Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ORGANISATIONAL MATTERS: NATIONAL INITIATIVES Lessons from the Australian Patient Safety Foundation: setting up a national patient safety surveillance system—is this the right model?

The evolution of the concepts and processes underpinning the Australian Patient Safety Foundation’s systems over the last 15 years are traced. An ideal system should have the following attributes: an independent organisation to coordinate patient safety surveillance; agreed frameworks for patient safety and surveillance systems; common, agreed standards and terminology; a single, clinically useful classification for things that go wrong in health care; a national repository for information covering all of health care from all available sources; mechanisms for setting priorities at local, national and international levels; a just system which caters for the rights of patients, society, and healthcare practitioners and facilities; separate processes for accountability and “systems learnings”; the right to anonymity and legal privilege for reporters; systems for rapid feedback and evidence of action; mechanisms for involving and informing all stakeholders. There are powerful reasons for establishing national systems, for aligning terminology, tools and classification systems internationally, and for rapid dissemination of successful strategies.
Effects of Dietary Fiber and Its Components on Metabolic Health

Dietary fiber and whole grains contain a unique blend of bioactive components including resistant starches, vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals and antioxidants. As a result, research regarding their potential health benefits has received considerable attention in the last several decades. Epidemiological and clinical studies demonstrate that intake of dietary fiber and whole grain is inversely related to obesity, type two diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular disease (CVD). Defining dietary fiber is a divergent process and is dependent on both nutrition and analytical concepts. The most common and accepted definition is based on nutritional physiology. Generally speaking, dietary fiber is the edible parts of plants, or similar carbohydrates, that are resistant to digestion and absorption in the small intestine. Dietary fiber can be separated into many different fractions. Recent research has begun to isolate these components and determine if increasing their levels in a diet is beneficial to human health. These fractions include arabinoxylan, inulin, pectin, bran, cellulose, β-glucan and resistant starch. The study of these components may give us a better understanding of how and why dietary fiber may decrease the risk for certain diseases. The mechanisms behind the reported effects of dietary fiber on metabolic health are not well established. It is speculated to be a result of changes in intestinal viscosity, nutrient absorption, rate of passage, production of short chain fatty acids and production of gut hormones. Given the inconsistencies reported between studies this review will examine the most up to date data concerning dietary fiber and its effects on metabolic health.
Excitatory action of sympathomimetic amines on 5‐hydroxytryptamine receptors of gut

1 Twenty‐two sympathomimetic amines were tested for excitatory activity on isolated guinea‐pig ileum, rabbit jejunum, and rat stomach. 2 Eight amines contracted all or almost all guinea‐pig ileum preparations; five amines contracted half the preparations and relaxed the others. Nine amines were consistently relaxant. Structural requirements for excitatory activity were not clear. 3 Six amines contracted rat stomach and only four contracted rabbit jejunum. Only β‐phenylethylamine and (—)‐amphetamine contracted all three preparations. 4 The excitatory effects of the sympathomimetic amines on guinea‐pig ileum seem to be due to an action on 5‐hydroxytryptamine receptors. This conclusion is based on evidence that their excitatory action is antagonized by 2‐bromo‐Iysergic acid diethylamide, by morphine and by desensitization with 5‐hydroxytryptamine, and that there is cross‐protection between 5‐hydroxytryptamine and the excitatory sympathomimetic amines against block by phenoxybenzamine.
Molecular characterization of an enterobacterial metallo beta-lactamase found in a clinical isolate of Serratia marcescens that shows imipenem resistance

A clinical isolate of Serratia marcescens (TN9106) produced a metallo beta-lactamase (IMP-1) which conferred resistance to imipenem and broad-spectrum beta-lactams. The blaIMP gene providing imipenem resistance was cloned and expressed in Escherichia coli HB101. The IMP-1 was purified from E. coli HB101 that harbors pSMBNU24 carrying blaIMP, and its apparent molecular mass was calculated to be about 30 kDa by sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. Kinetic studies of IMP-1 against various beta-lactams revealed that this enzyme hydrolyzes not only various broad-spectrum beta-lactams but also carbapenems. However, aztreonam was relatively stable against IMP-1. Although clavulanate or cloxacillin failed to inhibit IMP-1, Hg2+, Fe2+, or Cu2+ blocked the enzyme's activity. Moreover, the presence of EDTA in the reaction buffer resulted in a decrease in the enzyme's activity. Carbapenem resistance was not transferred from S. marcescens TN9106 to E. coli CSH2 by conjugation. A hybridization study confirmed that blaIMP was encoded on the chromosome of S. marcescens TN9106. By nucleotide sequencing analysis, blaIMP was found to encode a protein of 246 amino acid residues and was shown to have considerable homology to the metallo beta-lactamase genes of Bacillus cereus, Bacteroides fragilis, and Aeromonas hydrophila. The G+C content of blaIMP was 39.4%. Four consensus amino acid residues, His-95, His-97, Cys-176, and His-215, which form putative zinc ligands, were conserved in the deduced amino acid sequence of IMP-1. By determination of the amino acid sequence at the N terminus of purified mature IMP-1, 18 amino acid residues were found to be processed from the N terminus of the premature enzyme as a signal peptide. These results clearly show that IMP-1 is an enterobacterial metallo beta-lactamase, of which the primary structure has been completely determined, that confers resistance to carbapenems and other broad-spectrum beta-lactams.
Involvement of Estrone-3-Sulfate Transporters in Proliferation of Hormone-Dependent Breast Cancer Cells

Although circulating estrone-3-sulfate is a major precursor of biologically active estrogen, permeation across the plasma membrane is unlikely to occur by diffusion because of the high hydrophilicity of the molecule. The object of this study was to clarify the involvement of specific transporter(s) in the supply of estrone-3-sulfate to human breast cancer-derived T-47D cells, which grow in an estrogen-dependent manner. The proliferation of T-47D cells was increased by the addition of estrone-3-sulfate, or estradiol, to the cultivation medium. The initial uptake rate of estrone-3-sulfate kinetically exhibited a single saturable component, with Km and Vmax values of 7.6 μM and 172 pmol/mg of protein/min, respectively. The replacement of extracellular Na+ with Li+, K+, or N-methylglucamine+ had no effect on the uptake of [3H]estrone-3-sulfate. The uptake was strongly inhibited by sulfate conjugates of steroid hormones, but not by estradiol-17β-glucuronide. Taurocholate and sulfobromophthalein inhibited the uptake, whereas other tested anionic and cationic compounds did not. The expression of organic anion transporting polypeptides, OATP-D and OATP-E, which are candidate transporters of estrone-3-sulfate, was detected by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction analysis, although their actual involvement in the uptake of estrogen remains to be clarified. In conclusion, the uptake of estrone-3-sulfate by T-47D cells was mediated by a carrier-mediated transport mechanism, suggesting that the estrogen precursor is actively imported by estrogen-dependent breast cancer cells.
Seroprevalence of Antibodies against Pkn1, a Novel Potential Immunogen, in Chlamydia trachomatis-Infected Macaca nemestrina and Human Patients

Chlamydia trachomatis (CT) is an important cause of sexually transmitted genital tract infections (STIs) and trachoma. Despite major research into chlamydial pathogenesis and host immune responses, immunoprotection has been hampered by the incomplete understanding of protective immunity in the genital tract. Characterized vaccine candidates have shown variable efficacy ranging from no protection to partial protection in vivo. It is therefore a research priority to identify novel chlamydial antigens that may elicit protective immune responses against CT infection. In the present study we assessed the seroprevalence of antibodies against protein kinase1 (Pkn1), DNA ligaseA (LigA), and major outer membrane protein A (OmpA) following natural CT infection in humans and in experimentally induced CT infection in Macaca nemestrina. Antigenic stretches of Pkn1, LigA, and OmpA were identified using bioinformatic tools. Pkn1, LigA, and OmpA genes were cloned in bacterial expression vector and purified by affinity chromatography. Our results demonstrate significantly high seroprevalence of antibodies against purified Pkn1 and OmpA in sera obtained from the macaque animal model and human patients infected with CT. In contrast no significant seroreactivity was observed for LigA. The seroprevalence of antibodies against Pkn1 suggest that nonsurface chlamydial proteins could also be important for developing vaccines for C. trachomatis.
Trajectory based Recovery of Index Finger Articulated Pose during Palmar Grasp

This paper describes our experimental and analytical study of recovering index finger pose from tip trajectory during palmar grasp. Our study experimentally evaluates a kinematical model that can be used to reduce the number of surface markers in each finger for motion estimation and its segmental kinematics. We captured the trajectory of the index finger tip and joint angles in typical fist closing mode (palmar grasp), based on the concept of planar homology in projective space and then investigated the inverse kinematics solutions for the correlation. Jacobian based Damped Least Square (DLS) with variable damping parameter λ has been implemented. The DLS method, though iterative, shows reasonably fast convergence with in 3-10 iterations in feed forward mode and has better concurrence with the experimental values in recovery of articulated pose. General Terms Robotics, Computer Vision.
Motor neuron disease and dementia reported among 13 members of a single family

ABSTRACT All 49 members of four generations of a family were identified. In the first three generations eight members were afflicted with dementia, whereas in the fourth generation only one was demented but three of four were afflicted with motor neuron disease and they also had slight cognitive deficiencies. The pattern of heredity is compatible with dominant autosomal inheritance. Neuropsychological testing revealed affection mostly of the frontal lobes. A pedigree and six case reports are presented.
Self-assembly of electronically abrupt borophene/organic lateral heterostructures

Integrating borophene with organic molecules results in electronically abrupt self-assembled lateral heterostructures. Two-dimensional boron sheets (that is, borophene) have recently been realized experimentally and found to have promising electronic properties. Because electronic devices and systems require the integration of multiple materials with well-defined interfaces, it is of high interest to identify chemical methods for forming atomically abrupt heterostructures between borophene and electronically distinct materials. Toward this end, we demonstrate the self-assembly of lateral heterostructures between borophene and perylene-3,4,9,10-tetracarboxylic dianhydride (PTCDA). These lateral heterostructures spontaneously form upon deposition of PTCDA onto submonolayer borophene on Ag(111) substrates as a result of the higher adsorption enthalpy of PTCDA on Ag(111) and lateral hydrogen bonding among PTCDA molecules, as demonstrated by molecular dynamics simulations. In situ x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy confirms the weak chemical interaction between borophene and PTCDA, while molecular-resolution ultrahigh-vacuum scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy reveal an electronically abrupt interface at the borophene/PTCDA lateral heterostructure interface. As the first demonstration of a borophene-based heterostructure, this work will inform emerging efforts to integrate borophene into nanoelectronic applications.
The Uses and Misuses of the Gender‐related Development Index and Gender Empowerment Measure: A Review of the Literature

The 1995 Human Development Report introduced two new measures of well‐being: the Gender‐Related Development Index (GDI) and the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM). The two indexes were created with the intention of attracting more attention to gender inequality issues. This paper first of all reviews the attention the indexes received in the publications of the United Nations Development Programme itself, concentrating on their use in national and subnational Human Development Reports. It also reviews how the two indexes were used in academia and the press. The main result of the review is that the GDI in particular seems to be a measure that is not used appropriately. In most cases of misuse, the GDI was wrongly interpreted as a measure of gender inequality. Due to the many misinterpretations, the potential policy impact the GDI and GEM can have seems limited.
Configurable Workflow Models

Workflow modeling languages allow for the specification of executable business processes. They, however, typically do not provide any guidance for the adaptation of workflow models, i.e. they do not offer any methods or tools explaining and highlighting which adaptations of the models are feasible and which are not. Therefore, an approach to identify so-called configurable elements of a workflow modeling language and to add configuration opportunities to workflow models is presented in this paper. Configurable elements are the elements of a workflow model that can be modified such that the behavior represented by the model is restricted. More precisely, a configurable element can be either set to enabled, to blocked, or to hidden. To ensure that such configurations lead only to desirable models, our approach allows for imposing so-called requirements on the model's configuration. They have to be fulfilled by any configuration, and limit therefore the freedom of configuration choices. The identification of configurable elements within the workflow modeling language of YAWL and the derivation of the new "configurable YAWL" language provide a concrete example for a rather generic approach. A transformation of configured models into lawful YAWL models demonstrates its applicability.
Brief announcement: on speculative replication of transactional systems

We define the problem of speculative processing in a replicated transactional system layered on top of an optimistic atomic broadcast service. A realistic model is considered in which transactions' read and write sets are not a priori known and transactions' data access patterns may vary depending on the observed snapshot. We formalize a set of correctness and optimality properties ensuring the minimality and completeness of the set of explored serialization orders within the replicated transactional system.
Feasibility, safety and accuracy of dobutamine/atropine stress echocardiography for the detection of coronary artery disease in renal transplant candidates.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the feasibility, safety and accuracy of dobutamine/atropine stress echocardiography (DASE) for the detection of coronary artery disease (CAD) in renal transplant candidates. METHODS Patients candidates to renal transplant were submitted consecutively to DASE and coronary angiography. The adopted angiographic criteria for CAD were an obstructive lesion of > or = 50% and > or = 70%. RESULTS 148 patients underwent the DASE and the coronary angiography. Mean age was 52 +/- 9 years, 69% of the patients were males; 27% had diabetic nephropathy and 73% had LVH; 63% were asymptomatic; 36% and 22% presented coronary obstructions > or = 50% and 70%, respectively. The DASE performance was 91% and major complication rate was 2.7%. The sensibility, specificity and accuracy for the diagnosis of coronary obstruction > 50% were 53% (CI:45-61), 87% (CI:81-93), and 75% (CI:63-83) respectively. For coronary obstruction > or = 70% these values were, respectively, 71% (CI:64-92), 85% (CI:79-91) and 81% (CI:75-87). The sensibility to detect univessel and multivessel disease was 41% (CI:19-63) and 78% (CI:64-92), respectively. CONCLUSION The DASE was practical and safe; however, it presented a poor result for the detection of CAD regarding obstructions > or = 50%. It can be a useful screening for the detection of CAD in candidates with obstructions > or = 70% and multivessel disease.
Inhaler use in adolescents and adults with self-reported physician-diagnosed asthma, bronchitis, or emphysema in the city of Pelotas, Brazil*

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the characteristics of users of inhalers and the prevalence of inhaler use among adolescents and adults with self-reported physician-diagnosed asthma, bronchitis, or emphysema. METHODS: A population-based study conducted in the city of Pelotas, Brazil, involving 3,670 subjects ≥ 10 years of age, evaluated with a questionnaire. RESULTS: Approximately 10% of the sample reported at least one of the respiratory diseases studied. Among those individuals, 59% reported respiratory symptoms in the last year, and, of those, only half reported using inhalers. The use of inhalers differed significantly by socioeconomic status (39% and 61% for the lowest and the highest, respectively, p = 0.01). The frequency of inhaler use did not differ by gender or age. Among the individuals reporting emphysema and inhaler use, the use of the bronchodilator-corticosteroid combination was more common than was that of a bronchodilator alone. Only among the individuals reporting physician-diagnosed asthma and current symptoms was the proportion of inhaler users higher than 50%. CONCLUSIONS: In our sample, inhalers were underutilized, and the type of medication used by the individuals who reported emphysema does not seem to be in accordance with the consensus recommendations.
Effect of Frequency of Sucrose Exposure on Dental Biofilm Composition and Enamel Demineralization in the Presence of Fluoride

It has been suggested that enamel would resist higher frequencies of sucrose exposure if fluoride from water or dentifrice is being used. However, the effect of increasing frequencies of sugar on dental biofilm composition is not well known. Ten volunteers living in a fluoridated area wore palatal appliances bearing human enamel slabs during 14 days. The slabs were exposed to 20% sucrose solution 0 (control), 2, 4, 6, 8 or 10 times/day and the volunteers used fluoride dentifrice 3 times/day. Enamel demineralization was significantly greater than control for sucrose frequencies higher than 6 times/day. However, biofilm mass, total microbiota, total streptococci, lactobacilli counts and insoluble extracellular polysaccharide concentration increased, while Ca, Pi and F concentration in whole biofilm decreased significantly, with frequencies of sucrose exposure lower than 6 times/day. The findings confirm that fluoride can reduce enamel demineralization if sucrose consumption is not higher than 6 times/day, but changes in the biochemical and microbiological composition of the biofilm are observed with lower frequencies of sucrose use.
A tile-based scalable raster data management system based on HDFS

Hadoop has become a worldwide popular open source platform for large data analysis in commercial application and Hadoop distributed file system (HDFS) is the core part of it. However, HDFS cannot be used directly for managing raster data, for the geographic location information is involved. In this paper, we describe the implementation of a tile-based scalable raster data management system based on HDFS. While reserving the basic architecture of HDFS, we reorganize the data structure in block, add some additional metadata, design an index data structure in block, keep an overlapping region between adjacent blocks, and offer a compression option for users. Besides, we provide functions for reading the raster data from HDFS in tile stream. These optimizations match the feature of raster data to the architecture of HDFS. MapReduce Applications can be built on the raster data management system.
Practical craniofacial surgery simulator based on GPU accelerated lattice shape matching

This paper presents an intuitive and practical craniofacial surgery simulation system, which is suitable for daily clinical practice. The key component of the system is a GPU accelerated lattice shape matching method, to estimate individual patient post‐operative appearance interactively. The lattice model can be set up from individual CT data in an easy and robust way, incorporating CT mapping physical inhomogeneous material as well as orthotropic behavior of soft tissue. Instead of simulating dynamic behavior, an iterative optimization is used for direct computation of soft tissue deformation. In addition, a GPU acceleration framework for the lattice shape matching method is further exploited based on the lattice regularity, thus the simulation operations can be performed at interactive or real time. Finally, a craniofacial surgery simulation system is developed for daily clinical practice, which is capable of simulating a variety of surgeries including osteotomies, bone fragment repositioning, and insertion of implants. The treatment of more than 50 patients was found to provide a good correlation between simulation and post‐operative outcome. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The Role of Online Videos in Undergraduate Casual-Leisure Information Behaviors

This study describes undergraduate casual-leisure information behaviors relevant to online videos. Diaries and in-depth interviews were used to collect data. Twenty-four undergraduates participated in this study (9 men, 15 women; all were aged 18â€“22 years). This study proposes a model of casual-leisure information behaviors and contributes new insights into user experience in casual-leisure settings, such as online video programs, with implications for other information domains.