Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Improving the Medication Reconciliation Discharge Prescription Documentation of Rationale for New or Changed Medications at the Niagara Health System

Transitions from hospital to community care represent a vulnerable point for patient safety and for medication safety in particular. Previous work by Boockvar et al has demonstrated that 20% of patients returning to long-term care facilities from acute care settings experienced adverse drug events related to medication changes at the time of transfer. Performing medication reconciliation—the process of systematically reviewing a patient’s medications with emphasis on documenting new, changed, or discontinued medications—has been shown to reduce the risk of adverse events related to medication discrepancies. Our team is applying a quality improvement (QI) approach to improve the medication reconciliation process at discharge from the Niagara Health System (NHS) for patients returning to long-term care facilities. This project is part of the Interprofessional Education for Quality Improvement Program, a collaboration between McMaster University’s Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine, Brock University’s Health Sciences program, and NHS. Teams built of local health care providers, medical students, and health sciences students receive training in QI principles and apply these principles tackling areas for improvement within the health care system. A literature review identified the transition from hospital to long-term care as an important target for intervention, and through discussions with an interdisciplinary team of professionals working at NHS, we selected the transition of care at discharge as our point of focus. A retrospective chart review was performed to gather baseline data pertaining to the percent completion rate and the quality of the medication reconciliation discharge processes being carried out for patients in this population at the NHS during the period of September to December 2014. Results of this review demonstrated inconsistencies in documentation and communication of rationale for new or changed home medications to long-term care facilities during the discharge transition in 90% of charts reviewed. The results obtained confirm the discharge process at NHS as a valuable target for this QI initiative. In our intervention phase, we redesigned the existing discharge prescription form and added a new column with the heading “Rationale for New or Changed Medications,” where information about medications altered in hospital can be documented clearly by the discharging prescriber. Uptake, usability of the form, as well as the quality of medication reconciliation information documented will be monitored through end user feedback, data collection in the electronic medical record, and retrospective chart reviews. Through these efforts, we aim to achieve a 25% completion rate of this column by April 2016 for NHS inpatients returning to long-term care. The next step of this project is to enhance adherence through evidence-based strategies to engage health care providers’ participation in this important patient safety intervention.
Extraction of temporal motor activity signals from video recordings of neonatal seizures by feature tracking methods based on rigid motion models

This paper presents a new method for tracking features in video. This method estimates the displacement of a feature between two successive frames by minimizing an error function defined in terms of the feature intensities at these frames. Feature tracking relies on a rigid motion model, which allows for translation, rotation and uniform scaling of the feature tracked from one frame to the next. The proposed feature tracking method is used to extract motor activity signals from video recordings of neonatal seizures.
A Novel Finite-Element-Based Algorithm for Fluorescence Molecular Tomography of Heterogeneous Media

The knowledge of optical properties distribution of heterogeneous media has significant impact on the reconstructed fluorescence image quality in fluorescence molecular tomography (FMT). In this study, a novel finite-element-based algorithm for FMT of heterogeneous media is proposed. In the algorithm, optical properties are reconstructed using the conjugate gradient method. A modified method based on reverse differential scheme is deduced for calculating the gradient when the detector points are not restricted on boundary nodes. With the recovered optical properties, linear relationship between known surface measurements of emission light and unknown fluorescence yield is then obtained. FMT reconstruction is implemented by combining algebraic reconstruction technique (ART) and Landweber iteration method. With initial value provided by ART, Landweber iteration method improves the quantification smoothly with small step length between neighboring iterations. The algorithm was evaluated using phantoms of different heterogeneity configurations. Results show that the reconstructed fluorescence yield is insensitive to various degrees of heterogeneity for the proposed algorithm. In contrast, when assuming homogeneous optical properties, it shows that more underestimation of optical properties results in more underestimation of the reconstructed fluorescence yield. Fast computation speed of the proposed algorithm is also demonstrated in this study.
Dynamic Expression Profiles from Static Cytometry Data: Component Fitting and Conversion to Relative, “Same Scale” Values

Background Cytometry of asynchronous proliferating cell populations produces data with an extractable time-based feature embedded in the frequency of clustered, correlated events. Here, we present a specific case of general methodology for calculating dynamic expression profiles of epitopes that oscillate during the cell cycle and conversion of these values to the same scale. Methods Samples of K562 cells from one population were labeled by direct and indirect antibody methods for cyclins A2 and B1 and phospho-S10-histone H3. The same indirect antibody was used for both cyclins. Directly stained samples were counter-stained with 4′6-diamidino-2-phenylindole and indirectly stained samples with propidium to label DNA. The S phase cyclin expressions from indirect assays were used to scale the expression of the cyclins of the multi-variate direct assay. Boolean gating and two dimensional, sequential regions set on bivariate displays of the directly conjugated sample data were used to untangle and isolate unique, unambiguous expression values of the cyclins along the four-dimensional data path through the cell cycle. The median values of cyclins A2 and B1 from each region were correlated with the frequency of events within each region. Results The sequential runs of data were plotted as continuous multi-line linear equations of the form y = [(yi+1−yi)/(xi+1−xi)]x + yi−[(yi+1−yi)/(xi+1−xi)]xi (line between points (xi,yi) and (xi+1, yi+1)) to capture the dynamic expression profile of the two cyclins. Conclusions This specific approach demonstrates the general methodology and provides a rule set from which the cell cycle expression of any other epitopes could be measured and calculated. These expression profiles are the “state variable” outputs, useful for calibrating mathematical cell cycle models.
Quantifying the “Slosh Stomach”: A Novel Tool for Assessment of Exercise-Associated Gastroparesis Symptoms in Endurance Athletes

Introduction. We describe a novel scale and its field use for evaluation of exercise-associated gastroparesis in the endurance athlete. Methods. A scale was created based on gastroparesis tools previously described in the medical literature. Surveys of the tool were administered to runners participating in a 210 km multiday foot race in Sri Lanka. Results. Use of this novel scale was demonstrated to be useful in assessing gastroparesis severity scores of athletes and how these symptoms affected their race performance. Of the 27 race participants who completed the survey, 27 felt that the tool adequately captured their symptoms. Conclusions. This novel survey tool was able to assess the presence and severity of exercise-associated gastroparesis symptoms in endurance racers in a remote location. This tool may be helpful with further research of the identification and management of gastroparesis and other gastrointestinal upset in the endurance race environment.
The Death of Unemployment and the Birth of Job-Seeking in Welfare Policy: Governing a Liminal Experience

The category of ‘unemployment’ is gradually being replaced with ‘job-seeking’, in contemporary welfare policy – driven by ‘liberal’ or neo-liberal politics. Here we attempt to go beyond the ‘deprivation theory’ of unemployment, emphasising how the experience of ‘unemployment’ or ‘jobseeking’ is shaping the way it is governed – drawing on the Foucault inspired governmentality approach. Firstly, we examine the apparatus of supervision, interventions and sanctions introduced in Ireland under Pathways to Work. Secondly, we analyse a set of interviews with job seekers in 2014, specifically focusing on interactions with the social welfare office, internships, sanctions and job-seeking activities. Building on these empirical investigations we suggest that unemployment/job-seeking can be understood as an artificially produced liminality, characterised by uncertainty, self-questioning, tedious time to be filled and frantic seeking to escape to a job, and, in many cases, repeated failure.
Living together in multi-ethnic cities: People of migrant background, their interethnic friendships and the neighbourhood

This paper explores the extent to which people of different origins, natives and migrants, come together in everyday life in Europe. Instead of looking at overall ‘perceptions’ and ‘stances’, which are context-dependent and mediated through political-ideological currents and discourses as well as broader patterns of prejudice, we focus on sustained close contacts that suggest meaningful and organic relationships. Since it is most often people of migrant background who are blamed for leading ‘parallel lives’ and ‘not integrating’, we chose to focus on them and their interethnic friendships. Moreover, we seek to understand the relevance and role of the neighbourhood context in the development of those relationships. Despite the expressive fears in public discourses about the supposed negative impact of the presence of immigrants and ethnic minorities on social cohesion, our findings indicate that close interethnic relationships are not uncommon in diverse European cities. They further highlight that the neighbourhood context plays an important role in the first years of migrants’ settlement. Relationships in the neighbourhood develop in less formal social settings and are also less demanding in terms of host-country cultural skills on the part of the migrants, thus giving the opportunity to newcomers to develop close interethnic relationships with natives. Finally, the analysis supports the positive role of diversity at the neighbourhood level in the development of interethnic friendships and stresses the importance of the neighbourhood’s socio-spatial characteristics and its location in the wider urban net.
A COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND LENSING MASS MAP AND ITS CORRELATION WITH THE COSMIC INFRARED BACKGROUND

We use a temperature map of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) obtained using the South Pole Telescope at 150 GHz to construct a map of the gravitational convergence to z ∼ 1100, revealing the fluctuations in the projected mass density. This map shows individual features that are significant at the ∼4σ level, providing the first image of CMB lensing convergence. We cross-correlate this map with Herschel/SPIRE maps covering 90 deg2 at wavelengths of 500, 350, and 250 μm. We show that these submillimeter (submm) wavelength maps are strongly correlated with the lensing convergence map, with detection significances in each of the three submm bands ranging from 6. 7σ to 8. 8σ. We fit the measurement of the cross power spectrum assuming a simple constant bias model and infer bias factors of b = 1.3–1.8, with a statistical uncertainty of 15%, depending on the assumed model for the redshift distribution of the dusty galaxies that are contributing to the Herschel/SPIRE maps.
Host and Guest Relations and Sport Tourism

Sport tourism activity has substantial potential to enrich the lives of the members of the host community by enhancing economic prosperity, providing additional social and recreational opportunities, and the development of new infrastructure. However, if poorly managed, such activities may also generate negative externalities such as disruption, noise and environmental damage. This essay outlines some of the theories and methods that are relevant to a greater understanding of the impact of sport tourism on a host community and how such impacts may be better managed to ensure the sustainability of the activity. It also presents the results of a series of empirical case studies exploring the impact of large scale sporting events.
Enhancing interoperability between enterprise planning applications: An architectural framework

In this article, a model of service oriented market is presented. It gives a more equitable opportunity of integration in the business markets for the small and medium enterprises. Nevertheless, multi-site planning is a critical and difficult task due to the heterogeneity between planning applications of the various partners. For this objective, the proposed interoperable and distributed architecture SCEP-SOA for multi-site planning is based on SOA (service oriented architecture), integrating the concepts of the generic model of planning and scheduling SCEP (supervisor, customer, environment, and producer). This interoperable architecture enables an applicative interoperability as well as a semantic interoperability between different planning applications used by the partners.
Human obesity and endothelium‐dependent responsiveness

Obesity is an ongoing worldwide epidemic. Besides being a medical condition in itself, obesity dramatically increases the risk of development of metabolic and cardiovascular disease. This risk appears to stem from multiple abnormalities in adipose tissue function leading to a chronic inflammatory state and to dysregulation of the endocrine and paracrine actions of adipocyte‐derived factors. These, in turn, disrupt vascular homeostasis by causing an imbalance between the NO pathway and the endothelin 1 system, with impaired insulin‐stimulated endothelium‐dependent vasodilation. Importantly, emerging evidence suggests that the vascular dysfunction of obesity is not just limited to the endothelium, but also involves the other layers of the vessel wall. In particular, obesity‐related changes in medial smooth muscle cells seem to disrupt the physiological facilitatory action of insulin on the responsiveness to vasodilator stimuli, whereas the adventitia and perivascular fat appear to be a source of pro‐inflammatory and vasoactive factors that may contribute to endothelial and smooth muscle cell dysfunction, and to the pathogenesis of vascular disease. While obesity‐induced vascular dysfunction appears to be reversible, at least in part, with weight control strategies, these have not proved sufficient to prevent the metabolic and cardiovascular complication of obesity on a large scale. While a number of currently available drugs have shown potentially beneficial vascular effects in patients with obesity and the metabolic syndrome, elucidation of the pathophysiological mechanisms underlying vascular damage in obese patients is necessary to identify additional pharmacologic targets to prevent the cardiovascular complications of obesity, and their human and economic costs.
Dimensions of Thought Flow in Everyday Life

To what extent are three criteria of daydreaming–as thought that is fanciful, stimulus-independent, or undirected–equivalent? How are these properties of thought flow distributed during everyday activity? Students (N = 29) carrying a beeper described properties of their consciousness on a total of 1425 occasions by means of a Thought-Sampling Questionnaire, anxiety and depression measures, and activity report forms. Intrasubject analyses of thought variables identified eight orthogonal factors, including Visual Modality, Auditory Modality, Operantness (directedness), Attentiveness to External Stimulation, Controllability, Strangeness (fancifulness/bizarreness), Past Time Orientation, and Future Time Orientation. Most thought samples contained some interior monologue, largely independent of other variables. Thought properties were uncorrelated with affective variables, frustration of goals, and impulses to drink alcohol. Factors for individual differences differed sharply from the intrasubject results, with a single undifferentiated Vividness factor and controllability no longer a separate factor. The visual modality predominates for most individuals, about a third of thought is on the average predominantly undirected, an uncorrelated third is stimulus-independent, and about a quarter of thoughts contain at least traces of dream-like elements.
GPU-accelerated progressive Gaussian filtering with applications to extended object tracking

Since the last years, Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) have massive parallel execution capabilities even for non-graphic related applications. The field of nonlinear state estimation is no exception here. Particle Filters have already been successfully ported to GPUs. In this paper, we propose a GPU-accelerated variant of the Progressive Gaussian Filter (PGF). This allows us to combine the advantages of the particle flow with the ability to process thousands of measurements at once in order to improve state estimation quality. To get a meaningful comparison between its CPU and GPU variants, we additionally propose a likelihood for tracking a sphere and its extent in 3D based on noisy point measurements. The likelihood considers the physical relationship between sensor, measurement, and sphere to best exploit the information of the received measurements. We evaluate the GPU implementation of the PGF using the proposed likelihood in combination with tens of thousands of measurements. Although the CPU implementation fully exploits parallelization techniques such as SSE and OpenMP, the GPU-accelerated PGF reaches speedups over 20 and real-time tracking can nearly be achieved.
The chromosome of Bacillus subtilis. I. Theory of marker frequency analysis.

REPLICATION of different genetic markers of Bacillus subtilis has a definite temporal order (YOSHIKAWA and SUEOKA 1962, 1963a,b). The simplest interpretation of the results is that replication of the chromosome of B. subtilis starts from one fixed position (origin) and proceeds sequentially along the chromosome. A schematic representation of the model is given in Figure 1. The model is one of the obvious predictions from the structural model of DNA (WATSON and CRICK 1953) and dual units of chromosome (TAYLOR, WOODS and HUGHES 1957). Supporting evidence for the model in B. subtilis has been presented, and other alternative models have been discussed (YOSHIKAWA and SUEOKA 1963a). In the present series of papers, the detail of our work on the B. subtilis chromosome will be reported. This first paper describes the theoretical treatments which have played an indispensable role in guiding and planning our experimentation. Theories which may account for some unexpected discoveries made during the work are also presented.
Bangla vowel sign recognition by extracting the fuzzy features

This paper presents a fuzzy based Bangla vowel sign recognition system. Vowel and consonant are the main criteria to express any language. Exceptionally, Bangla has some vowel sign which are used to express Bangla word. Therefore, to recognize any Bangla word, at first it is necessary to recognize which vowel sign is used to express that word. Due to its low computational requirement and very high accuracy, fuzzy logic system is probably the most efficient method available for online vowel sign recognition. The most important task for this implementation is the building of the rule base using fuzzy logic that would describe the recognized vowel sign, which is more complicated as different people write the same vowel sign in completely different ways. In this paper, we propose a system that uses automatically generated fuzzy membership value that describes the handwritten Bangla vowel sign written by different individuals.
Neuroprotective Effect of Phosphocreatine on Focal Cerebral Ischemia-Reperfusion Injury

Phosphocreatine (PCr) is a natural compound, which can donate high-energy phosphate group to ADP to synthesize ATP, even in the absence of oxygen and glucose. At present, it is widely used in cardiac and renal ischemia-reperfusion (IR) disease. In this study, to examine the protective efficacy of PCr against cerebral IR, disodium creatine phosphate was injected intravenously into rats before focal cerebral IR. Intracranial pressure (ICP), neurological score, cerebral infarction volume, and apoptotic neurons were observed. Expression of caspase-3 and aquaporin-4 (AQP4) was analyzed. Compared with IR group, rats pretreated with PCr had better neurologic score, less infarction volume, fewer ultrastructural histopathologic changes, reduced apoptosis, and lower aquaporin-4 level. In conclusion, PCr is neuroprotective after transient focal cerebral IR injury. Such a protection might be associated with apoptosis regulating proteins.
Changing Relationships, Changing Youth

In the past quarter century, research on adolescence has expanded from a near exclusive focus on intraindividual processes to a concern with individuals in an interpersonal context. Today, studies of the impact of relationships within families, with peers, and with romantic partners account for a large proportion of research in the field. This article outlines three features of this transformation: an increasing focus on the nature of, changes in, and the developmental impact of adolescents’ relationships with significant others; the expansion and diversification of networks of significant others during adolescence; and the recognition of significant interrelations among these relationships. Contemporary studies require research designs that encompass multiple significant relationships and that assess a broad range of relationship properties.
Social Modulation and Communication of Pain in the Laboratory Mouse

Pain sensitivity is importantly affected by a number of factors, and may best be evaluated using a biopsychosocial framework. Although such a framework has been applied to the study and treatment of pain in humans, the concept of pain as a multidimensional experience in rodent models has been given considerably less attention. There is evidence, however, that pain is significantly modulated by a variety of psychosocial factors; therefore, identifying such factors is important, especially considering the extensive use of rodent subjects in pain research. A previous study performed in our laboratory described a within-cage order-of-testing effect that suggested the social communication of pain amongst mice, a finding that inspired the research described in this dissertation. Using novel experimental paradigms, the research presented describes the effects of the immediate social environment on pain sensitivity in the laboratory mouse, as well as the converse, the effect of pain on social interactions among mice. Social conditions in pain experiments vary with respect to familiarity (i.e., cagemate versus stranger), sex, and pain state of the conspecific and such factors appear to significantly modulate both pain sensitivity and social behaviour. Here I present social modulation of pain as evidence for empathy in mice, such that mice observing a cagemate in pain exhibit significant hypersensitivity to a noxious stimulus; such modulation is dependent on visual cues. I also show that varying perceived social threat by permitting or limiting full physical contact in stranger male dyads significantly modulates pain behaviour resulting in testosterone-dependent stress-induced analgesia or hyperalgesia, respectively.