Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Does the Extension of Primary Care Practice Opening Hours Reduce the Use of Emergency Services?

Overcrowding in emergency departments generates potential inefficiencies. Using regional administrative data, we investigate the impact that an increase in the accessibility of primary care has on emergency visits in Italy. We consider two measures of avoidable emergency visits recorded at list level for each General Practitioner. We test whether extending practices' opening hours to up to 12 hours/day reduces the inappropriate utilization of emergency services. Since subscribing to the extension program is voluntary, we account for the potential endogeneity of participation in a count model for emergency admissions in two ways: first, we use a two-stage residual inclusion approach. Then we exploit panel methods on data covering a three-year period, thus accounting directly for individual heterogeneity. Our results show that increasing primary care accessibility acts as a restraint on the inappropriate use of emergency departments. The estimated effect is in the range of a 10-15% reduction in inappropriate admissions.
METAHEURISTICS VERSUS SPECTRAL AND MULTILEVEL METHODS APPLIED ON AN AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL PROBLEM

Abstract In this paper, different metaheuristics applied on an air traffic control problem. This problem is a graph partitioning problem. It can be solved by classical methods which are spectral and multilevel methods. State-of-the-art public-domain graph partitioning packages, CHACO and METIS are used to resolve it. A comparison between results return by these packages and metaheuristics implementations is made for different objective functions of the literature. Metaheuristics used are simulated annealing, ant colony and a new one called fusion fission developed in the LOG laboratory. Experimental results show that metaheuristics find better results than classical packages.
Novel therapeutic strategies targeting liver cancer stem cells.

Novel strategies against treatment-resistant tumor cells remain a major challenge but a promising therapeutic method. Over the past decade, despite accumulated evidence suggesting the presence of highly malignant cell populations within tumors, the issues such as in vivo targeting and clinical relevance remain unsolved. In liver cancer, which is the 5th most common cancer in worldwide, several hepatic stem/progenitor markers are found for isolating a subset of liver cells with stem cell features, such as cancer stem cells (CSCs) which are responsible for tumor drug resistance, relapse, and metastasis (1). Currently, Yamashita’s group focused on chromodomain helicase DNA binding protein 4 (CHD 4), a component of the histone deacetylase NuRD complex which participates in the remodeling of chromatin by deacetylating histones (2). They found that CHD4, which is specifically expressed in CSC fractions with [epithelial cell adhesion molecule (EpCAM)] + , could be a therapeutic approach against liver CSCs.
Breast-Specific γ-Imaging for the Detection of Mammographically Occult Breast Cancer in Women at Increased Risk

Breast-specific γ-imaging (BSGI) is a physiologic imaging modality that can detect subcentimeter and mammographically occult breast cancer, with a sensitivity and specificity comparable to MRI. The purpose of this study was to determine the incremental increase in breast cancer detection when BSGI is used as an adjunct to mammography in women at increased risk for breast cancer. Methods: All patients undergoing BSGI from April 2010 through January 2014 were retrospectively reviewed. Eligible patients were identified as women at increased risk for breast cancer and whose most recent mammogram was benign. Examinations exhibiting focally increased radiotracer uptake were considered positive. Incremental increase in cancer detection was calculated as the percentage of mammographically occult BSGI-detected breast cancer and the number of mammographically occult breast cancers detected per 1,000 women screened. Results: Included in this study were 849 patients in whom 14 BSGI examinations detected mammographically occult breast cancer. Patients ranged in age from 26 to 83 y, with a mean age of 57 y. Eleven of 14 cancers were detected in women with dense breasts. The addition of BSGI to the annual breast screen of asymptomatic women at increased risk for breast cancer yields 16.5 cancers per 1,000 women screened. When high-risk lesions and cancers were combined, BSGI detected 33.0 high-risk lesions and cancers per 1,000 women screened. Conclusion: BSGI is a reliable adjunct modality to screening mammography that increases breast cancer detection by 1.7% (14/849) in women at increased risk for breast cancer, comparable to results reported for breast MRI. BSGI is beneficial in breast cancer detection in women at increased risk, particularly in those with dense breasts.
SAODV: Black hole and gray hole attack detection protocol in MANETs

A MANET is a group of wireless mobile nodes which cooperate in forwarding packets over a wireless links. Due to the lack of an infrastructure and open nature of MANET, security has become an essential and challenging issue. The mobile nature and selfishness of malicious node is a critical issue in causing the security problem. The MANETs are more defenseless to the security attacks; some of them are black hole and gray hole attacks. One of its key challenges is to find black hole attack. In this paper, researchers propose a secure AODV protocol (SAODV) for detection and removal of black hole and gray hole attacks in MANTEs. The proposed method is simulated using NS-2 and it seems that the proposed methodology is more secure than the existing one.
Prevalence and predictors of involuntary psychiatric hospital admissions in Ontario, Canada: a population-based linked administrative database study

Background Involuntary admissions to psychiatric hospitals are common; however, research examining the trends in prevalence over time and predictors is limited. Aims To examine trends in prevalence and risk factors for involuntary admissions in Ontario, Canada. Method We conducted an analysis of all mental health bed admissions from 2009 to 2013 and assessed the association between patient sociodemographics, service utilisation, pathway to care and severity characteristics for involuntary admissions using a modified Poisson regression. Results We found a high and increasing prevalence of involuntary admissions (70.7% in 2009, 77.1% in 2013, 74.1% overall). Individuals with police contact in the prior week (risk ratio (RR) = 1.20) and immigrants both experienced greater likelihood of being involuntarily admitted, regardless of control for other characteristics (RR = 1.07) (both P < 0.0001). Conclusions We identified numerous modifiable and non-modifiable risk factors for involuntary admissions. The prevalence of involuntary admissions was high, linearly increasing over time. Declaration of interest The authors have completed the ICMJE Form for Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest and none were reported. This study was conducted using funding entirely from public sources. P.K. has received operational support via an Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (MOHLTC) Health Services Research Fund Capacity Award to support this project. The Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES) is funded by the Ontario MOHLTC. The study results and conclusions are those of the authors, and should not be attributed to any of the funding agencies or sponsoring agencies. No endorsement by ICES or the Ontario MOHLTC is intended or should be inferred. All decisions regarding study design, publication, and data analysis were made independent of the funding agencies.
New differentially expressed genes and differential DNA methylation underlying refractory epilepsy

Epigenetics underlying refractory epilepsy is poorly understood, especially in patients without distinctive genetic alterations. DNA methylation may affect gene expression in epilepsy without affecting DNA sequences. Herein, we analyzed genome-wide DNA methylation and gene expression in brain tissues of 10 patients with refractory epilepsy using methylated DNA immunoprecipitation linked with sequencing and mRNA Sequencing. Diverse distribution of differentially methylated genes was found in X chromosome, while differentially methylated genes appeared rarely in Y chromosome. 62 differentially expressed genes, such as MMP19, AZGP1, DES, and LGR6 were correlated with refractory epilepsy for the first time. Although general trends of differentially enriched gene ontology terms and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genome pathways in this study are consistent with previous researches, differences also exist in many specific gene ontology terms and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genome pathways. These findings provide a new genome-wide profiling of DNA methylation and gene expression in brain tissues of patients with refractory epilepsy, which may provide a basis for further study on the etiology and mechanisms of refractory epilepsy.
Yeast peroxisomes multiply by growth and division

Peroxisomes can arise de novo from the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) via a maturation process. Peroxisomes can also multiply by fission. We have investigated how these modes of multiplication contribute to peroxisome numbers in Saccharomyces cerevisiae and the role of the dynamin-related proteins (Drps) in these processes. We have developed pulse-chase and mating assays to follow the fate of existing peroxisomes, de novo–formed peroxisomes, and ER-derived preperoxisomal structures. We find that in wild-type (WT) cells, peroxisomes multiply by fission and do not form de novo. A marker for the maturation pathway, Pex3-GFP, is delivered from the ER to existing peroxisomes. Strikingly, cells lacking peroxisomes as a result of a segregation defect do form peroxisomes de novo. This process is slower than peroxisome multiplication in WT cells and is Drp independent. In contrast, peroxisome fission is Drp dependent. Our results show that peroxisomes multiply by growth and division under our assay conditions. We conclude that the ER to peroxisome pathway functions to supply existing peroxisomes with essential membrane constituents.
Title Stability analysis of markovian jump systems with multiple delaycomponents and polytopic uncertainties

This paper investigates the stability problem of Markovian jump systems with multiple delay components and polytopic uncertainties. A new Lyapunov– Krasovskii functional is used for the stability analysis of Markovian jump systems with or without polytopic uncertainties. Two numerical examples are provided to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed approach.
Performance-driven global placement via adaptive network characterization

Delay minimization continues to be an important objective in the design of high-performance computing system. We present an effective methodology to guide the delay optimization process of the mincut-based global placement via adaptive sequential network characterization. The contribution of this work is the development of a fully automated approach to determine critical parameters related to performance-driven multi-level partitioning-based global placement with retiming. We validate our approach by incorporating this adaptive method into a state-of-the-art global placer GEO. Our A-GEO, the adaptive version of GEO, achieves 67% maximum and 22% average delay improvement over GEO.
Dissipative fuzzy control of nonlinear networked control systems with multiple packet dropout

In this paper, a dynamic output feedback-based fuzzy controller is developed for a class of nonlinear network control system where disturbances and multiple random data dropouts exist. Firstly, the network control system is modeled using Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy rules. Meanwhile, the defective communication links with packets loss in both channels, from the sensor to the controller and from the controller to the actuator, are modeled by stochastic binary switching variables with known probability distributions. Then, by using linear matrix inequality method, the sufficient conditions for the existence of the fuzzy controller, the fuzzy robust controller are designed to guarantee the stability of the closed-loop system.
Compressive Sensing by Shortest Solution Guided Decimation

Compressed sensing, which reconstructs a signal by finding sparse solutions to underdetermined linear systems, is an important problem in many fields of science and engineering. In this work we propose a deterministic and non-parametric algorithm, Shortest-Solution guided Decimation (SSD), to construct support of the sparse solution in an iterative way guided by the shortest Euclidean-length solution of the recursively decimated linear equation under orthogonal projections. The most significant feature of SSD is its insensitivity to correlations in the sampling matrix. Using extensive numerical experiments we show that SSD greatly outperforms L1-based methods, Orthogonal Matching Pursuit, and Approximate Message Passing when the sampling matrix contains strong correlations. This nice property of correlation tolerance makes SSD a versatile and robust tool for different types of real-world signal acquisition tasks.
Modern electrets

Ferroelectrets are cellular dielectric materials with an internal bipolar electret charge that exhibit ferroelectric-like hysteresis and switching behavior. Ferroelectrets have found considerable interest for transducer applications, since they mimic piezoelectricity by their unusual electromechanical properties. They offer very high d/sub 33/ transducer coefficients, comparable with ferroelectric ceramics and typically 20 times larger than that of ferroelectric polymers like PVDF. Ferroelectrets therefore offer a huge potential for the development of large area sensors, as well as for acoustical, ultrasonics, biomedical, underwater and nondestructive testing applications.
Herd Those Sheep: Emergent Multiagent Coordination and Behavioral-Mode Switching

Effectively coordinating one’s behaviors with those of others is essential for successful multiagent activity. In recent years, increased attention has been given to understanding the dynamical principles that underlie such coordination because of a growing interest in behavioral synchrony and complex-systems phenomena. Here, we examined the behavioral dynamics of a novel, multiagent shepherding task, in which pairs of individuals had to corral small herds of virtual sheep in the center of a virtual game field. Initially, all pairs adopted a complementary, search-and-recover mode of behavioral coordination, in which both members corralled sheep predominantly on their own sides of the field. Over the course of game play, however, a significant number of pairs spontaneously discovered a more effective mode of behavior: coupled oscillatory containment, in which both members synchronously oscillated around the sheep. Analysis and modeling revealed that both modes were defined by the task’s underlying dynamics and, moreover, reflected context-specific realizations of the lawful dynamics that define functional shepherding behavior more generally.
Children's acquisition of nouns and verbs in Italian: contrasting the roles of frequency and positional salience in maternal language*

ABSTRACT Because of its structural characteristics, specifically the prevalence of verb types in infant-directed speech and frequent pronoun-dropping, the Italian language offers an attractive opportunity to investigate the predictive effects of input frequency and positional salience on children's acquisition of nouns and verbs. We examined this issue in a sample of twenty-six mother–child dyads whose spontaneous conversations were recorded, transcribed, and coded at 1;4 and 1;8. The percentages of nouns occurring in the final position of maternal utterances at 1;4 predicted children's production of noun types at 1;8. For verbs, children's growth rates were positively predicted by the percentages of input verbs occurring in utterance-initial position, but negatively predicted by the percentages of verbs located in the final position of maternal utterances at 1;4. These findings clearly illustrate that the effects of positional salience vary across lexical categories.
Variable Selection and Optimization in Rapid Detection of Soybean Straw Biomass Based on CARS

Data are the basis of analysis and modeling. It is essential and necessary for performance optimization to extract useful data or characteristic variables from a large amount of data. In this paper, variable selection and trusted computing in rapid detection of soybean straw biomass is studied. Competitive adaptive reweighted sampling (CARS) is a variable selection method, which simulate the survival of the fittest principle of Darwin’s evolution theory. CARS is applied in to soybean straw near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) analysis data and compared with other variable selection methods, such as interval partial least squares (iPLS), synergy interval partial least square (siPLS), backward interval partial least square (biPLS), and successive projection algorithm (SPA). Built PLS model using the optimization data based on above five methods, and contrasted the root-mean-square error of prediction (RMSEP) of the PLS model and the difference between root-mean-square error of cross validation (RMSECV) and RMSEP. The experimental results show that the iPLS and SPA methods are not suitable for analyzing soybean straw NIRS data. Also, the CARS method is found to be more effective in extracting character variables than siPLS and biPLS. Performance of prediction model is improved by variable selection. In contrast to the global PLS model, the RMSECV is reduced to 0.6572 from 0.8082, the RMSECP is reduced to 0.5710 from 0.6250, and correlation coefficient of the calibration model is increased to 0.8162 from 0.7087 for the hemicellulose. The difference between RMSECV and RMSEP is small, so the model will be stable. Similar results appear in the cellulose and lignin analyzing process. It is concluded that CARS method is effective in variables selection and optimization for soybean straw NIRS data.
Automatic recognition of facial expression using features of salient patches with SVM and ANN classifier

Variety of methodologies has been proposed for facial expression recognition. Facial expression recognition has been very important in computer vision over the last several decades. This paper presents a novel method for facial expression detection using LBP features of selected salient patches on CK+ video Data Base. A few prominent active patches are extracted based on the position of facial landmarks. The positions of landmarks are obtained automatically. These active patches are further processed to obtain salient patches by 10 fold cross validation. Extracted features from the salient patches improve the computational cost with small variation in accuracy. Extracted features are classified by using both SVM and ANN classifier and results are compared.
Transcriptional responses to short‐term and long‐term host plant experience and parasite load in an oligophagous beetle

Oligophagous herbivores must adjust their enzymatic machinery to the different host plant species they consume. If different hosts are used from one generation to the next, adaptation may be highly plastic, while if a single host is used over several generations, there may be a longer‐term response due to natural selection. Using an experimental evolutionary approach, we investigated effects of long‐term experience vs. short‐term responses to different host plants in the oligophagous mustard leaf beetle Phaedon cochleariae. After 26 generations of continuous feeding on either Brassica rapa, Nasturtium officinale or Sinapis alba, freshly hatched larvae were kept on these plants or moved to one of the other host plants for ten days. Global transcriptional patterns as shown by microarrays revealed that between 1% and 16.1% of all 25,227 putative genes were differentially expressed in these treatments in comparison with the control line constantly feeding on B. rapa. A shift back from S. alba to B. rapa caused the largest changes in gene transcription and may thus represent the harshest conditions. Infection rates with a gregarine parasite were intermediate in all lines that were constantly kept on one host, but much lower or higher when short‐term shifts to other host plants occurred. In conclusion, transcriptional plasticity in genes related to metabolism, digestion and general cellular processes plays a key role in long‐ and short‐term responses of the beetle to changing host plant conditions, whereby the specific conditions also affect the interactions between the beetle host and its gregarine parasite.
Changes in the Plasmodial Surface Anion Channel Reduce Leupeptin Uptake and Can Confer Drug Resistance in Plasmodium falciparum-Infected Erythrocytes

ABSTRACT Cysteine protease inhibitors kill malaria parasites and are being pursued for development as antimalarial agents. Because they have multiple targets within bloodstream-stage parasites, workers have assumed that resistance to these inhibitors would not be acquired easily. In the present study, we used in vitro selection to generate a parasite resistant to growth inhibition by leupeptin, a broad-profile cysteine and serine protease inhibitor. Resistance was not associated with upregulation of cysteine protease activity, reduced leupeptin sensitivity of this activity, or expression level changes for putative cysteine or serine proteases in the parasite genome. Instead, it was associated with marked changes in the plasmodial surface anion channel (PSAC), an ion channel on infected erythrocytes that functions in nutrient and bulky organic solute uptake. Osmotic fragility measurements, electrophysiological recordings, and leupeptin uptake studies revealed selective reductions in organic solute permeability via PSAC, altered single-channel gating, and reduced inhibitor affinity. These changes yielded significantly reduced leupeptin uptake and could fully account for the acquired resistance. PSAC represents a novel route for the uptake of bulky hydrophilic compounds acting against intraerythrocytic parasite targets. Drug development based on such compounds should proceed cautiously in light of possible resistance development though the selection of PSAC mutants.
Mechanistic insights into plasmonic photocatalysts in utilizing visible light

The utilisation of sunlight as an abundant and renewable resource has motivated the development of sustainable photocatalysts that can collectively harvest visible light. However, the bottleneck in utilising the low energy photons has led to the discovery of plasmonic photocatalysts. The presence of noble metal on the plasmonic photocatalyst enables the harvesting of visible light through the unique characteristic features of the noble metal nanomaterials. Moreover, the formation of interfaces between noble metal particles and semiconductor materials further results in the formation of a Schottky junction. Thereby, the plasmonic characteristics have opened up a new direction in promoting an alternative path that can be of value to the society through sustainable development derived through energy available for all for diverse applications. We have comprehensively prepared this review to specifically focus on fundamental insights into plasmonic photocatalysts, various synthesis routes, together with their strengths and weaknesses, and the interaction of the plasmonic photocatalyst with pollutants as well as the role of active radical generation and identification. The review ends with a pinnacle insight into future perspectives regarding realistic applications of plasmonic photocatalysts.