Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Understanding compassion fatigue: understanding compassion.

AIM A discussion of how the construct of compassion fatigue is understood in nursing. BACKGROUND Compassion fatigue is a topic commonly found in nursing literature. DESIGN Discussion paper. DATA SOURCES The literature from 1992-2012 on compassion fatigue was examined. The literature from 1998-2012 on compassion was examined. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING There are multiple and diverse understandings and definitions of what compassion fatigue is. So much so, there are equally multiple, diverse and conflicting strategies to mitigate it. To understand better what compassion fatigue is, an examination of what compassion is was undertaken. Much is written that nurses are, or should be compassionate. Compassion is an archetype of nursing. However, there is little in the nursing literature defining what compassion is. Literature on compassion outside of nursing was then examined. There is a growing body of theory and research about compassion in other disciplines. None of the multiple definitions of nurse compassion fatigue match this understanding of compassion. The tools most often used to measure nurse compassion fatigue do not appear to measure the construct of compassion. CONCLUSION To understand what nurse compassion fatigue is, we must first understand what nurse compassion is.
Affinity Map of Bromodomain Protein 4 (BRD4) Interactions with the Histone H4 Tail and the Small Molecule Inhibitor JQ1*

Background: BRD4 is a reader of acetylated histones. Results: Mutational analysis of BRD4 BD1 allowed the identification of three groups with different binding profiles. Conclusion: Pro-82, Leu-94, Asp-145, and Ile-146 have a differentiated role in acetyl-lysine and inhibitor interaction. Significance: Identification of residues essential for BRD4 function will guide the design of novel inhibitors. Bromodomain protein 4 (BRD4) is a member of the bromodomain and extra-terminal domain (BET) protein family. It binds to acetylated histone tails via its tandem bromodomains BD1 and BD2 and forms a complex with the positive transcription elongation factor b, which controls phosphorylation of RNA polymerase II, ultimately leading to stimulation of transcription elongation. An essential role of BRD4 in cell proliferation and cancer growth has been reported in several recent studies. We analyzed the binding of BRD4 BD1 and BD2 to different partners and showed that the strongest interactions took place with di- and tetra-acetylated peptides derived from the histone 4 N-terminal tail. We also found that several histone 4 residues neighboring the acetylated lysines significantly influenced binding. We generated 10 different BRD4 BD1 mutants and analyzed their affinities to acetylated histone tails and to the BET inhibitor JQ1 using several complementary biochemical and biophysical methods. The impact of these mutations was confirmed in a cellular environment. Altogether, the results show that Trp-81, Tyr-97, Asn-140, and Met-149 play similarly important roles in the recognition of acetylated histones and JQ1. Pro-82, Leu-94, Asp-145, and Ile-146 have a more differentiated role, suggesting that different kinds of interactions take place and that resistance mutations compatible with BRD4 function are possible. Our study extends the knowledge on the contribution of individual BRD4 amino acids to histone and JQ1 binding and may help in the design of new BET antagonists with improved pharmacological properties.
Pakistani medical students' specialty preference and the influencing factors.

OBJECTIVE To elucidate the specialty preferences of Pakistani medical students and the factors which influence medical students to make the decision regarding which specialty to pursue. METHODS Both basic sciences and clinical students from four medical colleges of Pakistan, i.e., Dow Medical College, Sindh Medical College, Liaquat National Medical College and Muhammad Medical College, were included in the cross-sectional survey during the period of July 2008 to Jan' 2009. After ethical acceptance, data was collected using convenient sampling technique. The questionnaire covered the following demographic details: 13 common specialties and 15 influencing factors. RESULTS Questionnaires included in the analysis were 771. Most students gave preference to surgery and its associated sub-specialties (50.3%) followed by internal medicine (26.8%), paediatrics (23.2%), dermatology (16.7%), gynaecology and obstetrics (16.7%), psychiatry (13.1%), radiology (10.8%), ENT (8.8%), anaesthesiology (8.7%), administrative medicine (8.6%), orthopaedics (8.2%), ophthalmology (7.5%), and laboratory medicine (6.1%). The highly considered factors (regarding specialties) chosen by 70% of the medical students were: applicable to respective personalities of the individuals, prestige and respect, international opportunities, and time commitment. Surgical-skills, job availability, financial rating, academic performance, and a role model were moderately influencing factors. Hospital environment, parents, general practice, peer-pressure and personal health were the least influential. CONCLUSION This trend suggests competition in surgery and its sub-specialties along with internal medicine, paediatrics, dermatology, gynaecology and obstetrics. Specialty suited to personality, time commitment, prestige/respect and international opportunity, influenced more than 70% of the students.
Sound Source Localization in a Reverberant Room Using Harmonic Based Music

The localization of acoustic sound sources is beneficial to signal processing applications of speech enhancement, dereverberation, separation and tracking. Difficulties in position estimation arise in real world environments due to coherent reflections degrading performance of subspace localization techniques. This paper proposes a method of multiple signal classification (MUSIC) subspace localization, which is suitable for reverberant rooms. The method is based on the modal decomposition of a room’s region-to-region transfer function, which is assumed to be known. We perform a numerical simulation of four sound sources in a reverberant room, and show that the localization method exhibits increased spatial resolution and distance focusing abilities when the region-to-region transfer function is incorporated. The proposed method is successful in estimating three-dimensional sound source positions without distortion due to reverberation. Index Terms– Coherent MUSIC, source localization, reverberant environment, modal decomposition.
Critical Role of Transient Activity of MT1-MMP for ECM Degradation in Invadopodia

Focal degradation of extracellular matrix (ECM) is the first step in the invasion of cancer cells. MT1-MMP is a potent membrane proteinase employed by aggressive cancer cells. In our previous study, we reported that MT1-MMP was preferentially located at membrane protrusions called invadopodia, where MT1-MMP underwent quick turnover. Our computer simulation and experiments showed that this quick turnover was essential for the degradation of ECM at invadopodia (Hoshino, D., et al., (2012) PLoS Comp. Biol., 8: e1002479). Here we report on characterization and analysis of the ECM-degrading activity of MT1-MMP, aiming at elucidating a possible reason for its repetitive insertion in the ECM degradation. First, in our computational model, we found a very narrow transient peak in the activity of MT1-MMP followed by steady state activity. This transient activity was due to the inhibition by TIMP-2, and the steady state activity of MT1-MMP decreased dramatically at higher TIMP-2 concentrations. Second, we evaluated the role of the narrow transient activity in the ECM degradation. When the transient activity was forcibly suppressed in computer simulations, the ECM degradation was heavily suppressed, indicating the essential role of this transient peak in the ECM degradation. Third, we compared continuous and pulsatile turnover of MT1-MMP in the ECM degradation at invadopodia. The pulsatile insertion showed basically consistent results with the continuous insertion in the ECM degradation, and the ECM degrading efficacy depended heavily on the transient activity of MT1-MMP in both models. Unexpectedly, however, low-frequency/high-concentration insertion of MT1-MMP was more effective in ECM degradation than high-frequency/low-concentration pulsatile insertion even if the time-averaged amount of inserted MT1-MMP was the same. The present analysis and characterization of ECM degradation by MT1-MMP together with our previous report indicate a dynamic nature of MT1-MMP at invadopodia and the importance of its transient peak in the degradation of the ECM.
Localization and Phylogenetic Analysis of Enzymes Related to Organellar Genome Replication in the Unicellular Rhodophyte Cyanidioschyzon merolae

Plants and algae possess plastids and mitochondria harboring their own genomes, which are replicated by the apparatus consisting of DNA polymerase, DNA primase, DNA helicase, DNA topoisomerase, single-stranded DNA maintenance protein, DNA ligase, and primer removal enzyme. In the higher plant Arabidopsis thaliana, organellar replication-related enzymes (OREs) are similar in plastids and mitochondria because many of them are dually targeted to plastids and mitochondria. In the red algae, there is a report about a DNA replicase, plant/protist organellar DNA polymerase, which is localized to both plastids and mitochondria. However, other OREs remain unclear in algae. Here, we identified OREs possibly localized to organelles in the unicellular rhodophyte Cyanidioschyzon merolae. We then examined intracellular localization of green fluorescent protein-fusion proteins of these enzymes in C. merolae, whose cell has a single plastid and a single mitochondrion and is suitable for localization analysis, demonstrating that the plastid and the mitochondrion contain markedly different components of replication machinery. Phylogenetic analyses revealed that the organelle replication apparatus was composed of enzymes of various different origins, such as proteobacterial, cyanobacterial, and eukaryotic, in both red algae and green plants. Especially in the red alga, many enzymes of cyanobacterial origin remained. Finally, on the basis of the results of localization and phylogenetic analyses, we propose a model on the succession of OREs in eukaryotes.
Bayesian-optimized Bidirectional LSTM Regression Model for Non-intrusive Load Monitoring

In this paper, a Bayesian-optimized bidirectional Long Short -Term Memory (LSTM) method for energy disaggregation, is introduced. Energy disaggregation, or Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring (NILM), is a process aiming to identify the individual contribution of appliances in the aggregate electricity load. The proposed model, Bayes-BiLSTM, is structured in a modular way to address multi-dimensionality issues that arise when the number of appliances increase. In addition, a non-causal model is introduced in order to tackle with inherent structure, characterizing the operation of multi-state appliances. Furthermore, a Bayesian-optimized framework is introduced to select the best configuration of the proposed regression model, thus increasing performance. Experimental results indicate the proposed method’s superiority, compared to the current state-of-the-art.
Privacy Protection Filter Using StegoScrambling in Video Surveillance

This paper introduces a new privacy filter adopted in the context of the DPT (Drone Protect Task) at MediaEval Benchmark 2015. Our proposed filter protects privacy by visually replacing sensitive RofI (Regions of Interest) by its shapes. A combination of steganography and scrambling is used in order to make this filter. Once the scrambling is applied on the pixels of the RofI, its MSB (Most Significant Bit) are hidden in the LSB (Least Significant Bit) of a cover image. Our filter fulfils four criteria defined by DPT: near-lossless reversibility, intelligibility, appropriateness and anonymization. We benchmarked the filter on the last three criteria and we get good results: 40 % for intelligibility and appropriateness, and 60 % for anonymization.
A non-negative matrix factorization method for bilinear-bilinear unmixing of hyperspectral images

Spectral unmixing of hyperspectral images consists of estimating pure material spectra with their corresponding proportions (or abundances). Recently, non-linear unmixing has received growing interest in the geoscience and remote sensing community. This article proposes a new non-linear unmixing approach using non-negative matrix factorization method that takes into account physical constraints on spectra (positivity) and abundances (positivity and sum-to-one). The proposed method is tested using a projected Gradient algorithm on synthetic and real data. The performances of this method are compared to the linear approach ones and to recent non-linear approaches results.
Towards Designing and Implementing an Expert Network To Manage the Computer Communication Networks

This paper aimed to design and implement a new hybrid intelligent technique called expert network. The main purpose of this expert network is to use it as a management tool assist network administrator in his job regarding the monitoring process of network performance. Here, the management task that uses this expert network was how to detect a fault (i.e. fault detection) that may be occurred on a certain part of the network either on hardware or software where this fault can affect on the performance of the computer network as: delay, throughput, utilization. Our proposed expert network depends on using both feed forward Neural Network and CBR. The Multilayer feed forward NN is used to predict the upcoming or the next values of the network major parameters (as load, delay, throughput.etc), then this predicted value will produces a residual signal used for comparing the actual with the desired network parameter. According to the comparison results, the Expert Network will alter the network administrator with certain alarm if the difference between the actual and desired network parameter outside a certain range (threshold value, knowing that this threshold is suggested by the network administrator). Accordingly, the network administrator begins to take some action towards repairing the fault component. Efficiency of the proposed expert-network was examined through investigating the time of detecting a fault. This time was too short relative to the running time of the computer network.
Preventing acute gout when starting allopurinol therapy

Acute gout is a well known complication of the commencement of allopurinol therapy. Prophylaxis is needed for some months, even after serum urate levels have returned to normal. Colchicine is usually preferable to NSAIDs for this purpose, being cheaper, and better tolerated, especially in patients with peptic ulcer, gastrointestinal bleeding or dyspepsia or who are taking anticoagulants.
A molecular epidemiological approach to studying the transmission of tuberculosis in Amsterdam.

We conducted a retrospective, population-based study with use of restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) analysis to determine the incidence of and risk factors for clustering of Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates, indicative of recently transmitted infection, among patients with culture-proven tuberculosis diagnosed between 1 July 1992 and 1 January 1995 in Amsterdam. We found that 214 (47%) of 459 patients were in 53 clusters, probably because of recent transmission of M. tuberculosis among 161 (35%) of these patients. Conventional contact tracing resulted in identification of 5.6% of the 161 patients. Clustering was more frequent among Dutch patients (59.3%) than among foreign ethnic patients (42.1%) (P = .002). The independent risk factor for clustering among Dutch patients was younger age; the independent risk factors among foreign ethnic patients were hard-drug use; alcohol abuse; and country of origin (Surinam or the Netherlands Antilles). These findings suggest the shortcomings of the usual tuberculosis control policies in Amsterdam. We identified several risk factors for clustering, which may guide adjustment of tuberculosis control and contact tracing strategies.
Air-Bearing Design Towards Highly Stable Head–Disk Interface at Ultralow Flying Height

Pushing recording density towards tera-bit per square inch and beyond requires reducing flying height to 2.5-3 nm or below. One critical challenge at such ultralow flying height is the possible head-disk crash or unstable head-disk spacing due to short-range interaction forces, such as electrostatic force, intermolecular forces, lubricant interaction force, and so on. Slider design and design strategy are investigated in this work aiming at significantly increased stability of the head-disk spacing at ultralow flying height. Nonzero surface roughness leads to a roughness-limited possible minimum flying height. A stable head-disk interface requires a full air-bearing domination even at a roughness-imposed minimum flying height. Here, the air-bearing domination means that both air-bearing force and air-bearing stiffness are larger than the combination of various short-range forces and the corresponding stiffness. Investigations presented in this paper indicate that high pressure and high-pressure concentration technology are effective approaches to extending the domination of air-bearing force towards such a roughness-limited possible minimum flying height. Slider designs, proposed by authors, exhibit satisfying flying height stability even at the roughness-limited minimum flying height
Viral Replication in the Nasopharynx Is Associated with Diarrhea in Patients with Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome

Abstract The role of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) coronavirus as an enteric pathogen was investigated in a cohort of 142 patients with SARS who were treated with a standard treatment protocol. Data from daily hematological, biochemical, radiological, and microbiological investigations were prospectively collected, and the correlation of these findings with diarrhea was retrospectively analyzed. Sixty-nine patients (48.6%) developed diarrhea at a mean (± standard deviation [SD]) of 7.6 ± 2.6 days after the onset of symptoms. The diarrhea was most severe at a mean (±SD) of 8.8 ± 2.4 days after onset, with a maximum frequency of 24 episodes per day (median, 5 episodes; range, 3–24 episodes). A higher mean virus load in nasopharyngeal specimens obtained on day 10 after the onset of symptoms was significantly associated with the occurrence of diarrhea (3.1 log10 vs. 1.8 log10 copies/mL; P = .01) and mortality (6.2 vs. 1.7 log10 copies/mL; P < .01). However, diarrhea was not associated with mortality. The lung and the gastrointestinal tract may react differently to SARS coronavirus infection. Additional investigation of the role of SARS coronavirus in the pathogenesis of diarrhea in patients with SARS should be conducted.
Lyapunov functions , stationary distributions , and non-equilibrium potential for chemical reaction networks

We consider the relationship between stationary distributions for stochastic models of chemical reaction systems and Lyapunov functions for their deterministic counterparts. Specifically, we derive the well known Lyapunov function of chemical reaction network theory as a scaling limit of the non-equilibrium potential of the stationary distribution of stochastically modeled complex balanced systems. We extend this result to general birth-death models and demonstrate via example that similar scaling limits can yield Lyapunov functions even for models that are not complex or detailed balanced, and may even have multiple equilibria.
Immunoglobulin G fragment C receptor polymorphisms and clinical efficacy of trastuzumab-based therapy in patients with HER-2/neu-positive metastatic breast cancer.

PURPOSE The anti-HER-2/neu monoclonal antibody trastuzumab has been shown to engage both activatory (fragment C receptor [Fc gamma R]IIIa; Fc gamma RIIa) and inhibitory (Fc gamma RIIb) antibody receptors and Fc gamma R polymorphisms have been identified that may affect the antibody-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity (ADCC) of natural-killer cells/monocytes. In this study, we tested whether Fc gamma R polymorphisms are associated with clinical outcome of patients with breast cancer who received trastuzumab. PATIENTS AND METHODS Fifty-four consecutive patients with HER-2/neu-amplified breast cancer receiving trastuzumab plus taxane for metastatic disease were evaluated for genotype for the Fc gamma RIIIa-158 valine(V)/phenylalanine(F), Fc gamma RIIa-131 histidine(H)/arginine(R), and Fc gamma RIIb-232 isoleucine(I)/threonine(T) polymorphisms. Trastuzumab-mediated ADCC of patients' peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) was measured by chromium-51 release using a HER-2/neu-expressing human breast cancer cell line as a target. Controls comprised thirty-four patients treated with taxane alone. RESULTS Our population was in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium except for the Fc gamma RIIb polymorphism. The Fc gamma RIIIa-158 V/V genotype was significantly correlated with objective response rate (ORR) and progression-free survival (PFS). Also, there was trend significance in ORR and PFS for the Fc gamma RIIa-131 H/H genotype. The combination of the two favorable genotypes (VV and/or H/H) was independently associated with better ORR and PFS compared with the other combinations. The ADCC analysis showed that V/V and/or H/H PBMCs had a significantly higher trastuzumab-mediated cytotoxicity than PBMCs harboring different genotypes. CONCLUSION These data support for the first time the hypothesis that Fc gamma R-mediated ADCC plays an important role in the clinical effect of trastuzumab. Prospective studies are needed to confirm the role of Fc gamma R polymorphisms in predicting clinical outcome of patients with breast cancer treated with trastuzumab-based therapy.
In-Sole MEMS Pressure Sensing for a LowerExtremity Exoskeleton

The control system for the Berkeley lower extremity exoskeleton (BLEEX) requires ground contact pressure information to operate safely and effectively. Commercially available in-sole sensors do not have sufficient bandwidth, accuracy and reliability for such a system. We have designed and prototyped an in-sole ground contact sensor that uses MEMS pressure transducers placed in an array of hermetically sealed cavities. This system provides a robust method to monitor ground contact pressures
The UCSC Archaeal Genome Browser

As more archaeal genomes are sequenced, effective research and analysis tools are needed to integrate the diverse information available for any given locus. The feature-rich UCSC Genome Browser, created originally to annotate the human genome, can be applied to any sequenced organism. We have created a UCSC Archaeal Genome Browser, available at , currently with 26 archaeal genomes. It displays G/C content, gene and operon annotation from multiple sources, sequence motifs (promoters and Shine-Dalgarno), microarray data, multi-genome alignments and protein conservation across phylogenetic and habitat categories. We encourage submission of new experimental and bioinformatic analysis from contributors. The purpose of this tool is to aid biological discovery and facilitate greater collaboration within the archaeal research community.