Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analyzing Variability in Pain Management Using Electronic Health Record Data

Variability in pain management processes may affect outcomes. Researchers collected pain management documentation from electronic health record systems of 3 hospitals and constructed process and outcome variables. Simple linear regressions revealed that relationships exist between increased pain variability and less frequent assessment and more frequent intervention, identifying targeted areas for improvement. Researchers demonstrated the use of the electronic record output for improvement purposes.
Chandra and HST Confirmation of the Luminous and Variable X-ray Source IC 10 X-1 as a Possible Wolf-Rayet, Black-Hole Binary

We present a Chandra and HST study of IC 10 X-1, the most luminous X-ray binary in the closest starburst galaxy to the Milky Way. Our new hard X-ray observation of X-1 confirms that it has an average 0.5-10 keV luminosity of 1.5e38 erg/s, is strongly variable (a factor of ~2 in>3 ks), and is spatially coincident (within 0.'23 +/-0.'30) with the Wolf-Rayet (WR) star [MAC92] 17A in IC 10. The spectrum of X-1 is best fit by a power law with photon index of ~1.8 and a thermal plasma with kT~1.5 keV, although systematic residuals hint at further complexity. Taken together, these facts suggest that X-1 may be a black hole belonging to the rare class of WR binaries; it is comparable in many ways to Cyg X-3. The Chandra observation also finds evidence for extended X-ray emission co-spatial with the large non-thermal radio superbubble surrounding X-1.
On Backoff Timer Scheduling for Smart-DCF and Performance Evaluation

In this work, we present a generic backoff-timer scheduling algorithm for the Smart-DCF scheme. In Smart-DCF, the master station schedules the backoff timer value for each client station, and the backoff timer information is sent to the client station via an acknowledgment frame. The proposed backoff-timer scheduling mechanism enables the Smart-DCF access point to provide differentiated services to different classes of wireless stations or traffic. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheduling algorithm is effective. The results also show that the Smart-DCF scheme noticeably outperforms the existing DCF scheme. In addition, the throughput performance of Smart-DCF starts to reach the saturated level when each data burst is longer than 5 frames.
Transform based face recognition with partial and full feature vector using DCT and Walsh transform

This paper presents, efficient transform based face recognition technique which considers full and partial feature vector of an image. 2D-DCT and Walsh transform is applied on the resized image of size 128x128, to obtain its feature vector. Partial feature vector is obtained by selecting 75% rows and columns of feature vector, 50% rows and columns of feature vector and so on. The smallest size of partial feature vector is selected as 4x4. Proposed technique is tested on two different databases. Georgia Tech Face Database contains JPEG color images and Indian Face Database contains Bitmap color images of varying size. Recognition rate is calculated for varying size of selected feature vector using DCT and Walsh transform and compared. Also computational complexity in terms of number of CPU units is compared in both the cases: with full feature vector and with partial feature vector. Results show that, Walsh transform gives better recognition rate than DCT and number of CPU units required using 2D- Walsh transform is almost 9 times less than that of required by using 2D-DCT. This is because the multiplications required in Walsh transform are zero.
An emerging eco-habitus: The reconfiguration of high cultural capital practices among ethical consumers

Bourdieu’s concept of habitus describes a set of tastes and dispositions operating according to a class homology – for example, a working-class preference for utility, or a bourgeois orientation toward luxury. In the United States, Holt found that high cultural capital consumers were characterized by their cosmopolitanism, idealism, connoisseurship, and affinity for the exotic and authentic. In this article, we use Holt’s analysis as a comparative case, finding an altered high cultural capital habitus incorporating environmental awareness and sustainability principles, in a configuration that has been called ethical or “conscious consumption. ” Using both quantitative survey data of self-described conscious consumers as well as four qualitative case studies, we argue that ethical consumers are overwhelmingly high cultural capital consumers, and that high cultural capital consumption strategies have shifted since Holt’s study in the mid-1990s. We show that on a number of dimensions – cosmopolitanism, idealism, and relation to manual labor – a new high cultural capital consumer repertoire privileges the local, material, and manual, while maintaining a strategy of distinction. While the critical literature on conscious consumers has suggested that such practices reflect neo-liberal tendencies that individualize environmental responsibility, our findings suggest that such practices are hardly individual. Rather, they are collective strategies of consumption – what we have termed an emerging high cultural capital “eco-habitus. ”
Donating to disaster victims: Responses to natural and humanly caused events

The effect of the cause of a disaster, i.e. whether it was perceived to be caused by human or natural factors, on willingness to donate money to disaster victims was examined. In Study 1 (N=76), the cause of a fictitious disaster was experimentally varied. In Study 2 (N=219), participants were asked about their views regarding donations to two real-life disasters, one of which was perceived to be naturally caused while the other one was perceived to be caused by humans. In Study 3 (N=115), the cause of a fictitious disaster was experimentally varied, but this time measures of the proposed psychological mediators of the effect on donations were included, namely perceived victim blame and the extent to which victims were thought to make an effort to help themselves. A measure of real donation behaviour was also added. In Study 4 (N=196), the proposed psychological mediators were manipulated directly, and the effect of this on donations was monitored. Across all studies, more donations were elicited by naturally caused rather than humanly caused disasters. This difference was driven by a perception that the victims of natural disasters are to be blamed less for their plight, and that they make more of an effort to help themselves. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.
Predisposition to Vasovagal Syncope in Subjects With Blood/Injury Phobia

Background—Most subjects with blood/injury phobia experience syncope or presyncope as part of the phobic response. We tested the hypothesis that these subjects have a constitutional autonomic dysregulation that predisposes them to vasovagal syncope during head-up tilt. Methods and Results—We studied 11 subjects (9 females, 2 males) who had a history of syncope or presyncope only in response to a blood or injury stimulus and 11 healthy matched controls (10 females, 1 male) without a history of syncope. Blood pressure (BP) and heart rate (HR) were measured during a 15-minute baseline period with subjects in the supine position and then during 45 minutes of head-up tilt to 70°. Measurements at rest did not differ between the blood phobic and control subjects. During tilt, 9 (82%) of the 11 blood phobic subjects experienced presyncope or syncope, leading to termination of the study after 22±17 minutes of tilt. Only 1 (9%) of the 11 control subjects experienced presyncope (&khgr;2=11.7, P =0.001). Hemodynamic responses to tilt were consistent with a vasovagal mechanism in the blood phobic subjects, with simultaneous decreases in BP and HR during tilt. During tilt, systolic BP fell by 21±15 mm Hg (P =0.001), and HR fell by 22±25 bpm (P =0.01). By contrast, BP and HR were very stable in the control group. Conclusions—Subjects with syncope related to blood/injury phobia have an underlying autonomic dysregulation predisposing them to neurally mediated syncope, even in the absence of any blood or injury stimulus. Fainting related to these stimuli may in large part be due to dysfunction in neural circulatory control, which may secondarily lead to the phobia because of repeated syncopal events.
Epithelial expression of keratinocytes growth factor in oral precancer lesions

Background: Keratinocyte growth factor (KGF) is a potent epithelial mitogen that acts by binding the KGF receptors (KGFRs) expressed on epithelial cells and regulates proliferation and differentiation. The objective of this study was to investigate the expression of KGF in the epithelium in oral precancer. Materials and Methods: Archival tissues of oral submucous fibrosis (SMF) and leukoplakia were assessed for epithelial KGF expression by immunohistochemistry and real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction. Results: KGF was predominantly expressed in the basal and parabasal cells in the epithelium of SMF tissues. KGF transcript in the epithelial cells increased with increasing severity of epithelial dysplasia in oral leukoplakia. Conclusion: Although widely reported as a product secreted by the mesenchymal cells, our data suggest that the KGF is also expressed in oral epithelial cells much like the expression in ovarian epithelial cells. Based on the localization of KGF in cells at the epithelial mesenchymal junction and that of the reported presence of KGFR in oral keratinocytes, a potential mechanism involving paracrine and autocrine interactions of KGF and KGFR in early stages of oral precancer is postulated.
Sunyaev-Zeldovich decrements with no clusters

In this paper, we propose an alternative physical process which can produce detectable Sunyaev--Zeldovich decrements around quasars or quasar pairs in regions where no assembled, virialized clusters are detected in either the optical or X-ray waveband. Invoking quasar outflows, we argue that both thermal and kinematic decrements can be produced by the baryons swept up by the mechanical luminosity of quasars. In contrast to the case of decrements produced by the hot electrons confined within the cluster potential, the magnitude of these quasar outflow induced effects depends primarily on the luminosity of the QSO, and the physical scale of the outflow -- which in turn depends on both the mean local density and the density gradient in the vicinity of the quasar. Quasar outflows produce: (i) a frequency-independent kinematic decrement ΔT T ∼ 10-4; (ii) a frequency-dependent fluctuation in the intensity, Δ Jν Jν∼ a 20 per cent variation relative to Δ T T, say, at 15 and 30 GHz; (iii) depending on the presence of any other local density inhomogeneities, potentially a temperature increment Δ T T ∼ 10-4 on the opposite side of the QSO; (iv) a linear polarization signal over 20 arcsec at the ∼ 10-7 level; and therefore (v) patches of signal with Δ T T ∼ 10-4 on degree scales. In principle, the effect ought to be observable for QSOs in cases with the appropriate opening angle and alignment of outflow to the line of sight, and preferentially for high mechanical luminosity, high-redshift, radio-quiet QSOs. These effects are of interest since they are potentially observable in the context of the next generation of cosmic microwave background experiments: MAP and Planck.
Social Networks that Matter: Exploring the Role of Political Discussion for Online Political Participation

We examine the relationship between citizen-to-citizen discussions and online political participation considering various attributes of individuals’ social networks: Modality, discussants’ ties, diversity of opinions, and quality of argumentation. Using a national survey of U.S. residents we find that communication within networks is a significant predictor of web-based forms of political engagement, after controlling for offline participation, political orientations, news use, and socio-demographics. Consistent with the ‘‘strength of weak ties’’ argument, larger online networks and weak-tie discussion frequency are associated with online participation. While like-minded discussions are positively related to online participation, discussions with people who are not of like mind correlate negatively with it. Online network size and reasoning discussions were positively related to online participation, although these associations were rather weak compared to the role of other network characteristics.
Fast radiometric compensation accomplished by eliminating color mixing between projector and camera

The quality of the projector output image is influenced by the surrounding conditions such as the projector's nonlinear response, the shape and color of the screen, and environmental light. Therefore, techniques that ensure desirable image quality, regardless of such surrounding conditions, have been in demand and are being steadily developed. Among these techniques, radiometric compensation is a representative one. In general, radiometric compensation is achieved by measuring the color of the screen and environmental light based on an analysis of a camera image of a projector output image and then adjusting the color of the projector input image in a pixel-wise manner. In this paper, we propose a fast radiometric compensation method. The method uses color filters to eliminate color mixing between the projector and camera, as the speed of radiometric compensation depends mainly on measuring color mixing between the projector and the camera. Using color filters, there is no need to measure the color mixing. Experiments showed that the proposed method improved the compensation speed by 44 percent while maintaining the projector output image quality. This method is expected to be a key technique for the widespread use of projectors for large-scale and high-quality display.
Role of microRNAs in obesity and the metabolic syndrome

Obesity and the metabolic syndrome are major public health concerns, and present a formidable therapeutic challenge. Many patients remain recalcitrant to conventional lifestyle changes and medical therapies. Bariatric surgery has made laudable progress in the treatment of obesity and its related metabolic disorders, yet carries inherent risks. Unravelling the molecular mechanisms of metabolic disorders is essential in order to develop novel, valid therapeutic strategies. Mi(cro)RNAs play important regulatory roles in a variety of biological processes including adipocyte differentiation, metabolic integration, insulin resistance and appetite regulation. Investigation of these molecules and their genetic targets may potentially identify new pathways involved in complex metabolic disease processes, improving our understanding of metabolic disorders and influence future approaches to the treatment of obesity. This review discusses the role of miRNAs in obesity and related components of the metabolic syndrome, and highlights the potential of using miRNAs as novel biomarkers and therapeutic targets for these diseases.
The exposome: from concept to utility.

the broad sense of ‘non-genetic’. The exposome, therefore, complements the genome by providing a comprehensive description of lifelong exposure history. Remaining focused on the element of application (to epidemiology) is a key to ensuring that the exposome is translated from concept to utility for better delineating the causes and prevention of human disease. At the time of the original proposal, it was recognized that whereas exquisite tools had been developed to sequence the human genome and to interrogate individual susceptibility through genome-wide association studies (GWAS), there was a relative paucity of comparable tools, or indeed investment, in relation to exposure assessment. Given that cancer and other chronic diseases develop predominantly from a combination of environmental exposures played out on a particular genetic background, the inability to measure one part of the gene:environment combination with anything approaching the precision of the other will stymie progress. This becomes particularly acute as epidemiology aims to tease out relatively modest effect sizes associated with specific environmental exposures. This commentary seeks to further define the exposome and to describe how its realisation may be achieved in epidemiological studies. The commentary focuses on cancer but many of the concepts are applicable to other chronic diseases.
Measuring Language Attitudes: The Speech Evaluation Instrument

This paper describes investigations in the measurement of listeners' evaluations of spoken language. Lack of integration in research in this area has been due in part to the numerous measurement instruments used to assess such evaluative reactions. The paper reviews the development of past instruments, describes the design, analysis, and implementation of an omnibus measure, the Speech Evaluation Instrument (SEI), and interprets these findings in light of past research. The use of the SEI is recommended to researchers as a way to make findings of various studies more comparable. Although the development of the SEI was based on evaluation of linguistic diversity, its applicability to a wider range of speech phenomena is suggested.
Truthful Virtual Machine Allocation in Clouds Based on LP-relaxation

An auction mechanism is said to be truthful if every bidder can maximize her profit by declaring the true valuation of requested items. In this paper, we propose a truthful auction-based scheme to allocate virtual machine (VM) instances of various types to the users in clouds so that the total amount of valuations attained by the allocation is maximized. The proposed scheme is an extension of the greedy allocation scheme proposed by Lehmann et al. so that it solves the corresponding winner determination problem by using LP (linear programming) relaxation. The performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated by simulation. The simulation results indicate that it outperforms conventional schemes including fixed-price scheme with respect to the resource utilization, revenue generation, and the allocation efficiency.
Elm : Concurrent FRP for Functional GUIs

Graphical user interfaces (GUIs) mediate almost all of our interactions with computers, whether it is through web pages, phone apps, or desktop applications. Functional Reactive Programming (FRP) is a promising approach to GUI design. This thesis presents Elm, a concurrent FRP language focused on easily creating responsive GUIs. Elm has two major features: (1) purely functional graphical layout and (2) support for Concurrent FRP. Purely functional graphical layout is a high level framework for working with complex visual components. It makes it quick and easy to create and combine text, images, and video into rich multimedia displays. Concurrent FRP solves some of FRP’s long-standing efficiency problems: global delays and needless recomputation. Together, Elm’s two major features simplify the complicated task of creating responsive and usable graphical user interfaces. This thesis also includes a fully functional compiler for Elm, available at elm-lang.org. This site includes an interactive code editor that allows you to write and compile Elm programs online with no download or install.
Race and Class Differences in Print Media Portrayals of Crack Cocaine and Methamphetamine

Despite a growing body of research on moral panic theory, this framework has been largely inattentive to the role of race and class in the creation of moral panics over drug abuse. Using a content analysis of 124 newspaper articles, this study extends moral panic theory by examining whether the race and class of crack cocaine and methamphetamine users and traffickers shaped the print media’s depiction of these drugs; and whether such depictions affected the official response. Findings reveal that media reports on crack cocaine frequently referenced African Americans and depicted the drug in conjunction with violent crime. However, articles on methamphetamine were more likely to reference poor Whites and associate this drug as a public health problem.
A fast scheme for arbitrarily resizing of digital image in the compressed domain

Arbitrarily resizing of digital images is needed in many applications, such as transmission of images over communication channels whose bandwidth is varying widely, or display of the pre-encoding program on devices with different resolution. This paper presents a new algorithm, which possesses the capability of arbitrarily image resizing in compressed domain. Experimental results confirm that this scheme can achieve significant computation cost reduction while maintaining better quality. Hence, it can be efficiently used in standalone image resizing and in transcoding applications which require real-time processing.
EPIDEMIOLOGY, CLINICAL MANIFESTATIONS, AND DIAGNOSIS OF CHIKUNGUNYA FEVER: LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE RE-EMERGING EPIDEMIC

Chikungunya fever, caused by “Chikungunya virus,” is an arbovirus disease transmitted by the bite of infected mosquitoes belonging to the genus Aedes. Chikungunya fever epidemics have been reported from several countries around the world. The disease that was silent for nearly 32 years re-emerged in the October 2005 outbreak in India that is still ongoing. The incubation period ranges from 3 to 12 days. The onset is usually abrupt and the acute stage is characterized by sudden onset with high-grade fever, severe arthralgias, myalgias, and skin rash. Swollen tender joints and crippling arthritis are usually evident. In the chronic stage, relapses that include sensation of fever, asthenia, exacerbation of arthralgias, inflammatory polyarthritis, and stiffness may be evident. Neurological, ocular, and mucocutaneous manifestations have also been described. Chronic arthritis may develop in about 15% of the patients. Viral culture is the gold standard for the diagnosis of Chikungunya fever. Reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction and real-time loop-mediated isothermal amplification have also been found to be useful. Serodiagnostic methods for the detection of immunoglobulin M and immunoglobulin G antibodies against Chikungunya virus are more frequently used. Chikungunya is a self-limiting disease; however, severe manifestations such as meningoencephalitis, fulminant hepatitis, and bleeding manifestations may sometimes be life-threatening. Treatment is symptomatic and supportive. Prevention by educating the community and public health officials, vector control measures appear to be the best approach at controlling Chikungunya fever as no commercially available vaccine is available for public use in India for this condition presently.
Human-Centered Development of an AR Handheld Display

In this paper we present the process of designing and developing a fully functional and interactive AR handheld device. Based on a human-centered approach we describe the results of our exploration; from the contextual usage to the different rapid prototyped models and the evaluation activities. We also discuss some recommendations for how to use similar methods for developing future new AR physical interfaces.