Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Chronic Opioid Therapy and Preventive Services in Rural Primary Care: An Oregon Rural Practice-based Research Network Study

PURPOSE For clinicians, using opioid therapy for chronic noncancer pain (CNCP) often gives rise to a conflict between treating their patients’ pain and fears of addiction, diversion of medication, or legal action. Consequent stresses on clinical encounters might adversely affect some elements of clinical care. We evaluated a possible association between chronic opioid therapy (COT) for CNCP and receipt of various preventive services. METHODS We conducted a retrospective cohort study in 7 primary care clinics within the Oregon Rural Practice-based Research Network (ORPRN). Using medical records of 704 patients, aged 35 to 85 years, seen during a 3-year period, we compared the receipt of 4 preventive services between patients on COT for CNCP and patients not on chronic opioid therapy (non-COT). We used multivariate log-binomial regression analyses to estimate the relative risk of receipt of each preventive service. RESULTS After adjustment for plausible confounders, we found that patients using COT had a statistically significantly lower relative risk (RR) of receipt of cervical cancer screening (RR = 0.60; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.47–0.76) and colorectal cancer screening (RR = 0.42; 95% CI, 0.22–0.80) when compared with non-COT patients. The RR was reduced, without statistical significance, for lipid screening (RR = 0.77; 95% CI, 0.54–1.10), and not notably reduced for smoking cessation counseling (RR = 0.95; 95% CI, 0.78–1.15). CONCLUSIONS Patients using COT for CNCP were less likely to receive some preventive services. Research is needed to better understand barriers to and improved methods for providing preventive services for these patients.
Event Modeling for Content Based Publish/Subscribe Systems

Event-based middle ware is a scalable and powerful type of middle ware for building large-scale distributed systems. Content Based Publish/Subscribe System (CBPSS) is a convenient interaction model for distributed systems. One of the biggest challenges in CBPSS is the effective dissemination of messages from publishers to subscribers. The primary focus of this paper is efficient dissemination of messages from publishers to subscribers. We present an event model which can effectively disseminate messages from publishers to subscribers for the applications running under publish/subscribe model. In our approach, we represent subscriptions filters as valid XML expressions and content management has been done through XML query-X Path. The experimental results show that expressiveness of X query is better compared to the conventional relational expression query.
Interpretations of stratospheric photochemistry

Trace stratospheric species (parts per billion or less) have negligible effects on ozone (parts per million) unless they interact in catalytic cycles that regenerate the trace species. It is appropriate to regard catalytic cycles, null cycles, and consumptive sequences, rather than the elementary chemical reactions, as the components of ozone photochemistry. A general differential equation for ozone is transformed to an equivalent equation that directly identifies the catalytic cycles and sequences. The novel aspect of this article is the completeness with which this transformation is carried out and used. This method of treating stratospheric photochemistry properly partitions ozone destruction rates among O/sub x/, NO/sub x/, HO/sub x/, and CIX families of reactions. The features of the methane-smog chemistry are clearly brought out. From the midvalues of published measurements of NO/sub 2/ and CIO, it appears that NO/sub 2/, CIO, and O/sub 3/, are sufficient to destroy ozone as fast as it is formed in the range 23-35 km, and NO/sub x/ reactions and CIX reactions appear to be roughly equal in importance. There is no need to invoke any new or unknown sink for ozone in this region if the midvalues of measured NO/sub 2/ and CIO are representative ofmore » the global average. It is improbable that the high values observed for NO/sub 2/ or for CIO are representative of the global average values. The magnitude of the contribution of HO/sub x/ reactions to ozone photochemistry cannot be found by this method because of lack of observations of HOO in the stratosphere. These conclusions depend on the accuracy of the stratospheric observations and certain rate constants. Additional measurements are needed, especially for HOO, NO/sub 2/, CIO, and HO. « less
Multiple Model Linearization Solution for Cellular Base Station Power Amplifiers

A multiple model adaptive digital pre-distortion (DPD) scheme is proposed for use in a cellular base station Power Amplifier (PA). The PA is excited by rapidly changing wideband signals. The changes in the signals are caused by variations in power levels and bandwidths. These changing signals can cause a significant change in the dynamic characteristics of the PA. The proposed multiple model DPD scheme can track and compensate for the changing dynamic characteristics of the PA. The proposed scheme offers reduced computational complexity in comparison to old published methods. Experiments are performed on a Phoenix PA excited by two- and four- carrier Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) signals at varying power levels. The simulation results verify the efficacy of the method based on the limitations placed on the Adjacent Channel Power Ratio (ACPR) and Normalized Mean Square Error (NMSE).
The Survivin – Crm 1 interaction is essential for chromosomal passenger complex localization and function

The chromosomal passenger complex (CPC) of Aurora-B, Borealin, INCENP (inner centromere protein) and Survivin coordinates essential chromosomal and cytoskeletal events during mitosis. Here, we show that the nuclear export receptor Crm1 is crucially involved in tethering the CPC to the centromere by interacting with a leucine-rich nuclear export signal (NES), evolutionarily conserved in all mammalian Survivin proteins. We show that inhibition of the Survivin–Crm1 interaction by treatment with leptomycin B or by RNA-interference-mediated Crm1 depletion prevents centromeric targeting of Survivin. The genetic inactivation of the Survivin–Crm1 interaction by mutation of the NES affects the correct localization and function of Survivin and the CPC during mitosis. By contrast, CPC assembly does not seem to require the Survivin–Crm1 interaction. Our report shows the functional significance of the Survivin–Crm1 interface and provides a novel link between the mitotic effector Crm1 and the CPC.
Social engineering from a normative ethics perspective

Social engineering is deeply entrenched in both computer science and social psychology. Knowledge on both of these disciplines is required to perform social engineering based research. There are several ethical concerns and requirements that need to be taken into account whilst performing social engineering research on participants to ensure that harm does not come to the participants. These requirements are not yet formalised and most researchers are unaware of the ethical concerns whilst performing social engineering research. This paper identifies several ethical concerns regarding social engineering in public communication, penetration testing and social engineering research. This paper discusses the identified ethical concerns with regards to two different normative ethics approaches namely utilitarianism and deontology. All of the identified ethical concerns and their corresponding ethical perspectives are provided as well as practical examples of where these formalised ethical concerns for social engineering research can be utilised.
Is (99m)Tc-MDP whole body bone scintigraphy adjuvant to (18)F-FDG-PET for the detection of skeletal metastases?

PURPOSE Due to the fact that fluorine-18-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography/computed tomography ((18)F-FDG-PET/CT) and technetium-99m-methylenediphosphonate ((99m)Tc-MDP) whole body scans identify bone metastases by different mechanisms, i.e. by using glucose metabolism and osteoblastic response in the bone, respectively, it can be expected that there may be some differences between these two methods in the number of lesions identified. The aim of this study was to compare the sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, positive predictive value (PPV) and negative predictive value (NPV) in detecting bone metastases between (18)F-FDG-PET/CT and conventional (99m)Tc-MDP whole body scans. METHODS Between 2006-2009, 121 patients with malignancies (62 male and 59 female, mean age 59.3±10.8 years, range 37-84) were examined with (18)F-FDG-PET/CT and conventional (99)Tc-MDP whole-body scans for detection of bone metastases. RESULTS For (18)F-FDG-PET/CT and for (99m)TC-MDP, sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, PPV and NPV for detecting all studied bone metastases were 88.3, 83.6, 86.7, 91.7, 77.8% and 91.7, 71.0, 84.9, 86.6, 80.8%, respectively. For bone metastases of breast and lung cancers, the specificity and accuracy of PET/CT was higher than that of bone scintigraphy. On the other hand, the sensitivity of bone scintigraphy was higher than PET/CT in breast and lung cancers groups and all patients. In the detection of osteolytic and osteosclerotic metastases no difference was found between the two methods, while for osteolytic lesions the mean standardized uptake value (SUV) max was higher than for osteosclerotic lesions. CONCLUSION For the detection of bone metastases the specificity and accuracy of (18)F-FDG-PET/CT were higher compared to bone scintigraphy, while the sensitivity was lower. It is the opinion of the authors that both studies are complementary to final diagnosis.
On the Use of Linguistic Features in an Automatic System for Speech Analytics of Telephone Conversations

A research on the analysis of human/human conversations in a call centre is described. The purpose of the research is to provide short reports of each conversation with information useful for monitoring the call centre efficiency. Data from real users discussing over the telephone with agents are processed by an automatic speech recognition (ASR) system. Reports are grouped into classes by the agents based on predefined taxonomy. A train set of manually transcribed data is used for training the extraction of features relevant to the application and the classification of the conversations. The use of all the words of the application vocabulary, of automatically selected key_words, and of automatically learned sentence chunks containing semantic classes of words are compared and evaluated with a totally different test set. The results show a significant increase in performance when chunks are used even in comparison with the use of bags of words obtained with a boosting algorithm.
Individual Wellbeing in a Dynamic Perspective

This paper explores the determinants of individual well-being as measured by self-reported levels of satisfaction with income. Making full use of the panel data nature of the German Socio-Economic Panel, we provide empirical evidence for well-being depending on absolute and on relative levels of income in a dynamic framework. This finding holds after controlling for other influential factors in a multivariate setting. The main novelty of the paper is the consideration of dynamic aspects: individual’s own history as well as the relative income performance with respect to the others living in the society under analysis do play a major role in the assessment of well-being.
Looking to the future, working on the present. Intention to donate blood and risk behavior: A study on adolescents

Background: The aim of this work was to investigate adolescents’ propensity to donate blood, the incidence in this population of risk behaviors that limit and restrict the potential for blood donation, thus reducing the number of possible subjects suitable for donation, and the link between propensity to donate and healthy lifestyles. Materials and Methods: Adolescents were asked to complete an anonymous self-report questionnaire during class time. The questionnaire included ad hoc items designed to investigate the intention to donate blood and behaviors traditionally considered to put adolescents’ “health at risk”. Participants were 201 students from northern Italy (range 12–19, M = 17.98, SD = 1.82; 38.9% male, 61.1% female). Results: About half of respondents perceived that they were able to donate blood and could overcome any obstacle that might prevent them from doing so. Some of the examined risk behaviors were widespread in the population under consideration. The linear regressions run show that there is no link between the propensity to give blood and a tendency to engage in healthy lifestyles. Conclusion: The study shows that adolescents demonstrate an interest in blood donation; however, it shows a real lack of “action” to make it happen: there is, indeed, a serious lack of attention to matters related to healthy lifestyles. In fact, adolescents are not aware of how to act to access the world of donation, with the risk that they present themselves at blood donation centers and are then found to be unfit to donate. The research offers many suggestions and implications.
Local chromosome context is a major determinant of crossover pathway biochemistry during budding yeast meiosis

Meiotic chromosomes are divided into regions of enrichment and depletion for meiotic chromosome axis proteins, in budding yeast Hop1 and Red1. These proteins are important for formation of Spo11-catalyzed DSB, but their contribution to crossover recombination is undefined. By studying meiotic recombination initiated by the sequence-specific VMA1-derived endonuclease (VDE), we show that meiotic chromosome structure helps to determine the biochemical mechanism by which recombination intermediates are resolved to form crossovers. At a Hop1-enriched locus, most VDE-initiated crossovers required the MutLγ resolvase, which forms most Spo11-initiated crossovers. In contrast, at a locus with lower Hop1 occupancy, most VDE-initiated crossovers were MutLγ-independent. In pch2 mutants, the two loci displayed similar Hop1 occupancy levels, and also displayed similar MutLγ-dependence of VDE-induced crossovers. We suggest that meiotic and mitotic recombination pathways coexist within meiotic cells, with features of meiotic chromosome structure partitioning the genome into regions where one pathway or the other predominates.
On the theory and computation of surface tension: the elimination of parasitic currents through energy conservation in the second-gradient method

Errors in the computation of fluid flows with surface tension are examined. These errors cause large parasitic flows when the capillary number is large and have often been attributed to truncation error in underresolved interfacial regions. A study using the second-gradient method reveals that when truncation error is eliminated in the computation of energy exchanges between surface and kinetic energies so that energy is strictly conserved, the parasitic currents are reduced to round-off. The results are based on general thermodynamic arguments and can be used to guide improvements in other methods, such as the continuum-surface-force (CSF) method, which is commonly used with the volume-of-fluid (VOF) method.
Cognitive Performances and Locomotor Activity Following Dentate Granule Cell Damage in Rats: Role of Lesion Extent and Type of Memory Tested

Intradentate injection of colchicine is one of the techniques used to destroy granule cells. This study compared the behavioral effects of various amounts of colchicine (1.0, 3.0, and 6.0 microg; Col 1, Col 3, and Col 6, respectively) injected into the dentate gyrus of adult Long-Evans male rats. Starting 10 days after lesion surgery, behavioral testing assessed home-cage and open-field locomotion, alternation in a T-maze, water-maze, and radial-maze learning according to protocols placing emphasis on reference, and working memory. All of these tasks are sensitive to hippocampal disruption. Histological verifications showed that the extent of the lesions depends on the dose of colchicine (index of dentate gyrus shrinkage: -33% in Col 1, -54% in Col 3, and -67% in Col 6 rats). Colchicine dose-dependently increased nocturnal home cage activity (an effect found 10 days but not 5 months after surgery), but had no significant effect on open-field locomotion or T-maze alternation. A dose-dependent reference memory impairment was found during the acquisition of spatial navigation in the water maze; Col 3 and Col 6 rats were more impaired than Col 1 rats. During the probe trial (platform removed), control rats spent a longer distance swimming over the platform area than all rats with colchicine lesions. In the working memory version of the test, all rats with colchicine lesions showed significant deficits. The deficits were larger in Col 3 and Col 6 rats compared to Col 1 rats. The lesions had no effect on swimming speed. In the radial-maze test, there was also a dose-dependent working memory impairment. However, reference memory was disrupted in a manner that did not differ among the three groups of lesioned rats. Our data are in line with the view that the dentate gyrus plays an important role in the acquisition of new information and is an integral neural substrate for spatial reference and spatial working memory. They also suggest that damage to granule cells might have more pronounced effects on reference than on working memory in the radial maze. Finally, they demonstrate that part of the variability in the conclusions from previous experiments concerning the role of granule cells in cognitive processes, particularly in spatial learning and memory, may be due to the type of tests used and/or the extent of the damage produced.
Structural social capital and innovation. Is knowledge transfer the missing link?

Purpose – This paper aims to address the gap that, to date, no systematic review has been carried out on the role that structural social capital (SC) plays for knowledge transfer and innovation at the interpersonal, inter-unit and inter-firm levels. Individuals and organisations are becoming increasingly involved in collaboration networks to share knowledge and generate innovation. SC theory has been adopted in several areas of study to explain how individuals, groups and organisations manage relationships to generate innovation. Design/methodology/approach – This review covers studies of SC in organisational behaviour, strategy and management over a period of 20 years. Findings – The literature review shows that knowledge types and knowledge transfer processes are the missing links in the relationship between structural SC and innovation. Moreover, the paper demonstrates that seemingly opposite configurations of SC are complementary to each other (structural holes vs dense networks; strong vs weak ties) .
Detection of Image Fragments Related by Affine Transforms: Matching Triangles and Ellipses

Visual information retrieval systems are often constructed upon the notion of image similarity. The concept of image similarity may be defined in many ways: from a pure visual level, where we seek identical images, to a semantic level related with human perception the image. In our research we address the first approach, we explore topics of image matching (image alignment), however in terms of image fragments. The goal of image fragment matching is to find similar parts of two images, without a given model of particular objects present on images. It is also assumed that the number of similar objects (image fragments) is not known. In this paper we present a novel method for image fragment matching. It uses two ellipse pairs as an elementary object for image geometry reconstruction. The method is an extension of the previously proposed approach based on triangles. We have decided to replace triangles with a different geometrical structure to reduce computational complexity from O(n^3) to O(n^2), where n is the number of coherent key regions. We discuss and compare both matching methods both in terms of quality and processing efficiency.
On Verifying the Consistency of Remote Untrusted Services

A group of mutually trusting clients outsources a computation service to a remote server, which they do not fully trust and that may be subject to attacks. The clients do not communicate with each other and would like to verify the correctness of the remote computation and the consistency of the server’s responses. This paper presents the Commutative-Operation veriﬁcation Protocol (COP) that ensures linearizability when the server is correct and preserves fork-linearizability in any other case. Fork-linearizability ensures that all clients that observe each other’s operations are consistent in the sense that their own operations and those operations of other clients that they see are linearizable. COP goes beyond previous protocols in supporting wait-free client operations for sequences of commutative operations.
Mangroves : a natural defense against cyclones; an investigation from Orissa, India

Following this disaster in Orissa caused by a super cyclone there was a great deal of controversy over whether the high levels of mangrove forest destruction in the area had increased the impact of the cyclone. Many argued that the loss of human life caused by the storm was directly linked to the removal of the natural defenses provided by mangroves. [SANDEE Policy Brief No. 24-07]
Motion-induced blindness does not affect the formation of negative afterimages

Aftereffects induced by invisible stimuli constitute a powerful tool to investigate what type of neural information processing can occur in the absence of visual awareness. This approach has been successfully used to demonstrate that awareness of oriented gratings or translating stimuli is not necessary to obtain a robust orientation-specific or motion aftereffect. We exploit motion-induced blindness (Bonneh, Cooperman, & Sagi, 2001) to investigate the related question of the influence of visual awareness on the formation of negative afterimages. Our results show MIB does not affect the persistence and intensity of afterimages. Thus, there is no significant contribution to the formation of afterimages beyond the sites mediating MIB. 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
The nature and control of infections in patients with acute leukemia.

Summary The spectrum of infections in patients with leukemia continues to change. During the past 8 years there has been a significant increase in infections due to fungi and other organisms with a lower order of pathogenicity and a natural resistance to commonly employed antibiotics. Pseudomonas infections constitute the most important bacterial problem. Serious staphylococcal infections have been markedly reduced by the synthetic, penicillinase-resistant penicillins. The reasons for the shifting patterns of infection are considered. Several approaches to the treatment of the above infections through improving or replacing host defense mechanisms are considered. Granulocyte transfusions are effective in the management of Pseudomonas septicemia and significantly reduce the mortality of that disease. The host-defense deficits responsible for the frequency of fungus infections are considered. It is proposed that this deficit relates primarily to failure of lymphocyte function.