Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Study on the Mediating Effect of Emotional Intelligence between Perfectionism and Burnout in Advanced Practice Nurses (APN)

Purpose: The aim of this study was to analyze relationships between perfectionism, burnout, and emotional intelligence in APN and to identify the mediating effect of emotional intelligence on the relationship between perfectionism and burnout. Methods: A structured self-report questionnaire was used to measure perfectionism, burnout, and emotional intelligence. Data were collected from 121 APN working in five advanced general hospitals and two general hospitals. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Independent t-test, One-way ANOVA, Mann-Whitney U test, Pearson correlation and Hierarchical multiple regression with the SPSS/WIN 22.0 program. Results: Mean scores for each variable were: perfectionism 3.57 (on a 5-point scale), burnout 3.32 (on a 7-point scale), and emotional intelligence 5.00 (on a 7-point scale). Self-oriented perfectionism had a positive correlation with burnout, as did socially prescribed perfectionism. Emotional intelligence was a significant variable reducing burnout, as it also had a reverse buffering effect on the relationship between self-oriented perfectionism and burnout. Explanatory power of the final model based on variables was 34%. Conclusion: The results of this study suggest a mediating direction regarding burnout by demonstrating that emotional intelligence plays a direct and reverse buffering role to self-oriented perfectionism, which can be used to reduce burnout in APN.
Handbook of Research on Holistic Perspectives in Gamification for Clinical Practice

Exergames may provide low-cost solutions for playing, training and rehabilitation. Exergame user research, studies the interaction between an exergame and users, in order to provide feedback for game developers and safe and meaningful game play. Detailed evaluations and a coding system based on muscle activation levels are necessary to characterize. This is important when it comes to use exergames in purposes other than fun. The purpose of this chapter was to characterize the muscle activation during a swimming exergame and to compare the level of activation during different conditions. Healthy subjects played bouts of exergame using Xbox360 and Kinect. Muscle activation was monitored for desired muscles on dominant upper limb using wireless electromyography system. An investigation of muscular coordination was also conducted to provide activation sequences of studied muscles. Preliminary results showed that upper trapezius was the most active muscle in all techniques. Results can provide insights for practitioners to have a baseline on application of exergames in their routines.
Apoptotic regulation in primitive hematopoietic precursors.

Bcl-2 and bcl-xL function as suppressors of programmed cell death. The expression of bcl-2 protein in vivo is associated with long-lived hematopoietic cells such as mature lymphocytes and early myeloid progenitors. Bcl-xL, a homologue of bcl-2, is also expressed in lymphocytes and thymocytes. In contrast, the bcl-2-related proteins (bax, bad, and bak) act by promoting apoptotic cell death as shown from their expression in hematopoietic cell lines. We analyzed the expression of bcl-2 and bcl-x proteins in hematopoietic precursors obtained from various cell sources in adult mobilized peripheral blood collected from 13 patients with solid tumors, 8 adult bone marrow, and 12 umbilical cord blood. The analysis was based on the expression of the proliferation and activation specific antigens, CD38 and class II (HLA-DR). Similarly, we analyzed the expression of bcl-2-related proteins bcl-xL, bax, bad, and bak before and during ex-vivo expansion. Hematopoietic precursors expressing strongly the CD34 antigen (CD34(s+)) and lacking CD38 or HLA-DR expression were analyzed by using three-color immunofluorescence staining. The majority of CD34(+) cells expressed bcl-2 and unexpectedly showed a bimodal distribution of low and high expression. More cells that lacked or expressed low density CD38 expressed low bcl-2 than the more differentiated counterparts (those with high density CD38). Immaturity (ie, little or no HLA-DR) is associated with the expression of low bcl-2 compared with HLA-DR+. However, HLA-DR-/low population contained a lower number of cells expressing low bcl-2 (30% to 40%) than CD38(-/low) in comparable samples. The hematopoietic precursors with bcl-2(low) and bcl-2(high) formed a homogeneous population of undifferentiated lymphoid-like cells having a similar forward scatter. These cells expressed strongly the bcl-xL protein (>95%) but were bax low (4% to 12%), bad low (0% to 0.8%), and bak low (0% to 3%). The expression of apoptosis specific protein (ASP) was also low (3.4% +/- 3.1%) as was Annexin V. In addition, the CD34(+)/CD38(-) showed low cell cycle activity (<2.2%). Induction of apoptosis by overnight incubation of CD34 cells in serum-deprived medium resulted in the upregulation of bcl-2 as a single population histogram. Thus, these results suggest that in quiescent hematopoietic precursors, the bcl-2 protein plays a less prominent role as a survival promoter than bcl-xL and that the low bcl-2 expression did not promote apoptosis. During day 10 of ex vivo expansion of CD34(+) cells in liquid culture containing stem cell factor, interleukin-3 (IL-3), IL-6, IL-1beta, and erythropoietin, the CD34(+)/CD38(-) cells expressed high bcl-2 as a single population histogram, and greater than 90% were bcl-xL high. However, the expression of pro- and apoptotic antigens increased: bax (10% to 15%), bad (5% to 8%), bak (6% to 14%), and ASP (6% to 10%). These results show the importance of monitoring the expression of these proteins when defining the culture conditions for ex vivo expansion.
Drosophila Models of Tauopathies: What Have We Learned?

Aggregates of the microtubule-associated protein Tau are neuropathological hallmark lesions in Alzheimer's disease (AD) and related primary tauopathies. In addition, Tau is genetically implicated in a number of human neurodegenerative disorders including frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and Parkinson's disease (PD). The exact mechanism by which Tau exerts its neurotoxicity is incompletely understood. Here, we give an overview of how studies using the genetic model organism Drosophila over the past decade have contributed to the molecular understanding of Tau neurotoxicity. We compare the different available readouts for Tau neurotoxicity in flies and review the molecular pathways in which Tau has been implicated. Finally, we emphasize that the integration of genome-wide approaches in human or mice with high-throughput genetic validation in Drosophila is a fruitful approach.
A novel recursive Bayesian learning method for video segmentation

This work presents a novel Bayesian learning method for dynamic video segmentation. In the algorithm, each frame pixel is represented as layered normal distributions and the recursive Bayesian estimation is used to update the background parameters to obtain a robust background model. In the segmentation, foreground is separated by simple background subtraction method firstly. And then, a local texture correlation method is introduced to remove vacancies in the separated foreground to achieve better segmentation result. Experimental results on two typical video clips are used to show the proposed method can outperform traditional methods in both segmentation result and converging speed.
YOUNG STELLAR POPULATIONS AND STAR CLUSTERS IN NGC 1705

We present Hubble Space Telescope (HST) photometry of the late-type dwarf galaxy NGC 1705 observed with the Wide-Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) in the F380W and F439W bands and with the Advanced Camera for Surveys/High-Resolution Channel (HRC) in the F330W, F555W, and F814W broad-band filters. We cross-correlate these data with previous ones acquired with the WFPC2 in the F555W, F814W bands, and derive multiband color–magnitude diagrams (CMDs) of the cross-identified individual stars and candidate star clusters. For the central regions of the galaxy, where HST-NICMOS F110W and F160W photometry is also available, we present U, B, V, I, J, H CMDs of the 256 objects with magnitudes measured in all bands. While our previous study based on F555W, F814W, F110W, and F160W data allowed us to trace the star formation history of NGC 1705 back to a Hubble time, the new data provide a better insight on its recent evolution. With the method of the synthetic CMDs, we confirm the presence of two strong bursts of star formation (SF). The older of the two bursts (B1) occurred between ∼10 and 15 Myr ago, coeval to the age of the central super star cluster (SSC). The younger burst (B2) started ∼3 Myr ago, and it is still active. The stellar mass produced by B2 amounts to ∼106 M☉, and it is a factor of ∼3 lower for B1. The interburst phase was likely characterized by a much lower level of SF rather than by its complete cessation. The two bursts show distinct spatial distributions: while B1 is centrally concentrated, B2 is more diffused, and presents ring and arclike structures that remind of an expanding shell. This suggests a feedback mechanism, in which the expanding superbubble observed in NGC 1705, likely generated by the 10–15 Myr burst, triggered the current strong SF activity. The excellent spatial resolution of the HRC allowed us to reliably identify 12 star clusters (plus the SSC) in the central ∼26″ × 29″ region of NGC 1705, 10 of which have photometry in all the UBVIJH bands. The comparison of the cluster photometry with the GALEV populations synthesis models provides ages from ≈10 Myr to ≈1 Gyr, and masses between ≈104 and 105 M☉. The conspicuous cluster population in the central regions, with one SSC, one populous cluster, and several regular ones, confirm the strong star-forming activity of NGC 1705.
Genome-wide evidence for speciation with gene flow in Heliconius butterflies

Most speciation events probably occur gradually, without complete and immediate reproductive isolation, but the full extent of gene flow between diverging species has rarely been characterized on a genome-wide scale. Documenting the extent and timing of admixture between diverging species can clarify the role of geographic isolation in speciation. Here we use new methodology to quantify admixture at different stages of divergence in Heliconius butterflies, based on whole-genome sequences of 31 individuals. Comparisons between sympatric and allopatric populations of H. melpomene, H. cydno, and H. timareta revealed a genome-wide trend of increased shared variation in sympatry, indicative of pervasive interspecific gene flow. Up to 40% of 100-kb genomic windows clustered by geography rather than by species, demonstrating that a very substantial fraction of the genome has been shared between sympatric species. Analyses of genetic variation shared over different time intervals suggested that admixture between these species has continued since early in speciation. Alleles shared between species during recent time intervals displayed higher levels of linkage disequilibrium than those shared over longer time intervals, suggesting that this admixture took place at multiple points during divergence and is probably ongoing. The signal of admixture was significantly reduced around loci controlling divergent wing patterns, as well as throughout the Z chromosome, consistent with strong selection for Müllerian mimicry and with known Z-linked hybrid incompatibility. Overall these results show that species divergence can occur in the face of persistent and genome-wide admixture over long periods of time.
$62.5 US The Modeling and Implementation of Reliable Mobile Agent Systems using Group Communication Services

A mobile agent is a computer program that runs autonomously on behalf of a user and travels through a certain itinerary in a network of computers. When compared with normal client/server architecture, mobile agent paradigm adds up additional reliability problems since agents programs could be totally or partially lost due to failures that come from bad communication or computer agent's crash with the recent increase of considering mobile agent in different E-World applications, reliability is considered as a crucial issue to be faced. Most of existing mobile agent systems considers check pointing or replication as a mechanism in achieving reliable and fault tolerant execution. In this paper we present new model which employs the benefits gained from combing both mechanisms to achieve reliable mobile agent execution. Our model uses group communication services to avail different essential issues such as agent’s synchronization to facilitate the implementation the protocol. The proposed approach is dynamic in the sense that it allows a flexible membership mechanism to join or leave a mobile agent groups used in achieving the reliable execution .
Job Search Monitoring and Unemployment Duration in Hungary: Evidence from a Randomised Control Trial

The impact of the administration of unemployment benefits on time spent unemployed is a neglected issue in discussion of incentive effects in Central and Eastern Europe. We use Labour Force Survey data, administrative registers and inspection of benefit office practices to show that there is good reason to investigate this issue in Hungary. We then report on results from a field experiment of the impact of tightening the administration of benefits in which benefit claimants were randomly assigned to treatment and control groups. Treatment has quite a large effect on durations on benefit of women aged 30 and over while we find no effect for younger women or for men.
Orthogonal scan: low overhead scan for data paths

Orthogonal scan paths, which follow the path of the data flow, can be used in data path designs to reduce the test overhead-area, delay and test application time by sharing functional and test logic. Orthogonal scan paths are orthogonal to traditional scan paths. Judicious ordering of the registers in the orthogonal scan path can allow the scan path to be implemented entirely with existing interconnect, resulting in no additional wiring to connect the scan path and no performance degradation due to additional loading on the bistable outputs. Taking the orthogonal scan path into account during high-level synthesis operations such as register allocation allows for a better final solution, but orthogonal scan paths can also be used with non-synthesized data path. Orthogonal scan paths have roughly half the overhead of traditional scan paths and greatly reduce the test application time. TOPS, Stanford CRC's synthesis-for-test tool, has been modified to implement orthogonal scan paths for synthesized circuits.
Real-time Structure from Motion for Augmented Reality

Our work is focused on developing a real-time structure from motion (SfM) algorithm that is usable in an augmented reality system. We envisage augmented reality applications involving a head-mounted camera and display system. This requires an SfM algorithm that is robust to different scene structure and camera motion and will invariably have to deal with the problems of occlusion, clutter and multiple objects. We aim to develop a system that would be capable of providing camera ego-motion and scene structure in a variety of such head-mounted video sequences. This report reviews current approaches to SfM and describes our current work on a Monte Carlo approach to the structure from motion problem.
Key Establishment Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks usually comprise a number of sensors with limited resources. Each sensor includes sensing equipment, a data processing unit, a short range radio device and a battery [Pottie & Kaiser, 2000; Kahn et al.,1999; Akyildiz, 2002]. These networks have been considered for various purposes including border security, military target tracking and scientific research in dangerous environments [Perrig et. al., 2002; Kung & Vlah, 2003; Brooks, 2003]. Since the sensors may reside in an unattended and/or hostile environment, security is a critical issue. An adversary could easily access the wireless channel and intercept the transmitted information, or distribute false information in the network. Under such circumstances, authentication and confidentiality should be used to achieve network security. Since authentication and confidentiality protocols require a shared key between entities, key management is one of the most challenging issues in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) [Perrig et. al., 2002].
ISA meets Lara: An incremental word space model for cognitively plausible simulations of semantic learning

We introduce Incremental Semantic Analysis, a fully incremental word space model, and we test it on longitudinal child-directed speech data. On this task, ISA outperforms the related Random Indexing algorithm, as well as a SVD-based technique. In addition, the model has interesting properties that might also be characteristic of the semantic space of children.
Combining techniques and segment selective repeat on turbo coded hybrid ARQ

A turbo coded hybrid automatic repeat request (TC-HARQ) scheme is proposed based on packet combining technique and segment selective repeat. First, we demonstrate through simulation that, data combining gives substantial performance improvement over log-likelihood ratio (LLR) combining with the cost of more buffers. Second, we propose a novel retransmission strategy for TC-HARQ: segment selective repeat (SSR), which intends to select the worst corrupted part of the packet for retransmission. We show that SSR increases system throughput and has a potential to perform better with more sophisticated use of LLR.
Virtual Machine Trading in a Federation of Clouds: Individual Profit and Social Welfare Maximization

By sharing resources among different cloud providers, the paradigm of federated clouds exploits temporal availability of resources and geographical diversity of operational costs for efficient job service. While interoperability issues across different cloud platforms in a cloud federation have been extensively studied, fundamental questions on cloud economics remain: When and how should a cloud trade resources (e.g., virtual machines) with others, such that its net profit is maximized over the long run, while a close-to-optimal social welfare in the entire federation can also be guaranteed? To answer this question, a number of important, interrelated decisions, including job scheduling, server provisioning, and resource pricing, should be dynamically and jointly made, while the long-term profit optimality is pursued. In this work, we design efficient algorithms for intercloud virtual machine (VM) trading and scheduling in a cloud federation. For VM transactions among clouds, we design a double-auction-based mechanism that is strategy-proof, individual-rational, ex-post budget-balanced, and efficient to execute over time. Closely combined with the auction mechanism is a dynamic VM trading and scheduling algorithm, which carefully decides the true valuations of VMs in the auction, optimally schedules stochastic job arrivals with different service level agreements (SLAs) onto the VMs, and judiciously turns on and off servers based on the current electricity prices. Through rigorous analysis, we show that each individual cloud, by carrying out the dynamic algorithm in the online double auction, can achieve a time-averaged profit arbitrarily close to the offline optimum. Asymptotic optimality in social welfare is also achieved under homogeneous cloud settings. We carry out simulations to verify the effectiveness of our algorithms, and examine the achievable social welfare under heterogeneous cloud settings, as driven by the real-world Google cluster usage traces.
Population Pharmacokinetic and Pharmacogenetic Analysis of Nevirapine in Hypersensitive and Tolerant HIV-Infected Patients from Malawi

ABSTRACT We modeled nevirapine (NVP) pharmacokinetics in HIV-infected Malawian patients to assess the relationship between drug exposure and patient characteristics, genetic polymorphisms, and development of hypersensitivity reaction (HSR). One thousand one hundred seventeen patients were prospectively recruited and followed for 26 weeks with multiple or single serum samples obtained in a subset of patients for NVP quantification. Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within CYP2B6 and CYP3A4 genes were typed. Nonlinear mixed effects modeling was utilized to assess the influence of patient characteristics and host genetics on NVP apparent oral clearance (CL/F) and to explore the relationship between NVP CL/F and HSR. Published haplotype distributions were used to simulate NVP concentrations in Caucasians versus Africans. One hundred eighty patients (101 female) were included in the model; 25 experienced HSR. No associations between patient demographics or HSR and NVP CL/F were evident. A significant relationship between CYP2B6 c.983T>C and CYP2B6 c.516G>T and NVP CL/F was observed (P < 0.01). NVP CL/F was reduced by 23% and 36% in patients with CYP2B6 983TT/516TT and 983TC/516GG or GT, respectively, compared to the reference genotype. Simulated exposures suggested similar proportions (13 to 17%) of patients with subtherapeutic NVP among Caucasians and an African population. Influence of CYP2B6 polymorphisms on NVP CL/F in this population is in agreement with other reports. Our data indicate a lack of association between NVP exposure and HSR. Based on these data, dose optimization based solely on ethnicity (without individual gene testing) is unlikely to impact on risk of treatment failure or toxicity even in an African population with high carriage of poor metabolizer mutations.
Polaris: getting accurate indoor orientations for mobile devices using ubiquitous visual patterns on ceilings

Ubiquitous computing applications commonly use digital compass sensors to obtain orientation of a device relative to the magnetic north of the earth. However, these compass readings are always prone to significant errors in indoor environments due to presence of metallic objects in close proximity. Such errors can adversely affect the performance and quality of user experience of the applications utilizing digital compass sensors. In this paper, we propose Polaris, a novel approach to provide reliable orientation information for mobile devices in indoor environments. Polaris achieves this by aggregating pictures of the ceiling of an indoor environment and applies computer vision based pattern matching techniques to utilize them as orientation references for correcting digital compass readings. To show the feasibility of the Polaris system, we implemented the Polaris system on mobile devices, and field tested the system in multiple office buildings. Our results show that Polaris achieves 4.5° average orientation accuracy, which is about 3.5 times better than what can be achieved through sole use of raw digital compass readings.