. This pilot trial demonstrates that the fourth dimension is a reality for 3D-printed materials, and with continued human studies, 4D biomaterials promise to change the way we envision the next generation of regenerative medicine. Three-dimensional (3D) printing offers the potential for rapid customization of medical devices. The advent of 3D-printable biomaterials has created the potential for device control in the fourth dimension: 3D-printed objects that exhibit a designed shape change under tissue growth and resorption conditions over time. Tracheobronchomalacia (TBM) is a condition of excessive collapse of the airways during respiration that can lead to life-threatening cardiopulmonary arrests. We demonstrate the successful application of 3D printing technology to produce a personalized medical device for treatment of TBM, designed to accommodate airway growth while preventing external compression over a predetermined time period before bioresorption. We implanted patient-specific 3D-printed external airway splints in three infants with severe TBM. At the time of publication, these infants no longer exhibited life-threatening airway disease and had demonstrated resolution of both pulmonary and extrapulmonary complications of their TBM. Long-term data show continued growth of the primary airways. This process has broad application for medical manufacturing of patient-specific 3D-printed devices that adjust to tissue growth through designed mechanical and degradation behaviors over time.
Promoting Parent and Child Physical Activity Together: Elicitation of Potential Intervention Targets and Preferences

Promoting physical activities that involve both parents and their children would be very useful to the improved health and well-being of families, yet coactivity interventions have been particularly unsuccessful in past research. The purpose of this study was to elicit the salient parental beliefs about coactivity framed through theory of planned behavior in order to inform future intervention content. A representative sample of Canadian parents (N = 483) with children aged 6 to 14 years completed belief elicitation measures of theory of planned behavior, as well as coactivity and program preferences. Analyses included content theming by physical activity belief and preference through tallies of the percentages of parents endorsing each belief. Exploratory analyses of differences in endorsed themes were conducted by parent (mother, father), age of child (6-10 years, 11-14 years), and sex of the child. The results showed that behavioral beliefs about health, interpersonal and educational/learning opportunities and control beliefs about lack of time, various incompatible parent/child factors, parental health, and bad weather were dominant themes. Most of these themes did not vary in endorsement by parent and child characteristics. By contrast, preferences for various activities varied by parent and child characteristics, yet parents overwhelmingly desired the activities to be outdoors, close to home, after work, and originally delivered from community health professionals via Internet or face-to face means. Overall, the findings provide several considerations for specific targets to improve future physical activity intervention approaches among parents and their children.
Inversion of surface parameters from polarimetric SAR

Proposes a new model for the inversion of surface roughness and soil moisture from polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data, based on the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the polarimetric coherency matrix. It demonstrates how three polarimetric parameters, namely the scattering entropy (H), the scattering anisotropy (A), and the alpha angle (/spl alpha/) may be used in order to decouple surface roughness from moisture content estimation offering the possibility of a straightforward inversion of these two surface parameters. The potential of the proposed inversion algorithm is investigated using fully polarimetric laboratory measurements as well as airborne L-band SAR data and ground measurements from two different test sites in Germany, the Elbe-Auen site and the Weiherbach site.
Game Theory Based Bandwidth Allocation Scheme for Network Virtualization

Running multiple virtual networks over a shared physical network is a promising way to support diverse applications, consequently network virtualization is viewed as the keystone of the next-generation architecture. However, decoupling the role of traditional ISPs into Infrastructure Providers (InPs) and Service Providers (SPs), also brings some new challenges to us. For example, how to fairly and efficiently share the sacred physical resources of InPs among multiple SPs is a key problem. The interaction between InPs and SPs, such as cooperation and competition, makes this topic even more complicated. In this paper, we develop a novel approach to encourage efficient behavior in solving the interaction between InPs and SPs by introducing economic incentives, in the form of Game Theory. Based on the non-cooperative game model, a bandwidth allocation scheme in the network virtualization environment is established, using the concept of the Nash Equilibrium. Then we propose an iterative algorithm to find the Nash Equilibrium and solve the bandwidth allocation problem. Finally, we demonstrate the convergence and the effectiveness of our scheme in the experiments.
Assessment of different topographic corrections in Landsat-TM data for mapping vegetation types (2003)

Different methods for topographic correction of Landsat Thematic Mapper images have been assessed in the context of mapping vegetation types. The best results were obtained with a variation of the C method, which takes into account the overcorrection of low illuminated slopes by the original C method. The performance of this method was tested using two criteria: the changes in the spectral characteristics of the image and the reduction in standard deviation of each vegetation type after the correction.
Dementia and driving: Results of a semi‐realistic simulator study

The objective was to assess the performance of patients with dementia on the DRIVAGE semi‐realistic driving simulator task. A study of patients with dementia who were continuing to drive a car at the time of assessment, was undertaken in a specialist Pre‐Senile Dementia Clinic at The National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery and a driving simulator laboratory at King's College, London. It comprised thirteen patients diagnosed with dementia (10 Alzheimer's disease, three focal dementia syndrome), mean age 63 (range 57–71) years. Measured performance was judged by an independent rater, blind to diagnosis and neuropsychological test results, as either normal or poor by comparison with data previously collected on 125 normal older drivers. Secondary performance was assessed from objective performance data generated by the simulator. The performance of seven patients was rated as normal and that of six as poor. The majority with poor performance could only complete two of four driving tasks. The normal group scored higher on the Mini Mental State Examination (24 (21–27) vs 17 (13–22)), were less impaired on neuropsychological testing, particularly tasks assessing performance IQ, and had intact perceptual abilities. The results of the study demonstrate that patients with dementia can retain their ability to perform a driving task. Loss of this ability is broadly associated with progression of the dementia, impaired perception and impairment of non‐verbal intelligence tests. Studies on larger groups of patients in a more comprehensive driving task would be required to demonstrate specific markers of loss of driving ability.
Basal exon skipping and genetic pleiotropy: A predictive model of disease pathogenesis

Basal exon skipping, a mechanism by which a cell compensates for deleterious mutations, explains pleiotropic disease pathogenesis in patients with mutations in two different ciliopathy-associated genes. A new model of disease pleiotropy To investigate a potential mechanism explaining genetic pleiotropy, Drivas et al. correlated the genotype/phenotype information of individuals affected with two different autosomal recessive ciliopathies to the molecular biologic parameters in their cells. In both cases, disease severity correlated with amounts of the relevant protein. Basal exon skipping explains the diverse phenotypes seen in these different ciliopathies and may also explain the pathologic findings associated with other inherited disorders. Genetic pleiotropy, the phenomenon by which mutations in the same gene result in markedly different disease phenotypes, has proven difficult to explain with traditional models of disease pathogenesis. We have developed a model of pleiotropic disease that explains, through the process of basal exon skipping, how different mutations in the same gene can differentially affect protein production, with the total amount of protein produced correlating with disease severity. Mutations in the centrosomal protein of 290 kDa (CEP290) gene are associated with a spectrum of phenotypically distinct human diseases (the ciliopathies). Molecular biologic examination of CEP290 transcript and protein expression in cells from patients carrying CEP290 mutations, measured by quantitative polymerase chain reaction and Western blotting, correlated with disease severity and corroborated our model. We show that basal exon skipping may be the mechanism underlying the disease pleiotropy caused by CEP290 mutations. Applying our model to a different disease gene, CC2D2A (coiled-coil and C2 domains–containing protein 2A), we found that the same correlations held true. Our model explains the phenotypic diversity of two different inherited ciliopathies and may establish a new model for the pathogenesis of other pleiotropic human diseases.