Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Impact of caregiver group psychoeducation on the course and outcome of bipolar patients in remission: a randomized controlled trial.

OBJECTIVE Although there are some randomized controlled trials that highlight the positive role of family-focused treatment added to pharmacotherapy in bipolar disorder, no trials using contemporary methodologies have analyzed the specific effect of working with caregiver-only groups. The aim of this study was to assess the efficacy of a psychoeducational group intervention focused on caregivers of euthymic bipolar patients. METHOD A total of 113 medicated euthymic bipolar outpatients who lived with their caregivers were randomized into an experimental and a control group. Caregivers in the experimental group received twelve 90-min group psychoeducation sessions focused on knowledge of bipolar disorder and training in coping skills. The patients did not attend the groups. Caregivers assigned to the control group did not receive any specific intervention. Patients were assessed monthly during both the intervention and the 12 months of follow-up. The primary outcome was time to any mood recurrence. RESULTS Psychoeducation group intervention focused on the caregivers of bipolar patients carried a reduction of the percentage of patients with any mood recurrence (chi2 = 6.53; p = 0.011) and longer relapse-free intervals (log-rank chi(2) = 4.04; p = 0.044). When different types of episodes were analyzed separately, the effect was significant for both the number of patients who experienced a hypomanic/manic recurrence (chi2 = 5.65; p = 0.017) and the time to such an episode (log-rank chi2 = 5.84; p = 0.015). The differences in preventing depressive and mixed episodes were not significant. CONCLUSIONS A psychoeducation group intervention for the caregivers of bipolar patients is a useful adjunct to usual treatment for the patients in reducing the risk of recurrences, particularly mania and hypomania, in bipolar disorder.
Having a Say Matters: Influence of Decision-Making Power on Contraceptive Use among Nigerian Women Ages 35–49 Years

Background Research suggests that women of reproductive age who are involved in household decision-making are more likely than those who are not involved to be able to control their fertility. Little is known, however, about this relationship among women at the upper end of the reproductive spectrum. The aim of this study was to determine the association between household decision-making power and modern contraceptive use among Nigerian women ages 35–49 years. Methods A descriptive, cross-sectional study involving a secondary analysis of data from the Nigerian 2008 Demographic and Health Survey was conducted among women ages 35–49 years who were considered to be in need of contraception. The outcome was modern contraceptive use while the main independent variable was a woman's household decision-making power score, constructed using principal component analysis. Multivariate logistic regression was performed to determine whether the women's household decision-making power score, categorized into tertiles, was independently associated with modern contraceptive use. Data were weighted and adjusted for the complex survey design. Results Prevalence of modern contraceptive use among Nigerian women deemed to be in need of contraception in this study was 18.7%. Multivariate logistic regression showed that women's decision-making power remained statistically significantly associated with modern contraceptive use, even after adjusting for age, education, religion, polygyny, parity, wealth and domicile. Women who were in the highest decision-making power tertile had more than one and a half times the odds of using modern contraception compared with women in the lowest tertile [Adjusted Odds Ratio = 1.70; 95% Confidence Interval = 1.31–2.21, p<0.001]. Significance Older Nigerian women who are involved in making household decisions are also able to make decisions related to their fertility. Programs in Nigeria focused on increasing modern contraceptive use should include strategies to increase women's status through encouraging more visible involvement in decision-making across different spheres of their lives.
Financial Sector Reforms in Developing Countries with Special Reference to Egypt

Financial Sector Reforms in Developing Countries with Special Reference to Egypt Philip Arestis, The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College ABSTRACT Financial reforms, and financial liberalization in particular, have been at the root of many recent cases of financial and banking crises. In several countries financial reforms allowed real interest rates to reach levels exceeding 20 percent per annum in some cases; in other cases, banking and financial crises led to currency crises. National governments either abandoned attempts at implementing financial liberalization (some countries even reimposed controls) or were forced to intervene by nationalizing banks and guaranteeing deposits. This paper draws on this experience to show that the main cause of these crises is the application of a theoretical framework that is predicated on a number of assumptions that are problematic and based on weak empirical foundations. Consequently, it should be no surprise that the reforms were often unsuccessful and in many cases led to severe financial crises. We will also argue that the case of Egypt is particularly interesting in this regard, since although financial reforms have been enacted, the experience has been rather different: there has been no accompanying financial crisis.
Electromagnetic properties of a WPT system applied on transmission lines

Wireless power transfer (WPT) technology can be potentially used to solve the power supply source problem of electronic equipment in high-voltage terminals. To achieve that, both the magnetic field and electric field around the transmission line should be analyzed to validate the availability of WPT technology. In this paper an analysis on the induced voltage generated by the power frequency magnetic field (PFMF) is presented. After a 3D model of the WPT system is established in Maxwell, the simulation on the potential distribution on the ends of the insulator is carried out Results show that the induced voltage can hardly affect the power transmission. Meanwhile, when WPT devices are added on the line, the potential difference between the two ends of the insulator can also be reduced to a safe range.
AKARI DETECTION OF FAR-INFRARED DUST EMISSION IN THE HALO OF NGC 253

We present new far-infrared (FIR) images of the edge-on starburst galaxy NGC 253 obtained with the Far-Infrared Surveyor (FIS) onboard AKARI at wavelengths of 90 μm and 140 μm. We have clearly detected FIR dust emission extended in the halo of the galaxy; there are two filamentary emission structures extending from the galactic disk up to 9 kpc in the northern and 6 kpc in the northwestern direction. From its spatial coincidence with the X-ray plasma outflow, the extended FIR emission is very likely to represent outflowing dust entrained by superwinds. The ratios of surface brightness at 90 μm to that at 140 μm suggest that the temperatures of the dust in the halo are getting higher in the regions far from the disk, implying that there exist extra dust heating sources in the halo of the galaxy.
Multiwavelength optical beam forming network with ring resonator-based binary-tree architecture for broadband phased array antenna systems

Integrated optical beam forming networks (OBFNs) offer many advantages for phased array applications. ORR-based true-time-delay units can be cascaded in a binary tree topology and tuned for continuously-adjustable broadband time delay. Nonetheless, with large number of antenna elements, the OBFN may become very complex. A novel idea is proposed to exploit the frequency periodicity of the ORRs and the WDM technique to achieve multiple-signal-paths on a single beamformer, thus reducing complexity and costs. The use of high index contrast waveguides in Si-compatible technology further reduces chip footprint and allows the use of integrated OBFNs for large arrays and multi-beam applications.
Preconditioned Iterative Solvers for Inductance Extraction of VLSI Circuits

Parasitic extraction techniques are used to estimate signal delay in VLSI circuits. Inductance extraction is a critical component of the parasitic extraction process that involves estimation of on-chip inductive effects with high accuracy. The problem requires the solution of a large, dense, complex linear system of equations, where the unknown current must satisfy the constraint imposed by Kirchoff’s current law. In this paper, we describe a solenoidal basis method to transform the constrained linear system into an unconstrained one. The method uses discrete local solenoidal flows to represent the unknown current, and to obtain a reduced linear system. The paper proposes preconditioning techniques that do not require explicit construction of the reduced system. Numerical experiments are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the preconditioning approach. Comparisons with a well-known inductance extraction package are provided to highlight the advantages of the proposed scheme.
Identifying Threats and Threatening Identities: The Social Construction of Realism and Liberalism

How does a state determine if another state is an important military or economic threat? The issue of threat perception drives a wide variety of behaviors, from allegiance formation and defense spending to trade relations and regime membership. While liberal theorists and realists both agree that threat perception is a cornerstone of international relations, there is widespread disagreement on the factors that contribute to our fear of other states. In particular, the field is deeply divided between those who believe material factors such as the balance of military power determine the perception of threat and those who believe ideational factors such as shared democratic value determine the perception of threat. Using a variety of social scientific methods of investigation ranging from laboratory experiments and public opinion surveys to computer simulations and case studies, Rousseau challenges these conventional arguments and sheds new light on this debate. He presents a model of identity formation that can explain when ideas will (and will not) have a decisive impact on threat perception.
Effects of Positive End-expiratory Pressure and Different Tidal Volumes on Alveolar Recruitment and Hyperinflation

Background The morphologic effect of positive end-expiratory pressure (PEEP) and of two tidal volumes were studied by computed tomography to determine whether setting the tidal volume (Vt) at the upper inflection point (UIP) of the pressure-volume (P-V) curve of the respiratory system or 10 ml/kg have different effects on hyperinflation and alveolar recruitment. Methods Alveolar recruitment and hyperinflation were quantified by computed tomography in nine patients with the acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). First, end expiration was compared without PEEP and with PEEP set at the lower inflection point of the P-V curve; second, at end inspiration above PEEP, a reduced Vt set at the UIP (rVt) and a standard 10 ml/kg Vt (Vt) ending above the UIP were compared. Three lung zones were defined from computed tomographic densities: hyperdense, normal, and hyperinflated zones. Results Positive end-expiratory pressure induced a significant decrease in hyperdensities (from 46.8 +/- 18% to 38 +/- 15.1% of zero end-expiratory pressure (ZEEP) area; P < 0.02) with a concomitant increase in normal zones (from 47.3 +/- 20.9% to 56.5 +/- 13.2% of the ZEEP area; P < 0.05), and a significant increase in hyperinflation (from 8.1 +/- 5.9% to 17.8 +/- 12.7% of ZEEP area; P < 0.01). At end inspiration, a significant increase in hyperinflated areas was observed with Vt compared with rVt (33.4 +/- 17.8 vs. 26.8 +/- 17.3% of ZEEP area; P < 0.05), whereas no significant difference was observed for both normal and hyperdense zones. Conclusions end-expiratory pressure promotes alveolar recruitment; increasing Vt above the UIP seems to predominantly increase hyperinflation.
Phenylalanine: Its ˙OH and SO4˙⁻-Induced Oxidation and Decarboxylation. A Pulse Radiolysis and Product Analysis Study

Phenylamine has been oxidized by radiolytically generated hydroxyl and sulfate radicals, the ensuing intermediates and their reactions have been studied by pulse radiolysis and product analysis in the absence and presence of oxidants such as Fe(CN)63- and O2. Upon OH radical attack, hydroxycyclohexadienyl-type radicals are mainly formed while Η-abstraction reactions can be neglected. In the presence of Fe(CN)63- these radicals are for the most part oxidized to the corresponding tyrosines (80%), except for the ipso-OH-adduct radicals (≈ 20%). It is concluded that ˙OH-addition is almost random, but with a slight avoidance of the metaposition relative to the ortho-, para- and ipso-positions. Oxygen adds reversibly to the OH-adduct radicals (kf = 1.8 × 108 dm3 mol-1 s-1, kr = 5.4 × 104 s-1). In this case, tyrosine formation occurs by HO2˙-elimination. However, due to side reactions, tyrosine formation only reaches 52% of the OH radical yield. The tyrosine yield drops to 10% in the absence of an oxidant. Upon SO4˙⁻-attack, decarboxylation becomes a major process (33% of SO4˙⁻) alongside the production of tyrosines (43%). Here, with Fe(CN)63- as the oxidant the formation of p-Tyr (18.5%) and m-Tyr (16.5%) is preferred over o-Tyr formation (8.5%). It is believed that in analogy to other systems a radical cation is formed immediately upon SO4˙⁻-attack which either reacts with water under the formation of hydroxycyclohexadienyl-type (“OH-adduct”) radicals, or decarboxylates after intramolecular electron transfer. The radical cation can also arise indirectly through H+-catalysed water elimination from the ˙OH-adduct radicals. At pH 2 and a dose rate of 0.0046 Gy s-1 CO2 formation matches the OH radical yield when ˙OH is the attacking radical. Below pH 2, G(CO2) decreases with falling pH. This indicates the occurrence of another, unimolecular, pathway under these conditions competing effectively with decarboxylation. This appears to be a relatively slow deprotonation reaction of the carboxylprotonated phenylalanine radical cation which gives rise to the benzyl-type radical.
Plateforme pour se proteger tant de soi-meme que de ses amis sur facebook

Social networks deal every day with millions of users (individuals or companies). They are directly affected by their rapid expansion. Some have developed a certain dependence on the use of social networks and even transform their everyday lifestyle. However, this craze for social networking is not always secure. It is obvious that their expansion promotes and serves the increase of online attacks. Social networks are an ideal opportunity for criminals and fraudsters to take advantage of users. They give access to millions of potential victims. Threats coming from “friends” on social networks are numerous: cyberintimidation, fraud, criminal harassment, moral and physical threats, incitement to suicide, circulation of compromising contents, hatred promotions, etc. There is also a “very close friend” who could cause us problems with his behavior on social networks: ourselves. When a user discloses too much information about himself, it contributes unwittingly to attracting scammers who are continually looking for preys. This thesis presents a new approach to protect Facebook users. We created a platform based on two systems: Protect_U and Protect_UFF. The first system tries to protect users from themselves by analysing the content of their profiles and by suggesting a list of recommendations in order to reduce the publication of private information. The second system aims to protect users from their “friends” who have profiles presenting alarming symptoms (psychopaths, fraudsters, criminals, etc.) taking into account essentially three main parameters: narcissism, lack of emotions and aggressive behaviour.
Query Optimization over Cloud Data Market

Data market is an emerging type of cloud service that enables a data owner to sell their data sets in a public cloud. Buyers who are interested in a certain dataset can access the data in the market via a RESTful API. Accessing data in the data market may not be free. For example, it costs USD 12 per month to obtain 100 “transactions” from the WorldWide Historical Weather dataset in Windows Azure Data Marketplace, where a transaction is a unit of result size (e.g., a query result of 4400 records would consume 44 transactions as Windows Azure Data Marketplace confines one transaction to 100 records). Therefore, in this paper, we present PayLess, a system that helps data buyers to optimize their queries so that they can obtain the query results by paying less to the data sellers. Experiments over synthetic data and real data sets in Windows Azure Marketplace show that PayLess can cost-effectively handle SQL query processing over data markets.
Designing secure and reliable wireless sensor networks under a pairwise key predistribution scheme

We investigate k-connectivity in secure wireless sensor networks under the random pairwise key predistribution scheme with unreliable links; a network is said to be k-connected if it remains connected despite the failure of any of its (k - 1) nodes or links. With wireless communication links modeled as independent on-off channels, this amounts to analyzing a random graph model formed by intersecting a random K-out graph and an Erdös-Rényi graph. We present conditions on how to scale the parameters of this intersection model so that the resulting graph is k-connected with probability approaching to one (resp. zero) as the number of nodes gets large. The resulting zero-one law is shown to improve and sharpen the previous result on the 1-connectivity of the same model. We also provide numerical results to support our analysis and show that even in the finite node regime, our results can provide useful guidelines for designing sensor networks that are secure and reliable.
Combating Drug Resistant Pathogenic Bacteria Isolated from Clinical Infections, with Silver Oxide Nanoparticles

The antibiogram study of methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus isolates revealed 100% resistance to vancomycin, bacitracin, erythromycin, ciprofloxacin and nalidixic acid. Eight isolates (53.3%) showed resistance to co-trimoxazole and one isolate to rifampicin, which was the drug of choice. An effort was made to evaluate the antimethicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus activity of silver oxide (Ag2O) nanoparticles synthesized from Aspergillus terreus VIT 2013. Production of Ag2O nanoparticles was confirmed by color change of fungal filtrate and UV light absorption at 450 nm. X-ray diffraction pattern showed 2θ values at 27, 32, 38 and 57°, which corresponded to the cubic structure of Ag2O nanocrystals. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy indicated the presence of primary amine, carbonyl group, NO2 and silver, revealing protein mediated nanoparticle production. The scanning electron microscope image showed freely dispersed Ag2O nanoparticles. The nanoparticles were active against all methicillin resistant isolates and hence can be used as antibacterial agents against drug resistant bacteria.
Bacterial Endophthalmitis: Epidemiology, Therapeutics, and Bacterium-Host Interactions

SUMMARY Endophthalmitis is a severe inflammation of the interior of the eye caused by the introduction of contaminating microorganisms following trauma, surgery, or hematogenous spread from a distant infection site. Despite appropriate therapeutic intervention, bacterial endophthalmitis frequently results in visual loss, if not loss of the eye itself. Although the pathogenicity of bacterial endophthalmitis has historically been linked with toxin production during infection, a paucity of information exists as to the exact mechanisms of retinal toxicity and the triggers for induction of the intraocular immune response. Recently, research has begun to examine the bacterial and host molecular and cellular events that contribute to ocular damage during endophthalmitis. This review focuses on the causative agents and therapeutic challenges of bacterial endophthalmitis and provides current data from the analysis of the role of bacterial virulence factors and host inflammatory interactions in the pathogenesis of eye infections. Based on these and related studies, a hypothetical model for the molecular pathogenesis of bacterial endopthalmitis is proposed. Identifying and understanding the basic mechanisms of these bacterium-host interactions will provide the foundation for which novel, information-based therapeutic agents are developed in order to prevent vision loss during endophthalmitis.
Nonlinear Estimation and Multiple Sensor Fusion Using Unscented Information Filtering

This letter represents a new unscented information filtering algorithm for nonlinear estimation and multiple sensor information fusion. The proposed information fusion algorithm is derived by embedding the unscented transformation method used in the sigma point filter into the extended information filtering architecture. The new information filter achieves not only the accuracy and robustness of the sigma point filter but also the flexibility of the information filter for multiple sensor estimation. Performance comparison of the proposed filter with the extended information filter is demonstrated through a target-tracking simulation study.
A longitudinal study of IP Anycast

IP anycast is a commonly used technique to share the load of a variety of global services. For more than one year, leveraging a lightweight technique for IP anycast detection, enumeration and geolocation, we perform regular IP monthly censuses. This paper provides a brief longitudinal study of the anycast ecosystem, and we additionally make all our datasets (raw measurements from PlanetLab and RIPE Atlas), results (monthly geolocated anycast replicas for all IP/24) and code available to the community.