Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Avoiding hospital admissions. What does the research evidence say

Despite considerable efforts to reduce emergency admissions, only a minority of primary care trusts (PCTs) succeeded in doing so between 2007/8 and 2008/9 (Gillam 2010). The average increase in admissions during this time was 5 per cent across all PCTs, ranging from a 12.7 per cent decrease to a 27.3 per cent increase. In order to successfully reduce avoidable emergency admissions, we need to fully understand which interventions are the most effective.
Real Time Eye Tracking and Blink Detection with USB Cameras

A human-computer interface (HCI) system designed for use by people with severe disabilities is presented. People that are severely paralyzed or afflicted with diseases such as ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) or multiple sclerosis are unable to move or control any parts of their bodies except for their eyes. The system presented here detects the user’s eye blinks and analyzes the pattern and duration of the blinks, using them to provide input to the computer in the form of a mouse click. After the automatic initialization of the system occurs from the processing of the user’s involuntary eye blinks in the first few seconds of use, the eye is tracked in real time using correlation with an online template. If the user’s depth changes significantly or rapid head movement occurs, the system is automatically reinitialized. There are no lighting requirements nor offline templates needed for the proper functioning of the system. The system works with inexpensive USB cameras and runs at a frame rate of 30 frames per second. Extensive experiments were conducted to determine both the system’s accuracy in classifying voluntary and involuntary blinks, as well as the system’s fitness in varying environment conditions, such as alternative camera placements and different lighting conditions. These experiments on eight test subjects yielded an overall detection accuracy of 95.3%.
Similarities between Friends and Nonfriends in Middle Childhood

Similarities were assessed between target children (mean age, 11.1 years) and their friends and nonfriends, respectively. One target child of each sex (N= 192), along with one same-sex friend and one nonfriend, were selected from 102 participating classrooms. “Guess who” nominations obtained within these classrooms were used to measure prosocial behavior, antisocial behavior, shyness/dependency, and sociometric status; self-reports were used to measure depressive symptoms. Children and their friends were more similar to one another than nonfriends across the entire data set—as the participants were rated by their classmates and as their classmates were rated by the participants. Friendship similarities varied from attribute to attribute, being greater in antisocial behavior than in the other domains. Similarities between friends in sociometric status and size of the friendship network were also greater among socially accepted than nonaccepted children.
CONFLICT MANAGEMENT, EFFICACY, AND PERFORMANCE IN ORGANIZATIONAL TEAMS

The study empirically links conflict management literature with research on efficacy and organizational teams. Sixty-one self-managing teams with 489 employees were recruited from the production department of a leading electronic manufacturer. Structural equation analysis supports the model that a cooperative instead of competitive approach to conflict leads to conflict efficacy that in turn results in effective performance as measured by managers. Findings suggest how organizational teams can be prepared to make use of their autonomy to deal with problems and conflicts so that they are productive.
Perioperative Activation of Hemostasis in Vascular Surgery Patients

BackgroundPerioperative activation of hemostasis could play an important role in the occurrence of postoperative cardiac events. The authors conducted a prospective study to assess platelet function, coagulation, and fibrinolysis status during and after infrarenal aortic surgery. MethodsSeventeen patients were studied. Excluded were patients with preoperative coagulopathies or liver disease, or cardiac or renal insufficiency; patients receiving anticoagulant treatment, antiplatelet agents, nonsteroidal antiinflammatory agents, fresh frozen plasma, or platelet concentrates; and patients undergoing reoperation and septic patients. Blood samples were drawn before induction (T1), 1 h after incision (T2), 1 h after extubation (T3), 24 h postoperatively (T4), 48 h postoperatively (T5), and at day 7 (T6). The following tests were performed: platelet count, platelet aggregation, platelet flow cytometry for CD62 and CD63, usual coagulation tests, thrombin–antithrombin complexes, plasminogen activator inhibitor 1. ResultsA significant increase of adenosine diphosphate–induced platelet aggregation was observed postoperatively at T4 and T5. This was not associated with a change of flow cytometry profile. No increase of thrombin–antithrombin complex levels was observed. A higher fibrinogen rate was detected at T5 and T6. Greater amounts of plasminogen activator inhibitor 1 were detected at T3 and T4. Thus, thrombin generation was limited and fibrinolysis was impaired postoperatively. Platelets were not activated in the postoperative period, as shown by flow cytometry, but were prone to be activated, as shown by aggregation studies. ConclusionThe association of more easily activated platelets with a higher fibrinogen rate and a temporary shut down of fibrinolysis during the early postoperative period may indicate an increased thrombotic risk in patients undergoing major vascular surgery.
Motivation and academic staff in higher education

Seeks to identify issues that impact on the motivation of academic staff in higher education. Argues that the rational‐economic model, the social model, the self‐actualizing model and the complex models of motivation provide a basis for analysing staff motivation as a central issue in evolving quality cultures. Discusses environmental factors that impact on motivation including: approaches to financial rewards, the culture of teaching and higher education, the diversity of staff experience and roles, personal autonomy, and organizational structure.
What impact do setting and transitions have on the quality of life at the end of life and the quality of the dying process?

PURPOSE The aim of this article was to identify major research needs related to quality of life at the end of life and quality of the dying process for vulnerable older people at home, in assisted living facilities, in skilled nursing facilities, and in prisons. DESIGN AND METHODS Review and analysis of the literature was used. RESULTS The science is generally weak in relationship to what is known about quality of life at the end of life and quality of dying for vulnerable older adults in different settings. Few studies address actively dying patients and the reasons for transfers between home and other settings. Existing studies are primarily anecdotal, descriptive, have small samples, and involve a single setting. Participant decisional capacity is a barrier to conducting research in these settings. IMPLICATIONS Research recommendations for each setting and across settings are provided. The National Institutes of Health should clarify criteria for enrollment of persons with diminished, fluctuating, and absent decisional capacity in research.
Bioinformatic analysis reveals a pattern of STAT3-associated gene expression specific to basal-like breast cancers in human tumors

Significance This research, for the first time to our knowledge, elucidates patterns of mRNA, protein, and microRNA expression uniquely associated with STAT3 signaling in basal-like but not other subtypes of breast cancer, indicating STAT3 as a potential subtype-specific regulator of breast cancer malignancy. Signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3), a latent transcription factor associated with inflammatory signaling and innate and adaptive immune responses, is known to be aberrantly activated in a wide variety of cancers. In vitro analysis of STAT3 in human cancer cell lines has elucidated a number of specific targets associated with poor prognosis in breast cancer. However, to date, no comparison of cancer subtype and gene expression associated with STAT3 signaling in human patients has been reported. In silico analysis of human breast cancer microarray and reverse-phase protein array data was performed to identify expression patterns associated with STAT3 in basal-like and luminal breast cancers. Results indicate clearly identifiable STAT3-regulated signatures common to basal-like breast cancers but not to luminal A or luminal B cancers. Furthermore, these differentially expressed genes are associated with immune signaling and inflammation, a known phenotype of basal-like cancers. These findings demonstrate a distinct role for STAT3 signaling in basal breast cancers, and underscore the importance of considering subtype-specific molecular pathways that contribute to tissue-specific cancers.
401(k) Plan Asset Allocation, Account Balances, and Loan Activity in 2016

The bulk of 401(k) assets were invested in stocks. On average, at year-end 2016, 67 percent of 401(k) participants’ assets were invested in equity securities through equity funds, the equity portion of balanced funds, and company stock. Twenty-seven percent of assets were in fixed-income securities such as stable-value investments, bond funds, money funds, and the fixed-income portion of balanced funds. More 401(k) plan participants held equities at year-end 2016 than before the financial market crisis (year-end 2007), and most had the majority of their accounts invested in equities. For example, more than three-quarters of participants in their twenties had more than 80 percent of their 401(k) plan accounts invested in equities at year-end 2016, up from less than half of participants in their twenties at year-end 2007. Overall, more than 90 percent of 401(k) participants had at least some investment in equities at year-end 2016. About two-thirds of 401(k) plans, covering about three-quarters of 401(k) plan participants, included target-date funds in their investment lineup at year-end 2016. At year-end 2016, 21 percent of the assets in the EBRI/ICI 401(k) database were invested in target-date funds and more than half of 401(k) participants in the database held target-date funds. Also known as lifecycle funds, these funds are designed to offer a diversified portfolio that automatically rebalances to be more focused on income over time. A majority of new or recent hires invested their 401(k) assets in balanced funds, including target-date funds. For example, at year-end 2016, 71 percent of recently hired participants held balanced funds in their 401(k) plan accounts. Balanced funds made up 45 percent of the account balances of recently hired 401(k) participants at year-end 2016. A significant subset of that balanced fund category is invested in target-date funds. At year-end 2016, 38 percent of the account balances of recently hired participants were invested in target-date funds. 401(k) participants’ investment in company stock continued at historically low levels. Six percent of 401(k) assets were invested in company stock at year-end 2016, the lowest share observed in the database. This share has fallen by 69 percent since 1999 when company stock accounted for 19 percent of assets. Recently hired 401(k) participants contributed to this trend: they tend to be less likely to hold company stock. At year-end 2016, in plans offering company stock, less than one-quarter of recently hired 401(k) plan participants held company stock, compared with about 40 percent of all 401(k) participants.
The Electrocortical Correlates of Daydreaming During Simulated Driving Tasks

Driver inattention is one of the leading causes of traffic crashes. In comparison to the extensive body of research examining the attention principles that govern distraction by external stimuli, the topic of attention and distraction by daydreaming has been relatively understudied. This work used a self-caught method to examine EEG and driving behavioral correlates of daydreaming during simulated driving tasks. Participants were asked to report any time they found themselves thinking something unrelated to the driving tasks. Measures of EEG and driving behaviors were compared prior to and after each daydreaming. Results showed that three EEG band ratios, beta/(alpha+theta), beta/alpha, and beta/theta were able to discriminate daydreaming from attentive driving, and the beta/alpha band ratio outperformed the other two indices. The power band activities of EEG observed from parietal lobe sites (Pz, P3, and P4) were more sensitive to reflect subtle changes in daydreaming. The current findings suggested that these EEG band ratios could be used for early detection of daydreaming in real driving.
A liquid metal reaction environment for the room-temperature synthesis of atomically thin metal oxides

Expanding the world of 2D materials Two-dimensional (2D) materials have a wide variety of potential applications in the electronics industry. However, certain compositions of 2D materials are difficult to obtain owing to the challenges in exfoliating thin sheets from bulk crystals. Zavabeti et al. exploited liquid metals to synthesize 2D Ga2O3, HfO2, Gd2O3, and Al2O3. The 2D sheets appear as a surface layer in gallium-based liquid metals after the Hf, Gd, or Al is dissolved into the bulk alloy. The 2D oxide that appears on the surface is the oxide with the lowest energy, suggesting that it should be possible to make other 2D oxides by using the same process. Science, this issue p. 332 Several new 2D materials were synthesized as surface layers of gallium-based liquid metals. Two-dimensional (2D) oxides have a wide variety of applications in electronics and other technologies. However, many oxides are not easy to synthesize as 2D materials through conventional methods. We used nontoxic eutectic gallium-based alloys as a reaction solvent and co-alloyed desired metals into the melt. On the basis of thermodynamic considerations, we predicted the composition of the self-limiting interfacial oxide. We isolated the surface oxide as a 2D layer, either on substrates or in suspension. This enabled us to produce extremely thin subnanometer layers of HfO2, Al2O3, and Gd2O3. The liquid metal–based reaction route can be used to create 2D materials that were previously inaccessible with preexisting methods. The work introduces room-temperature liquid metals as a reaction environment for the synthesis of oxide nanomaterials with low dimensionality.
Robust feature extraction for 3D reconstruction of boundary segmented objects in a robotic Library scenario

In this paper a vision system for robust feature extraction and 3D reconstruction of boundary segmented objects is presented. The goal of the system is reliable perception of a professional life environment in a scenario of the rehabilitation robot FRIEND. Reconstructed scenes are used to plan object manipulation with a 7-DoF manipulator arm. The robustness of boundary feature extraction is achieved by the means of including feedback control at image segmentation level. The objective of feedback is to adjust the segmentation parameters in order to cope with scene uncertainties, such as variable illumination conditions. Robustly extracted 2D object features are provided as input to the 3D object reconstruction module of the FRIEND vision system. The performance of the proposed approach is evaluated through experiments in the Library scenario of the robotic system FRIEND.
Pilot study of idarubicin-based intensive-timing induction therapy for children with previously untreated acute myeloid leukemia: Children's Cancer Group Study 2941.

PURPOSE Randomized comparisons of idarubicin (IDA) with daunorubicin (DNR) show that in adults with acute myeloid leukemia (AML), IDA achieves higher remission rates and longer remission durations. In Children's Cancer Group Pilot Study CCG-2941, we assessed toxicity and feasibility of substituting 4 mg of DNR with 1 mg of IDA in intensive-timing daunorubicin-based induction therapy (DNR/DNR) used in CCG-2891. PATIENTS AND METHODS On days 1 through 3 and 10 through 14, patients received two courses of dexamethasone, cytarabine, 6-thioguanine, etoposide, and IDA (IDA/IDA). After enrollment of 65 patients, toxicity prompted replacement of IDA with DNR (IDA/DNR) on days 10 through 14 for the remaining 28 patients. Outcomes were compared with those of intensive timing in CCG-2891. RESULTS Treatment-related mortality after two courses of induction was not significantly different among the three regimens: 14% with IDA/IDA, 7% with IDA/DNR, and 9% with DNR/DNR. In course 1 of CCG-2941 IDA/IDA, 11% of patients withdrew compared with 1.5% in CCG-2891 (P <.001) and 5% in CCG-2941 IDA/DNR (P = not significant). Compared with CCG-2891 DNR/DRN, CCG-2941 IDA/IDA increased days in hospital (43 v 36 days; P =.007), mean duration of course 1 by a week (P =.002), and risk of grade 3 or 4 hyperbilirubinemia (18% v 5%; P =.02). Toxicity of IDA/DNR was not different from that of DNR/DNR in CCG-2891. The mean day 7 marrow blast percentage was 11.4% in CCG-2941 versus 21.1% in CCG-2891 (P =.004). Remission induction, survival, and event-free survival rates were not significantly different from those of CCG-2891. CONCLUSION In CCG-2941, excessive toxicity and withdrawals outweighed potential benefits of early response with IDA.
Help Wanted: Principals Who Can Lead Professional Learning Communities

Principals must live with paradox: They must have a sense of urgency about improving their schools, balanced by the patience to sustain them for the long haul. They must focus on the future, but remain grounded in today. They must see the big picture, while maintaining a close focus on details. They must be strong leaders who give away power to others. Where will we find the solution to these dilemmas?
‘The Learning Economy, the Learning Firm and the Learning Region’

The recent growing interest in ‘learning’ and ‘knowledge’ as a - maybe the (only) - route to corporate and regional economic success is one facet of the engagement between economic geographers and regional analysts on the one hand and evolutionary and institutional economists on the other. This focus on knowledge is often presented as a dramatic breakthrough, promising radical theoretical reappraisal and opening up exciting new possibilities for the conception, implementation and practise of policy. Recognizing the importance of innovation and knowledge creation to economic success is hardly novel, however. The paper first summarizes the claims made by the proponents of ‘learning’, and some links are drawn between the pre-eminent emphasis that they place upon knowledge and learning and other literatures that analyse ongoing changes in the organization of production and work in contemporary capitalism and which have different emphases. The aim is to situate and contextualize claims about the significance of ‘learning’. These claims are then placed within the context of continuities and changes within capitalism, and the ways in which these have been understood, as a further step in this process of contextualization and situation. Finally, some conclusions are briefly drawn around the limits to learning, and questions of learning by whom, and for what purpose, in the context of the politics and policies of social, economic and territorial development.
Crucial roles of NGF in dorsal horn plasticity in partially deafferentated cats

Though exogenous nerve growth factor (NGF) has been implicated in spinal cord plasticity, whether endogenous NGF plays a crucial role has not been established in vivo. This study investigated first the role of endogenous NGF in spinal dorsal horn (DH) plasticity following removal of L1–L5 and L7–S2 dorsal root ganglions (DRGs) in cats. Co-culture of chick embryo DRG with DH condition media, protein band fishing by cells as well as western blot showed that NGF could promote neurite growth in vitro. Immunohistochemistry and in situ hybridization technique revealed an increase in the NGF and NGF mRNA immunoreactive cells in the DH after partial deafferentation. Lastly, after blocking with NGF antibody, choleragen subunit B horseradish peroxidase (CB-HRP) tracing showed a reduction in the neuronal sprouting observed in the DH. Our results demonstrated that in the cat, endogenous NGF plays a crucial role in DH plasticity after partial deafferentation.
Software-Level Approaches for Tolerating Transient Faults in a Coarse-GrainedReconfigurable Architecture

Coarse-grained reconfigurable architectures have drawn increasing attention due to their merits in performance and flexibility. Typically, they have many processing elements in the form of an array, which is suitable for implementing spatial redundancy used for fault-tolerant systems design. This paper presents a purely software-level approach to implementing transient-fault-tolerance on an existing processing element array without any modification to the architecture. It includes automated design flow to construct a fault-tolerant system and mathematical modeling for analyzing system reliability. Experiments with real-world applications show the effectiveness of the proposed approaches in terms of yield enhancement and system reliability.
A Survey of Perceptually Motivated 3D Visualization of Medical Image Data

This survey provides an overview of perceptually motivated techniques for the visualization of medical image data, including physics‐based lighting techniques as well as illustrative rendering that incorporate spatial depth and shape cues. Additionally, we discuss evaluations that were conducted in order to study the perceptual effects of these visualization techniques as compared to conventional techniques. These evaluations assessed depth and shape perception with depth judgment, orientation matching, and related tasks. This overview of existing techniques and their evaluation serves as a basis for defining the evaluation process of medical visualizations and to discuss a research agenda.
Improvements on Twin Support Vector Machines

For classification problems, the generalized eigenvalue proximal support vector machine (GEPSVM) and twin support vector machine (TWSVM) are regarded as milestones in the development of the powerful SVMs, as they use the nonparallel hyperplane classifiers. In this brief, we propose an improved version, named twin bounded support vector machines (TBSVM), based on TWSVM. The significant advantage of our TBSVM over TWSVM is that the structural risk minimization principle is implemented by introducing the regularization term. This embodies the marrow of statistical learning theory, so this modification can improve the performance of classification. In addition, the successive overrelaxation technique is used to solve the optimization problems to speed up the training procedure. Experimental results show the effectiveness of our method in both computation time and classification accuracy, and therefore confirm the above conclusion further.
SpeechMark: Landmark Detection Tool for Speech Analysis

Landmark-based software tools are particularly suited to fast, automatic analysis of small, non-lexical differences in production of the same speech material by the same speaker. We are building a suite of independent applications and plugins as toolkits that make our landmark-based software system, SpeechMark, available to the wider scientific community. This will be achieved by extending existing software platforms with “plug-ins” that perform specific measures and report results to the user and by developing a MATLAB toolkit. These tools provide automatic summary statistics for measures of speech acoustics based on Stevens’ paradigm of landmarks, points in an utterance around which information about articulatory events can be extracted.