Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Improving attendance at post-emergency department follow-up via automated text message appointment reminders: a randomized controlled trial.

OBJECTIVES Patients discharged from the emergency department (ED) are often referred for primary care, specialty, or other disease-specific follow-up appointments. Attendance at these scheduled follow-up appointments has been found to improve patient outcomes, decrease ED bounce-backs, and reduce malpractice risk. Reasons for missing follow-up visits are complex, but the most commonly reason cited by patients is simply forgetting. In this study the authors evaluated the ability of an automated text message reminder system to increase attendance at post-ED discharge follow-up appointments in a predominantly Hispanic safety-net population. METHODS This was a randomized controlled trial of ED patients with outpatient follow-up visits scheduled at the time of ED discharge. A total of 374 English- and Spanish-speaking patients with text-capable mobile phones were enrolled. Patients in the intervention arm received automated, personalized text message appointment reminders including date, time, and clinic location at 7, 3, and 1 day before scheduled visits. A t-test of proportions was used to compare outcomes between intervention and control groups. Both an intention-to-treat (ITT) and a per-protocol analysis of the data were performed. The ITT more accurately reflects real-world conditions where errors such as number entry errors are bound to occur. The per-protocol analysis adds value by isolating the effect of the intervention by comparing patients who actually received it compared with those who did not. RESULTS In the per-protocol analysis of the primary outcome, the overall appointment adherence rate was 72.6% in the intervention group compared with 62.1% in the control group (difference between groups = 10.5%, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.3% to 20.8%; p = 0.045; number needed to treat = 9.5). In the ITT analysis, the overall appointment attendance rate 70.2% in the intervention group compared with 62.1% in the control group (difference between groups = 8.2%; 95% CI = -1.6% to 17.7%; p = 0.100). In a secondary largely exploratory analysis, the intervention was found to have the most benefit in patients with the lowest baseline follow-up rate (English speakers with specialty care appointments). CONCLUSIONS Automated text message appointment reminders resulted in improvement in attendance at scheduled post-ED discharge outpatient follow-up visits and represent a low-cost and highly scalable solution to increase attendance at post-ED follow-up appointments, which should be further explored in larger sample sizes and diverse patient populations.
Opportunistic cross-layer power control for high density clustered wireless sensor networks

In this paper, we propose a novel transmission power control scheme to improve energy efficiency in high density clustered wireless sensor networks(WSNs). Our scheme is based on cross-layer strategy that combines both medium access control (MAC) layer and physical (PHY) layer. The algorithm consists of an efficient time slot allocation and opportunistic transmission power control to support energy-efficient intra- cluster communication. Performance evaluation results reveal that our approach is more energy efficient and can maximize the network lifetime in high density clustered WSNs. Our approach can achieve a network lifetime of up to 2 times longer than that generated by the current schemes. Furthermore, our approach outperforms traditional layered protocols.
Transposon Tn4556 of Streptomyces fradiae: nucleotide sequence of the ends and the target sites

A transposon, Tn4556, has recently been isolated from Streptomyces fradiae (S.-T. Chung, J. Bacteriol. 169:4436-4441, 1987). The ends of Tn4556 were found to contain inverted repeats of 38 base pairs with 70% sequence identity with the ends of Tn3. Insertion of Tn4556 into a Streptomyces plasmid resulted in a 5-base-pair duplication of the target site.
Scaling up to Billions of Cells with DATASPREAD : Supporting Large Spreadsheets with Databases

Spreadsheet software is the tool of choice for ad-hoc tabular data management, manipulation, querying, and visualization with adoption by billions of users. However, spreadsheets are not scalable, unlike database systems. We develop DATASPREAD, a system that holistically unifies databases and spreadsheets with a goal to work with massive spreadsheets: DATASPREAD retains all of the advantages of spreadsheets, including ease of use, ad-hoc analysis and visualization capabilities, and a schema-free nature, while also adding the scalability and collaboration abilities of traditional relational databases. We design DATASPREAD with a spreadsheet front-end and a regular relational database back-end. To integrate spreadsheets and databases, in this paper, we develop a storage and indexing engine for spreadsheet data. We first formalize and study the problem of representing and manipulating spreadsheet data within a relational database. We demonstrate that identifying the optimal representation is NP-HARD via a reduction from partitioning of rectangles; however, under certain reasonable assumptions, can be solved in PTIME. We develop a collection of mechanisms for representing spreadsheet data, and evaluate these representations on a workload of typical data manipulation operations. We augment our mechanisms with novel positionally-aware indexing structures that further improve performance. DATASPREAD can scale to billions of cells, returning results for common operations within seconds. Lastly, to motivate our research questions, we perform an extensive survey of spreadsheet use for ad-hoc tabular data management.
Women with rheumatoid arthritis: Non-vocational activities and quality of life

The aim of this study was to examine a possible relationship between partaking in non-vocational activities and health-related quality of life in women with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Two questionnaires were completed by 45 women with RA aged from 25 to 80. The MOS Short-Form 36 (SF-36) measured the health-related quality of life and the Interest Checklist measured the amount of non-vocational activities performed. The present study revealed a significant decrease in non-vocational activities by the participants during the last 10 years. Mental health status seemed to be of greater importance than physical function to perform non-vocational activities in daily life. There were indications that a high number of activities performed correlated positively with scores on psychological well-being, and that a low amount of activities performed correlated with the psychological distress scores.
A quality improvement initiative to improve adherence to national guidelines for empiric management of community-acquired pneumonia in emergency departments.

OBJECTIVE The objective of this study was to improve the concordance of community-acquired pneumonia management in Australian emergency departments with national guidelines through a quality improvement initiative promoting concordant antibiotic use and use of a pneumonia severity assessment tool, the pneumonia severity index (PSI). DESIGN and INTERVENTIONS Drug use evaluation, a quality improvement methodology involving data collection, evaluation, feedback and education, was undertaken. Educational interventions included academic detailing, group feedback presentations and prescribing prompts. SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS Data were collected on 20 consecutive adult community-acquired pneumonia emergency department presentations by each hospital for each of three audits. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Two process indicators measured the impact of the interventions: documented PSI use and concordance of antibiotic prescribing with guidelines. Comparisons were performed using a Chi-squared test. RESULTS Thirty-seven hospitals, including public, private, rural and metropolitan institutions, participated. Twenty-six hospitals completed the full study (range: 462-518 patients), incorporating two intervention phases and subsequent follow-up audits. The baseline audit of community-acquired pneumonia management demonstrated that practice was varied and mostly discordant with guidelines. Documented PSI use subsequently improved from 30/518 (6%, 95% confidence interval [CI] 4-8) at baseline to 125/503 (25%, 95% CI 21-29; P < 0.0001) and 102/462 (22%, 95% CI 18-26; P < 0.0001) in audits two and three, respectively, while concordant antibiotic prescribing improved from 101/518 (20%, 95% CI 16-23) to 132/462 (30%, 95% CI 26-34; P < 0.0001) and 132/462 (29%, 95% CI 24-33; P < 0.001), respectively. CONCLUSIONS Improved uptake of guideline recommendations for community-acquired pneumonia management in emergency departments was documented following a multi-faceted education intervention.
A simple technique for skin grafting rats

Skin grafting is often used routinely to check the homozygosity of inbred strains of laboratory animals. Brown (I963) described a successful method of skin grafting in mice using the Waldemar punch to prepare both graft and graft bed, but the technique has not proved to be successful in rats due to the toughness of the back skin in this species. Bailey & Usama (1960) described a rapid technique of grafting on the tails of mice, which has a number of advantages. As many as 7 or 8 grafts can be fitted on each tail, the technique is simple, and it causes the minimum amount of distress to the animals. This paper describes Bailey & Usama's method as applied to rats. The rats to be grafted should preferably be between 4 and 6 weeks old at the time of the operation; older animals can be grafted, but with a certai n amount of difficulty as the tail skin becomes very tough. The rats are anaesthetised (intraperitoneal pentobarbitone sodium, 'Nembutal', 4 mgjlOO g bodyweight) and laid out on a sterile surface, ventral side up. The tails are cleaned as far as possible by swabbing them with a disinfectant solution (e.g. 'Hibitane'; Imperial Chemical Industries Ltd, Millbank, London, S.W.I), and the graft bed is prepared by removing a thin sliver of skin about O.Sin (12 mm) long, and about half the width of the tail (Fig. 1). Care must be taken not to cut too deep, as this will cause excessive bleeding. Slight bleeding will occur, but this does not interfere with the acceptance of the graft. The piece of skin that is removed may be used as a graft on another animal, or the graft may be prepared separately in exactly the same way. Grafts may be held for short periods on sterile filter paper damped with sterile physiological saline.
Sector-zoned aegirine in Sanbagawa quartz schist from the western Kii Peninsula, central Japan

Sector-zoned aegirine was found in a specimen of Sanbagawa quartz schist from the Iimori region of the western Kii Peninsula, central Japan. The schist consists of quartz, aegirine, albite, amphibole (magnesioriebeckite to manganocummingtonite), garnet (spessartine), rhodochrosite, pyrophanite, jacobsite, and apatite. Aegirine occurs as subhedral to euhedral prismatic crystals less than 250 μm long. Three sectors in the zoning are distinguished on the basis of backscattered electron images. The [001] sector is more enriched in Ca and Mg (as CaMgSi2O6) and depleted in Al (as NaAlSi2O6) than the {110} and {100} sectors, and the {110} sector is more enriched in Fe (NaFeSi2O6) and depleted in Al than the {100} sector. The sector-zoned aegirine is mantled by XJd-rich aegirine, and there is an outermost rim of XJd-poor aegirine. These textural relationships suggest that after rapid non-equilibrium crystallization, the XJd-rich mantle as well as the XJd-poor outermost rim formed under conditions of equilibrium with the surrounding minerals.
Decoding of redundant residue polynomial codes using Euclid's algorithm

A decoding method is proposed for the redundant residue polynomial codes, a class that includes Reed-Solomon codes. The method is based on properties of Euclid's algorithm. The advantage of the method is that the computation of both the error-locator polynomial and the error-evaluator polynomial needed in conventional decoding methods can be avoided. The method is suitable for decoding concatenated codes whose outer codes are redundant residue polynomial codes, since they are easily decoded by ignoring erasures detected in the inner codes. >
Levenshtein Distances Fail to Identify Language Relationships Accurately

The Levenshtein distance is a simple distance metric derived from the number of edit operations needed to transform one string into another. This metric has received recent attention as a means of automatically classifying languages into genealogical subgroups. In this article I test the performance of the Levenshtein distance for classifying languages by subsampling three language subsets from a large database of Austronesian languages. Comparing the classification proposed by the Levenshtein distance to that of the comparative method shows that the Levenshtein classification is correct only 40% of time. Standardizing the orthography increases the performance, but only to a maximum of 65% accuracy within language subgroups. The accuracy of the Levenshtein classification decreases rapidly with phylogenetic distance, failing to discriminate homology and chance similarity across distantly related languages.This poor performance suggests the need for more linguistically nuanced methods for automated language classification tasks.
Use of the Backseat Driving Technique in Evaluation of a Perceptually Optimized In-Car Navigation Display

Recently drivers have greatly benefited from new vehicular technologies such as in-car navigation systems, but at the same time they can be easily distracted from those technologies. Consequently, creating displays that balance the communication of information with the attentional demand imposed on the driver is of increasing importance. A set of research has been conducted to minimize the driver’s attentional cost toward the navigational displays while driving. However, accurate evaluation methods to assess the effects of these displays in realistic environments are not yet available. This article introduces the backseat driving technique for high-fidelity, safe, and inexpensive evaluation of interaction with in-car displays. This technique makes use of a real vehicle driving on a real road. As a result it allows for the exploration of some types of research questions using audio, visual, and kinesthetic stimulus at least equal in fidelity to very high-end driving simulators, without requiring such a specialized and expensive facility. Further, it allows for the employment of detailed and fine-grained measures of attentional demand, which cannot be safely used with subjects who are actually driving. Although the backseat driving technique can address only some types of questions and so is not a full replacement for high-realism driving simulators, it may offer a new approach, which augments laboratory, simulator, and real driving for many studies. As a part of the work presented here, the backseat driving technique is used to evaluate a previously developed in-car navigation display—the MOVE system. The technique allowed for new questions to be asked, which were not able to be considered in previous laboratory studies, and for the use of study measures that were only previously able to be used in the laboratory due to driving safety concerns. Specifically, the display was shown to work well when real-world stimulus are used to navigate along a real route, reducing the navigation error rate nearly threefold, and up to sixfold when compared to displays providing more or less contextual information. In addition the display was shown to cut total display fixation time (which is time spent looking away from the road) almost in half in both cases.
Comparison of Validated Assessment Scales and 3D digital fringe projection method to assess lifetime development of wrinkles in men

The assessment of wrinkle severity is an important evaluation criterion to determine the efficacy of aesthetic treatments. Aim of the present study was to compare Validated Assessment Scales (VAS) and 3D fringe projection (PRIMOS®) for the evaluation of facial wrinkles in men and to determine standard values for each level of the VAS.
Experiences in Adoption of Teledermatology in Mohs Micrographic Surgery

Decades after its development, Mohs micrographic surgery (MMS) remains the first-line treatment for skin malignancies in functionally and aesthetically sensitive areas. By nature, the size, shape, and extent of Mohs defects are not known prior to margins being cleared by histological examination. In many large institutions, multiple patients are treated concurrently, and the decision for optimal method and surgeon for defect closure is a collaborative effort between multiple subspecialists. This may include dermatology, plastic surgery, otorhinolaryngology, and other surgical subspecialties. Although effort is always made to communicate effectively, tools that improve the communication between physicians participating and collaborating in patient care will improve outcomes and make these processes less strenuous and more efficient. This conflagration of complicated scheduling, defect repair triage, and coordination between multiple departments provides an ideal environment for the application of intradepartmental telemedicine. We report with great interest that telemedicine and other telecommunication technologies are increasingly used to coordinate care in surgery and dermatology. For example, Lamel et al have explored the use of mobile phones for skin cancer screening and Kanthraj has described the successful use of teledermatology for remote consultation in dermatosurgery. Additionally, plastic surgeons have used third-generation smart phones for triaging wounds and other traumas. Telehealth technologies have also been used in MMS, especially for the purpose of telepathology. For example, distinguishing between basal cell carcinoma from benign histology on difficult frozen sections may be aided by dynamic telepathology intraoperatively. Smartglasses (Google Glass, Google Inc, Mountain View, CA) are a new telecommunication device, computer engineered to fit into a pair of eye-glasses (Figure 1). They are hands-free, voice-activated tools that present information to the user on a small translucent optical display. These features make smartglasses well suited to dermatological surgery where infection control and complex procedures prevent the surgeon from using other devices like computers or cell phones. Our device is also fitted 552735 SRIXXX10.1177/1553350614552735Surgical InnovationHamann et al research-article2014
Functional Differences between the Long Terminal Repeat Transcriptional Promoters of Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 Subtypes A through G

ABSTRACT The current human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) shows an increasing number of distinct viral subtypes, as well as viruses that are recombinants of at least two subtypes. Although no biological differences have been described so far for viruses that belong to different subtypes, there is considerable sequence variation between the different HIV-1 subtypes. The HIV-1 long terminal repeat (LTR) encodes the transcriptional promoter, and the LTR of subtypes A through G was cloned and analyzed to test if there are subtype-specific differences in gene expression. Sequence analysis demonstrated a unique LTR enhancer-promoter configuration for each subtype. Transcription assays with luciferase reporter constructs showed that all subtype LTRs are functional promoters with a low basal transcriptional activity and a high activity in the presence of the viral Tat transcriptional activator protein. All subtype LTRs responded equally well to the Tattrans activator protein of subtype B. This result suggests that there are no major differences in the mechanism of Tat-mediatedtrans activation among the subtypes. Nevertheless, subtype-specific differences in the activity of the basal LTR promoter were measured in different cell types. Furthermore, we measured a differential response to tumor necrosis factor alpha treatment, and the induction level correlated with the number of NF-κB sites in the respective LTRs, which varies from one (subtype E) to three (subtype C). In general, subtype E was found to encode the most potent LTR, and we therefore inserted the core promoter elements of subtype E in the infectious molecular clone of the LAI isolate (subtype B). This recombinant LAI-E virus exhibited a profound replication advantage compared with the original LAI virus in the SupT1 T-cell line, indicating that subtle differences in LTR promoter activity can have a significant impact on viral replication kinetics. These results suggest that there may be considerable biological differences among the HIV-1 subtypes.
On a Network Forensics Model For Information Security

The employment of a patchwork of nonintegrated security products can only provide incomplete coverage, which cannot give the total panorama of the network misuse behavior. Network forensics is a new approach for the incident investigation and emergence response, which also enhance the network security from a different point of view. However, the current network forensics system is confused with the network monitor system or sniffer system. It always is misconstrued to an only network traffic capture system. In this paper, we for the first time discuss the concept model of network forensics system, which can give guidance for the implementation of network forensics system and the formalization of the network forensics procedure, which is a principle element of the recognition between the law enforcement participation. Particularly, some novel approaches for network forensics system are discussed for the first time, such as network forensics server, network forensics protocol and standardization, and so on.
A Study of Enterprise Software Licensing Models

Abstract We study an enterprise software vendor’s decision on three prominent licensing models– on-premises, software as a service (SaaS), and hybrid. Our findings indicate that both the customers’ estimation of the future software quality improvement and network effects play critical roles in the software vendor’s choice of optimal licensing models. If the network effects are weak, the enterprise software vendor should choose the on-premises model when customers have a low estimation of the software quality improvement in the upgrade version. The hybrid model should be implemented if this estimation is in the mid-range, while the SaaS model generates the highest profit when customers believe that the upgrade version will have a significant improvement in software quality. As the network effects become stronger, the on-premises model will be dominated by the other two licensing models and is never optimal. In the event of a high upgrade cost and strong network effects, SaaS becomes the best licensing model due to its multitenancy nature.