Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Patient and caregiver characteristics and nursing home placement in patients with dementia.

CONTEXT The decision to institutionalize a patient with dementia is complex and is based on patient and caregiver characteristics and the sociocultural context of patients and caregivers. Most studies have determined predictors of nursing home placement primarily according to patient or caregiver characteristics alone. OBJECTIVE To develop and validate a prognostic model to determine the comprehensive predictors of placement among an ethnically diverse population of patients with dementia. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS The Medicare Alzheimer's Disease Demonstration and Evaluation study, a prospective study at 8 sites in the United States, with enrollment between December 1989 and December 1994 of 5788 community-living persons with advanced dementia. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Time to nursing home placement throughout a 36-month follow-up period, assessed by interview and review of Medicare records, and its association with patient and caregiver characteristics, obtained by interview at enrollment. RESULTS Patients were divided into a development (n = 3859) and validation (n = 1929) cohort. In the development cohort, the Kaplan-Meier estimates of nursing home placement throughout 1, 2, and 3 years were 22%, 40%, and 52%, respectively. After multivariate adjustment, patient characteristics that were associated with nursing home placement were as follows: black ethnicity (hazard ratio, 0.60; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.48-0.74), Hispanic ethnicity (HR, 0.40; 95% CI, 0.28-0.56) (both ethnicities were inversely associated with placement), living alone (HR, 1.74; 95% CI, 1.49-2.02), 1 or more dependencies in activities of daily living (HR, 1.38; 95% CI, 1.20-1.60), high cognitive impairment (for Mini-Mental Status Examination score < or =20: HR, 1.52; 95% CI, 1.33-1.73), and 1 or more difficult behaviors (HR, 1.30; 95% CI, 1.11-1.52). Caregiver characteristics associated with patient placement were age 65 to 74 years (HR, 1.17; 95% CI, 1.01-1.37), age 75 years or older (HR, 1.55; 95% CI, 1.31-1.84), and high Zarit Burden Scale score (for highest quartile: HR, 1.73; 95% CI, 1.49-2.00). Patients were assigned to quartiles of risk based on this model. In the development cohort, patients in the first, second, third, and fourth quartile had a 25%, 42%, 64%, and 91% rate of nursing home placement at 3 years, respectively. In the validation cohort, the respective rates were 21%, 50%, 64%, and 89%. The C statistic for 3-year nursing home placement was 0.66 in the development cohort and 0.63 in the validation cohort. CONCLUSIONS Patient and caregiver characteristics are both important determinants of long-term care placement for patients with dementia. Interventions directed at delaying placement, such as reduction of caregiver burden or difficult patient behaviors, need to take into account the patient and caregiver as a unit.
Paradoxical Increase of IgE Binding Components during Allergen-Specific Immunotherapy in Pollinosis Patients

Allergen-specific immunotherapy (SIT) reduces allergen specific IgE (sIgE) levels and achieves clinical and immunological tolerance by modulating innate and adaptive immunological responses. Increased temperature and CO2 concentrations caused by climate changes contribute to an increase of pollen count and allergenicity that influences clinical SIT outcomes. In this study, we investigated the changes of IgE binding components to tree and weed pollens in pollinosis patients who showed a paradoxical increase of serum sIgE level during pollen-SIT. We enrolled nine patients who showed an increasing pattern of serum sIgE level to alder, birch, ragweed and mugwort pollens by enzyme-linked immunosorbant assay. IgE immunoblot analysis confirmed the intensification or new generation of major IgE binding components that could be induced by climate change. The findings suggest that the regular monitoring of sIgE levels and symptom changes is required to improve the clinical outcomes of SIT in patients undergoing SIT for tree and weed pollens. Graphical Abstract
e-business adoption and use among African women-owned SMEs: an analytical study in Nigeria

This paper examines the factors that influence adoption and use of ICTs for business purposes (e-business) among women-owned small and medium enterprises (WOSMEs) in sub-Saharan Africa. SMEs are central to socio-economic development in Africa, but relatively little is known about e-business, particularly among African women entrepreneurs. Therefore, this study surveyed 140 WOSMEs in Nigeria, using questions shaped by the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology. Findings show that perceived usefulness seems to play the strongest single role in e-business adoption and use decisions within this demographic. Awareness of e-business technologies and availability of resources serve as enablers; market forces serve as a driver; and lack of infrastructure and resources function as impediments to adoption and use of e-business. These findings suggest that governments, development organisations or private sector actors seeking to increase e-business adoption rates among WOSMEs in Africa should focus on 1) e-business awareness-raising initiatives including use of e-business ambassadors; 2) developing mobile products and services that address specific communication and information needs across the value chain; and 3) increasing access to supporting resources and infrastructure.
Purification of a Multidrug Resistance Transporter for Crystallization Studies

Crystallization of integral membrane proteins is a challenging field and much effort has been invested in optimizing the overexpression and purification steps needed to obtain milligram amounts of pure, stable, monodisperse protein sample for crystallography studies. Our current work involves the structural and functional characterization of the Escherichia coli multidrug resistance transporter MdtM, a member of the major facilitator superfamily (MFS). Here we present a protocol for isolation of MdtM to increase yields of recombinant protein to the milligram quantities necessary for pursuit of structural studies using X-ray crystallography. Purification of MdtM was enhanced by introduction of an elongated His-tag, followed by identification and subsequent removal of chaperonin contamination. For crystallization trials of MdtM, detergent screening using size exclusion chromatography determined that decylmaltoside (DM) was the shortest-chain detergent that maintained the protein in a stable, monodispersed state. Crystallization trials of MdtM performed using the hanging-drop diffusion method with commercially available crystallization screens yielded 3D protein crystals under several different conditions. We contend that the purification protocol described here may be employed for production of high-quality protein of other multidrug efflux members of the MFS, a ubiquitous, physiologically and clinically important class of membrane transporters.
A Black Hole in the Living Room

We present a novel approach for studying a curved spacetime in a holistic, but still intuitive way. Using this approach, laymen and newcomers have a way to comprehend the properties of curved space without knowledge of the abstract mathematical formalism of non-euclidean spaces. Moreover, certain phenomena observable in astronomy can be demonstrated via familiar objects.
Peloruside- and Laulimalide-Resistant Human Ovarian Carcinoma Cells Have βI-Tubulin Mutations and Altered Expression of βII- and βIII-Tubulin Isotypes

Peloruside A and laulimalide are potent microtubule-stabilizing natural products with a mechanism of action similar to that of paclitaxel. However, the binding site of peloruside A and laulimalide on tubulin remains poorly understood. Drug resistance in anticancer treatment is a serious problem. We developed peloruside A- and laulimalide-resistant cell lines by selecting 1A9 human ovarian carcinoma cells that were able to grow in the presence of one of these agents. The 1A9-laulimalide resistant cells (L4) were 39-fold resistant to the selecting agent and 39-fold cross-resistant to peloruside A, whereas the 1A9-peloruside A resistant cells (R1) were 6-fold resistant to the selecting agent while they remained sensitive to laulimalide. Neither cell line showed resistance to paclitaxel or other drugs that bind to the taxoid site on β-tubulin nor was there resistance to microtubule-destabilizing drugs. The resistant cells exhibited impaired peloruside A/laulimalide-induced tubulin polymerization and impaired mitotic arrest. Tubulin mutations were found in the βI-tubulin isotype, R306H or R306C for L4 and A296T for R1 cells. This is the first cell-based evidence to support a β-tubulin–binding site for peloruside A and laulimalide. To determine whether the different resistance phenotypes of the cells were attributable to any other tubulin alterations, the β-tubulin isotype composition of the cells was examined. Increased expression of βII- and βIII-tubulin was observed in L4 cells only. These results provide insight into how alterations in tubulin lead to unique resistance profiles for two drugs, peloruside A and laulimalide, that have a similar mode of action. Mol Cancer Ther; 10(8); 1419–29. ©2011 AACR.
Test oracle assessment and improvement

We introduce a technique for assessing and improving test oracles by reducing the incidence of both false positives and false negatives. We prove that our approach can always result in an increase in the mutual information between the actual and perfect oracles. Our technique combines test case generation to reveal false positives and mutation testing to reveal false negatives. We applied the decision support tool that implements our oracle improvement technique to five real-world subjects. The experimental results show that the fault detection rate of the oracles after improvement increases, on average, by 48.6% (86% over the implicit oracle). Three actual, exposed faults in the studied systems were subsequently confirmed and fixed by the developers.
Rewriting with Linear Inferences in Propositional Logic

Linear inferences are sound implications of propositional logic where each variable appears exactly once in the premiss and conclusion. We consider a specific set of these inferences, MS, first studied by Strasburger, corresponding to the logical rules in deep inference proof theory. Despite previous results characterising the individual rules of MS, we show that there is no polynomial-time characterisation of MS, assuming that integers cannot be factorised in polynomial time. We also examine the length of rewrite paths in an extended system MSU that also has unit equations, utilising a notion dubbed trivialisation to reduce the case with units to the case without, amongst other observations on MS-rewriting and the set of linear inferences in general.
The Implementation of Database Partitioning Based on Streaming Framework

Horizontal and vertical partitioning can increase the performance of the database and simplify data management. However traditional partitioning techniques can't deal with stream queries efficiently. In this paper we present WSPS: a workload-driven stream partitioning system to solve the above problembytheintegrationofpartitioningtechnologyandstreaming framework. We construct a dynamic data model, cluster and merge nodes according to the node affinity, then get the optimal partitioning scheme according to a cost model. WSPS can deal with stream data and obtain real time partitioning scheme. Experimental results show that WSPS can improve the partitioning efficiency and reduce the computing complexity. Additionally, WSPS has good performance on horizontal scaling and high-throughput adaption.
DAGGER: Distributed architecture for granular mitigation of mobile based attacks

In this paper, we present DAGGER, a distributed architecture for collaborating mobile hosts and telecom operators for the granular mitigation of mobile-based attacks. Due to the growing usage of network resources by mobile handsets and the increasing spread of malicious applications among those handsets, it has become vital for mobile operators to join the fight against mobile-based attacks in order to protect their resources and infrastructure. Several security solutions are available in the market for telecom operators to detect anomalies. DAGGER extends those solutions and enables the operators to not only detect the subscriber(s) that generated anomalies, but also to granularly identify the malicious applications behind those abnormalities, allowing the operators to terminate the malwares themselves rather than shutdown the network connection for the mobile subscriber(s). We present an Android host-based component and define the distributed host-network communication procedure in order to identify malicious applications causing network anomalies and thus to terminate such applications.
Contextual Teaching-Learning Method to Improve Student Engagement among College Students in Cognitive Psychology Course

This study focus on how contextual teaching-learning (CTL), as one of learning method, can improve student engagement. Participants of this study were 156 college students in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. The study was conducted with an experimental approach. Measurement of student engagement was done by using School Engagement Scale. This scale was adapted into Indonesia version, and it has Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient 0.859 with 15 items. Result of data analysis showed that there was a significant difference on student engagement among college students (p=0.042), but student engagement scores in posttest was smaller than scores in pretest (N Negative Ranks = 83, Mean rank = 78.20; N Positive Rank = 64, Mean rank = 68.55; Ties = 9). Additional analysis was also discussed in this study.From this result, we can conclude that CTL not effective to improve student engagement among college students. Results and limitations of this study are discussed further in this paper.
A Node Replication Method to Guarantee Reachability for P2P Sensor Data Stream Delivery System on Heterogeneous Churn Situations

In this paper, we propose a method to construct scalable sensor data stream delivery system that guarantees the specified QoS of the delivery, i.e. Total reachbility to destinations even in a heterogeneous churn situation of the delivery server resources (nodes). There were some P2P-based methods to construct scalable and efficient sensor data stream system that accommodates different delivery cycles by distributing communication loads of the nodes. However, existing methods could not guarantee the QoS of the delivery when the nodes on the system has heterogeneous churn rate. Our method extends existing method, which assigns the relay nodes based on the distributed hashing of the time-to-deliver, to decide the number of replication nodes according to the churn rate of each node and delivery paths. By simulations, we confirmed that our proposed method can guarantee the required reach ability avoiding to increase unnecessary resource assignment costs.
3D CFD modeling of local scouring, bed armoring and sediment deposition

3D numerical models are increasingly used to simulate flow, sediment transport and morphological changes of rivers. For the simulation of bedload transport, the numerical flow model is generally coupled with an empirical sediment transport model. The application range of the most widely used empirical models is, however, often limited in terms of hydraulic and sedimentological features and therefore the numerical model can hardly be applied to complex situations where different kinds of morphological processes take place at the same time, such as local scouring, bed armoring and aggradation of finer particles. As a possible solution method for this issue, we present the combined application of two bedload transport formulas that widens the application range and thus gives more appropriate simulation results. An example of this technique is presented in the paper by combining two bedload transport formulas. For model validation, the results of a laboratory experiment, where bed armoring, local scouring and local sediment deposition processes occurred, were used. The results showed that the combined application method can improve the reliability of the numerical simulations.
Hepatitis C virus coinfection increases mortality in HIV-infected patients in the highly active antiretroviral therapy era: data from the HIV Atlanta VA Cohort Study.

BACKGROUND We compared survival among patients coinfected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV) with that among patients infected solely with HIV. METHODS Descriptive, bivariate, and survival analyses were conducted using data for all HIV-positive patients who were seen during the period of January 1997 through May 2001 in the HIV Atlanta VA Cohort Study (HAVACS) and who had been tested for HCV antibody since 1992 (n=970). RESULTS The prevalence of HCV coinfection was 31.6%, and coinfected patients were significantly more likely to be older, black, and injection drug users. In multivariate analysis, the duration of survival from the time of diagnosis of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) was significantly shortened for HIV-HCV-coinfected patients (hazard ratio [HR], 1.84; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.09-3.10), as was time from HIV diagnosis to death (HR, 2.47; 95% CI, 1.26-4.82). Recovery of CD4+ cell count from the time of initiation of HAART did not differ significantly by coinfection status. CONCLUSIONS HCV coinfection is common in this HIV-infected population and negatively affects survival from the time of both HIV and AIDS diagnoses, although this is apparently not associated with a difference in CD4+ cell recovery while receiving HAART. These findings differ from those of a previous study that was conducted in this cohort in the pre-HAART era, which found no association between HIV-HCV coinfection and HIV disease progression.
Tics and Shorter Stature: Should We Be Looking for an Association?

Background Tic disorders have commonly occurring and well recognized comorbidities including obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Shorter stature is not generally appreciated as an associated feature. Methods Case reports and a literature review. Results We describe four recently encountered patients with tics and shorter stature. The literature suggests that in addition to OCD and ADHD, shorter stature may also commonly accompany tic disorders. A variety of neuroendocrine mechanisms have been proposed. Discussion The potential associations between shorter stature and tic disorders and the common comorbidities OCD and ADHD deserve more attention. More research is needed to establish the strength of these associations and the underlying neurobiological mechanisms.
What Is Needed, What Is Valued: Trans Students’ Perspectives on Trans-Inclusive Policies and Practices in Higher Education

ABSTRACT This mixed-methods study of 507 trans and gender-nonconforming students (75% undergraduate, 25% graduate) aimed to understand (a) what institutional factors are associated with the presence of more trans-inclusive policies/supports, (b) what trans-inclusive policies/supports are viewed as important by different groups of trans students, and (c) how the presence of such policies/supports is related to trans students’ sense of belonging on campus and their perception of campus climate. Results indicated that religiously affiliated institutions and two-year institutions tend to lag behind in their inclusivity of trans students. Gender-inclusive restrooms, nondiscrimination policies that are inclusive of gender identity, and the ability to change one’s name on campus records without legal name change were among the supports that students valued most. Students articulated many concrete suggestions for institutions seeking to be more inclusive of their trans students. The known presence of trans-inclusive policies/supports was related to a greater sense of belonging and more positive perceptions of campus climate. These findings provide consultants and practitioners with guidance in identifying and promoting systems-level changes needed to support trans students.
A case study for tele-immersion communication applications: From 3D capturing to rendering

The primary objective of this paper is to present and analyze key aspects related to next-generation tele-immersion applications, studying the end-to-end chain from 3D capturing of remote users to rendering. The key modules for 3D reconstruction of moving humans and their mesh compression, are presented and discussed. The chain performance is evaluated in terms of frame-rates, delay, and visual quality.
From Situation Calculus to Fluent Calculus: a New Motivation

While historically the Fluent Calculus arose from approaches to the Frame Problem using non-classical, linear logics, an alternative is to view it as a development of the Situation Calculus with the aim of coping with the inferential aspect of the Frame Problem. Starting oo from the concept of successor state axioms as a solution to the representational aspect, we show how by gradual improvement regarding the inferential aspect, but without losing the representational merits , one nally arrives at a novel version of the Fluent Calculus. We illustrate that under the provision that actions have no so-called open eeects, any Situation Calculus speciication can be transformed into an essentially equivalent Fluent Calculus speciication. Our hope is that this alternative access to the Fluent Calculus both clariies its role in relation to the most popular axiomatization paradigm and helps enhancing its acceptance.
Ieee Transactions on Information Forensics and Security 1 a New View-invariant Feature for Cross-view Gait Recognition

—Human gait is an important biometric feature which is able to identify a person remotely. However, change of view causes significant difficulties for recognizing gaits. This paper proposes a new framework to construct a new view-invariant feature for cross-view gait recognition. Our view-normalization process is performed in the input layer (i.e. on gait silhouettes) to normalize gaits from arbitrary views. That is, each sequence of gait silhouettes recorded from a certain view is transformed onto the common canonical view by using corresponding domain transformation obtained through Invariant Low-rank Textures (TILT). Then, an improved scheme of Procrustes Shape Analysis (PSA) is proposed and applied on a sequence of the normalized gait silhouettes to extract a novel view-invariant gait feature based on Procrustes Mean Shape (PMS) and consecutively measure a gait similarity based on Procrustes Distance (PD). Comprehensive experiments were carried out on widely adopted gait databases. It has been shown that the performance of the proposed method is promising when compared with other existing methods in the literature.
A low power mm-wave oscillator using power matching techniques

A low power low voltage 90nm CMOS mm-wave oscillator using a power matching technique is presented. The oscillator uses an inductive divider to create impedance matching for the amplifier. With this technique, the effect of the varactor loss on the phase noise is reduced and the oscillator power efficiency is increased. The proposed oscillator achieves a phase noise of −95dBc/Hz at 1MHz offset from 64GHz carrier, consuming 3.16 mW from a 0.6 V supply voltage. The figures-of-merit are FOM −186 and FOMT −185 respectively. The tuning range is from 61.1 GHz to 66.7 GHz and the measured output power is about −14 dBm.