Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Antimicrobial Susceptibility and β-Lactamase Production of Anaerobic and Aerobic Bacteria Isolated from Pus Specimens from Orofacial Infections

Abstract Most suppurative orofacial infections are polymicrobial. Information regarding the antimicrobial susceptibility of the microorganisms involved can be useful in the choice of an effective antibiotic therapy. In this study we determined the antimicrobial susceptibility of a total 235 anaerobic and aerobic bacteria recently isolated from pus specimens of orofacial infections. All the viridans streptococci were susceptible to penicillin, cefotaxime, cefoxitin, imipenem and levofloxacin. Imipenem and levofloxacin were active against 100% of the anaerobic Gram-positive organisms isolated. Among the anaerobic Gram-negative rods β-lactamase production was detected in all species except Campylobacter rectus. Amoxicillin-clavulanate, cefoxitin, imipenem and metronidazole were active against all the isolates of anaerobic Gram-negative species. Isolates resistant to erythromycin were found in all the species tested, however, resistance to clindamycin was only detected in Porphyromonas gingivalis and Bacteroides ureolyticus. Isolates resistant to levofloxacin were detected in P. gingivalis and Prevotella sp.
Empathic Responsiveness: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment on Giving to Welfare Recipients

This paper reports a surprising finding from an experiment on giving to welfare recipients. The experiment tests how offers of money in n-donor dictator games are affected by 1) donors' humanitarian and egalitarian values and 2) direct information about the recipients' work-preferences. People who are self-reported humanitarians and egalitarians have giving that is highly elastic with respect to the apparent worthiness of the recipient. Among high scoring humanitarian-egalitarians, the median offer to a recipient who appeared industrious was $5.00, while the median offer to a recipient who appeared lazy was only $1.00. Among low scoring humanitarian-egalitarians, the median offer was $1.00 in both conditions. I refer to this combination of altruism and equity/reciprocity as empathic responsiveness. This finding can be rationalized by a model of inequity aversion.
A Study on Sinus-Lifting Motion of a Snake Robot With Sequential Optimization of a Hybrid System

In this paper, we consider “sinus-lifting motion” of a living snake, in which a snake lifts up some parts of its body from the ground, and switches the lifted parts dynamically. It is not clear whether imitating the sinus-lifting motion is the best locomotion or not for a snake like robot. The aim of this paper is to propose an appropriate motion pattern to a snake like robot considering the optimality of the sinus-lifting motion. We introduce two physical parameters, constraint forces and energy efficiency, as cost functions to optimize and propose switching strategies for generating optimal motion patterns of a snake like robot.
Reading and Learning Disabilities.

Reading specialists have been concerned with remedial reading, corrective reading, and reading disabilities for many years. Smith ( 1960) traces the concept of remedial reading in the United States to the 1920's. In very recent years a new movement that has focused on many of the same problems has been rapidly growing. This movement, which finally evolved as the field of learning disabilities, has been spurred by parents, schools, state departments of education, and the Federal government.
Hierarchical and Redundant Lymphocyte Subset Control Precludes Cytomegalovirus Replication during Latent Infection

Reactivation from latent cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection is often associated with conditions of immunosuppression and can result in fatal disease. Whether the maintenance of systemic CMV latency is mainly governed by factors of the infected cell or by immune control functions is unknown. Likewise, the putative immune control mechanisms which could prevent the induction and spread of recurrent CMV infection are not clearly identified. We took advantage of latently infected B cell–deficient mice and a sensitive method for virus detection to study CMV reactivation after ablation of lymphocyte subsets. A crucial role of both T lymphocytes and natural killer (NK) cells was demonstrated. Within 5 d after depletion of lymphocytes, productive infection occurred in 50% of mice, and 14 d later 100% of mice exhibited recurrent infection. A hierarchy of immune control functions of CD8+, NK, and CD4+ cells was established. Reactivation was rare if only one of the lymphocyte subsets was depleted, but was evident after removal of a further subset, indicating a functional redundancy of control mechanisms. The salivary glands were identified as the site of most rapid virus shedding, followed by the detection of recurrent virus in the lungs, and eventually in the spleen. Our findings document a previously unknown propensity of latent CMV genomes to enter productive infection immediately and with a high frequency after immune cell depletion. The data indicate that only the sustained cellular immune control prevents CMV replication and restricts the viral genome to a systemic state of latency.
A design framework for a home-based stroke rehabilitation system: Identifying the key components

We present a design framework for a sensor-based stroke rehabilitation system for use at home developed through the analysis of data collected from a series of workshops. Participants had a variety of backgrounds and included people living with stroke and health professionals who work with them. Our focus in these workshops was to learn more about the social context around stroke care, to share early project ideas and develop a design framework for developing systems. In this paper we present a detailed analysis of participant responses and use this analysis to draw specific conclusions about the components and configuration that we believe should be in future systems.
Weak gravitational flexion

Flexion is the significant third-order weak gravitational lensing effect responsible for the weakly skewed and arc-like appearance of lensed galaxies. Here we demonstrate how flexion measurements can be used to measure galaxy halo density profiles and large-scale structure on non-linear scales, via galaxy-galaxy lensing, dark matter mapping and cosmic flexion correlation functions. We describe the origin of gravitational flexion, and discuss its four components, two of which are first described here. We also introduce an efficient complex formalism for all orders of lensing distortion. We proceed to examine the flexion predictions for galaxy-galaxy lensing, examining isothermal sphere and Navarro-Frenk-White (NFW) profiles and both circularly symmetric and elliptical cases. We show that in combination with shear we can precisely measure galaxy masses and NFW halo concentrations. We also show how flexion measurements can be used to reconstruct mass maps in two-dimensional projection on the sky, and in three dimensions in combination with redshift data. Finally, we examine the predictions for cosmic flexion, including convergence-flexion cross-correlations, and we find that the signal is an effective probe of structure on non-linear scales.
Fast estimation of the Frame Error Rate for error-correcting codes by the generalized error impulse method

In this paper, we describe a new method to determine the Frame Error Rate (FER) for error-correcting codes in the presence of additive white Gaussian noise (AGWN) under a maximum-likelihood (ML) hypothesis. This algorithm is a generalization of the impulse method of Berrou et al. We compare our method with the standard Monte Carlo method for the estimate of low frame error rates for the extended Golay code. We observe large speedups concerning simulation time. We also experiment this method in the case of turbo product codes. The estimated performance obtained by the new method turns out to be very close to the exact performance obtained by the Monte Carlo method.
Predictive Analytics : A Survey , Trends , Applications , Oppurtunities & Challenges

Predictive analysis is an advanced branch of data engineering which generally predicts some occurrence or probability based on data. Predictive analytics uses data-mining techniques in order to make predictions about future events, and make recommendations based on these predictions. The process involves an analysis of historic data and based on that analysis to predict the future occurrences or events. A model can be created to predict using Predictive Analytics modeling techniques. The form of these predictive models varies depending on the data they are using. Classification & Regression are the two main objectives of predictive analytics. Predictive Analytics is composed of various statistical & analytical techniques used to develop models that will predict future occurrence, events or probabilities. Predictive analytics is able to not only deal with continuous changes, but discontinuous changes as well. Classification, prediction, and to some extent, affinity analysis constitute the analytical methods employed in predictive analytics. KeywordsPredictive Analytics; Predictive Modeling; Data Mining; Prediction.
Learning action durations from executions

Accurate action models are essential for efficiently solving automated planning tasks. An accurate action model allow the planner to precisely foresee the consequences of executing actions in a given environment and therefore tofind robust and good quality plans. But when addressing planning tasks in the real world, even hand-coding a simple STRIPS action model is complex, thus defining action models capturing further features, like the execution duration or costs, becomes more difficult. Moreover, if these features can be captured at a given instant they may vary over time. In this paper we automatically model the duration of action execution as relational regression trees learned from observing plan executions. And we show how planners find better plans after incorporating these models to their domain definition.
SZTE-NLP at SemEval-2017 Task 10: A High Precision Sequence Model for Keyphrase Extraction Utilizing Sparse Coding for Feature Generation

In this paper we introduce our system participating at the 2017 SemEval shared task on keyphrase extraction from scientific documents. We aimed at the creation of a keyphrase extraction approach which relies on as little external resources as possible. Without applying any hand-crafted external resources, and only utilizing a transformed version of word embeddings trained at Wikipedia, our proposed system manages to perform among the best participating systems in terms of precision.
Illumination Techniques for Photorealistic Rendering in Augmented Reality

This paper presents a combined solution to realistically insert virtual objects into real scenes. The solution proposed focuses on the illumination problem, which was divided in three parts: estimating the radiance reaching objects’ surface, through an Image Based Lighting technique; self shadowing, through an Ambient Occlusion technique; and lighting effects due to lens properties, through Bloom and Exposure Control techniques. These techniques were implemented in a single solution which obtained good visual results. As interactive performance was achieved, the solution presented is suitable to insert virtual objects into Augmented Reality applications in a photorealistic way.
A Distributed Mining Framework for Influence in Evolving Entities

Mining dynamic influence in evolving entities, which provides insights into the interaction and causal relations among entities, is an important and fundamental data mining task. Meanwhile, nowadays pervasive sensors in a variety of contexts give rise to the development of many distributed real-time computation systems intended for massive time series streams. In this paper, we focus on mining dynamic influence from time series data generated by entities via such a distribute real-time computation system. The proposed DInfMiner framework encompasses a statistical leadlag correlation based influence detection module and an on-line model for dynamic influence inference. We implement DInfMiner framework based on Apache Storm.
School effectiveness for whom? : challenges to the school effectiveness and school improvement movements

1. Introduction: Effective for Whom? Effective for What? Roger Slee and Gaby Weiner 2. The Idols of the Market Place David Hamilton 3. Cultures of Blame and Redemption - When Empowerment Becomes Control: Practitioners' Views of the Effective Schools Movement Joe Rea and Gaby Weiner 4. The Tyranny of the International Horse Race Margaret Brown 5. Models of Effective Schools: Limits and Capabilities Hugh Lauder, Ian Jamieson and Felicity Wikeley 6. Educational Studies, Policy Entrenpreneurship and Social Theory Stephen Ball 7. School Effects in Postmodern Conditions Bob Lingard, Jim Ladwig and Allan Luke 8. High Reliability Organizations and Liability Students - The Politics of Recognition Roger Slee 9. Realizing the Mission: Catholic Approaches to School Effectiveness Gerald Grace 10. Effective Teachers for Effective Schools Pat Mahony and Ian Hextall 11. A Tale of Two Schools in One City: Foxwood and Cross Green, Leeds Bob Spooner 12. A Tale of One School in One City: Hackney Downs in London Sally Tomlinson 13. The Utility of Qualitative Research for Influencing Policy and Practice on School Effectiveness Sheila Riddell, Sally Brown and Jill Duffield
Fabular: regression formulas as probabilistic programming

Regression formulas are a domain-specific language adopted by several R packages for describing an important and useful class of statistical models: hierarchical linear regressions. Formulas are succinct, expressive, and clearly popular, so are they a useful addition to probabilistic programming languages? And what do they mean? We propose a core calculus of hierarchical linear regression, in which regression coefficients are themselves defined by nested regressions (unlike in R). We explain how our calculus captures the essence of the formula DSL found in R. We describe the design and implementation of Fabular, a version of the Tabular schema-driven probabilistic programming language, enriched with formulas based on our regression calculus. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first formal description of the core ideas of R's formula notation, the first development of a calculus of regression formulas, and the first demonstration of the benefits of composing regression formulas and latent variables in a probabilistic programming language.
Patient and physician perspectives regarding treatment of diabetes: compliance with practice guidelines.

BACKGROUND Managed care organizations are focusing on how physicians manage their patients with diabetes mellitus as an indicator of physician compliance with clinical practice guidelines. Assessment of physician compliance with published guidelines may reveal areas of disagreement between physicians and guidelines or between physicians and patients and may show areas for potential improvement of care. Compliance with the diabetes care guidelines was assessed in our clinics to determine physician beliefs and performance and patients' accommodation of recommended practices. METHODS We interviewed 295 patients with diabetes and surveyed 47 providers at an academic family practice center to assess practices and beliefs regarding the care of patients with diabetes. We also reviewed a 1-year compilation of billing and referral records for physician use of glycosylated hemoglobin (hemoglobin A1c) testing and referral of patients for eye examinations. RESULTS We found that physician beliefs and practices were divergent and that provider performance of these nationally recommended activities was low. More than 75% of providers said that they recommended hemoglobin A1c testing, but only about 50% of patients had a documented test in the billing system. When questioned, one third of the patients reported that their physicians recommended this test. Similarly, nearly all physicians stated that they recommended annual eye examinations, although only 43% of patients said that their primary care physician recommended this referral. CONCLUSIONS Physicians can and must improve intervention and patient education in the care of diabetic patients. Patient knowledge, motivation, and practice must be augmented by physician efforts. Lack of compliance with guidelines may indicate deficiencies in physician knowledge, implementation problems, lack of belief in guidelines, or problems in patient compliance. Attention should be directed to all these areas.
Soluble Fms-like tyrosine kinase-1 to placental growth factor ratio in mid-pregnancy as a predictor of preterm preeclampsia in asymptomatic pregnant women

Abstract Background: This study aims to evaluate the performance of the soluble Fms-like tyrosine kinase-1/placental growth factor (sFlt-1/PlGF) ratio to predict early-onset, preterm and severe preeclampsia at mid-pregnancy in asymptomatic women. Methods: Based on a prospective cohort of 7929 pregnant women from the Quebec City metropolitan area, a nested case-control study was performed including 111 women who developed preeclampsia and 69 women with gestational hypertension matched with 338 normotensive women. Serum sFlt-1 and PlGF were measured between 20 and 32 weeks of gestation. The performance of the sFlt-1/PlGF ratio, expressed as raw values and multiples of the median (MoM) for the prediction of early-onset, preterm and severe preeclampsia was evaluated. Results: Women who developed preeclampsia had significantly higher MoM sFlt-1/PlGF ratio (p<0.001). In the early-onset preeclampsia group, the median of the MoM distribution was 24.0 and the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) was 0.977, giving sensitivities of 77.8% and 88.9% at false-positive rates of 5% and 10%. Positive predictive values (PPV) were 2.5% and 1.5%, respectively. In a subset between 26 and 32 weeks of gestation, at a threshold of 30, the sFlt-1/PlGF ratio yielded 100% specificity and identified, respectively, 85.7% and 65.2% of women who developed early-onset and preterm preeclampsia. Conclusions: The sFlt-1/PlGF ratio has the potential to predict early-onset and preterm preeclampsia at mid-pregnancy in asymptomatic women. However, care must be paid to the prevalence of early-onset preeclampsia in the population since low prevalence reduces PPV and may hamper clinical utility.
Methylprednisolone for acute spinal cord injury: an inappropriate standard of care.

OBJECT Since publication in 1990, results from the National Acute Spinal Cord Injury Study II (NASCIS II) trial have changed the way patients suffering an acute spinal cord injury (SCI) are treated. More recently, recommendations from NASCIS III are being adopted by institutions around the world. The purpose of this paper is to reevaluate carefully the results and conclusions of these studies to determine the role they should play in influencing decisions about care of the acutely spinal cord-injured patient. METHODS Published results from NASCIS II and III were reviewed in the context of the original study design, including primary outcomes compared with post-hoc comparisons. Data were retroconverted from tabular form back to raw form to allow direct inspection of changes in treatment groups. These findings were further analyzed with respect to justification of practice standards. Although well-designed and well-executed, both NASCIS II and III failed to demonstrate improvement in primary outcome measures as a result of the administration of methylprednisolone. Post-hoc comparisons, although interesting, did not provide compelling data to establish a new standard of care in the treatment of patients with acute SCI. CONCLUSIONS The use of methylprednisolone administration in the treatment of acute SCI is not proven as a standard of care, nor can it be considered a recommended treatment. Evidence of the drug's efficacy and impact is weak and may only represent random events. In the strictest sense, 24-hour administration of methylprednisolone must still be considered experimental for use in clinical SCI. Forty-eight-hour therapy is not recommended. These conclusions are important to consider in the design of future trials and in the medicolegal arena.
Trisodium citrate 46.7% selectively and safely reduces staphylococcal catheter-related bacteraemia.

BACKGROUND Trisodium citrate (TSC) 30% has been shown in a randomized control trial to be an effective antimicrobial catheter locking solution, able to significantly reduce catheter-related bacteraemia (CRB) in haemodialysis patients. Since that report, the formulation in Europe has been changed to 46.7% TSC without confirmatory data on efficacy. We report a 55 915 patient-day at risk experience in tunnelled lines of 46.7% TSC, emphasizing efficacy and changes in microbiology seen. METHODS On 1 July 2006, inter-dialytic catheter locking solution was changed from 5000 IU/ml heparin to Citra-lock(TM) (46.7% TSC) in all haemodialysis patients at Barts and the London Renal Unit dialysing through an incident or prevalent tunnelled catheter. Prospectively collected blood culture data for the 6 months prior to the switch and 3 months at the end of the first year of TSC use were analysed. TSC tolerability was excellent with only a single withdrawal for intolerance of the agent. No major adverse events were reported. RESULTS A major fall in CRB rates was noticed with a change from heparin (2.13/1000 catheter-days) in 2006 to TSC (0.81/1000 catheter-days) in 2007. This was due to significant reductions in staphylococcal CRB, true for sensitive, methicillin-resistant and coagulase-negative staphylococci. No increase in catheter malfunction was observed. CONCLUSIONS We found that 46.7% TSC is a safe, convenient and highly effective catheter locking solution, leading to significant reduction in CRB largely by preventing staphylococcal bloodstream infections. Given that Staphylococcus aureus in particular is associated with serious and often disseminated infection, TSC seems to be a powerful tool for dialysis units.
MpkA-Dependent and -Independent Cell Wall Integrity Signaling in Aspergillus nidulans

ABSTRACT Cell wall integrity signaling (CWIS) maintains cell wall biogenesis in fungi, but only a few transcription factors (TFs) and target genes downstream of the CWIS cascade in filamentous fungi are known. Because a mitogen-activated protein kinase (MpkA) is a key CWIS enzyme, the transcriptional regulation of mpkA and of cell wall-related genes (CWGs) is important in cell wall biogenesis. We cloned Aspergillus nidulans mpkA; rlmA, a TF gene orthologous to Saccharomyces cerevisiae RLM1 that encodes Rlm1p, a major Mpk1p-dependent TF that regulates the transcription of MPK1 besides that of CWGs; and Answi4 and Answi6, homologous to S. cerevisiae SWI4 and SWI6, encoding the Mpk1p-activating TF complex Swi4p-Swi6p, which regulates CWG transcription in a cell cycle-dependent manner. A. nidulans rlmA and mpkA cDNA functionally complemented S. cerevisiae rlm1Δ and mpk1Δ mutants, respectively, but Answi4 and Answi6 cDNA did not complement swi4Δ and swi6Δ mutants. We constructed A. nidulans rlmA, Answi4 and Answi6, and mpkA disruptants (rlmAΔ, Answi4Δ Answi6Δ, and mpkAΔ strains) and analyzed mpkA and CWG transcripts after treatment with a β-1,3-glucan synthase inhibitor (micafungin) that could activate MpkA via CWIS. Levels of mpkA transcripts in the mutants as well as those in the wild type were changed after micafungin treatment. The β-glucuronidase reporter gene controlled by the mpkA promoter was expressed in the wild type but not in the mpkAΔ strain. Thus, mpkA transcription seems to be autoregulated by CWIS via MpkA but not by RlmA or AnSwi4-AnSwi6. The transcription of most CWGs except α-1,3-glucan synthase genes (agsA and agsB) was independent of RlmA and AnSwi4-AnSwi6 and seemed to be regulated by non-MpkA signaling. The transcriptional regulation of mpkA and of CWGs via CWIS in A. nidulans differs significantly from that in S. cerevisiae.