Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Task-space PD Control of Robot Manipulators: Unified Analysis and Duality Property

Task-space regulation of robots is classified into two basic approaches, namely transpose Jacobian regulation and inverse Jacobian regulation. This paper shows that, despite the distinct differences between inverse Jacobian and transpose Jacobian regulation problems, there is a unified approach for the analysis and design of the transpose Jacobian and inverse Jacobian PD controllers for non-redundant robots. Based on the unified analysis, we show that there is a fundamental property in the task-space regulation problem, namely the duality property. The results on the duality property show that the transpose Jacobian matrix can be replaced by the inverse Jacobian matrix and vice versa. The two basic transformations, the transpose Jacobian and the inverse Jacobian, are said to be dual. The task-space PD controllers are implemented on an industrial robot and experiment results are presented.
Integrin diversity brings specificity in mechanotransduction

Cells sense and respond to the biochemical and physical properties of the extracellular matrix (ECM) through adhesive structures that bridge the cell cytoskeleton and the surrounding environment. Integrin‐mediated adhesions interact with specific ECM proteins and sense the rigidity of the substrate to trigger signalling pathways that, in turn, regulate cellular processes such as adhesion, motility, proliferation and differentiation. This process, called mechanotransduction, influenced by the involvement of different integrin subtypes and their high ECM–ligand binding specificity, contributes to the cell‐type‐specific mechanical responses. In this review, we describe how the expression of particular integrin subtypes affects cellular adaptation to substrate rigidity. We then explain the role of integrins and associated proteins in mechanotransduction, focusing on their specificity in mechanosensing and force transmission.
Time to plasma transfusion: a patient centered approach and modifiable risk factor

T he recent paradigm shift in the treatment of critically injured patients suffering massive bleeding has seen a fundamental change from crystalloid and red blood cell (RBC)-based resuscitation toward the early delivery of balanced blood components (plasma, platelets, and RBCs). This change in transfusion practice has resulted in substantially improved outcomes for trauma patients. A recent large, randomized clinical trial has shown that early balanced administration of blood products is crucial, with a particular emphasis on the rapid delivery of plasma. Plasma-based resuscitation has been shown to help reverse trauma-induced coagulopathy, restore volume deficits, repair endothelial permeability, and mitigate inflammatory responses after trauma. The most recent recommendations from the American College of Surgeons state that liquid-state plasma should be readily available (within 15 minutes) for providing balanced resuscitation during massive transfusion. Likewise, the United Kingdom has endorsed the rapid and balanced transfusion approach for bleeding patients. These recommendations have resulted in the demand for plasma ready for immediate use in emergency centers, with some centers extending this approach to the prehospital setting. These protocols have created new logistic opportunities for blood banks dispensing components to trauma departments. Blood bank inventories most commonly supply plasma as fresh frozen plasma (FFP) or plasma frozen within 24 hours (FP24) and, less commonly, thawed plasma (TP) and liquid plasma (LP). FFP is frozen within 8 hours of collection and can be stored at 48C for up to 24 hours after thawing. FFP can be relabeled as TP, which can be kept for a further 4 days. LP is never FP, which has the longest shelf-life (up to 26 days) but is the least commonly used of these plasma products. In the March issue of TRANSFUSION, Backholer and colleagues elegantly compare the hemostasis parameters of TP with those of LP and the impact of storage over time. Their data indicate that, for 7 days of storage, LP demonstrated more rapid initiation of coagulation despite minor decreases in clotting factor levels. However, overall differences in factor levels and coagulation parameters were negligible, suggesting there is little effect of freezing and thawing on the hemostatic capacity of plasma. Importantly, they also showed that LP coagulation potential was stable for up to 7 days but started showing protein degradation after 11 days of storage. Furthermore, LP stored for 14 to 28 days exhibited evidence of contact activation as a result of cold storage. The overall conclusion was that LP and TP are comparable in their ability to promote hemostasis with recommended use up to 14 days, although the appropriate shelf-life for LP remains to be definitively established. Their report provides a thought-provoking response to the requirement for rapidly available, balanced transfusion.
Effects of dietary fatty acids and calcium levels on performance and mineral metabolism of broiler chickens.

The influence of inclusion of 8% linoleic/oleic, oleic, palmitic, and stearic acids as the major source of fat in the presence of low (.8%) and high (1.2%) calcium in broiler diets was investigated using broiler chicks from day-old to 3 weeks of age. Palmitic and stearic acid caused an increase (P less than .01) in daily feed intake and weight gain with a decrease in feed efficiency compared to oleic and linoleic acid. There was variation (P less than .01) in energy utilization with palmitic and stearic acid being essentially unavailable. An interaction (P less than .05) between type of fatty acid and dietary calcium level was observed with fat retention. Increasing dietary calcium increased fecal soap concentration (P less than .01). Palmitic and stearic acid caused a significant increase in fecal soap formation and decrease in calcium retention. A significant interaction between type of fatty acid and dietary calcium level was observed with magnesium retention. Bone ash and bone calcium level were reduced (P less than .01) in the presence of palmitic and stearic acid while oleic acid had no significant effect on these parameters. A significant interaction of fatty acid type and level of calcium was observed for bone magnesium content, while bone phosphorus was not affected. Plasma calcium level was significantly reduced (P less than .01) by the addition of fatty acids relative to the control diets. Increasing dietary calcium level did not alleviate the decrease in calcium retention and bone calcium content associated with addition of fat.
Lubricant Use and Rectal Chlamydial and Gonococcal Infections Among Men Who Engage in Receptive Anal Intercourse

Background Use of lubricants during anal intercourse is very common among men who have sex with men. However, few studies have evaluated associations between specific lubricants and rectal sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Methods Between July 2012 and October 2013, we conducted a cross-sectional study of men who have sex with men recruited from an urban, public sexual health clinic. In a self-administered survey, participants identified the lubricants used and frequency of lubricant use in the previous three months. Among men reporting any receptive anal intercourse (RAI) in the previous 3 months, we used multivariable binomial regression models to analyze associations between recent use of 9 specific lubricants and prevalent rectal chlamydia, rectal gonorrhea, and either rectal infection. Results Twenty-five percent of the 146 participants had rectal chlamydial infection and 21% had rectal gonococcal infection; 37% had either (chlamydial or gonococcal) infection. Three-quarters reported always or almost always using lubricant during recent receptive anal intercourse. After adjustment for age, race, human immunodeficiency virus status, and condom use, Gun Oil (adjusted prevalence ratio [aPR], 1.99; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.04–3.80) and Slick (aPR, 3.55; 95% CI, 1.38–9.12) were significantly associated with prevalent gonococcal infection. No lubricants were significantly associated with prevalent rectal chlamydia, but in analyses of either rectal infection, precum (aPR, 1.68; 95% CI, 1.06–2.66), Vaseline (aPR, 1.70; 95% CI, 1.10–2.64), and baby oil (aPR, 2.26; 95% CI, 1.43–3.57) were all significantly associated with prevalent rectal infection. Conclusions Several lubricants were significantly associated with increased prevalence of rectal STI. Longitudinal studies are needed to examine any causal relationship between specific lubricants and STI acquisition.
Readmission and Late Mortality After Critical Illness in Childhood*

Objectives: Little is known about the ongoing mortality risk and healthcare utilization among U.S. children after discharge from a hospitalization involving ICU care. We sought to understand risks for hospital readmission and trends in mortality during the year following ICU discharge. Design: Retrospective observational cohort study. Setting: This study was performed using administrative claims data from 2006-2013 obtained from the Truven Health Analytics MarketScan Database. Subjects: We included all children in the dataset admitted to a U.S. ICU less than or equal to 18 years old. Interventions: The primary outcome was nonelective readmission in the year following discharge. Risk of rehospitalization was determined using a Cox proportional hazards model. Measurements and Main Results: We identified 109,130 children with at least one ICU admission in the dataset. Over three quarters of the index ICU admissions (78.6%) had an ICU length of stay less than or equal to 3 days, and the overall index hospitalization mortality rate was 1.4%. In multivariate analysis, risk of nonelective readmission for children without cancer was higher with longer index ICU admission length of stay, younger age, and several chronic and acute conditions. By the end of the 1-year observation period, 36.0% of children with an index ICU length of stay greater than or equal to 14 days had been readmitted, compared with only 13.9% of children who had an index ICU length of stay equals to 1 day. Mortality in the year after ICU discharge was low overall (106 deaths per 10,000 person-years of observation) but was high among children with an initial index ICU admission length of stay greater than or equal to 14 days (599 deaths per 10,000 person-years). Conclusions: Readmission after ICU care is common. Further research is needed to investigate the potentially modifiable factors affecting likelihood of readmissions after discharge from the ICU. Although late mortality was relatively uncommon overall, it was 10-fold higher in the year after ICU discharge than in the general U.S. pediatric population.
Effect of ionizing radiation dose, temperature, and atmosphere on the survival of Salmonella typhimurium in sterile, mechanically deboned chicken meat.

The response to gamma radiation (0 to 3.60 kGy; 100 krad = 1 kGy) of Salmonella typhimurium was tested in otherwise sterile, mechanically deboned chicken meat (MDCM) in the absence of competing microflora. Response was determined at temperatures of -20 to +20 C and when the MDCM was packaged in vacuum or in the presence of air. A central composite response-surface design was used to test the response of the pathogen to the treatments in a single experiment. Predictive equations were developed from the analyses of variances of the resulting data. The accuracy of each predictive equation was tested by further studies of the effects of gamma radiation on S. typhimurium in the presence or absence of air at -20, 0, and +20 C. All data were then analyzed to refine the predictive equations further. Both the original and the refined equations adequately predicted the response of S. typhimurium in MDCM to gamma radiation doses up to 3.60 kGy in the presence of air or in vacuo. Gamma irradiation was significantly more lethal for S. typhimurium in the presence of air and at higher temperatures. The final equations predict a reduction in the number of surviving Salmonella in MDCM irradiated to 1.50 kGy at -20 C of 2.53 logs in air or 2.12 logs if irradiated in vacuum. If the contaminated MDCM were to receive a dose of 3.0 kGy at -20 C in air, the number of Salmonella would be decreased by 4.78 logs, and if irradiated in vacuum, by 4.29 logs. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Supervised Opinion Aspect Extraction by Exploiting Past Extraction Results

One of the key tasks of sentiment analysis of product reviews is to extract product aspects or features that users have expressed opinions on. In this work, we focus on using supervised sequence labeling as the base approach to performing the task. Although several extraction methods using sequence labeling methods such as Conditional Random Fields (CRF) and Hidden Markov Models (HMM) have been proposed, we show that this supervised approach can be significantly improved by exploiting the idea of concept sharing across multiple domains. For example, "screen" is an aspect in iPhone, but not only iPhone has a screen, many electronic devices have screens too. When "screen" appears in a review of a new domain (or product), it is likely to be an aspect too. Knowing this information enables us to do much better extraction in the new domain. This paper proposes a novel extraction method exploiting this idea in the context of supervised sequence labeling. Experimental results show that it produces markedly better results than without using the past information.
The Organizational Context of Teaching and Learning Changing Theoretical Perspectives

Sociologists have a predilection for the collective. We are centrally concerned with social facts, characteristics of collectivities that give shape and motivation to individual action. Sociological research on schooling shares this interest in the collective. School resources, composition, climate, leadership, and governance, all collective attributes of schools, are often looked to as sources of influence on the outcomes of schooling for individual students. Yet the study of school organization is marked more by failure than by success. It is especially significant that the most important contribution by sociologists to research on schooling—the famous Coleman Report of 1966—is also the most spectacular failure to connect the collective with the individual in an educational setting. Variation in school conditions was largely unrelated to differences in student outcomes, as school-level effects were dwarfed by the powerful influence of the home environment for student learning. Though policymakers drew implications from the positive impact on learning of the proportion of White students in a school, the effect of racial composition was small compared to the great importance of individual family background factors. This pattern of results, emphasizing the individual over
Cloxacillin induced agranulocytosis: A rare adverse event of a commonly used antibiotic

Cloxacillin, a semisynthetic penicillin is a potent inhibitor of most penicillinase-producing Staphylococci. Use of high doses of Cloxacillin for 6 weeks is recommended for the treatment of infective endocarditis caused by methicillin-susceptible Staphylococcus aureus (MSSA). Here, we report a case of Cloxacillin-induced agranulocytosis in a patient treated for MSSA native tricuspid valve endocarditis, which was resolved after discontinuation of the antibiotic. This case report highlights a rare adverse event of a commonly used antibiotic.
Less Than Ideal Cardiovascular Health Is Associated With Shorter Leukocyte Telomere Length: The National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys, 1999–2002

Background The associations between individual cardiovascular disease risk factors and leukocyte telomere length (LTL) have been inconclusive. We investigated the association between LTL and overall cardiovascular health (CVH) as defined by the American Heart Association and whether the association is modified by sex and race/ethnicity. Methods and Results We included 5194 adults (aged ≥20) from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 1999–2002. CVH was defined as a composite score of the 7 metrics (smoking, physical activity, diet, body mass index, blood pressure, total cholesterol, and fasting blood glucose) and categorized as “poor,” “intermediate,” and “ideal. ” LTL was assayed from whole blood using the quantitative polymerase chain reaction method relative to standard reference DNA. Multivariable linear regression models were used to estimate the association between CVH and log‐transformed LTL. We found strong graded association between CVH and LTL in the overall sample, with evidence of dose‐response relationship (P for trend=0.013). Individuals with poor and intermediate CVH had significantly shorter LTL than individuals with ideal CVH (−3.4% [95% CI=−6.0%, −0.8%] and −2.4% [−4.4%, −0.3%], respectively), after adjustment for demographic variables, socioeconomic status, and C‐reactive protein. The association was stronger in women (−6.6% [−10.2%, −2.9%] for poor vs ideal CVH) and non‐Hispanic whites (−4.3% [−7.1%, −1.4%] for poor vs ideal CVH). Conclusions The findings suggest that less‐than‐ideal CVH is associated with shorter LTL, but this association varies by sex and race/ethnicity. Future longitudinal research is needed to elucidate the mechanisms that underlie the association between CVH and LTL.
Helping parents live with the hole in their heart: The role of health care providers and institutions in the bereaved parents' grief journeys

Bereaved parents experience significant psychosocial and health sequelae, suggesting that this population may benefit from the ongoing extension of support and resources throughout the grief journey. The interaction of hospital staff with patients and families at the end of a child's life and after death profoundly affects parental grief, offering a unique opportunity for the medical community to positively impact the bereavement experience. The current study was conducted to explore the role of the health care team and medical institutions in the grief journeys of parents whose child died a cancer‐related death.
Endovascular Embolization of Prominent Intercavernous Sinuses for Successful Transsphenoidal Resection of Cushing Microadenoma: Case Report

BACKGROUND AND IMPORTANCE: Prominent intercavernous sinuses may result in vigorous bleeding during transsphenoidal resection of pituitary microadenomas and lead to incomplete or aborted tumor resection. We report the use of coil embolization of the intercavernous sinuses to prevent uncontrollable bleeding before transsphenoidal surgery is reattempted. CLINICAL PRESENTATION: A 40-year-old man with Cushing disease underwent an attempt for transsphenoidal resection of an adrenocorticotrophic hormone--producing pituitary microadenoma. This approach was aborted secondary to profuse intercavernous sinus bleeding. The patient underwent endovascular coil embolization of the anterior intercavernous sinuses with complete obliteration. Six weeks later, he underwent successful transsphenoidal resection of the microadenoma. CONCLUSION: To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of successful coil embolization of the intercavernous sinuses to prevent uncontrolled bleeding before transsphenoidal resection of pituitary microadenomas. ABBREVIATION: ACTH, adrenocorticotrophic hormone
Follow Your Virtual Trainer (FYVT): a randomised controlled trial protocol of IT-based lifestyle intervention programme to promote physical activity and health among middle-aged Hong Kong Chinese

Introduction Hong Kong is a highly urbanised city where many people work long hours. The limited time and lack of professional instruction are the typical barriers to exercise. The purpose of this study is to test the effectiveness of an information technology-based lifestyle intervention programme on improving physical activity (PA) level and health status in a sample of middle-aged Hong Kong adults. Methods and analysis A two-arm parallel randomised controlled trial named ‘Follow Your Virtual Trainer’ will be conducted among 200 physically inactive Chinese adults aged from 40 to 65 years. Those randomly allocated to an intervention group will be under the instruction of a web-based computer software termed ‘Virtual Trainer (VT)’ to conduct a 3-month self-planned PA programme. A series of online seminars with healthy lifestyle information will be released to the participants biweekly for 3 months. After that, 6 months observation will follow. Those in the control group will only receive a written advice of standard PA recommendation and the textual content of the seminars. The assessments will be implemented at baseline, the 3rd, 6th and 9th months. The primary outcome is PA measured by accelerometer and International Physical Activity Questionnaire. The secondary outcomes include cardiorespiratory fitness, resting energy expenditure, anthropometrics, body composition, blood pressure, health-related quality of life, sleep quality and quantity, fatigue, behaviour mediators and maintenance of PA. The main effectiveness of the intervention will be assessed by a linear mixed model that tests the random effect of treatment on outcomes at the 3rd, 6th and 9th months. Ethics and dissemination This trial has been approved by the Joint Chinese University of Hong Kong—New Territories East Cluster Clinical Research Ethics Committee (CRE 2015235). The study results will be presented at scientific conferences and published in peer-reviewed journals. Trial registration number NCT02553980.
The Economics of Sovereign Debt, Bailouts and the Eurozone Crisis

Despite a formal 'no-bailout clause; we estimate significant net present value transfers from the European Union to Cyprus, Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain, ranging from roughly 0.5% (Ireland) to a whopping 43% (Greece) of2010 output during the Eurozone crisis. We propose a model to analyze and understand bailouts in a monetary union, and the large observed differences across countries. We characterize bailout size and likelihood as a function of the economic fundamentals (economic activity, debt-to-gdp ratio, default costs). Our model embeds a 'Southern view' of the crisis (transfers did not help) and a 'Northern view' (transfers weaken fiscal discipline). While a stronger no-bailout commitment reduces risk-shifting, it may not be optimal from the perspective of the creditor country, even ex-ante, if it increases the risk of immediate insolvency for high debt countries. Hence, the model provides a potential justification for the often decried policy of 'kicking the can down the road. ' Mapping the model to the estimated transfers, we find that the main purpose of the outsized Greek bailout was to prevent an exit from the eurozone and possible contagion. Bailouts to avoid sovereign default were comparatively modest.
ROBUST GEOMETRIC COMPUTATION

Geometric algorithms are often composed of a set of basic geo metric predicates and constructions, also calledprimitives. Correctness of an algorithm is usually proved under the ass umption that all primitives return the correct result. This is in sharp contrast to the naive, but common str ategy of implementing such primitives with fixed-precision floating-point arithmetic. The disastrous effects of this g ap between theory and practice have been witnessed in variou s areas using geometric algorithms, like computer-aided des ign or computational fluid dynamics.
Broadband matching via reflection function optimization

In this paper, a practical approach is presented for designing broadband matching networks via reflection function optimization. In the proposed algorithm, the input or output reflection function of the matching network is expressed in terms of three real polynomials describing the matching network, load and generator reflection coefficients. Next one of the polynomials is optimized to get minimum reflection function values in the passband. Then matching network topology and element values are obtained via the formed input reflection coefficient expression. Two examples are presented to explain the usage of the new approach. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.