Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of multi-sensory stimulation for people with dementia.

BACKGROUND Over recent years multi-sensory stimulation (MSS) has become an increasingly popular approach to care and is used in several centres throughout Europe. This popularity could be explained by the limited alternatives available to staff and a widely held belief that MSS is a friendly and highly humane approach. A randomized controlled trial was therefore essential to evaluate the effectiveness and extent of the benefits of MSS. AIM To assess whether MSS is more effective in changing the behaviour, mood and cognition of older adults with dementia than a control of activity (playing card games, looking at photographs, doing quizzes, etc.). METHODS A total of 136 patients from three countries [United Kingdom (UK), the Netherlands and Sweden] were randomized to MSS or activity groups. Patients participated in eight 30-minute sessions over 4 weeks. Ratings of behaviour and mood were taken before, during and after sessions to investigate immediate effects. Pre-, mid-, post-trial and follow-up assessments were taken to investigate any generalization of effects to cognition and behaviour and mood at home/on the ward or at the day hospital. RESULTS There were limited short-term improvements for both the MSS and activity groups immediately after sessions, and limited short-term improvements between the groups during sessions. There were no significant differences between the groups when assessing change in behaviour, mood or cognition at home/on the ward or at the day hospital. In the UK, however, behaviour at the day hospital for both groups remained stable during the trial but deteriorated once the sessions had stopped, and active/disturbed behaviour at home improved but likewise deteriorated once sessions had stopped. CONCLUSIONS Overall, MSS was found to be no more effective than an activity in changing the behaviour, mood or cognition of patients with dementia in the short- or long-term.
Usability metrics for augmented reality applications

Augmented reality applications differ from conventional applications in several aspects, for example, add virtual objects in real scenes, and often, uses markers for interaction. It is evident the need of methods to evaluate the usability of these applications, since the way of interaction is quite different from what the user is accustomed. This article presents metrics to usability evaluation of Augmented Reality applications created from the specifics of the technologies involved and from Nielsen heuristics, adapted to this context. It presents the result of application of these metrics on two augmented reality in the automotive area.
Hepatic free cholesterol accumulates in obese, diabetic mice and causes nonalcoholic steatohepatitis.

BACKGROUND & AIMS Type 2 diabetes and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) are associated with insulin resistance and disordered cholesterol homeostasis. We investigated the basis for hepatic cholesterol accumulation with insulin resistance and its relevance to the pathogenesis of NASH. METHODS Alms1 mutant (foz/foz) and wild-type NOD.B10 mice were fed high-fat diets that contained varying percentages of cholesterol; hepatic lipid pools and pathways of cholesterol turnover were determined. Hepatocytes were exposed to insulin concentrations that circulate in diabetic foz/foz mice. RESULTS Hepatic cholesterol accumulation was attributed to up-regulation of low-density lipoprotein receptor via activation of sterol regulatory element binding protein 2 (SREBP-2), reduced biotransformation to bile acids, and suppression of canalicular pathways for cholesterol and bile acid excretion in bile. Exposing primary hepatocytes to concentrations of insulin that circulate in diabetic Alms1 mice replicated the increases in SREBP-2 and low-density lipoprotein receptor and suppression of bile salt export pump. Removing cholesterol from diet prevented hepatic accumulation of free cholesterol and NASH; increasing dietary cholesterol levels exacerbated hepatic accumulation of free cholesterol, hepatocyte injury or apoptosis, macrophage recruitment, and liver fibrosis. CONCLUSIONS In obese, diabetic mice, hyperinsulinemia alters nuclear transcriptional regulators of cholesterol homeostasis, leading to hepatic accumulation of free cholesterol; the resulting cytotoxicity mediates transition of steatosis to NASH.
Use of failure mode and effects analysis in improving the safety of i.v. drug administration.

PURPOSE Failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) was used to identify dosing and administration errors associated with i.v. medications and evaluate the effectiveness of subsequent system improvements. SUMMARY A multidisciplinary medication safety team conducted an FMEA to identify and reduce common medication errors and selected wrong-dose errors for process improvement. In 2002, wrong-dose errors comprised 17% of all medication errors at the hospital (59 of 347 errors). The most common reason for administering the wrong dose was error in programming the i.v. infusion pump (41%). Potential errors (i.e., failures) identified were misinterpretation of the order, removing the wrong medication or wrong concentration of the correct medication, using the wrong diluent or drug to prepare the drip, and entering the wrong concentration or infusion rate on the pump. Errors in programming the i.v. infusion pump was the step in the medication-use process associated with the highest criticality index. Based on the results of the FMEA, two main interventions were performed. First, standard order sets were revised after streamlining the formulary and eliminating the use of unapproved abbreviations. Second, an i.v. pump with enhanced safety features was implemented. One-year follow-up data revealed that the number of medication errors related to dosing (wrong dose or incorrect infusion rate) had decreased slightly (from 59 in 2002 to 46 in 2003); however, a dramatic reduction was noted in the percentage of pump-related errors. In 2003, pump-related errors accounted for 22% of dosing errors, compared with 41% in 2002. CONCLUSION Medication errors related to i.v. infusion pumps were reduced by conducting an FMEA and implementing the process changes needed.
The link between childhood trauma and later violent offending: The application of attachment theory in a probation setting

This case-study identifies the links between an insecure-avoidant pattern of attachment organization, unresolved childhood trauma, emotional detachment, substance misuse and violent offending behaviour in adulthood. It demonstrates the way in which attachment theory may be used to explicate offending behaviour and to assess risk in a forensic setting. Further, the model illustrates that the clinical application of attachment theory in brief, time-limited work may enhance the offender's capacity for narrative intelligibility leading to an integration of dissociated thoughts and emotional affect, and to a concomitant cessation of violent behaviour. The process is intersubjective and involves the modification and updating of maladaptive, perceptually distorted cognitive-affective internal working models. This is accomplished by strengthening the offender's capacity for reflective thought, which, in turn, facilitates the organization and integration of error-correcting information.
Zwitterionic pyrrolidine-2,2-diylbis(phosphonic acid) at 100, 150 and 293 K.

The title compound, C4H11NO6P2, reveals a two-dimensional network of P—O—H⋯O=P and N—H⋯O=P hydrogen-bond interactions, forming molecular slabs parallel with the (010) plane. One O—H⋯O interaction is distinct within these sets: whilst forming the shortest intermolecular hydrogen bond, it possesses a short P—O(H) bond of 1.5291 (10) A. Weak C—H⋯O contacts link individual stacks to produce a three-dimensional array. The compound is zwitterionic: one H atom from a P—O—H group has transferred to the pyrrolidine ring N atom.
Anesthetic drug development: Novel drugs and new approaches

The ideal sedative–hypnotic drug would be a rapidly titratable intravenous agent with a high therapeutic index and minimal side effects. The current efforts to develop such agents are primarily focused on modifying the structures of existing drugs to improve their pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic properties. Drugs currently under development using this rational design approach include analogues of midazolam, propofol, and etomidate, such as remimazolam, PF0713, and cyclopropyl methoxycarbonyl-etomidate (MOC-etomidate), respectively. An alternative approach involves the rapid screening of large libraries of molecules for activity in structural or phenotypic assays that approximate anesthetic and target receptor interactions. Such high-throughput screening offers the potential for identifying completely novel classes of drugs. Anesthetic drug development is experiencing a resurgence of interest because there are new demands on our clinical practice that can be met, at least in part, with better agents. The goal of this review is to provide the reader with a glimpse of the novel anesthetic drugs and new developmental approaches that lie on the horizon.
Questionable research practices among italian research psychologists

A survey in the United States revealed that an alarmingly large percentage of university psychologists admitted having used questionable research practices that can contaminate the research literature with false positive and biased findings. We conducted a replication of this study among Italian research psychologists to investigate whether these findings generalize to other countries. All the original materials were translated into Italian, and members of the Italian Association of Psychology were invited to participate via an online survey. The percentages of Italian psychologists who admitted to having used ten questionable research practices were similar to the results obtained in the United States although there were small but significant differences in self-admission rates for some QRPs. Nearly all researchers (88%) admitted using at least one of the practices, and researchers generally considered a practice possibly defensible if they admitted using it, but Italian researchers were much less likely than US researchers to consider a practice defensible. Participants’ estimates of the percentage of researchers who have used these practices were greater than the self-admission rates, and participants estimated that researchers would be unlikely to admit it. In written responses, participants argued that some of these practices are not questionable and they have used some practices because reviewers and journals demand it. The similarity of results obtained in the United States, this study, and a related study conducted in Germany suggest that adoption of these practices is an international phenomenon and is likely due to systemic features of the international research and publication processes.
The Functional Role of Basic Patch, a Structural Element ofEscherichia coli Transcript Cleavage Factors GreA and GreB*

The transcript cleavage factors GreA and GreB ofEscherichia coli are involved in the regulation of transcription elongation. The surface charge distribution analysis of their three-dimensional structures revealed that the N-terminal domains of GreA and GreB contain a small and large basic “patch,” respectively. To elucidate the functional role of basic patch, mutant Gre proteins were engineered in which the size and charge distribution of basic patch were modified and characterized biochemically. We found that Gre mutants lacking basic patch or carrying basic patch of decreased size bind to RNA polymerase and induce transcript cleavage reaction in minimally backtracked ternary elongation complex (TEC) with the same efficiency as the wild type factors. However, they exhibit substantially lower readthrough and cleavage activities toward extensively backtracked and arrested TECs and display decreased efficiency of photocross-linking to the RNA 3′-terminus. Unlike wild type factors, basic patch-less Gre mutants are unable to complement the thermosensitive phenotype of GreA–:GreB– E. coli strain. The large basic patch is required but not sufficient for the induction of GreB-type cleavage reaction and for the cleavage of arrested TECs. Our results demonstrate that the basic patch residues are not directly involved in the induction of transcript cleavage reaction and suggest that the primary role of basic patch is to anchor the nascent RNA in TEC. These interactions are essential for the readthrough and antiarrest activities of Gre factors and, apparently, for theirin vivo functions.
Reverse Engineering the Gap Gene Network of Drosophila melanogaster

A fundamental problem in functional genomics is to determine the structure and dynamics of genetic networks based on expression data. We describe a new strategy for solving this problem and apply it to recently published data on early Drosophila melanogaster development. Our method is orders of magnitude faster than current fitting methods and allows us to fit different types of rules for expressing regulatory relationships. Specifically, we use our approach to fit models using a smooth nonlinear formalism for modeling gene regulation (gene circuits) as well as models using logical rules based on activation and repression thresholds for transcription factors. Our technique also allows us to infer regulatory relationships de novo or to test network structures suggested by the literature. We fit a series of models to test several outstanding questions about gap gene regulation, including regulation of and by hunchback and the role of autoactivation. Based on our modeling results and validation against the experimental literature, we propose a revised network structure for the gap gene system. Interestingly, some relationships in standard textbook models of gap gene regulation appear to be unnecessary for or even inconsistent with the details of gap gene expression during wild-type development.
Effect of physical exercise on college students'mobile phone addiction

Statistical methods including cluster sampling, questionnaire survey and SPSS17.0 were used to investigate the difference of college students' mobile phone dependence before and after comprehensive intervention measures primarily based on physical exercise. The results showed that: before and after intervention, the values of P in score of MPATS, withdrawal symptoms, salience, social comfort, calm change were less than 0.01, the comprehensive intervention measures based on physical exercise can effectively improve the addiction symptoms on the mobile phone among students.
Positron emission tomography for assessment of the response to induction radiochemotherapy in locally advanced oesophageal cancer.

AIMS This prospective study was designed to determine the utility of 18F-labelled deoxyglucose (FDG) in positron emission tomography (PET) (FDG-PET) for assessing the response to neoadjuvant chemoradiation therapy (CRT) in locally advanced oesophageal tumours. PATIENTS AND METHODS Thirty-six patients with locally advanced oesophageal cancer (clinical T4 stage) without organ metastases, underwent FDG-PET before and 1 month after CRT. Patients were classified as major responders by serial FDG-PET when the post-CRT PET demonstrated a strong reduction of FDG uptake at the primary tumour site (>80% reduction of tumour-to-liver uptake ratio) without any abnormal FDG uptake elsewhere in the body. PET response was compared with histology obtained during post-induction transthoracic oesophagectomy. RESULTS A strong correlation was found between the extent of lymph node (LN) involvement as shown by the pre-CRT PET and the major response rate (P = 0.001): such response occurred in nine of 11 N0M0 patients (82%), in three of nine N(1-2)M0 patients (33%) and in two of 16 patients (13%) with distant lymphatic spread. Such a correlation was not found for computed tomography or endoscopic ultrasonography. The sensitivity of serial FDG-PET for a major CRT response was 10 of 14 (71%), its specificity 18 of 22 (82%). The concordance between the response assessment by PET and histopathology was 78%. The median survival time after CRT of PET major responders compared with PET non-major responders was 16.3 months and 6.4 months, respectively. The metabolic response as measured by serial FDG-PET is a stronger prognostic factor for overall survival (P = 0.002) than the extent of LN involvement seen on the pretreatment FDG-PET (P = 0.087). CONCLUSIONS These data indicate that CRT response as assessed by serial FDG-PET is strongly correlated with pathological response and survival.
Examining the development of pragmatics of Chinese JFL students

The field of interlanguage pragmatics has burgeoned since late 20th century. Requests, as a part of speech act theory, have been investigated by many scholars. This cross-sectional study explores the acquisition of pragmatics of Chinese learners of Japanese in foreign language contexts (JFL) by examining their request usages, which incorporates pragmatic transfer as a tool to interpret data. Discourse completion task (DCT) questionnaires were distributed to first-year, second-year and fourth-year Japanese learners at a university in China, as well as to native speakers in the U.S. to elicit requests. Requests were analyzed according to the following six categories: perspectives, speech levels, strategies, syntactic downgraders, semantic downgraders, and supportive moves. Based on data analysis, the preliminary findings are: 1) Significant improvement from the first- year group to the second-year group can be observed. 2) In general, the fourth-year group performed similar to or less native-like than the second-year group. 3) Regardless of the advancement, a gap still exists between learners and native speakers regarding pragmatics proficiency. The study not only sheds light on the evolution of learners’ interlanguage from a perspective of pragmatics, but can also reveal part of the current teaching and learning situations of Japanese pragmatics at universities in China. By discussing learners' success and potential areas that need developing, the findings could provide some meaningful implications for Japanese pedagogy.
Toward Cost-Effective Mobile Video Streaming via Smart Cache With Adaptive Thresholding

Mobile video streaming has become the leading contributor to the explosive growth of mobile Internet traffic. As a key system parameter of mobile video apps, cache threshold plays an important role in regulating the downloading behavior of a mobile device, and directly affects the efficacy of mobile video streaming. In this paper, we first conduct a series of well-designed experiments to understand the mechanism of cache management in the Android OS and investigate the impact of cache threshold on the performance of mobile video streaming. The experiments show that the current static configuration of cache thresholds in the Android OS cannot well balance the tradeoff between cost incurred by unconsumed content and user quality of experience. To achieve cost-effective mobile video streaming, this paper further proposes a control-theoretic cache management algorithm called smart cache with adaptive thresholding (SCAT), which can intelligently tune cache thresholds to satisfy user preferences. The complexity of cache management and optimization can be decreased extensively by the SCAT strategy, facilitating its easy integration with the OS kernel codes. Finally, we implement and evaluate our proposed scheme on the real Android platform and the experimental results verify that our proposed scheme achieves significant gain over other alternative approaches. Compared to the Android's default scheme, SCAT achieves over 40% reduction of unconsumed content cost and nearly 30% reduction of freezing duration in the low-bandwidth network environment.
Mental Processing Models and Neural Mechanisms for Response Inhibition

Response inhibition refers to the ability to suppress responses that are no longer required or inappropriate. It is also considered to be a key component of processing for executive control. Two models are proposed to explain the mental processing mechanisms for response inhibition,one is called the race-horse model which assumes that response and inhibition was independent of each other,and the other is the interactive horse-race mode which hypothesizes that response and inhibition were interactive. In recent years,neural mechanisms of response inhibition studies have shown that the hyperdirect pathway and the indirect pathway in front-basal ganglia system could be jointly responsible for suppressing advantage responses,and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG),supplementary motor area/pre-supplementary motor area (SMA/ pre-SMA) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) might be the key brain areas for inhibition control. Moreover,there has been a closely association between response inhibition and response selection,working memory,and attention,as the brain activated by them are not only overlapped but also differentiated each other. In addition,the activation in right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex could reflect the processing of attention and working memory associated with response inhibition. Further research is required to combine various techniques,such as brain damage,functional neural imaging and TMS,to clarify the interaction mechanisms of the above mentioned brain regions in response inhibition.
Demodulation as Probabilistic Inference

Demodulation is an ill-posed problem whenever both carrier and envelope signals are broadband and unknown. Here, we approach this problem using the methods of probabilistic inference. The new approach, called Probabilistic Amplitude Demodulation (PAD), is computationally challenging but improves on existing methods in a number of ways. By contrast to previous approaches to demodulation, it satisfies five key desiderata: PAD has soft constraints because it is probabilistic; PAD is able to automatically adjust to the signal because it learns parameters; PAD is user-steerable because the solution can be shaped by user-specific prior information; PAD is robust to broad-band noise because this is modeled explicitly; and PAD's solution is self-consistent, empirically satisfying a Carrier Identity property. Furthermore, the probabilistic view naturally encompasses noise and uncertainty, allowing PAD to cope with missing data and return error bars on carrier and envelope estimates. Finally, we show that when PAD is applied to a bandpass-filtered signal, the stop-band energy of the inferred carrier is minimal, making PAD well-suited to sub-band demodulation.
8 Evolutive Platform – A Genetic E-Learning Environment

It is now a widely accepted fact that IT can radically change educational practices and learning processes. The technological revolution requires better cognitive skills, either through the innovation or creativity, cognitive attributes par excellence. These attributes are not stratified by class or social status. A low cognitive functioning, with implications in poor school performance, are not indicators of lower classes or marginalized ethnic groups, i.e., their intelligence is not limited to the models of society. There will be one cognitive dysfunction ("Input," preparation, "Output") that in most cases, those responsible for education are not formed to overcome it, or do not make use of strategic resources to avoid waste of the cognitive potential of individuals (Fonseca, 1999).