Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Change in Quality Management in Diabetes Care Groups and Outpatient Clinics After Feedback and Tailored Support

OBJECTIVE To assess the change in level of diabetes quality management in primary care groups and outpatient clinics after feedback and tailored support. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS This before-and-after study with a 1-year follow-up surveyed quality managers on six domains of quality management. Questionnaires measured organization of care, multidisciplinary teamwork, patient centeredness, performance results, quality improvement policy, and management strategies (score range 0–100%). Based on the scores, responders received feedback and a benchmark and were granted access to a toolbox of quality improvement instruments. If requested, additional support in improving quality management was available, consisting of an elucidating phone call or a visit from an experienced consultant. After 1 year, the level of quality management was measured again. RESULTS Of the initially 60 participating care groups, 51 completed the study. The total quality management score improved from 59.8% (95% CI 57.0–62.6%) to 65.1% (62.8–67.5%; P < 0.0001). The same applied to all six domains. The feedback and benchmark improved the total quality management score (P = 0.001). Of the 44 participating outpatient clinics, 28 completed the study. Their total score changed from 65.7% (CI 60.3–71.1%) to 67.3% (CI 62.9–71.7%; P = 0.30). Only the results in the domain multidisciplinary teamwork improved (P = 0.001). CONCLUSIONS Measuring quality management and providing feedback and a benchmark improves the level of quality management in care groups but not in outpatient clinics. The questionnaires might also be a useful asset for other diabetes care groups, such as Accountable Care Organizations.
Mechanism Theory

Some of the basic results and insights of the literature on mechanism design are presented. In that literature game theoretic reasoning is used to model social institutions as varied as voting systems, auctions, bargaining protocols, and methods for deciding on public projects. A theme that comes out of the literature is the difficulty of finding mechanisms compatible with individual incentives that simultaneously result in efficient decisions (maximizing total welfare), the voluntary participation of the individuals, and balanced transfers (taxes and subsidies that net to zero across individuals). This is explored in the context of various incentive compatibility requirements, public and private goods settings, small and large societies, and forms of private information held by individuals.
Instrumental Enrichment—Effects of Generalimtion and Durability with Talented Adolescents

It was hypothesized that efficient generalization and durability in Instrumental Enrichment (IE) program can be achieved by using metacognition principles in bridging. 140 talented children 10–12 yr. olds were drawn from schools which are defined as culturally disadvantaged. The subjects were randomly divided into experimental and control groups. During two years the experimental group received 240 hours of intervention. Half of the time was devoted to IE and the other half to various topics which were not learned in school. Throughout the entire intervention program, emphasis was placed upon the bridging between contents by means of metacognition, systematic thinking and integrative lesson plans. Immediately after the program was completed the results showed generalization effects on verbal and nonverbal thinking tasks and very limited generalization on school achievement. A follow-up study, four years later, showed effects of durability on verbal, non-verbal thinking tasks and broad generalization in school achievement. The research points to the necessity to integrate between IE and school curriculum, through the conceptual framework of systematic thinking and metacognition.
Effectively Generating Frequent Episode Rules for Anomaly-based Intrusion Detection *

Datamining is a useful tool for building classifiers to distinguish intrusive behavior from normal network traffic. In this paper, we provide new pruning techniques for the reduction of frequent episode rules to build anomaly-based intrusion detection systems (IDS). This reduction is crucial to use datamining for anomaly detection of unknown attacks. Otherwise, the rule search space may escalate too large to be practical for just one day’s collection of network traffic records. The new approach being reported here accelerates the entire process of machine learning and profile matching using a normal-use model, instead of using the misuse model associated with signature-based IDS. To solve this problem, we developed a base-support mining algorithm for generating effective frequent episode rules (FERs). Several rule-pruning laws are introduced to reduce the search space as much as 80% in anomaly detection. Through testing the new pruning techniques over the DARPA 1999 IDS evaluation data sets, we demonstrate a 15% reduction in the number of false alarms over 50 network attack incidents ranging from Probes to R2L (remote-to-local) and DoS (denial of service) attacks. Our experiments reveal an intrusion detection rate of 76%, 42%, and 82%, respectively, for the 3 categories of network attacks. These results are higher than the average case of using association rules alone. We demonstrate with ten examples on anomaly-based intrusion detection of unknown attacks embedded in telnet, http, ftp, smtp, Email, and authentication requests of TCP or UDP connections.
Museal tropes in popular film

This text concentrates on the enactment of exhibitions, particularly, within the films of Batman, Dressed to Kill and 91/2 Weeks. While central to the discourse of visual art, exhibitions must in fact be performed. An aesthetic experience, then, can be considered not only in terms of a static visual relationship between beholder and art, but also in its proprioceptive aspect of moving through space. The project of analysing museum enactment poses obvious challenges short of actually stalking people. So I have turned to examining the action of museum scenes from popular films. What I found was that the coding of the postural and kinaesthetic engagement of gallery visitors provides a rich source for mining some of the ways that aesthetic experience is stereotyped. Beholders shift their weight between feet, step back to get a different view, cup their chins with their hands, or walk through gallery spaces with the kind of indrawn awareness characterizing heightened visual engagement. But beyond these representations, I have discovered that films portray the gallery space as contexts for affective choreographies which exaggerate, or even exceed, aesthetic conventions altogether. The disciplinary aspects of museum enactment have been explored by several authors in recent museum criticism. Carol Duncan (1995), for example, has argued that museums are performed as civilizing rituals which constitute an art public, while Tony Bennett (1995) has elucidated, in the wake of Foucault, how the disciplinary architectures of museums operate on the minds of spectators as they view an exhibition and on their bodies as they themselves are viewed. We now know that aesthetic experience is administrated and contained through the behavioural protocols of the gallery space: speaking in hushed tones, not touching works of art, refraining from running. We are guided to contemplative conduct by the presence of museum personnel: museum guards who police apprehension, volunteer guides who exemplify ‘the ideal viewer’, and from time to time curators who, heir to the class of connoisseurs, perform savoir faire through their physical manner and style. Yet, despite the efforts of museums to contain their public’s aesthetic experience, individuals activate the museal according to their own tactical pleasures and purposes. What I want to argue here is that museums pose the
Length-segmented lists

1. Introduction There are many applications in which it is necessary to search a pre-defined list of variable-length strings very large in number. Examples include spelling checkers, natural language processing, hyphenation lookup, and compilers (keyword lookup). In most of these applications , it is important to be able to search the list efficiently and, at the same time, keep the storage used to a minimum. There are many methods of storage compaction that can be used on variable-length strings; [1, 2, and 3] contain a few examples. Most of these methods pay a price in terms of access efficiency
The Theory and Research We Take for Granted

I have just returned from a week in Mexico where I gave a series of talks to various groups about human resource development (HRD) and adult learning. Although my data are not scientific, I spoke to a total of about 600 people in groups consisting of human resource professionals, business managers, executives, graduate students, undergraduate students, and faculty. The messages I heard were so consistent that I think they are worth sharing. I learned a lot on this trip, but most of all I learned that certain core elements of HRD theory that we take for granted are not present inMexico. Indeed, some of them represent core theory that I believe everyone in HRD can agree on. Let me share them with you:
Robust Estimation of Distribution by Shrinkage Technique

Most pattern recognition applications require the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the covariance matrix. It is well known that when the number of training samples is small, the eigenvalues of the covariance matrix contains bias, and the bias degrades recognition performance. There are some methods which ignore the small eigenvalues, or acquire better estimates of the covariance matrix by correcting the eigenvalues. Though all of these methods cope with the eigenvalues obtained after eigen decomposition, eigen decomposition seems to cause the biases of the eigenvalues. Therefore, it is worth trying to devise a method which avoids bias of eigenvalues. In this paper, it is confirmed that biases of the eigenvalues appear after eigen decomposition by experiments. Then a method of shrinking the covariance matrix before eigen decomposition for avoiding bias of the eigenvalues are proposed. The ability of the proposed method of estimating the true distribution more precisely than using the sample covariance matrix and of improving recognition performance is confirmed by the recognition experiments.
How Does a Child with Sensory Processing Problems Play

The occupation of play during one’s childhood years serves as a foundation for the development of future occupations in an individual’s life. By understanding a child’s extant play skills and deficits, one may then provide the necessary interventions needed to promote development and successful growth into new occupations. The purpose of this paper was to understand how a child with sensory processing deficits plays in a naturalistic environment. The findings revealed an interplay between the child’s underlying sensory processing deficits and his play skills and behaviors. Increased understanding of how a child with sensory processing deficits plays will provide information for other occupational therapists and help in the treatment of children with similar deficits.
Ontogenetic niche shifts in dinosaurs influenced size, diversity and extinction in terrestrial vertebrates

Given the physiological limits to egg size, large-bodied non-avian dinosaurs experienced some of the most extreme shifts in size during postnatal ontogeny found in terrestrial vertebrate systems. In contrast, mammals—the other dominant vertebrate group since the Mesozoic—have less complex ontogenies. Here, we develop a model that quantifies the impact of size-specific interspecies competition on abundances of differently sized dinosaurs and mammals, taking into account the extended niche breadth realized during ontogeny among large oviparous species. Our model predicts low diversity at intermediate size classes (between approx. 1 and 1000 kg), consistent with observed diversity distributions of dinosaurs, and of Mesozoic land vertebrates in general. It also provides a mechanism—based on an understanding of different ecological and evolutionary constraints across vertebrate groups—that explains how mammals and birds, but not dinosaurs, were able to persist beyond the Cretaceous–Tertiary (K–T) boundary, and how post-K–T mammals were able to diversify into larger size categories.
Copy Move Forgery Detection on Digital Images

scenario forging of the Digital images has become a common phenomena. The availability of low cost manipulation software also boost to this practice. The foremost practice of manipulating the digital images employed by the most forgerer is the copy move forgery. Copy move forgery is basically concerned with concealing or duplicating one region in an image by pasting certain portions of the same image on it. Numerous Algorithms are proposed to detect copy move forgery in digital images. In this paper an enhanced way to detect copy move forgery is proposed. It is analyzed that block based methods are secured against noise and JPEG compression where as feature based methods are robust to the rotation and scaling operations . The proposed approach use both block based method and feature based method to increase the accuracy rate of forgery detection. The Proposed method employed DCT and SIFT to extract features from image and matching those collected features to detect forgery on image and also perform the localization of the Forged Regions in the Digital Image.
Cardiovascular responses and endurance during isometric exercise in patients with Type 2 diabetes compared to control subjects.

BACKGROUND While it is well documented that diabetes impairs the microcirculation, its effect on isometric exercise has not been determined. MATERIAL/METHODS Isometric strength and endurance of the handgrip muscles for a series of 2 fatiguing isometric contractions at a tension of 40% of the maximum strength were assessed in 10 subjects with Type 2 diabetes compared to 10 control subjects; 5 minutes were allowed between the contractions. Blood pressure (BP), heart rate (HR), blood flow (BF) of the whole arm and of the skin on the chest and foot were measured. RESULTS Strength and endurance for the first contraction was the same in control subjects compared to subjects with Type 2 diabetes (p>0.05), but endurance of the second contraction was significantly less in subjects with diabetes (p<0.01). HR increased significantly (p<0.01) by over three fold during exercise in control subjects compared to subjects with diabetes. Resting and peak blood pressures were greater in subjects with type 2 diabetes compared to control subjects (p<0.01). Forearm blood flow was significantly lower at rest, during exercise and post exercise in subjects with diabetes compared to control subjects (p<0.01). CONCLUSIONS The results are probably explained by the damage to the microcirculation seen in subjects with diabetes.
An efficient algorithm for minimizing time granularity periodical representations

This paper addresses the technical problem of efficiently reducing the periodic representation of a time granularity to its minimal form. The minimization algorithm presented in the paper has an immediate practical application: it allows users to intuitively define granularities (and more generally, recurring events) with algebraic expressions that are then internally translated to mathematical characterizations in terms of minimal periodic sets. Minimality plays a crucial role, since the value of the recurring period has been shown to dominate the complexity when processing periodic sets.
Stress placement and word segmentation by Spanish speakers

Several studies have shown that the stress pattern of one’s native language is applied to new linguistic stimuli. Regarding the segmentation of artificial synthesized speech, this idea has been supported by experiments with languages where the stress pattern coincides with word boundaries (i.e. English, Finnish and Dutch). In this study, we present data on speech segmentation with native Spanish speakers whose stress pattern would mark the penultimate syllable of words. Results show that to stress the middle syllable of trisyllabic words in an artificial speech stream does not facilitate segmentation as would be predicted. Possible explanations of these results are explored as related to the interaction of statistical and stress cues in speech segmentation.
Powerpoint and Pedagogy: Maintaining Student Interest in University Lectures

This author discusses the relationship between the use of presentation software and the maintenance of student interest in university lectures. The evidence of surveyed university students suggests that PowerPoint, used as a presentation tool in university lectures, is pedagogically effective only while it provides variety and stimulates interest in the learning environment. That stimulation can be increased if Power Point is used to bridge the direct and constructivist teaching models.
Evaluating Environmental Education Programs Using Case Studies

Abstract Education programs must be evaluated in order to assess their worth and monitor performance. Few environmental education programs have been evaluated, for several reasons including lack of a suitable evaluation method. Evaluation of the Master of Environmental Science program at Monash University (Australia) provided the opportunity to assess the case-study method of evaluation. The design of the evaluation is discussed, and use of multiple sources of data and an innovative style are highlighted.
Exploring the Impact of Study Abroad on Students’ Intercultural Communication Skills: Adaptability and Sensitivity

This study answers a need for outcome assessment in study abroad by exploring the intercultural communication skills of study abroad and on campus students. Through a pretest and posttest of two specific skills, intercultural adaptability and intercultural sensitivity, study abroad students were compared to students who stay on campus to measure their change (if any) during the course of the semester. Using the Cross-Cultural Adaptability Inventory and the Intercultural Sensitivity Index, the two student groups individually assessed their strengths and weaknesses through a self-reported inventory at the beginning and end of the fall 2002 academic semester. Results confirmed the hypothesis that students who study abroad exhibit a greater change in intercultural communication skills after their semester abroad than students who stay on campus. Results also indicated that exposure to various cultures was the greatest predictor of intercultural communication skills.
Limitation of combination therapy of interferon and ribavirin for older patients with chronic hepatitis C

In contrast to the United States, Japanese patients with chronic hepatitis C currently treated with interferon are generally 10 to 15 years older. Older patients, however, tend to experience more frequent adverse events. This study was conducted to clarify the effect of patient age on the efficacy and safety of combination therapy. We consecutively enrolled 208 patients with naïve chronic hepatitis C. Patients were classified into three groups according to age: younger than 50 years of age (n = 52); 50 to 59 years old (n = 83); and 60 years of age or older (n = 73). Interferon alpha‐2b therapy was administered daily for 2 weeks, followed by 3 times per week for 22 weeks, while ribavirin was administered daily. Of the 208 study patients, discontinuation of therapy or dose reduction was required in 116 (56%) and was more frequent in older patient groups: 38%, 48%, and 77% for the <50, 50–59, and ≥60‐year‐old patient groups, respectively (P < .001). Multivariate analysis showed patient age to be independently associated with adherence to therapy. A sustained virological response was achieved in 77 (37%) patients, with genotype, viral load, and adherence to therapy associated with this achievement. A tendency toward a lower sustained virological response rate was seen in the older patients. In conclusion, patient age is an important factor contributing to the safety of combination therapy. Thus, treatment schedule should be modified, or other therapeutic modalities should be considered for older patients with chronic hepatitis C. (HEPATOLOGY 2006;43:54–63.)
Sexual Harassment and Masculinity

That women tend to see harassment where men see harmless fun or normal gendered interaction is one of the more robust findings in sexual harassment research. Using in-depth interviews with employed men and women, this article argues that these differences may be partially explained by the performative requirements of masculinity. The ambiguous practice of “girl watching” is centered, and the production of its meaning analyzed. The data suggest that men's refusal to see their behavior as harassing may be partially explained through the objectification and attenuated empathy that the production of masculine identities may require. Thus, some forms of harassment and their interpretations may more accurately be seen as acts of ignoring than states of ignorance (of the effects of the behavior or the law). Implications for anti-sexual harassment policies and training are explored.
Intestinal uptake of macromolecules. III. Studies on the mechanism by which immunization interferes with antigen uptake.

The mechanism(s) whereby immunization interferes with the intestinal absorption of macromolecules has been examined. After repeated intraperitoneal injection of protein antigens emulsified in incomplete Freund's adjuvant into rats, everted gut sacs from these animals and controls were exposed to radiolabeled antigen in vitro. There was a significant decrease in absorption of antigen by gut sacs from immunized rats as compared to control rats. On further analysis, it was found that, in contrast to controls, gut sacs from immunized rats showed an increased initial adsorption of labeled antigen. Furthermore, gut sacs from immunized rats showed enhanced breakdown of labeled antigen on prolonged incubation. Following incubation, gut sacs were rinsed and the amount of radioactivity eluted was determined. More radioactivity was present in the first rinse fluid of gut sacs from immunized rats than in rinse fluid from controls. On density gradient ultracentrifugation of the former fluids, radioactivity was localized in the middle or bottom of the gradient, whereas radioactivity in the latter fluids was located at the top of the gradient. The rapidly sedimenting labeled antigen was co-precipitated in the reaction of rabbit anti-rat IgG1 and IgG1 protein, suggesting the presence of antigen-IgG1 antibody complexes in the rinse fluid. These findings suggest that in vitro, antigen becomes rapidly associated with antibodies present on the surface of the gut. Formation of antigen-antibody complexes seems to prevent binding of antigen to and subsquent pinocytosis by the intestinal epithelial cells. Antigen-antibody complexes retained in the muous coat of the gut may be degraded by local proteases. The findings in this study suggest an additional role for antibodies present on mucosal surfaces, i.e., protection against absorption of ingested proteins which have escaped normal digestion in the intestinal lumen.
supersedes epigenetics in colon cancer phenotype

A CpG island DNA methylator phenotype has been postulated to explain silencing of the hMLH1 DNA mismatch repair gene in cancer of the microsatellite mutator phenotype. To evaluate this model, we analyzed methylation in CpG islands from six mutator and suppressor genes, and thirty random genomic sites, in a panel of colorectal cancers. Tumor-specific somatic hypermethylation was a widespread age-dependent process that followed a normal Gaussian distribution. Because there was no discontinuity in methylation rate, our results challenge the methylator phenotype hypothesis and its hypothetical pathological underlying defect. We also show that the mutator phenotype dominates over the gradual accumulation of DNA hypermethylation in determining the genotypic features that govern the phenotypic peculiarities of colon cancer of the mutator pathway.