Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Patient Perception , Preference and Participation Experiences of the encounter with the diabetes team — A comparison between obese and normal-weight type 2 diabetic patients

Objective: The aim of this study was to highlight and compare obese and normal-weight type 2 diabetic patients’ perceptions and reported behaviors in terms of their care encounter with the diabetes team. Methods: Interviews were conducted with 28 diabetic patients. Qualitative content analysis was used as analysis method. Results: The experiences revealed that when the care encounters took place from a health care perspective, there were no opportunities for individual support. For the obese diabetic patients, especially women, this gave rise to feelings of being stuck, defiance and shame, for those of normal weight, it created a sense of being left, despair and confusion. When encounters took place from the perspective of the individual, the diabetic patients need for support was fulfilled. For the obese diabetic patients this meant that the health care professionals recognised their needs and for those of normal weight, a feeling of security was created. Conclusions: The results demonstrate differences in the experiences of obese and normal-weight diabetic patients’ men and women in terms of their encounters with the diabetes team. Practice implication: Diabetic patients, especially the obese diabetic women, require tailor-made support provided by the health professionals in the diabetes team. 2010 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.
Fast Convergent Algorithms for Expectation Propagation Approximate Bayesian Inference

We propose a novel algorithm to solve the expectation propagation relaxation of Bayesian inference for continuous-variable graphical models. In contrast to most previous algorithms, our method is provably convergent. By marrying convergent EP ideas from [15] with covariance decoupling techniques [23, 13], it runs at least an order of magnitude faster than the most common EP solver.
Reduced phase space and toric variety coordinatizations of Delzant spaces

Abstract In this note we describe the natural coordinatizations of a Delzant space defined as a reduced phase space (symplectic geometry view-point) and give explicit formulas for the coordinate transformations. For each fixed point of the torus action on the Delzant polytope, we have a maximal coordinatization of an open cell in the Delzant space which contains the fixed point. This cell is equal to the domain of definition of one of the natural coordinatizations of the Delzant space as a toric variety (complex algebraic geometry view-point), and we give an explicit formula for the toric variety coordinates in terms of the reduced phase space coordinates. We use considerations in the maximal coordinate neighborhoods to give simple proofs of some of the basic facts about the Delzant space, as a reduced phase space, and as a toric variety. These can be viewed as a first application of the coordinatizations, and serve to make the presentation more self-contained.
Fully covered metallic stents in biliary stenosis after orthotopic liver transplantation

Background and study aims: Data from a preliminary study suggested that the placement of a fully covered metal stent may be a valid alternative to surgery in patients who do not respond to standard endoscopic treatment. The aims of the current study were to evaluate the clinical success of self-expandable metallic stents (SEMS) in a large cohort of patients and with a long follow-up, and the effectiveness of SEMS placement as a first-line procedure. Materials and methods: Between January 2008 and August 2010, 54 consecutive patients with biliary complications following orthotopic liver transplantation were treated with SEMS placement: 39 after failure of conventional endoscopic therapy (Group I), and 15 with no previous endoscopic treatment who were undergoing SEMS placement as first-line treatment for complications (Group II). Results: In Group I, resolution after SEMS removal was observed in 71.8 % of patients. Mean follow-up after resolution was 22.1 ±10 months. Recurrence of the complication was observed in 14.3 % of patients after a mean of 8.5 months and SEMS migration was observed in 33.3 % of patients. In Group II, resolution was observed in 53.3 % of patients. Mean follow-up after resolution was 14.4 ±2.2 months. Recurrence was observed in 25 % of patients and SEMS migration was observed in 46.7 %. Conclusions: For endotherapy of biliary complications after orthotopic liver transplantation, metallic stents should not be used as the primary modality. In patients in whom the standard approach fails, treatment with temporary SEMS placement can solve biliary complications in almost three-quarters of cases; however stent migration (33 %) remains a problem.
The BloodGen project: toward mass‐scale comprehensive genotyping of blood donors in the European Union and beyond

Neil D. Avent, Antonio Martinez, Willy A. Flegel, Martin L. Olsson, Marion L. Scott, Núria Nogués, Martin Písǎcka, Geoff Daniels, Ellen van der Schoot, Eduardo Muñiz-Diaz, Tracey E. Madgett, Jill R. Storry, Sigrid H. Beiboer, Petra A. Maaskant-van Wijk, Inge von Zabern, Elisa Jiménez, Diego Tejedor, Mónica López, Emma Camacho, Goedele Cheroutre, Anita Hacker, Pavel Jinoch, Irena Svobodova, and Masja de Haas
InN Nanowires: Growth and Optoelectronic Properties

An overview on InN nanowires, fabricated using either a catalyst-free molecular beam epitaxy method or a catalyst assisted chemical vapor deposition process, is provided. Differences and similarities of the nanowires prepared using the two techniques are presented. The present understanding of the growth and of the basic optical and transport properties is discussed.
Computerized tomography of the brain in children with chronic renal failure.

We performed computerized tomography (CT) of the brain in 22 patients, 2 to 18 years of age, with stable chronic renal failure (n = 6), on dialysis (n = 14) and after renal transplantation (n = 2). None suffered from a systemic disease known to affect the central nervous system (CNS) and none had overt CNS dysfunction at the time of the CT examination. The most striking pathological finding was brain atrophy, which was present in 13 patients (59%). In two patients cortical infarcts were present and one patient was found to have a hypodense area in the basal ganglia. The brain atrophy could not be related to the type of basic renal disease, the age of the patient, corticosteroid dosage, the duration of the renal failure or the presence of hypertension However, the mode of treatment, i.c. hemodialysis, seemed to be a risk factor. We assume that metabolic derangements and/or the accumulation of toxic substances due to the uremic state may be responsible for the brain atrophy in young patients with CRF. Recurrent osmotic changes of the brain during hemodialysis may aggravate the process of brain atrophy.
Mid-diaphyseal Endosteal Thickening With Subsequent Medullary Narrowing in a Patient With Hallermann-Streiff Syndrome

We report on a 5-year-old girl who presented with the full clinical criteria of Hallermann-Streiff syndrome (HSS). Classically, overtubulation (thin and gracile) bones are the characteristic and constant features in HSS. Interestingly, our present patient manifested unusual mid-diaphyseal endosteal thickening with subsequent medullary narrowing (defective endosteal resorption). To the best of our knowledge no previous reports described such unusual feature in a patient with HSS. Keywords Hallermann-Streiff syndrome; Mid-diaphyseal thickening; Radiology
Adsorption of Bence–Jones protein to polymethylmethacrylate membrane in primary amyloidosis

Primary amyloidosis is an incurable disease through high dose melphalan chemotherapy sometime achieves some efficacy in certain patients. The success of the melphalan chemotherapy appears to be associated with reduction of amyloidogenic immunoglobulin light chain (Bence–Jones Protein; BJP). Thus, in an attempt to reduce the BJP load, we conducted adsorption of BJP using polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) membrane in a patient with primary amyloidosis suffering nephritic syndrome, who chose not to receive high dose melphalan chemotherapy. Following adsorption, the patient reported an improvement of sensory disturbance in fingers. This was confirmed by markedly improved sensory nerve action potential. Western blot analysis of patient's serum also revealed a significant reduction of both multimer and monomer of BJP following adsorption using the PMMA membrane. These results suggest that removal of BJP by PMMA membrane could serve as an alternate therapeutic method in the treatment of primary amyloidosis.
Motion Control of Wheeled Mobile Robots with Model Predictive Techniques

This work outlines MPC (model predictive control) studies for mobile robots when local motion is considered. Different kinematic mobile robot configurations are introduced. Experiences are conducted by using a differential driven WMR (wheeled mobile robot) as an available vehicle that can represent nonholonomic kinematics constraints. Motion control is done using dynamic models, and selecting orientation and local desired-point distances as control law parameters. MPC is implemented by computing the horizon of suitable coordinates. Command speeds corresponding to the desired point are obtained by minimizing a cost function in which the population of available coordinates is taken into account. The research reported in this paper includes a set of experimental results obtained by testing different trajectories. Parameters such as time, accuracy, speed, and travelled distance are compared from statistics for different control laws.
Arguing about the world: the work and legacy of Meghnad Desai

Meghnad Desai is Professor Emeritus of Economics at the LSE. He is founder of LSE Global Governance. From 1990-1995 he was Director of LSE's Development Studies Institute and has been at the LSE for over 30 years. In 1991, Meghnad Desai was created Lord Desai of St Clement Danes. His latest book is Marx's Revenge: The Resurgence of Capitalism and the Death of Statist Socialism. By enabling leading scholars and other public figures to explore the subjects that inspired them and Lord Desai, the publication will offer a fascinating exploration of progress on economics, human rights and development issues. The initiative identifies the continuing contribution made by Lord Desai, and the development of the themes highlighted by his work. Topics covered include: Econometric modelling, Macro economics and monetary theory, Development, Inequality, poverty and famines, Marx and political economy, Globalisation and global governance, History of economic ideas, and Nationalism in South Asia. Contributors include: Robert Skidelsky, Charles Goodhart, David Hendry, John Harriss, Purna Sen and others.
Intelligent and adaptive middleware to improve user-perceived QoS in multimedia applications

We investigate the use of adaptive multimedia applications to improve the user-perceived QoS in next-generation wireless networks. These networks will be characterized by the heterogeneity of the access technologies including ad hoc wireless network extensions. In these network scenarios in which the links are error-prone, their capacity is extremely variable and even the topology can change due to handovers and mobility of the nodes, it is unrealistic to think of traditional network-layer QoS mechanisms alone, as a means to offer strict end-to-end QoS guarantees. As a complement to the network-layer QoS protocols, this paper presents an intelligent adaptation middleware allowing multimedia applications to dynamically adapt their internal settings. This intelligence enables the applications to minimize the impact of the adverse and changing network conditions in the QoS level perceived by the user. We use a machine learning technique to model the user's perception of QoS from a large set of QoS scores given by real users. We present some results demonstrating that our proposal clearly outperforms traditional multimedia internetworking.
Immune ant swarm optimization for optimum rough reducts generation

Ant Swarm Optimization refers to the hybridization of Particle Swarm Optimization PSO and Ant Colony Optimization ACO algorithms to enhance optimization performance. It is used in rough reducts calculation for identifying optimally significant attributes set. This paper proposes a hybrid ant swarm optimization algorithm by using immunity to discover better fitness value in optimizing rough reducts set. By integrating PSO with ACO, it will enhance the ability of PSO when updating its local search upon quality solution as the number of generations is increased. Unlike the conventional PSO/ACO algorithm, proposed Immune ant swarm algorithm aims to preserve global search convergence of PSO when reaching the optimum especially under the high dimension situation of optimization with small population size. By combining PSO with ACO algorithms and embedding immune approach, the approach is expected to be able to generate better optimal rough reducts, where PSO algorithm performs the global exploration which can effectively reach the optimal or near optimal solution to increase fitness value as compared to the past research in optimization of attribute reduction. This research is also to enhance the optimization ability by defining a suitable fitness function with immunity process to increase the competency in attribute reduction and has shown improvement of the classification accuracy with its generated reducts in solving NP-Hard problem. The proposed algorithm has shown promising experimental results in obtaining optimal reducts when tested on 12 common benchmark datasets. Result for rough reducts and fitness value performance has been discussed and briefly explored in order to identify the best solution. The experimental analysis on the initial results of IASORR has been proven to offer a better quality algorithm and to maintain PSO's performance, which are also encouraging in t-test analysis, for most of the tested datasets.
Research on an Inverter Output Filter for Reducing Common-Mode Voltage at Motor Terminals in PWM Drive System

Pulse width modulated (PWM) inverter can generate common-mode voltage. Common-mode voltage can produce charge-discharge current at the distant of every insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) high-speed switching. This current creates leakage current escaping to earth through stray capacitors inside motors. The large leakage current can create electromagnetic interference (EMI) and short the life of motor bearings, effect reliability of the whole system. A novel PWM inverter output filter is proposed for common-mode voltage reduction. A compensating voltage with the same amplitude but with the opposite polarity is imposed to the common-mode voltage generated by the PWM inverter. Analysis and experiment results confirm the validity of the proposed filter that the common-mode voltage at motor terminals is eliminated almost completely and the adverse effects of the common-mode voltage, such as shaft voltage and leakage current, are unobvious
Context Modulates the Contribution of Time and Space in Causal Inference

Humans use kinematic temporal and spatial information from the environment to infer the causal dynamics (e.g., force) of an event. We hypothesize that the basis for these inferences are malleable and modulated by contextual temporal and spatial information. Specifically, the present research investigates whether the extent of a person’s ongoing experience with direct causal events (e.g., temporally contiguous and spatially continuous) alters their use of time and space in judgments of causality. Participants made inferences of causality on animated launching events depicting a blue ball colliding with and then “launching” a red ball. We parametrically manipulated temporal contiguity and spatial continuity by varying the duration of contact between the balls and the angle of the second ball’s movement. We manipulated participants’ level of exposure to direct causal events (i.e., events with no delay or angle change) between experiments (Experiment 1: 2%, Experiment 2: 25%, Experiment 3: 75%). We found that participants adjust the temporal and spatial parameters they use to judge causality to accommodate the context in which they apprehended launching events. Participants became more conservative in their use of temporal and spatial parameters to judge causality as their exposure to direct causal events increased. People use time and space flexibly to infer causality based on their ongoing experiences. Such flexibility in making causal inferences may have adaptive significance.
Frequent Frameshift and Point Mutations in the SH Gene of Human Metapneumovirus Passaged In Vitro

ABSTRACT During the preparation of recombinant derivatives of the CAN97-83 clinical isolate of human metapneumovirus (HMPV), consensus nucleotide sequencing of the recovered RNA genomes provided evidence of frequent sequence heterogeneity at a number of genome positions. This heterogeneity was suggestive of sizable subpopulations containing mutations. An analysis of molecularly cloned cDNAs confirmed the presence of mixed populations. The biologically derived virus on which the recombinant system is based also contained sizeable mutant subpopulations, whose presence was confirmed by biological cloning and nucleotide sequencing. Most of the mutations occurred in the SH gene. For example, partial consensus sequencing of 40 independent preparations of recombinant HMPV (wild-type and various derivatives) showed that 31 of these preparations contained a total of 41 instances of small insertions in the SH gene and a total of five small insertions elsewhere. In each of these 31 preparations, there was at least one insert in SH that changed the reading frame and would yield a truncated protein. Nearly all of these insertions involved adding one or more A residues to various tracks of four or more A residues, with the most frequent site being a tract of seven A residues. There were also two instances of nucleotide deletions and numerous instances of nucleotide substitution point mutations, mostly in the SH gene. The occurrence of mutant subpopulations was greatly reduced by the replacement of the SH gene with a synthetic version in which these oligonucleotide tracts were eliminated by silent nucleotide changes. We suggest that we frequently detected subpopulations in which the expression of full-length SH protein was ablated because it provided a modest selective advantage to this clinical isolate in vitro. Adaptation involving the functional loss of a gene is unusual for an RNA virus.
Fast Two-Level Address Translation for Virtualized Systems

Recently, there have been several improvements in architectural supports for two-level address translation for virtualized systems. However, those improvements including HW-based two-dimensional (2D) page walkers have extended the traditional multi-level page tables, without considering the memory management characteristics of virtual machines. This paper exploits the unique behaviors of the hypervisor, and proposes three new nested address translation schemes for virtualized systems. The first scheme called nested segmentation is designed for static memory allocation, and uses HW segmentation to map the VM memory directly to large contiguous memory regions. The second scheme proposes to use a flat nested page table for each VM, reducing memory accesses by the current 2D page walkers. The third scheme uses speculative inverted shadow paging, backed by non-speculative flat nested page tables. The speculative mechanism provides direct translation with a single memory reference for common cases without page table synchronization overheads. We evaluate the proposed schemes with the Xen hypervisor running on a full system simulator. Nested segmentation can reduce the overheads of two-level translation significantly for a certain cloud computing model. The nested segmentation, flat page tables, and speculative shadowing improve a state-of-the-art 2D page walker by 10, 7, and 14 percent respectively.
Unobstructed modular deformation problems

Let / be a newform of weight k > 3 with Fourier coefficients in a number field K. We show that the universal deformation ring of the mod A Galois representation associated to / is unobstructed, and thus isomorphic to a power series ring in three variables over the Witt vectors, for all but finitely many primes A of K. We give an explicit bound on such A for the 6 known cusp forms of level 1 , trivial character, and rational Fourier coefficients. We also prove a somewhat weaker result for weight 2.
Sevoflurane Protects Ventricular Myocytes from Ca2+ Paradox-mediated Ca2+ Overload by Blocking the Activation of Transient Receptor Potential Canonical Channels

Background: Volatile anesthetics produce cardioprotective action by attenuating cellular Ca2+ overload. The Ca2+ paradox is an important model for studying the mechanisms associated with Ca2+ overload-mediated myocardial injury, and was recently found to be mediated by Ca2+ entry through the transient receptor potential canonical channels upon Ca2+ repletion. This study investigated the effect of sevoflurane on cellular mechanisms underlying the Ca2+ paradox. Methods: The Ca2+ paradox was examined in fluo-3 or mag-fluo-4-loaded mouse ventricular myocytes using confocal laser scanning microscope, upon Ca2+ repletion after 15 min of Ca2+ depletion in the absence and presence of sevoflurane. Results: The Ca2+ paradox was evoked in approximately 65% of myocytes upon Ca2+ repletion, as determined by an abrupt elevation of cytosolic Ca2+ accompanied by hypercontracture. The Ca2+ paradox was significantly suppressed by sevoflurane administered for 3 min before and during Ca2+ repletion (Post) or during Ca2+ depletion and repletion (Postlong), and Postlong was more beneficial than Post application. The sarcoplasmic reticulum Ca2+ levels gradually decreased during Ca2+ depletion, and the Ca2+ paradox was readily evoked in myocytes with reduced sarcoplasmic reticulum Ca2+ levels. Postlong but not Post application of sevoflurane prevented decrease in sarcoplasmic reticulum Ca2+ levels by blocking Ca2+ leak through ryanodine receptors. Whole cell patch-clamp recordings revealed that sevoflurane rapidly blocked thapsigargin-induced transient receptor potential canonical currents. Conclusions: Sevoflurane protects ventricular myocytes from Ca2+ paradox-mediated Ca2+ overload by blocking transient receptor potential canonical channels and by preventing the decrease in sarcoplasmic reticulum Ca2+ levels, which is associated with less activation of transient receptor potential canonical channels.
Cooperative networks: the mobile tethering game

We propose an analysis of cooperation for data sharing and the behavioral aspects involved in the process of decision making. Starting with the tethering capabilities of recent devices we apply game theoretical principles and models, inquire what makes the cooperation work, and what are the economical implications required to build a cooperative network. Aggregating the game theory with the results of the market inquiry of a questionnaire and with a developed android application, will give us an idea of why and how people share.