Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Neural network system for online controller adaptation and its application to underwater robot

Describes a neural network system which executes identification of robot dynamics and controller adaptation in parallel with robot control. The system consists of two parts: real-world part and imaginary-world part. The real-world part is a feedback control system for the actual robot. In the imaginary-world part, the model of robot and the controller are adjusted continuously in order to deal with the change of dynamic property caused by disturbance and so on. The system is designed to be suitable for a computer system with parallel processing ability. In the paper, adaptability of the controller system is investigated by heading keeping and path following experiments on the condition that unknown disturbances are given to the robot.
Undergraduate nurses reflections on Whatsapp use in improving primary health care education

Background The global use of mobile devices with their connectivity capacity, and integrated with the affordances of social media networks, provides a resource-rich platform for innovative student-directed learning experiences. Objective The objective of this study was to review the experiences of undergraduate nurses on the improvement of primary health care education at a School of Nursing at a University in the Western Cape, South Africa, through the incorporation of a social media application, WhatsApp. Method A qualitative, exploratory, descriptive, and contextual design was used to explore and describe data collected from a purposive sample of 21 undergraduate nursing students. The study population was engaged in a WhatsApp discussion group to enhance their integration of theory and clinical practice of the health assessment competency of the Primary Health Care Module. Participants submitted electronic reflections on their experiences in the WhatsApp discussion group via email on completion of the study. Thematic analysis of the qualitative data collected was done according to Tesch's (1990) steps of descriptive data analysis in order to identify the major themes in the study. The electronic reflections were analysed to explore their rich, reflective data. Results Seven themes were identified that included: positive experiences using the WhatsApp group; the usefulness of WhatsApp for integrating theory and clinical practice; the availability of resources for test preparation; opportunity for clarification; anonymity; exclusion of students as a result of the lack of an appropriate device, and the application caused the battery of the device to run flat quickly. Conclusion The results of the experiences of students in the WhatsApp discussion group could be used to inform the use of social media applications in teaching and learning, with the purpose of enhancing the integration of the theory and clinical practice.
The value of bladder-conserving strategies in muscle-invasive bladder carcinoma compared with radical surgery

Purpose of review Patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer will practically all develop progression, often associated with severe side effects including pain, dysuria or macrohematuria. Recent reports demonstrate multimodality bladder-sparing approaches as primary treatment for muscle-invasive bladder cancer. Recent findings Bladder-conserving strategies include thorough transurethral resection of the bladder tumor, external beam radiation therapy and chemotherapy. It has been shown that survival rates are similar to those of radical cystectomy series; additionally, a substantial number of patients survive with an intact bladder. The high costs, close cooperation between clinical specialists and a highly compliant patient need to be taken into consideration, however. Summary Nowadays, the good long-term results after radical cystectomy with the creation of an orthotopic neobladder make the substantial advantage of a bladder-preserving strategy questionable when the patient's quality of life is addressed. Multimodality bladder-conserving strategies are a therapeutic option for selected patients; however, radical cystectomy remains the gold standard of treatment.
Carbon Monoxide Poisoning and Subsequent Cardiovascular Disease Risk

AbstractCarbon monoxide (CO) poisoning is considered one of the most crucial health concerns. Few studies have investigated the correlation between CO poisoning and the risk of developing cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). Therefore, we conducted a population-based, longitudinal cohort study in Taiwan to determine whether patients with CO poisoning are associated with higher risk of developing subsequent CVDs, including arrhythmia, coronary artery disease (CAD) and congestive heart failure (CHF). This retrospective study used the National Health Insurance Research Database. The study cohort comprised all patients aged ≥20 years with a diagnosis of CO poisoning and hospitalized during 2000 to 2011 (N = 8381), and the comparison cohort comprised randomly selected non-CO-poisoned patients (N = 33,524) frequency-matched with the study cohort by age, sex, and the year of index date. Each patient was individually tracked to identify those who develop CVD events during the follow-up period. Cox proportional hazards regression model was performed to calculate the hazard ratios of CVDs after adjusting for possible confounders.The overall incidences of arrhythmia, CAD, and CHF were higher in the patients with CO poisoning than in the controls (2.57 vs 1.25/1000 person-years, 3.28 vs 2.25/1000 person-years, and 1.32 vs 1.05/1000 person-years, respectively). After adjusting for age, sex, and comorbidities, the patients with CO poisoning were associated with a 1.83-fold higher risk of arrhythmia compared with the comparison cohort, and nonsignificantly associated with risk of CAD and CHF. CO-poisoned patients with coexisting comorbidity or in high severity were associated with significantly and substantially increased risk of all 3 CVDs.CO poisoning is associated with increased risk of subsequent development of arrhythmia. Future studies are required to explore the long-term effects of CO poisoning on the cardiovascular system.
Twitching Motility Contributes to the Role of Pili in Corneal Infection Caused by Pseudomonas aeruginosa

ABSTRACT Twitching motility is a form of surface-associated bacterial movement mediated by type IV pili of Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Others have shown that pilT and pilU mutants, which are piliated but defective in twitching motility, display reduced cytotoxic capacity towards epithelial cells in vitro. Although these mutants efficiently infected lungs in vivo, they were defective in dissemination to the liver. In this study the role of twitching motility in P. aeruginosa epithelial cell invasion and corneal disease pathogenesis was explored. pilU and pilT mutants of P. aeruginosa strain PAK were compared to a nonpiliated pilA mutant and to wild-type bacteria in their ability to associate with and to invade corneal epithelial cells in vitro and to cause disease in a murine model of corneal infection. As expected, the pilA mutant demonstrated reduced association and invasion of corneal epithelial cells (P < 0.05 in both cases). The pilT mutant, but not the pilU mutant, was less invasive than wild-type PAK was (P < 0.05 versus P = 0.43), while both pilU and pilT mutants exhibited association levels similar to those of the wild type (P = 0.31 and 0.52, respectively). In vivo, all mutants were markedly attenuated in virulence and showed reduced ability to colonize the cornea at 4 and 48 h (all P values < 0.02). Thus, twitching motility contributed to the role of pili in corneal disease but was not involved in the role of pili in adherence to or invasion of corneal epithelial cells.
Symbol Error Probability of Distributed-Alamouti Scheme in Wireless Relay Networks

In this paper, we analyze the maximum likelihood decoding performance of non-regenerative cooperation employing Alamouti scheme. Specifically, we derive two closed-form expressions for average symbol error probability (SEP) when the relays are located near by the source or destination. The analytical results are obtained as a single integral with finite limits and an integrand composed solely of trigonometric functions. Assessing the asymptotic (high signal-to-noise ratio) behavior of SEP formulas, we show that the distributed-Alamouti codes achieves a full diversity order. We also perform Monte-Carlo simulations to validate the analysis.
Education in England – a testbed for network governance?

Abstract Since devolution in the late 1990s, education policy in England has diverged further from that in Scotland and also from policy in Wales and Northern Ireland. In this paper we review the roots and trajectory of the English education reforms over the past two decades. Our focus is the schools sector, though we also touch on adjoining reforms to early years and further and higher education. In so doing, we engage with various themes, including marketisation, institutional autonomy and accountability. Changes in governance arrangements for schools have been a defining feature of education reforms since devolution. This has been set against an evolution in national performance indicators that has put government priorities into ever sharper relief. In theorising the changes, we pay particular attention to the suggestion that the English education system now epitomises the concept of ‘network governance’, which has also been applied to education in a global context. We question the extent to which policies have in practice moved beyond the well-established mechanisms of ‘steering at a distance’ and undermined the very notion of an education system in England. We conclude by considering possible futures for education policy and how they may position England in relation to other parts of the UK and the wider world.
Impact of short SET pulse sequence on electronic switching in Phase Change Memory arrays

In this work we electrically characterized a population of 512 Kb PCM cells in order to statistically analyze the electronic switching phenomenon. Statistical distributions due to both technological dispersion and the intrinsic nature of the process are evaluated. In particular the statistics about the formation of the first polycrystalline grain percolation path (time to shunt) can be extracted from the experimental data and used to provide a deeper insight into the physical nature of the phenomenon. We studied the impact of a sequence of short pulses on the electronic switching behavior and showed that experimental results are in agreement with an analytical physical model presented in literature. Results also show that the shunt percolation path linearly grows in size until saturation occurs.
Social Incentives and Human Evolution

I investigate the implications for human evolution of the social incentives commonly applied in human societies, especially the incentives generated through the social status mechanism. These incentives reward diverse traits including intelligence, knowledge, norm-following, language ability, singing ability, heroism, and altruism towards one’s group. Furthermore, the incentives have inclusive fitness implications, resulting in an evolutionary force that has favored many traits which are uniquely exaggerated. I term this evolutionary force “prosocial selection. ” I highlight the social and psychological bases of prosocial selection, and compare the altruism that results from prosocial selection, termed “social altruism,” to established theories of altruism.
Study of prediagnostic selenium level in toenails and the risk of advanced prostate cancer.

BACKGROUND In a recent randomized intervention trial, the risk of prostate cancer for men receiving a daily supplement of 200 microg selenium was one third of that for men receiving placebo. By use of a nested case-control design within a prospective study, i.e., the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, we investigated the association between risk of prostate cancer and prediagnostic level of selenium in toenails, a measure of long-term selenium intake. METHODS In 1986, 51,529 male health professionals aged 40-75 years responded to a mailed questionnaire to form the prospective study. In 1987, 33,737 cohort members provided toenail clippings. In 1988, 1990, 1992, and 1994, follow-up questionnaires were mailed. From 1989 through 1994, 181 new cases of advanced prostate cancer were reported. Case and control subjects were matched by age, smoking status, and month of toenail return. Selenium levels were determined by neutron activation. All P values are two-sided. RESULTS The selenium level in toenails varied substantially among men, with quintile medians ranging from 0.66 to 1.14 microg/g for control subjects. When matched case-control data were analyzed, higher selenium levels were associated with a reduced risk of advanced prostate cancer (odds ratio [OR] for comparison of highest to lowest quintile = 0.49; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.25-0.96; P for trend = .11). After additionally controlling for family history of prostate cancer, body mass index, calcium intake, lycopene intake, saturated fat intake, vasectomy, and geographical region, the OR was 0.35 (95% CI = 0.16-0.78; P for trend = .03). CONCLUSIONS Our results support earlier findings that higher selenium intakes may reduce the risk of prostate cancer. Further prospective studies and randomized trials of this relationship should be conducted.
Delayed, but Marked, Expression of Apolipoprotein E is Involved in Tissue Clearance after Cerebral Infarction

Clearance of infarct tissue would be an important process for tissue repair after a stroke. Delayed clearance may hamper reconstitution of the blood–brain barrier and glial boundary formation. Recent growing evidence has indicated that apolipoprotein E (APOE), a major apoprotein, plays an important role in lipid transport and homeostasis in the brain. The tissue in the infarction contains abundant lipids must be removed for tissue clearance. In the current study, the authors investigated APOE expression after focal ischemia and the functional role of APOE in tissue clearance using APOE-knockout mice. Expression of APOE was delayed, but marked, in immunohistochemistry and immunoblotting 7 days after permanent focal ischemia. Macrophages were found to express APOE in the infarct center. Infarct size was similar after focal ischemia between wild-type and APOE-knockout mice, although there was no APOE protein expression in knockout mice. However, clearance of infarct tissue 2 weeks after ischemia was significantly delayed in APOE-knockout mice compared with wild-type mice. The current study supports current thinking that APOE is a key molecule for tissue remodeling in the brain. Clearance of damaged tissue may be one of the important functions of APOE in the brain.
The validity of schizophrenia diagnosis in the Finnish Hospital Discharge Register: Findings from a 10-year birth cohort sample

The purpose of this study was to investigate the diagnostic validity of schizophrenia in the Finnish Hospital Discharge Register (FHDR) with a large, epidemiologically representative sample using a multidiagnostic approach (DSM-III-R, DSM-IV, ICD-10), and to find additional criteria that could be used to improve the validity of schizophrenia diagnosis in future register-based research that utilizes the FHDR. The study population consisted of all individuals (n=877) who were born in Helsinki, Finland, between 1 January 1951 and 31 December 1960, and who had had at least one diagnosis of schizophrenia, schizophreniform disorder or schizoaffective disorder in the FHDR. All their available hospital case notes were collected. The total number of subjects for whom case notes were obtained was 806. We used the OPCRIT system (version 3.4) to produce diagnoses according to ICD-10, DSM-III-R and DSM-IV criteria based on the information extracted from the hospital case notes. We examined the distribution of the DSM-III-R, DSM-IV and ICD-10 diagnoses generated by the OPCRIT and calculated the proportion of individuals who received the same diagnosis in the FHDR and in the OPCRIT assessment. The proportion of subjects who received a core schizophrenia spectrum diagnosis (schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder or schizophreniform disorder) in both the FHDR and OPCRIT assessment varied between 75% (DSM-III-R criteria) and 78% (ICD-10 criteria). Of the subjects with a narrow schizophrenia diagnosis in the FHDR, between 74% (DSM-IV) and 78% (ICD-10) received a diagnosis of schizophrenia in the reassessment depending on the diagnostic criteria applied. Eighty per cent of those who had received a core schizophrenia spectrum FHDR diagnosis after 1982 (vs. 56% of those who had received their last schizophrenia diagnosis in 1982 or before) received a DSM-IV diagnosis of core schizophrenia spectrum disorder. Of the 58 subjects in the sample who had been given at various times diagnoses of both core schizophrenia diagnosis and bipolar I diagnosis in FHDR, 43% received a core schizophrenia spectrum diagnosis according to DSM-IV criteria. The validity of the FHDR schizophrenia diagnosis is acceptable for large-scale register studies and comparable with that of other Nordic registers. Diagnostic validity can be further improved by selecting subjects who have core schizophrenia spectrum disorder as the latest diagnosis, by omitting cases diagnosed before 1982, and by excluding cases with a register diagnoses of both a core schizophrenia spectrum and bipolar I disorder.
Local ternary pattern based on path integral for steganalysis

The least significant bit (LSB) matching is a steganographic method which embeds the stego signal into cover images in the spatial domain. However, the stego signal disturbs the correlation of neighboring pixels in cover image and this can be utilized for steganalysis. Local binary pattern (LBP) is an effective image texture descriptor, and it can summarize the correlation of neighboring pixels. In this paper, a LBP-based steganalyzer is proposed to identify the deviations of the correlation violated by the stego noise. Specifically, our paper proposes the local ternary pattern based on path integral (pi-LTP) to enhance the feature discrimination in large-scale pixels. Moreover, a greedy incremental algorithm is utilized in our method to select the optimal subspace of pi-LTP features. Experimental results show our method has a better performance than the state-of-the-art steganalysis methods.
Structural diversity in the recognition between reduced thioredoxin and its oxidized enzyme partners

Abstract Thioredoxins (Trx) are ubiquitous proteins that are conserved in all living organisms from archaea to humans. These small proteins display various cellular roles, including functioning as reductases in redox processes. All Trxs share a similar, characteristic three-dimensional fold with the Cys-Pro-Gly-Cys motif that contains both the catalytic and the resolving cysteine (Cys) on the surface of the protein. Reaction of reduced Trx with its oxidized protein partners leads to formation of a transient interdisulfide intermediate. However, the short lifetime of this species hinders the characterization of the stabilizing interactions that occur between the partners. In this short review, the three-dimensional structures of four artificial covalent Trx-protein partner complexes are analyzed. The data show that interprotein stabilization is mainly due to hydrophobic contacts and main-chain hydrogen bonds but that no common recognition motif between Trx and its protein partners can be identified. In two cases, formation of the Trx-partner complex is accompanied by a significant conformational change of the protein target, although in no case does the conformation of Trx change significantly. The absence of a common recognition motif supports the idea that it is difficult to predict with confidence putative oxidized protein substrates of Trx using only soft docking and molecular simulation methods. Instead, biochemical methods including proteomic approaches remain the primary tools to identify novel protein substrates of Trx. The generality and relevance of methods used to identify which of the two Cys of the disulfide-oxidized protein partner forms the transient interdisulfide intermediate with Trx are also discussed.
A model investigation of tropospheric ozone chemical tendencies in long-range transported pollution plumes

The impact of continental outflow on the ozone chemical tendencies (i.e., production and loss rates) is quantified in the North Atlantic and northwest Pacific regions using the GEOS-Chem and the MOZECH global models of chemistry and transport. The ozone tendencies simulated by these global models are compared to box model simulations constrained by observations in different regions and seasons. The two global models generally capture the seasonal and regional variations of the ozone tendencies. The largest discrepancies between the ozone tendencies from the box model and those from the global models are found in the lower troposphere of the eastern North Atlantic during the ACSOE campaign and are attributed to differences between chemical schemes and too strong NO x concentrations in the global models. The background and plume (i.e., impacted by continental outflow) environments are differentiated over the oceanic areas using criteria based on simulated daily mean CO concentrations. The ozone tendencies in the plume environment differ from that in the background over the entire column in North Atlantic and northwest Pacific at all seasons. According to the models, net ozone production is enhanced by 2 to 6 ppbv/day in the boundary layer and by 1 to 3 ppbv/day in the upper troposphere, whereas the effect of pollution ranges from −1 ppbv/day to +1 ppbv/day in the middle troposphere (3–7 km), depending on the model used. The different responses of the two models are determined by differences in the water vapor distributions relative to those of pollutants in the plumes. In particular, GEOS-Chem tends to transport pollution in a drier sector of cyclones than MOZECH.
Self-esteem and changes in heart rate during laboratory-based stress

The relationship between self-esteem (SE), type of stressor, and fluctuations in heart rate was assessed in a sample of 59 college students (40 females, 19 males; with a mean age of 23.98 years (SEM = 1.0)). SE was measured using the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale. The study assessed whether SE buffers the cardiovascular response to stress by comparing responses to two types of stressor: mental arithmetic and verbal memory. As predicted, an SE x stressor interaction was found (p = 0.039). High-SE participants found both stressors moderately stressful but low-SE participants found the mental arithmetic task particularly stressful. This is consistent with the view that mental arithmetic elicits a specific fear that exceeds that associated with other domains of performance. The present study suggests that such fear affects low-SE participants more strongly than high-SE participants. The interaction was statistically independent of potential physiological contaminants such as gender, age, smoking, and caffeine consumption.