Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Medical students' perceptions of barriers to training at a rural clinical school.

INTRODUCTION In response to concerns about the decreasing rural health workforce, the Australian Government has funded a number of clinical schools in rural locations across Australia. The University of Melbourne established its Rural Clinical School (RCS) in 2000, at Shepparton, population 42,000, 175 km north of Melbourne, Victoria. The University of Melbourne also has three metropolitan-based clinical schools. Rural clinical schools in Australia generally have experienced difficulty in recruiting students. This has also been the experience of the University of Melbourne's Shepparton-based RCS. This study focuses on student perceptions in an attempt to understand the reasons behind this difficulty. METHODS All medical students at The University of Melbourne were sent an internet-based questionnaire and invited to participate in this study. The survey included information-gathering questions focused on the following areas: demographic details, whether or not the student chose to study at the RCS, factors that were of importance to them in selection of a clinical school, and the reasons why they did or did not prefer the RCS. Participants were asked to rank their three most important issues and were then asked to comment on what would make training at the University of Melbourne RCS attractive to them. RESULTS The response rate was 49% (n = 785 of 1599). The most common concerns relating to the students' selection of a clinical school were the quality of teaching and education at the school, transport and location issues, and patient access. Other major issues included the ability to obtain the student's preferred internship, family and partner issues, and the lack of incentives, such as financial incentives. The most common issues for students who did not chose the RCS were of a non-clinical nature, such as family and partner commitments, financial issues, and housing commitments. The most common factors students identified as making the RCS more attractive to them were greater financial support and incentives, demonstrating value-added teaching, and teaching that was seen as better than that available in the metropolitan centres, and improvement in the flow of information, and promotion of the RCS's programs. Finally, students who chose to study at a RCS are more likely to be female, of graduate entry, and of rural origin. CONCLUSIONS Although little can be done regarding family and financial issues, these remain important concerns for students when considering relocation to a RCS. In addition, academic results and quality of teaching remain important concerns for students, despite evidence that, for the RCS, these are equal to or better than at The University of Melbourne metropolitan clinical schools.
Multiyear Ground‐Based Measurements of Aerosol Optical Properties and Direct Radiative Effect Over Different Surface Types in Northeastern China

Aerosol microphysical and optical properties as well as aerosol direct radiative effect (ADRE) were measured at a few ground sites to investigate aerosol optical‐radiative characteristics in northeastern China. Bimodal size distributions showed a dominance of fine mode particles at Shenyang, a megacity, and more impacts from larger particles at Fushun and Dalian, industrial and coastal sites, respectively. High aerosol optical depths at 440 nm in July (0.67–1.25) were ascribed to hygroscopic effects or cloud processing. Single scattering albedos at 440 nm show strong to moderate absorption at the urban and industrial sites (0.84–0.86) and weaker absorption at the coastal and rural sites (0.92–0.94). The single scattering albedo wavelength dependence implied influences of dust at the urban, industrial, and coastal regions (shorter wavelengths) and biomass emissions at the rural site (longer wavelengths). Absorptive aerosol optical depths at the urban and industrial sites were ~2.5 and 3.7 times higher than at the coastal and rural sites. Large negative ADREs at the bottom of the atmosphere at the urban and industrial sites implied strong surface cooling and the larger ADREs at the top of the atmosphere at the coastal site indicated more cooling of the Earth‐atmosphere system. The main aerosol types at the urban and industrial sites were mixed absorbing particles, while weakly‐absorbing fine mode particles dominated the coastal and rural sites. This study provides new information on the aerosol distributions and potential regional climate effects of aerosols in northeastern China.
The Potential for Harvesting Energy from the Movement of Trees

Over the last decade, wireless devices have decreased in size and power requirements. These devices generally use batteries as a power source but can employ additional means of power, such as solar, thermal or wind energy. However, sensor networks are often deployed in conditions of minimal lighting and thermal gradient such as densely wooded environments, where even normal wind energy harvesting is limited. In these cases a possible source of energy is from the motion of the trees themselves. We investigated the amount of energy and power available from the motion of a tree in a sheltered position, during Beaufort 4 winds. We measured the work performed by the tree to lift a mass, we measured horizontal acceleration of free movement, and we determined the angular deflection of the movement of the tree trunk, to determine the energy and power available to various types of harvesting devices. We found that the amount of power available from the tree, as demonstrated by lifting a mass, compares favourably with the power required to run a wireless sensor node.
An Empirical Comparison of Credit Spreads between the Bond Market and the Credit Default Swap Market

This paper compares the pricing of credit risk in the bond market and the fast-growing credit default swap (CDS) market. The cointegration test confirms that the theoretical parity relationship between the two credit spreads holds as a long-run equilibrium condition. Nevertheless, substantial deviation from the parity can arise in the short run. The panel data study and the VECM analysis both suggest that the deviation is largely due to the higher responsiveness of CDS premia to changes in credit conditions. Moreover, it exhibits a certain degree of persistence in that only 10% of price discrepancies can be removed within a business day.
A Survey of e-Commerce Recommender Systems

Due to their powerful personalization and efficiency features, recommendation systems are being used extensively in many online environments. Recommender systems provide great opportunities to businesses, therefore research on developing new recommender system techniques and methods have been receiving increasing attention. This paper reviews recent developments in recommender systems in the domain of ecommerce. The main purpose of the paper is to summarize and compare the latest improvements of e-commerce recommender systems from the perspective of e-vendors. By examining the recent publications in the field, our research provides thorough analysis of current advancements and attempts to identify the existing issues in recommender systems. Final outcomes give practitioners and researchers the necessary insights and directions on recommender systems.
Effect of overnight nasal continuous positive airway pressure treatment on the endothelial function in patients with obstructive sleep apnea.

OBJECTIVE In this prospective study, we aimed to investigate acute effect of nasal continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) therapy on the endothelial function of patients with obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSA) by using brachial artery flow mediated dilatation (FMD) method. METHODS Newly diagnosed thirty OSA patients with ages between 29 and 72 years were included in this study. FMD and high sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP) values of patients obtained before and after CPAP dose titration test were compared with paired samples t test or Wilcoxon signed ranks test. RESULTS With CPAP therapy apnea hypopnea indices were reduced (60.6±24.9/h vs. 9.6±7.9/h; p<0.001) and oxygen desaturation indices recovered (50±27/h vs. 6±7/h; p<0.001). Heart rates of patients decreased after CPAP therapy (80±10/min vs. 73±8/min; p=0.003). FMD values significantly increased after CPAP (8.55±5.82 percent vs. 12.08±7.17 percent; p=0.003). HsCRP values after CPAP were not different from baseline values. CONCLUSION Acute improvement of the endothelial function with one night CPAP therapy suggests endothelial dysfunction in OSA patients to be result of acute pathophysiologic factors. In intermediate and severe OSA patients, CPAP therapy may be considered in acute treatment of diseases associated with endothelial dysfunction.
Combining Case Study Research and Systems Theory as a Heuristic Model

The combined use of case study and systems theory is not often seen in the literature. The use of both approaches enables the specifics of the case to consider the influence of broader systems and external environments, offering in-depth exploration as well as comparative analysis between cases in the context of the system. Health care has obvious systems operating that may have developed from organizational hierarchies, funding mechanisms, or traditional service delivery of health care. Systems theory is ideally suited to examine health care and health promotion sites, such as hospitals or universities. Sites can use the principles of systems theory to explore innovation, change, and complexity of service delivery in the context of a case study approach. This article discusses how the combination of the two can act as a heuristic model, offering its application to emergency department physiotherapy as an example, to further bolster the evidence base for using such a methodology.
Preclinical Effectiveness of Selective Inhibitor of IRS-1/2 NT157 in Osteosarcoma Cell Lines

Osteosarcoma (OS) is the most common primary bone tumor in children and young adults. Several studies have confirmed the involvement of the insulin-like growth factor (IGF) system in the regulation of OS cell proliferation and differentiation as well as in the protection of cells from chemotherapy. Insulin receptor substrate (IRS)-1 is a critical mediator of IGF-1R signaling, and we recently reported that its overexpression in OS cells increases proliferation, migration, and metastasis both in vitro and in vivo. In this study, we evaluated the efficacy of NT157, a selective inhibitor of IRS-1/2, in a panel of OS cells. A strong dose-dependent inhibition of growth was observed in the MG-63, OS-19, and U-2OS OS cell lines, displaying IC50 values at sub-micromolar doses after 72 h of treatment. Exposure to NT157 elicited dose- and time-dependent decreases in IRS-1 levels. Moreover, a protein analysis showed that the degradation of IRS-1 inhibited the activation of principal downstream mediators of the IGF pathway. NT157 significantly affected the cells’ migratory ability, as confirmed by a wound-healing assay. The inhibitor induced cytostatic effects, as evidenced by G2/M cell cycle arrest, and did not affect apoptosis. Consequently, NT157 was combined with drugs used to treat OS in order to capitalize on its therapeutic potential. Simultaneous treatments were made in association with chemotherapeutic agents in a fixed ratio for 72 h and cell proliferation was determined by MTT assay. Synergistic or addictive effects with respect to single agents are expressed as the combination index. Significant synergistic effects were obtained with several targeted drugs, such as Everolimus, a mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) inhibitor, and NVP-BEZ235, a dual inhibitor of PI-3K/mTOR. Overall, these findings provide evidence for the effectiveness of a selected inhibitor of IRS-1/2 NT157 in OS cells, displaying a promising approach based on the targeting of IRS-1 combined with other therapies for the treatment of this pediatric solid tumor.
Zebrafish Lbh-like Is Required for Otx2-mediated Photoreceptor Differentiation

The homeobox transcription factor orthodenticle homolog 2 (otx2) is supposed as an organizer that orchestrates a transcription factor network during photoreceptor development. However, its regulation in the process remains unclear. In this study, we have identified a zebrafish limb bud and heart-like gene (lbh-like), which is expressed initially at 30 hours post fertilization (hpf) in the developing brain and eyes. Lbh-like knockdown by morpholinos specifically inhibits expression of multiple photoreceptor-specific genes, such as opsins, gnat1, gnat2 and irbp. Interestingly, otx2 expression in the morphants is not significantly reduced until 32 hpf when lbh-like begins to express, but its expression level in 72 hpf morphants is higher than that in wild type embryos. Co-injection of otx2 and its downstream target neuroD mRNAs can rescue the faults in eyes of Lbh-like morphants. Combined with the results of promoter-reporter assay, we suggest that lbh-like is a new regulator of photoreceptor differentiation directly through affecting otx2 expression in zebrafish. Furthermore, knockdown of lbh-like increases the activity of Notch pathway and perturbs the balance among proliferation, differentiation and survival of photoreceptor precursors.
Adaptive Planar Point Location

We present a self-adjusting point location structure for convex subdivisions. Let n be the number of vertices in a convex subdivision S. Our structure for S uses O(n) space and processes any online query sequence sigma in O(n + OPT) time, where OPT is the minimum time required by any linear decision tree for answering point location queries in S to process sigma. The O(n + OPT) time bound includes the preprocessing time. Our result is a two-dimensional analog of the static optimality property of splay trees. For connected subdivisions, we achieve a processing time of O(|sigma| log log n + n + OPT).
CERAMIC BIOMATERIALS: AN INTRODUCTORY OVERVIEW

A review of classes of biomaterials and their applications is presented. Particular interest is paid to bioceramics, calcium phosphates and hydroxyapatite which are the leading biomaterials employed today. Several methods for producing hydroxyapatite are presented, including the characteristics and disadvantages of each methodology reported in specialized literature. The main trends of the modern biomaterial science and technology, as well as the fundamental scientific problems involved, are discussed.
Phosphorylation and Activation of β-Adrenergic Receptor Kinase by Protein Kinase C (*)

The aim of this study was to test the possible modification of β-adrenergic receptor kinase (βARK) activity by second messengers and/or their downstream components. Using human mononuclear leukocytes (MNL), we found that calcium ionophores could elevate βARK activity by about 80% in a protein kinase C (PKC)-dependent manner. This was confirmed by the ability of the PKC activator phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate (PMA) to produce a similar effect, suggesting a PKC-dependent modulation of βARK activity. In vitro experiments with purified proteins showed that PKC could directly phosphorylate βARK1 with an apparent Km for βARK1 of 6 nM. The ability of βARK1 to phosphorylate rhodopsin was 61% greater when it was phosphorylated by PKC. The level of phosphorylation of βARK1 immunoprecipitated from MNL and Sf9 cells overexpressing this kinase was enhanced by about 2-3-fold after PMA treatment. Functional significance of PKC-dependent increase in βARK activity was demonstrated by β-adrenergic receptor (βAR) homologous desensitization experiments in MNL. βAR desensitization, as induced by exposure to 10 μM isoproterenol (5 min at 37°C), was increased from 42 ± 10% in control to 68 ± 8% in PMA-pretreated MNL. βARK inhibitor heparin (160 μg/ml) prevented the augmenting effect of PMA on βAR desensitization. These results show that βARK activity can be increased through phosphorylation by PKC, thus indicating that βARK can be preconditioned to modulate the subsequent cellular responsiveness to receptor activation, providing the cell with a mechanism by which specific homologous desensitization can be regulated heterologously.
Investigación de causas de explosiones en plantas petroliferas: El accidente de Buncefield

This paper reports on an accident occurred in a large fuel deposit located north of London in the United Kingdom. The purpose of the study is to identify the process of hypothesis formulation which took place in order to explain the causes of the incident. The importance of this incident is related to the magnitude of the damage produced, which exceeded by far the cost of reposition of the facilities. Further, the fire produced was of such a magnitude that destroyed most evidences that would have facilitated the identification of causes. The article describes the Buncefield deposit and its three levels of containment, followed by a description of the incident that occurred in 2005, and the evolution of the hypotheses formulated to identify causes. Finally, the environmental and legal consequences of the accident are described, and lessons learned from the study are identified.
Parsing-based objective functions for speech recognition in translation applications

This paper looks at a parsing-based alternative to word error rate (WER) for optimizing recognition, SParseval, hypothesizing that it may be a better objective for applications such as translation. We find that SParseval is more correlated than WER with human measures of subsequent translation performance, but that optimizing explicitly for SParseval does not give a significant reduction in translation error as measured by automatic methods based on a single translation reference. However, anecdotal examples indicate that SParseval does improve automatic speech recognition (ASR) results, leaving open the possibility that it may be more useful in the future or for other language processing tasks.
Energy-Efficient Packet Scheduling With Finite Blocklength Codes: Convexity Analysis and Efficient Algorithms

This paper considers an energy-efficient packet scheduling problem over quasi-static block fading channels. The goal is to minimize the total energy for transmitting a sequence of data packets under the first-in-first-out rule and strict delay constraints. Conventionally, such a design problem is studied under the assumption that the packet transmission rate can be characterized by the classical Shannon capacity formula, which, however, may provide inaccurate energy consumption estimation, especially when the code blocklength is finite. In this paper, we formulate a new energy-efficient packet scheduling problem by adopting a recently developed channel capacity formula for finite blocklength codes. The newly formulated problem is fundamentally more challenging to solve than the traditional one, because the transmission energy function under the new channel capacity formula neither can be expressed in closed form nor possesses desirable monotonicity and convexity in general. We analyze conditions on the code blocklength for which the transmission energy function is monotonic and convex. Based on these properties, we develop efficient offline packet scheduling algorithms as well as a rolling-window-based online algorithm for real-time packet scheduling. Simulation results demonstrate not only the efficacy of the proposed algorithms but also the fact that the traditional design using the Shannon capacity formula can considerably underestimate the transmission energy for reliable communications.
RiMOM-IM results for OAEI 2014

This paper presents the results of RiMOM-IM in the Ontology Alignment Evaluation Initiative (OAEI) 2014. We only participated in [email protected] We first describe the overall framework of our matching System (RiMOM-IM); then we detail the techniques used in the framework for instance matching. Last, we give a thorough analysis on our results and discuss some future work on RiMOM-IM.
Caractérisation et modélisation thermomécaniques de matériaux et de structures circuits imprimés complexes destinés aux applications spatiales radiofréquences et micro-ondes

La these s’interesse au comportement thermomecanique des circuits imprimes pour des applications spatiales hyperfrequences. Dans cette etude, les circuits imprimes sont des assemblages multi-materiaux faisant intervenir des substrats dielectriques (composites tisses) et des connexions en cuivre. Les circuits etudies sont des multicouches et l’information electrique transite d'une couche a l'autre par le biais de trous traversants : des percages realises a travers les differentes couches, recouverts de cuivre par electrodeposition. Tout satellite comporte de l’electronique embarquee dont le circuit imprime constitue le support et les connexions. Dans le cadre des applications spatiales, le circuit imprime subira des variations importantes de temperature. Ces chargements engendrent des deformations qui ne sont pas homogenes dans les differents materiaux, pouvant mener a des contraintes importantes qui seront source de defaillances. En effet, les coefficients d'expansion thermique des substrats dielectriques et du cuivre sont differents. A chaque cycle thermique, le cuivre est alors entraine sous chargement alterne. Suivant les configurations, le cuivre peut se plastifier et rompre apres quelques centaines ou milliers de cycles thermiques (fatigue oligo-cyclique). On remarque que les ruptures sont souvent observees dans les trous traversant. Deux volets sont identifiables dans la these : un premier volet de caracterisation du comportement thermomecanique des materiaux presents dans les circuits imprimes hyperfrequences (substrats composites et cuivre), et un second volet concernant les simulations de configurations strategiques a partir des comportements identifies
The C-Terminus of Histone H2B Is Involved in Chromatin Compaction Specifically at Telomeres, Independently of Its Monoubiquitylation at Lysine 123

Telomeric heterochromatin assembly in budding yeast propagates through the association of Silent Information Regulator (SIR) proteins with nucleosomes, and the nucleosome array has been assumed to fold into a compacted structure. It is believed that the level of compaction and gene repression within heterochromatic regions can be modulated by histone modifications, such as acetylation of H3 lysine 56 and H4 lysine 16, and monoubiquitylation of H2B lysine 123. However, it remains unclear as to whether or not gene silencing is a direct consequence of the compaction of chromatin. Here, by investigating the role of the carboxy-terminus of histone H2B in heterochromatin formation, we identify that the disorderly compaction of chromatin induced by a mutation at H2B T122 specifically hinders telomeric heterochromatin formation. H2B T122 is positioned within the highly conserved AVTKY motif of the αC helix of H2B. Heterochromatin containing the T122E substitution in H2B remains inaccessible to ectopic dam methylase with dramatically increased mobility in sucrose gradients, indicating a compacted chromatin structure. Genetic studies indicate that this unique phenotype is independent of H2B K123 ubiquitylation and Sir4. In addition, using ChIP analysis, we demonstrate that telomere structure in the mutant is further disrupted by a defect in Sir2/Sir3 binding and the resulting invasion of euchromatic histone marks. Thus, we have revealed that the compaction of chromatin per se is not sufficient for heterochromatin formation. Instead, these results suggest that an appropriately arrayed chromatin mediated by H2B C-terminus is required for SIR binding and the subsequent formation of telomeric chromatin in yeast, thereby identifying an intrinsic property of the nucleosome that is required for the establishment of telomeric heterochromatin. This requirement is also likely to exist in higher eukaryotes, as the AVTKY motif of H2B is evolutionarily conserved.