Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
CAUSES OF CHAIN ACQUISITION OF U . S . NURSING HOMES AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES FOR HEALTH OUTCOMES AND OPERATING STRATEGY , 1991-1997

Objective: This paper studies acquisitions of nursing homes by corporate chains. We examine the causes of the acquisitions. We also examine the consequences for the operating strategies of the acquired facilities and the health outcomes of the residents of the facilities. The impact of acquisition on resident health outcomes will depend on the ability of the acquiring chain to improve quality in low performing homes and to resist changes that would hurt quality in high performing homes. We contrast a business strategy model of organizational learning with traditional power-based perspectives on acquisitions. The analysis is highly relevant in the nursing home sector, in which almost half of U.S. nursing homes are now part of chain organizations. Data Sources: Our data include all reports of inspections of Medicare/Medicaid certified U.S. nursing homes from January 1991 through September 1997, with approximately 19,000 unique nursing homes and 3,000 corporate owners. About 4,700 nursing home acquisitions occurred within this population during the time period. We coded nursing home chain identities from the corporate names reported in the certification files. Study Design: The study uses a two stage analysis with a correction for sample selection. A two stage procedure that examines causes as well as consequences of acquisitions is necessary because chains may acquire either high or low quality facilities. The first stage uses logistic regression to predict the likelihood that a nursing home will be acquired. The second stage model estimates changes in the strategies and health outcomes at facilities and includes the effects of acquisition events, acquiring chain, and target facility characteristics. The second stage includes pooled cross-sectional data on all nursing home facilities across the years 1992-1997 and uses OLS estimation techniques. Principal Findings: Nursing home chains tend to acquire poorly performing facilities that offer opportunities for the new owners to improve health quality (pressure ulcer prevalence and health deficiency citations). Post-acquisition health quality of target nursing homes tends to decline initially and then improve. Target quality improves more when the acquiring chain is high quality and/or the target low quality. Nursing home acquisitions also lead to substantial changes in operating strategy, with acquired facilities experiencing declines in staffing ratios and increases in the percentage of specialty beds. Conclusions: The results support a contingency view of acquisitions, in which the attributes of both the target and acquiring organization influence post-acquisition outcomes and, moreover, in which the strategy and performance of an individual home tends to converge towards its parent chain's strategy and performance.
An update on the genetics of systemic lupus erythematosus.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW The aim of this study is to update on the most recent findings on the genetics of systemic lupus erythematosus. RECENT FINDINGS Our overview focuses particularly on results from expression quantitative trait loci, exome sequencing, and rare variants and their impact on disease. SUMMARY Systemic lupus erythematosus is a systemic autoimmune disease for which a significant number of susceptibility genes have been identified. Several genome-wide association studies were recently published in different populations that provide a better picture of the molecular mechanisms. It is becoming clear that the genetic architecture of lupus is quite well established but more information is required on the role of rare variants.
Role of angiotensin II in the development of peripheral vasoconstriction during cardiopulmonary bypass.

The possible relationship between angiotensin II -- the end product of the renin-angiotensin system, and the increase in peripheral vasoconstriction associated with cardiopulmonary bypass, has been investigated in 12 patients undergoing elective open-heart surgical procedures. Plasma angiotensin II (AII) levels were measured by radio-immunoassay at the start and the end of the period of cardiopulmonary bypass. Measurements of peripheral vascular resistance index were made at the times of AII sampling. Plasma AII levels rose during CPB from 78.0 to 231.3 pg.cm-3 (normal values less than 35 pg.cm-3). Peripheral vascular resistance index also rose during perfusion from 20.87 to 27.83 units. The rise in plasma AII levels and in peripheral vascular resistance index were correlated for each of the 12 patients. A highly significant correlation was obtained (r = 0.91; P less than 0.001). These results confirm the presence of parallel rises in plasma angiotensin II levels and in peripheral vasoconstriction during conventional non-pulsatile cardiopulmonary bypass, and suggest that increased plasma AII levels may be principal causative factor in the increased vasoconstriction associated with open-heart surgical procedures.
Template Based Segmentation of Touching Components in Handwritten Text Lines

In this paper, we present a template based approach to the segmentation of touching components in handwritten text lines. Local patches around touching components are identified and a dictionary is created consisting of template patches together with their correct segmentations. We use two shape context based methods to compute similarity between input patches and dictionary templates to find the best match. The template's known segmentation is then transformed to segment the input patch. Experiments are carried on a dataset of touching text lines.
Graphene Oxide Filled Nanocomposite with Novel Electrical and Dielectric Properties

The globally increasing demand of energy is a technical challenge for the electrical generation, transmission and distribution systems. This requires often contradictory features such as increasing voltage levels in combination with more compact designs in urban environments. This leads to an increased electric stress on the insulation systems. This can be addressed by using insulating materials with tunable non-linear conductivity, as well as high dielectric constant and low loss, for electric fi eld grading applications. [ 1 ] Current fi eld grading materials consist of polymer, semi-conducting ceramic particles such as SiC, ZnO etc., as well as lower amounts carbon black, embedded in a polymer matrix. [ 2 , 3 ] The nonlinear electrical conductivity is created by the percolated structure of these particles within the matrix, at a typically volume loading of 30% to 40%. As a result of the high fi ller level, current fi eld grading materials are limited in terms of poor mechanical properties, high weight and tendency to overheat at elevated electric fi elds. Graphene oxide (GO) is commonly prepared from natural fl ake graphite by the Hummers method and serves as an intermediate product to prepare graphene. [ 4 ] It has disrupted sp 2
Prototype-Based Domain Description for One-Class Classification

This work introduces the Prototype-based Domain Description rule (PDD) one-class classifier. PDD is a nearest neighbor-based classifier since it accepts objects on the basis of their nearest neighbor distances in a reference set of objects, also called prototypes. For a suitable choice of the prototype set, the PDD classifier is equivalent to another nearest neighbor-based one-class classifier, namely, the NNDD classifier. Moreover, it generalizes statistical tests for outlier detection. The concept of a PDD consistent subset is introduced, which exploits only a selected subset of the training set. It is shown that computing a minimum size PDD consistent subset is, in general, not approximable within any constant factor. A logarithmic approximation factor algorithm, called the CPDD algorithm, for computing a minimum size PDD consistent subset is then introduced. In order to efficiently manage very large data sets, a variant of the basic rule, called Fast CPDD, is also presented. Experimental results show that the CPDD rule sensibly improves over the CNNDD classifier, namely the condensed variant of NNDD, in terms of size of the subset while guaranteeing a comparable classification quality, that it is competitive over other one-class classification methods and is suitable to classify large data sets.
Coordinating Overviews and Detail Views of WWW Log Data (2000)

Web server log analysis tools provide site operators with useful information regarding the visitors to their sites. � Unfortunately, the utility of these tools is often limited by the use of aggregate summaries that hide the information associated with individual requests, and by the absence of contextual data that might help users interpret those summaries. Building upon earlier work in the use of starfield visualizations to display web site requests as individual data points [8], this paper describes the use of multiplecoordinated visualizations of web log data at varying granularities, and alongside additional related displays of appropriate contextual information.
Image stitching on the unmanned air vehicle in the indoor environment

This paper presents an image stitching algorithm for applied on the unmanned air vehicle in the indoor environment. Since the images are captured on this moving platform, the sudden vibration may cause the images blurred. These unclear frames must be removed for improving the quality of the mosaic image. Also, when stitching the images in the indoor environment, the distance between the scene and camera is closer than that in the outdoor air reconnaissance mission. The motion parallax easily exists in the continuously captured image sequence. The hierarchical image stitching method with the dominant image selection for a same scene is proposed to reduce the motion parallax region in the mosaic image. The experimental results validate the proposed image stitching algorithm producing a mosaic image with better image quality than that of the other method.
Folate-vitamin B-12 interaction in relation to cognitive impairment , anemia , and biochemical indicators of vitamin B-12 deficiency

Drug Ther Bull. 2009 Feb;47(2):19-21. Oral or intramuscular vitamin B12? [No authors listed] Vitamin B(12) deficiency is common, becoming more so with age, and estimates of its population prevalence have ranged from 1.5% to 15%. If untreated, it can lead to megaloblastic anaemia and irreversible neurological complications. In the UK, the usual treatment is regular intramuscular inject ions of hydroxocobalamin. High-dose oral vitamin B(12) replacement is standard practi ce in some other countries and less costly. Here we review issues around a dopting an oral vitamin B(12) replacement regimen more widely in the UK. PMID: 19193702 [PubMed in process]
Addressing Covariate Shift in Active Learning with Adversarial Prediction

Active learning approaches used in practice are generally optimistic about their certainty with respect to data shift between labeled and unlabeled data. They assume that unknown datapoint labels follow the inductive biases of the active learner. As a result, the most useful datapoint labels— ones that refute current inductive biases—are rarely solicited. We propose an adversarial approach to active learning that assumes the worstcase about the unknown conditional label distribution under covariate shift. This closely aligns model uncertainty and expected error with generalization error, enabling more useful label solicitation. We investigate the benefits of this approach on classification tasks.
Emergence and Global Spread of a Dengue Serotype 3, Subtype III Virus

Over the past two decades, dengue virus serotype 3 (DENV-3) has caused unexpected epidemics of dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF) in Sri Lanka, East Africa, and Latin America. We used a phylogenetic approach to evaluate the roles of virus evolution and transport in the emergence of these outbreaks. Isolates from these geographically distant epidemics are closely related and belong to DENV-3, subtype III, which originated in the Indian subcontinent. The emergence of DHF in Sri Lanka in 1989 correlated with the appearance there of a new DENV-3, subtype III variant. This variant likely spread from the Indian subcontinent into Africa in the 1980s and from Africa into Latin America in the mid-1990s. DENV-3, subtype III isolates from mild and severe disease outbreaks formed genetically distinct groups, which suggests a role for viral genetics in DHF.
Pivoting from polio eradication to measles and rubella elimination: a transition that makes sense both for children and immunization program improvement

Cite this: The Pan African Medical Journal. 2017;27 (Supp 3):10. DOI: 10.11604/pamj.supp. 2017.27. 3.11371 Received: 08/12/2016 Accepted: 24/03/2017 Published: 21/06/2017
Design of a crash-resistant PD-controlled quadcopter using coaxial propeller system

The versatility of the quadcopter as one of the most flexible aerial vehicle has earned its spot as a favourite for drones and hobby projects. Conventional quadcopters are in use today, which consists of four propellers attached to four motors on the quadcopter body. The propellers are paired such that the opposite pairs rotate in the same direction whereas the adjacent pairs rotate in the opposite direction. The different motions of the quadcopter are produced by the variation of angular velocities of at least one of the four motors. Conventional quadcopters, however, have the drawback in case of a motor failure that eventually makes it prone to crashes. This is because in such event the resultant torque cannot be removed and thus, stabilizing a failed motor quadcopter is impossible. We have provided an innovative coaxial-propelled quadcopter system where we have changed the configuration of rotation of the propellers. In our coaxial configuration, we have opted to rotate all upper propellers in one direction, and all lower propellers in the opposite, consequently canceling out any resultant torque during hover. Our study shows that the motor failure phenomenon faced in the conventional quadcopter is tackled in our system by turning off of the active motor opposite to the failed motor. The solution applied in the proposed system thus resulted in the stabilization of the quadcopter even if one of the motor fails. Our system also shows higher efficiency by producing thrusts at lower angular velocities of the motors.
Pharyngitis, splenomegaly, and hilar and peripheral adenopathy in a 29-year-old man with acute hypoxic respiratory failure.

A 29-year-old white man was seen in a local emergency department with complaints of fatigue, night sweats, cervical and inguinal lymphadenopathy, nausea, and right-upper-quadrant pain. His illness began when he developed a sore throat and weakness. He was treated with amoxicillin and had some improvement in symptoms over the next 2 days. This patient had no significant medical or surgical history, was receiving no long-term medications, and had no known drug allergies. He never smoked and had no history of illicit drug use.
S-BAND Electronically Tunable Microstrip Combline Filter

In this paper design and implementation of a narrowband electronically tunable micro-strip comb-line filter with wide tuning range in S-band is presented. This filter is constructed in substrate micro-strip with relative dielectric constant of 10.2, with less than 2% bandwidth at 2.8 GHz center frequency and a wide tuning range from 2.45 to 3.15 GHz with low ripple over tuning range. Narrow bandwidth, remarkable shape factor, low degradation in pass-band over tuning range and symmetrical insertion loss of filter are considerable characteristics of overall response
A Belief-Driven Method for Discovering Unexpected Patterns

Several pattern discovery methods proposed in the data mining literature have the drawbacks that they discover too many obvious or irrelevant patterns and that they do not leverage to a full extent valuable prior domain knowledge that decision makers have. In this paper we propose a new method of discovery that addresses these drawbacks. In particular we propose a new method of discovering unexpected patterns that takes into consideration prior background knowledge of decision makers. This prior knowledge constitutes a set of expectations or beliefs about the problem domain. Our proposed method of discovering unexpected patterns uses these beliefs to seed the search for patterns in data that contradict the beliefs. To evaluate the practicality of our approach, we applied our algorithm to consumer purchase data from a major market research company and to web logfile data tracked at an academic Web site and present our findings in the paper.
Spectral analysis of communication networks using Dirichlet eigenvalues

Good clustering can provide critical insight into potential locations where congestion in a network may occur. A natural measure of congestion for a collection of nodes in a graph is its Cheeger ratio, defined as the ratio of the size of its boundary to its volume. Spectral methods provide effective means to estimate the smallest Cheeger ratio via the spectral gap of the graph Laplacian. Here, we compute the spectral gap of the truncated graph Laplacian, with the so-called Dirichlet boundary condition, for the graphs of a dozen communication networks at the IP-layer, which are subgraphs of the much larger global IP-layer network. We show that i) the Dirichlet spectral gap of these networks is substantially larger than the standard spectral gap and is therefore a better indicator of the true expansion properties of the graph, ii) unlike the standard spectral gap, the Dirichlet spectral gaps of progressively larger subgraphs converge to that of the global network, thus allowing properties of the global network to be efficiently obtained from them, and (iii) the (first two) eigenvectors of the Dirichlet graph Laplacian can be used for spectral clustering with arguably better results than standard spectral clustering. We first demonstrate these results analytically for finite regular trees. We then perform spectral clustering on the IP-layer networks using Dirichlet eigenvectors and show that it yields cuts near the network core, thus creating genuine single-component clusters. This is much better than traditional spectral clustering where several disjoint fragments near the network periphery are liable to be misleadingly classified as a single cluster. Since congestion in communication networks is known to peak at the core due to large-scale curvature and geometry, identification of core congestion and its localization are important steps in analysis and improved engineering of networks. Thus, spectral clustering with Dirichlet boundary condition is seen to be more effective at finding bona-fide bottlenecks and congestion than standard spectral clustering.
Quasi-Particles and Gauge Invariance in the Theory of Superconductivity

Ideas and techniques known in quantum electrodynamics have been applied to the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer theory of superconductivity. In an approximation which corresponds to a generalization of the Hartree-Pock 6elds, one can write down an integral equation defining the self-energy of an electron in an electron gas with phonon and Coulomb interaction. The form of the equation implies the existence of a particular solution which does not follow from perturbation theory, and which leads to the energy gap equation and the quasi-particle picture analogous to Bogoliubov's. The gauge invariance, to the erst order in the external electromagnetic field, can be maintained in the quasi-particle picture by taking into account a certain class of corrections to the chargecurrent operator due to the phonon and Coulomb interaction. In fact, generalized forms of the Ward identity are obtained between certain vertex parts and the self-energy. The Meissner effect calculation is thus rendered strictly gauge invariant, but essentially keeping the BCS result unaltered for transverse 6elds. It is shown also that the integral equation for vertex parts allows homogeneous solutions which describe collective excitations of quasi-particle pairs, and the nature and effects of such collective states are discussed.
Effects of xylitol chewing gum on salivary flow rate, pH, buffering capacity and presence of Streptococcus mutans in saliva.

AIM The first studies on the use of chewing gum in dentistry were done in the 1970s. The Turku Sugar Studies, carried out between 1970 and 1973, showed the excellent anticaries properties of xylitol chewing gums. Since then, many dentists, particularly in Scandinavian countries, have studied the role of chewing xylitol-sweetened chewing gums as another preventive strategy in the control of dental caries. OBJECTIVE To compare variations in salivary flow rate, pH, buffering capacity, and levels of Streptococcus mutans in baseline conditions and after chewing paraffin pellets or xylitol chewing gum in children between the ages of 6 and 12 years who eat lunch in a school canteen. MATERIALS AND METHODS The study sample consisted of 90 children divided into 2 study groups, and a control group. The children ate lunch at the canteen of the Escultor Ortells state school in the town of Vila-real (Castellón, Spain). The baseline data recorded in the first phase of the study were compared with the data recorded in the second phase, after 15 minutes of chewing xylitol- sweetened chewing gums or paraffin pellets, depending on the study group. Salivary flow rate was measured by collecting the stimulated saliva in a graduated beaker. Levels of pH were measured using a Cyberscan pH 110 pH meter (Eutech Instruments). CRT buffer strips and the CRT bacteria test (Ivoclar-Vivadent) were used to measure buffering capacity and levels of S. mutans, respectively. RESULTS The data obtained after sample collection were compared by means of a 1-way analysis of variance using the StatGraphics Plus statistical software package, version 5.0. Statistically significant differences were found (p<.05) when pH, buffering capacity and levels of S. mutans were compared between the 3 groups. Comparison of salivary flow rates revealed no statistically significant differences (p>.05), though salivary flow rates were higher in the groups where gum was chewed. CONCLUSION The effect of chewing is essential to the stimulation of salivary flow and the resulting recovery of pH levels and reduction of levels of S. mutans in saliva.
Reading tweeting minds: real-time analysis of short text for computational social science

Twitter status updates (tweets) have great potential for unobtrusive analysis of users' perceptions in real time, providing a way of investigating social patterns at scale. Here we present a tool that performs textual analysis of tweets mentioning a topic of interest and outputs words statistically associated with it in the form of word lists and word graphs. Such a tool could be of value for helping social scientists to navigate the overwhelming amounts of data that are produced on Twitter. To evaluate our tool, we select three concepts of interest to social scientists (i.e., privacy, serendipity, and Occupy Wall Street), build ground truths for each concept using the Grounded Theory approach, and perform a quantitative assessment based on two widely-used information retrieval metrics. To then offer qualitative assessments complementary to the quantitative ones, we run a user study involving 32 individuals. We find that simple information-theoretic association measures are more accurate than frequency-based measures. We also spell out under which conditions these metrics tend to work best.