Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The acceptability of an Internet-based exposure treatment for flying phobia with and without therapist guidance: patients’ expectations, satisfaction, treatment preferences, and usability

Purpose Internet-based treatments have been tested for several psychological disorders. However, few studies have directly assessed the acceptability of these self-applied interventions in terms of expectations, satisfaction, treatment preferences, and usability. Moreover, no studies provide this type of data on Internet-based treatment for flying phobia (FP), with or without therapist guidance. The aim of this study was to analyze the acceptability of an Internet-based treatment for FP (NO-FEAR Airlines) that includes exposure scenarios composed of images and real sounds. A secondary aim was to compare patients’ acceptance of two ways of delivering this treatment (with or without therapist guidance). Patients and methods The sample included 46 participants from a randomized controlled trial who had received the self-applied intervention with (n = 23) or without (n = 23) therapist guidance. All participants completed an assessment protocol conducted online and by telephone at both pre- and posttreatment. Results Results showed good expectations, satisfaction, opinion, and usability, regardless of the presence of therapist guidance, including low aversiveness levels from before to after the intervention. However, participants generally preferred the therapist-supported condition. Conclusion NO-FEAR Airlines is a well-accepted Internet-based treatment that can help enhance the application of the exposure technique, improving patient acceptance and access to FP treatment.
Effectiveness of vibratory stimulation on needle-related procedural pain in children: a systematic review protocol.

REVIEW QUESTION/OBJECTIVE The objective of this systematic review is to identify, evaluate and synthesize evidence on the effectiveness of vibratory stimulation to reduce needle-related procedural pain in children aged 18 years and under.The review will address the following question: Is vibratory stimulation effective in reducing needle-related procedural pain in children aged 18 years and under, in comparison with no stimulation for needle-related procedures?
The Optimization Mechanism Research of Distributed Unified Authentication Based on Cache

It is one of the popular and effective way to build a unified authentication center to implement single sign-on among many applications in the enterprise. How to deal with the high concurrent and high flow of user requests to ensure the stability and efficiency of the authentication service is most important when integrating multiple systems. Aiming at the problem of authentication center, such as overloaded, single point of failure, slow response time, etc. we put forward a distributed architecture with cache to enable the unified authentication. The authentication tickets can be shared among multiple nodes by cache. The hot and important data can be prefetched to cache to improve the response time. A multi-factor cache replacement algorithm based on Hybird is also proposed which combining complex and diverse user behavior to improve the effectiveness of data replacement. The experimental results show that the optimized distributed authentication architecture can guarantee the stability of the system, and the cache mechanism can improve the response time, and a multi factor cache replacement algorithm based on Hybird can improve the cache hit ratio.
A Robotic Cloud Advisory Service

Solution architects in large enterprises are tasked with developing complex solutions based on client requirements. This process involves extensive skill, and knowledge of multiple products available within the company or in the market. In addition, they also need to know how different products integrate to form one comprehensive solution that answers client requirements. This approach is time consuming because the solution space is vast. Further, the solution design process is usually not standardized, and an error in judgment can have negative business implications. In this paper, we propose a two-phased methodology where we first use a heuristic-driven technique to automatically reduce the solution space into a smaller subset of viable solutions based on client requirements. These set of candidate solutions are then processed via a cognitive conversational engine that a human domain expert can leverage to converge on the best-fit solution. While our method is general enough to be applicable to multiple problem domains, we have implemented and tested our proposal for designing hybrid cloud architectures.
Economic-Robust Session Based Spectrum Trading in Multi-Hop Cognitive Radio Networks

Spectrum trading benefits primary users (PUs) by monetary gains and secondary users (SUs) by spectrum accessing opportunities in cognitive radio networks (CRNs). Unfortunately, most existing spectrum trading designs only focus on the guarantee of economic properties, but forget the wireless transmission nature, especially for multi-hop cognitive radio (CR) communications. In this paper, we propose an economic-robust session based spectrum trading, which has a joint consideration of economic properties such as incentive compatibility, individual rationality, and budget balance, and the end-to-end performance for multi-hop communications. Considering two bidding manners, i.e., bidding for the whole session and unit rate bidding, we formulate the spectrum trading optimization problems under multiple economic and multi-hop CR transmission constraints, design two pricing mechanisms to charge the winning spectrum bidders, and further mathematically prove the economic- robustness of the proposed spectrum trading schemes. Through extensive simulations, we show the proposed schemes are economic-robust and effective in improving spectrum utilization.
Spectrum Trading for Energy-Harvesting-Enabled Internet of Things in Harsh Environments

Energy harvesting refers to energy-supply guaranteed solutions in Internet of Things for functional maintenance, because network nodes can absorb energy from surrounding environments. However, once the environment turns into a harsh condition (e.g., desert, ocean, or battlefield), the design of a robust network model must take into account two intractable factors: 1) the flexibility of users’ heterogeneous requirements and 2) the influence of unpredictable emergency in energy harvesting. Consequently, spectrum resource allocation revolved issues become rather challenging. To tackle this problem, we build the central network into a combinatorial auction model where complex interactions between the access point and users can be captured. Meanwhile, our model preserves the user flexibility in time-frequency domain. Based on this model, we demonstrate both the energy supply of access point and the network performance can be guaranteed. Moreover, we propose an approximation algorithm to obtain efficient and effective results, and further provide incentives for users to anticipate a truthful auction. Finally, we modify the proposed model to be practical and yet truthful for pursuing an optimal solution. Extensive simulations validate the effectiveness and robustness of our proposal.
Do functional demands associated with locomotor habitat, diet, and activity pattern drive skull shape evolution in musteloid carnivorans?

A major goal of evolutionary studies is to better understand how complex morphologies are related to the different functions and behaviours in which they are involved. For example, during locomotion and hunting behaviour, the head and the eyes have to stay at an appropriate level in order to reliably judge distance as well as to provide postural information. The morphology and orientation of the orbits and cranial base will have an impact on eye orientation. Consequently, variation in orbital and cranial base morphology is expected to be correlated with aspects of an animal's lifestyle. In this study, we investigate whether the shape of the skull evolves in response to the functional demands imposed by ecology and behaviour using geometric morphometric methods. We test if locomotor habitats, diet, and activity pattern influence the shape of the skull in musteloid carnivorans using (M)ANOVAs and phylogenetic (M)ANOVAs, and explore the functional correlates of morphological features in relation to locomotor habitats, diet, and activity pattern. Our results show that phylogeny, locomotion and, diet strongly influence the shape of the skull, whereas the activity pattern seems to have a weakest influence. We also show that the locomotor environment is highly integrated with foraging and feeding, which can lead to similar selective pressures and drive the evolution of skull shape in the same direction. Finally, we show similar responses to functional demands in musteloids, a super family of close related species, as are typically observed across all mammals suggesting the pervasiveness of these functional demands.
Effect of Liquid Crystalline Systems Containing Antimicrobial Compounds on Infectious Skin Bacteria

This study aimed (i) to prepare liquid crystalline systems (LCS) of glyceryl monooleate (GMO) and water containing antibacterial compounds and (ii) to evaluate their potential as drug delivery systems for topical treatment of bacterial infections. Therefore, LCS containing CPC (cetylpyridinium chloride) (LCS/CPC) and PHMB (poly(hexamethylene biguanide) hydrochloride) (LCS/PHMB) were prepared and the liquid crystalline phases were identified by polarizing light microscopy 24 h and 7 days after preparation. The in vitro drug release profile and in vitro antibacterial activity of the systems were assessed using the double layer agar diffusion method against Staphylococcus aureus, methicillin-resistant S. aureus, Staphylococcus epidermidis, Escherichia coli, and Enterococcus faecalis. The interaction between GMO and the drugs was evaluated by a drug absorption study. Stable liquid crystalline systems containing CPC and PHMB were obtained. LCS/PHMB decreased the PHMB release rate and exerted strong antibacterial activity against all the investigated bacteria. In contrast, CPC interacted with GMO so strongly that it became attached to the system; the amount released was not sufficient to exert antibacterial activity. Therefore, the studied liquid crystalline systems were suitable to deliver PHMB, but not CPC. Accordingly, it was demonstrated that GMO interacts with each drug differently, which may interfere in the final efficiency of GMO/water LCS.
The DNMT3A R882H mutant displays altered flanking sequence preferences

Abstract The DNMT3A R882H mutation is frequently observed in acute myeloid leukemia (AML). It is located in the subunit and DNA binding interface of DNMT3A and has been reported to cause a reduction in activity and dominant negative effects. We investigated the mechanistic consequences of the R882H mutation on DNMT3A showing a roughly 40% reduction in overall DNA methylation activity. Biochemical assays demonstrated that R882H does not change DNA binding affinity, protein stability or subnuclear distribution of DNMT3A. Strikingly, DNA methylation experiments revealed pronounced changes in the flanking sequence preference of the DNMT3A-R882H mutant. Based on these results, different DNA substrates with selected flanking sequences were designed to be favored or disfavored by R882H. Kinetic analyses showed that the R882H favored substrate was methylated by R882H with 45% increased rate when compared with wildtype DNMT3A, while methylation of the disfavored substrate was reduced 7-fold. Our data expand the model of the potential carcinogenic effect of the R882H mutation by showing CpG site specific activity changes. This result suggests that R882 is involved in the indirect readout of flanking sequence preferences of DNMT3A and it may explain the particular enrichment of the R882H mutation in cancer patients by revealing mutation specific effects.
A Dynamic Self-Adapting Mechanism for ZigBee Performance Assurance Under Wi-Fi Interference

As the increasing number of the wireless devices, the unlicensed industrial scientific medical band becomes more and more crowded. The highly uncertain cross technology interference (CTI) has shown to adversely affect the performance of low-power wireless sensor networks (WSN). Because of the incompatible physical and medium access control layer, the low-power WSN suffers serious packet loss during the transmission. It raises the need for agile methods that can assess the channel conditions and assure the performance and robustness of wireless sensor networks. In this paper, we present a light-weight and self-adapting CTI mitigation strategy that quantifies the channel idle state and improves the packet reception rate (PRR) of the communication. Based on the background received signal strength indicator, we propose a new metric to quantify the constantly changing channel state in the temporal domain. We employ logistic regression as the machine learning classifier to decide whether the communication is viable over the interfered link. Through the collected Wi-Fi traffic, we find that the channel is idle in most of the time, which motivated the design of our scheme. Extensive experiments show that our scheme can achieve over 91% of the PRR, which gain the improvement of 40%. Carrying on further, our scheme consumes less energy via degrading packet loss rate in the energy consumption part.
Age-related islet inflammation marks the proliferative decline of pancreatic beta-cells in zebrafish

The pancreatic islet, a cellular community harboring the insulin-producing beta-cells, is known to undergo age-related alterations. However, only a handful of signals associated with aging have been identified. By comparing beta-cells from younger and older zebrafish, here we show that the aging islets exhibit signs of chronic inflammation. These include recruitment of tnfα-expressing macrophages and the activation of NF-kB signaling in beta-cells. Using a transgenic reporter, we show that NF-kB activity is undetectable in juvenile beta-cells, whereas cells from older fish exhibit heterogeneous NF-kB activity. We link this heterogeneity to differences in gene expression and proliferation. Beta-cells with high NF-kB signaling proliferate significantly less compared to their neighbors with low activity. The NF-kB signalinghi cells also exhibit premature upregulation of socs2, an age-related gene that inhibits beta-cell proliferation. Together, our results show that NF-kB activity marks the asynchronous decline in beta-cell proliferation with advancing age.
Mid-life psychosocial work environment as a predictor of work exit by age 50

Objectives To examine whether psychosocial work characteristics at age 45 years predict exit from the labour market by the age of 50 years in data from the 1958 British Birth Cohort. Methods Psychosocial work characteristics (decision latitude, job demands, job strain and work social support at 45 years and job insecurity at 42 years) measured by questionnaire were linked to employment outcomes (unemployment, retirement, permanent sickness, homemaking) at 50 years in 6510 male and female participants. Results Low decision latitude (RR = 2.01, 95%CI 1.06,3.79), low work social support (RR = 1.96, 95%CI 1.12,3.44), and high job insecurity (RR = 2.27, 95%CI 1.41, 3.67) predicted unemployment at 50, adjusting for sex, housing tenure, socioeconomic status, marital status, and education. High demands were associated with lower risk of unemployment (RR = 0.50, 95%CI 0.29,0.88) but higher risk of permanent sickness (RR = 2.14, 95%CI 1.09,4.21). Conclusions Keeping people in the workforce beyond 50 years may contribute to both personal and national prosperity. Employers may wish to improve working conditions for older workers, in particular, increase control over work, increase support and reduce demands to retain older employees in the workforce.
Translating Multi-device Task Models to State Machines

This paper presents an approach for translating multi-device task models to a distributed execution model based on state machines. We consider an expressive extension to ConcurTaskTrees, called multi-device ConcurTaskTrees (MCTTs) as a modeling language for distributed multi-device applications. We use the device labeling operators Any and All, which specify if user interactions at runtime shall take place on one or all of a set of devices and extend the translation algorithm for “classical” CTT operators with translation rules for these multi-device operators in a distributed setting. Our algorithm exploits concurrent and hierarchical state machines for the execution and the concept of partial state machines during the translation.
Understanding the viscoelastic behavior of silica filled rubber

This thesis focuses on the understanding the viscoelastic behavior of silica filled Nitrile Butadiene Rubber (NBR) using different sizes/surface areas in three different regions of deformation that will be developed in 3 chapters. The characterization of the samples used in this work is described in Chapter 2. Then, chapters 3, 4 and 5 will describe the viscoelastic behavior as follows: Chapter 3: We perform oscillatory measurements at small deformation (linear region) to show, for the first time, a rescaling of the reinforcement as a function of volume fraction and particle size. Chapter 4: We apply Large Amplitude Oscillatory Shear (LAOS) in order to study the nonlinear behavior of filled rubbers. We compare the elastic response observed in strain sweep measurements with the response analyzed within a single cycle oscillation (described by Lissajous curves). Chapter 5: We apply very large deformations (until the break point) in our rubber systems. We use a modified Griffith theory to predict the stress at break of rubber compounds, knowing the fracture energy and elastic modulus of the material that can be measured separately. Chapter 6: We show partial results that deserve more research, such as the SAXS experiments under tensile stress done in Grenoble, France, and spectroscopy measurements under stress done at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz, Germany. In addition, we suggest the implementation of coupling agents in our rubber compounds to better understand and control the interactions between filler particle and polymer matrix.
Thromboembolism in active ulcerative colitis

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) has a range of both intestinal and extraintestinal manifestations. Thromboembolism involving the arterial and/or venous systems is rare. Early recognition and treatment of thrombosis in patients with IBD may prevent progression and minimise complications. However, clear guidelines on the duration of treatment and indications for primary prophylaxis need to be established. We report a case of a young patient with ulcerative colitis, who developed multiple site arterial and venous thrombosis, all occurring within short intervals of each other.
Deep Attention Model for Triage of Emergency Department Patients

Optimization of patient throughput and wait time in emergency departments (ED) is an important task for hospital systems. For that reason, Emergency Severity Index (ESI) system for patient triage was introduced to help guide manual estimation of acuity levels, which is used by nurses to rank the patients and organize hospital resources. However, despite improvements that it brought to managing medical resources, such triage system greatly depends on nurse's subjective judgment and is thus prone to human errors. Here, we propose a novel deep model based on the word attention mechanism designed for predicting a number of resources an ED patient would need. Our approach incorporates routinely available continuous and nominal (structured) data with medical text (unstructured) data, including patient's chief complaint, past medical history, medication list, and nurse assessment collected for 338,500 ED visits over three years in a large urban hospital. Using both structured and unstructured data, the proposed approach achieves the AUC of $\sim 88\%$ for the task of identifying resource intensive patients (binary classification), and the accuracy of $\sim 44\%$ for predicting exact category of number of resources (multi-class classification task), giving an estimated lift over nurses' performance by 16\% in accuracy. Furthermore, the attention mechanism of the proposed model provides interpretability by assigning attention scores for nurses' notes which is crucial for decision making and implementation of such approaches in the real systems working on human health.
Features of self-management interventions for people with COPD associated with improved health-related quality of life and reduced emergency department visits: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Background Self-management interventions (SMIs) are recommended for individuals with COPD to help monitor symptoms and optimize health-related quality of life (HRQOL). However, SMIs vary widely in content, delivery, and intensity, making it unclear which methods and techniques are associated with improved outcomes. This systematic review aimed to summarize the current evidence base surrounding the effectiveness of SMIs for improving HRQOL in people with COPD. Methods Systematic reviews that focused upon SMIs were eligible for inclusion. Intervention descriptions were coded for behavior change techniques (BCTs) that targeted self-management behaviors to address 1) symptoms, 2) physical activity, and 3) mental health. Meta-analyses and meta-regression were used to explore the association between health behaviors targeted by SMIs, the BCTs used, patient illness severity, and modes of delivery, with the impact on HRQOL and emergency department (ED) visits. Results Data related to SMI content were extracted from 26 randomized controlled trials identified from 11 systematic reviews. Patients receiving SMIs reported improved HRQOL (standardized mean difference =−0.16; 95% confidence interval [CI] =−0.25, −0.07; P=0.001) and made fewer ED visits (standardized mean difference =−0.13; 95% CI =−0.23, −0.03; P=0.02) compared to patients who received usual care. Patients receiving SMIs targeting mental health alongside symptom management had greater improvement of HRQOL (Q=4.37; P=0.04) and fewer ED visits (Q=5.95; P=0.02) than patients receiving SMIs focused on symptom management alone. Within-group analyses showed that HRQOL was significantly improved in 1) studies with COPD patients with severe symptoms, 2) single-practitioner based SMIs but not SMIs delivered by a multidisciplinary team, 3) SMIs with multiple sessions but not single session SMIs, and 4) both individual- and group-based SMIs. Conclusion SMIs can be effective at improving HRQOL and reducing ED visits, with those targeting mental health being significantly more effective than those targeting symptom management alone.