Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Group critical incident stress debriefing with emergency services personnel: a randomized controlled trial

Although single-session individual debriefing is contraindicated, the efficacy of group psychological debriefing remains unresolved. We conducted the first randomized controlled trial of critical incident stress debriefing (CISD) with emergency workers (67 volunteer fire-fighters) following shared exposure to an occupational potentially traumatic event (PTE). The goals of group CISD are to prevent post-traumatic stress and promote return to normal functioning following a PTE. To assess both goals we measured four outcomes, before and after the intervention: post-traumatic stress, psychological distress, quality of life, and alcohol use. Fire brigades were randomly assigned to one of three treatment conditions: (1) CISD, (2) Screening (i.e., no-treatment), or (3) stress management Education. Controlling for pre-intervention scores, CISD was associated with significantly less alcohol use post-intervention relative to Screening, and significantly greater post-intervention quality of life relative to Education. There were no significant effects on post-traumatic stress or psychological distress. Overall, CISD may benefit broader functioning following exposure to work-related PTEs. Future research should focus on individual, group, and organizational factors and processes that can promote recovery from operational stressors. Ultimately, an occupational health (rather than victim-based) approach will provide the best framework for understanding and combating potential threats to the health and well-being of workers at high risk for PTE exposure.
Path planning of mobile robot using new potential field method in dynamic environments

The potential field method is widely used for autonomous mobile robot path planning. However, most potential field methods are designed to be applied in the stationary environment. In this paper, an improved potential field method is proposed for automatic mobile robot path planning in a dynamic environment. Improved method takes the position, the velocity, the acceleration and the physical size of the robot into account, and the relative factor of the distance and the acceleration is introduced in the potential function. The simulation result proves the effectiveness of this method.
Canine and feline emergency room visits and the lunar cycle: 11,940 cases (1992-2002).

OBJECTIVE To determine the frequency of canine and feline emergency visits with respect to the lunar cycle. DESIGN Retrospective case series. ANIMALS 11,940 dogs and cats evaluated on an emergency basis during an 11-year period. PROCEDURES Date of emergency visit, signalment, and chief complaint were retrieved from a medical records database. Emergency type was categorized as animal bite, cardiac arrest, epilepsy, ophthalmic, gastric dilatation-volvulus, trauma, multiple diseases, neoplasia, or toxicosis. The corresponding lunar phase was calculated and recorded as new moon, waxing crescent, first quarter, waxing gibbous, full moon, waning gibbous, last quarter, or waning crescent. The effect of lunar phase on the frequency of emergency visits was evaluated by calculating relative risk. RESULTS Of 11,940 cases, 9,407 were canine and 2,533 were feline. Relative risk calculations identified a significant increase in emergencies for dogs and cats on fuller moon days (waxing gibbous to waning gibbous), compared with all other days. CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE Results suggested that more emergency room visits occurred on fuller moon days for dogs and cats. It is unlikely that an attending clinician would notice the fractional increase in visits (0.59 and 0.13 more canine and feline visits, respectively) observed in this study at a facility with a low caseload. If the study is repeated at a facility with a robust emergency caseload, these results may lead to reorganization of staffing on fuller moon dates. A prospective study evaluating these findings under conditions of high caseload is necessary to determine the clinical relevance.
Polarización y desigualdad en Galicia y España, un análisis comparativo

Este trabajo presenta un analisis de la distribucion de la renta en Galicia entre 1973 y 1991. Usando datos de las Encuestas de Presupuestos Familiares (I.N.E.) se estudia la evolucion de los niveles de desigualdad y polarizacion en Galicia, comparando con resultados similares para el conjunto espanol. Para el estudio de la desigualdad se utiliza el criterio de Lorenz, asi como indices con diferente sensibilidad a las transferencias en distintos puntos de la distribucion. Para el estudio de la polarizacion se emplean los metodos derivados de Wolfson (1994) y Esteban, Gradin y Ray (1999). La inferencia se realiza mediante bootstraps.
In situ hybridization: A valuable tool in diagnostic pathology

In situ hybridization or hybridohistochemistry has evolved in recent years in a new histologic modality. In situ hybridization (ISH) can be used for the detection of DNA (DISH) or RNA (RISH). The potential diagnostic value within a pathologic setting are well recognized. In this review paper, we summarize the use of DISH in a pathologic setting for the detection of chromosomal aberrations and localization of DNA‐viruses like cytomegalovirus and Epstein Barr virus. RISH which is still in a more experimental stage can be applied for the localization of RNA‐virus, like human immunodeficiency virus. However, the most important application of RISH will be the detection of gene‐expression at the level of mRNA. Potentially this has many applications especially in early diagnostics of neoplastic tissues. Finally, we have summarized some pitfalls which may hamper the introduction of in situ hybridization for diagnostic purposes and some future developments in ISH.
Which is the better adjuvant to ropivacaine in brachial plexus block : dexmedetomidine or morphine ? A prospective , randomized , double-blinded , comparative study

Objectives: Dexmedetomidine has been utilized as an adjuvant to prolong single local anaesthetic injection technique in brachial plexus block despite of adverse effects and cost-effectiveness. Morphine, a classic opioid, is also used as an adjuvant in neuraxial and perineural nerve blocks. In this study, we compared the effects of these two different adjuvants to ropivacaine in interscalene brachial plexus blockade. The onset and duration of motor and sensory blocks are mainly focused in the study. Methods: A total of 92 patients scheduled for distal arm or forearm surgeries were divided into 3 groups in a randomized, double-blind mode. Under the direction of a nerve stimulator, an interscalene brachial plexus block was performed by a single injection of one of the following local anesthetics: 24 mL (120 mg) of 0.5% ropivacaine plus 1 mL saline in Group R; 24 mL (120 mg) of 0.5% ropivacaine plus 1 mL dexmedetomidine 0.75 μg/kg in Group RD; and 24 mL (120 mg) of 0.5% ropivacaine plus 1 mL (2 mg) morphine in Group RM. Onset time and durations of sensory and motor blocks, cardiovascular parameters, peripheral oxygen saturation (SpO2), and adverse reactions were recorded and compared. Results: The onset time in the Group RD was significantly less than that in the Group RM (P<0.05), while the duration in the Group RD was longer than that in the Group RM (P<0.05). Both the onset time and the duration of blocks were not critically different in the Group RM and the Group R. For the side effects, more patients in the Group RD suffered from bradycardia (P<0.05). However, more patients in the Group RM had nausea and vomiting (P<0.05). Conclusions: Compared with morphine, dexmedetomidine can provide superior analgesia for interscalene brachial plexus block in adjunct to ropivacaine at 0.5%. As an adjuvant, morphine may have few significant benefits in peripheral nerve block.
Local Topic Discovery via Boosted Ensemble of Nonnegative Matrix Factorization

Nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) has been increasingly popular for topic modeling of large-scale documents. However, the resulting topics often represent only general, thus redundant information about the data rather than minor, but potentially meaningful information to users. To tackle this problem, we propose a novel ensemble model of nonnegative matrix factorization for discovering high-quality local topics. Our method leverages the idea of an ensemble model to successively perform NMF given a residual matrix obtained from previous stages and generates a sequence of topic sets. The novelty of our method lies in the fact that it utilizes the residual matrix inspired by a state-of-the-art gradient boosting model and applies a sophisticated local weighting scheme on the given matrix to enhance the locality of topics, which in turn delivers high-quality, focused topics of interest to users. 1
Human herpes virus-8-associated multicentric Castleman’s disease in an HIV-positive patient presenting with relapsing and remitting hyponatraemia

We report a case of human herpes virus-8-associated multicentric Castleman’s disease in an HIV-positive patient with hyponatraemia. A 65-year-old man was admitted with relapsing and remitting fever, scattered skin eruptions and hepatosplenomegaly following combination antiretroviral therapy for his HIV infection. Based on histopathological findings, he was diagnosed as having human herpes virus-8-associated multicentric Castleman’s disease and was treated with four-weekly infusions of rituximab. Prior to receiving chemotherapy, we observed several suspected biomarkers of disease activity, positive correlations between plasma human herpes virus-8 viral load and the levels of plasma interleukin-6, C-reactive protein and soluble interleukin-2 receptor, and negative correlations between platelet count, albumin levels and especially serum sodium levels. We hypothesize that non-osmotic release of plasma antidiuretic hormone is a cause of hyponatraemia in human herpes virus-8-associated multicentric Castleman’s disease and that relapsing and remitting hyponatraemia could be correlated with plasma human herpes virus-8 viral load.
An integrated development environment for reconfigurable operators array

In this paper, an integrated development environment (IDE), which is used to map application into a target reconfigurable operators (ReOps) array, is presented. Having as input APU RTL description of an application, the IDE produces the configuration bitstream. The proposed IDE supports a variety of ReOps array through revising the architecture file which including the definition of ReOps, interconnection segments and connection switches, as well as the scale of array and organization of ReOps. A set of benchmarks is given to verify the flow of proposed IDE.
Single-molecule fluorescence to study molecular motors

Abstract Molecular motors, which use energy from ATP hydrolysis to take nanometer-scale steps with run-lengths on the order of micrometers, have important roles in areas such as transport and mitosis in living organisms. New techniques have recently been developed to measure these small movements at the single-molecule level. In particular, fluorescence imaging has contributed to the accurate measurement of this tiny movement. We introduce three single-molecule fluorescence imaging techniques which can find the position of a fluorophore with accuracy in the range of a few nanometers. These techniques are named after Hollywood animation characters: Fluorescence Imaging with One Nanometer Accuracy (FIONA), Single-molecule High-REsolution Colocalization (SHREC), and Defocused Orientation and Position Imaging (DOPI). We explain new understanding of molecular motors obtained from measurements using these techniques.
Wisdom and Intelligence: The Nature and Function of Knowledge in the Later Years

Intelligence can be defined as the ability to think logically, to conceptualize and abstract from reality. Wisdom can be defined as the ability to grasp human nature, which is paradoxical, contradictory, and subject to continual change. These two constructs hold potential for highlighting positive and adaptive features of development in the later years. Both are considered to increase with age, and both provide for life-long acquisition of knowledge. Despite these phenotypic similarities, this paper attempts to illustrate that the nature of wisdom and its function in the developmental process differs sufficiently from cognitive ability to warrant separate scrutiny. These two constructs are compared with respect to the domains of behavior they represent, the operational tasks used to assess them, and the relationship of logic and time in their development. The function of intelligence is characterized as focusing on questions of how to do and accomplish necessary life-supporting tasks; the function of wisdom is characterized as provoking the individual to consider the consequences of his actions both to self and their effects on others. Wisdom, therefore, evokes questions of should one pursue a particular course of action.
Industrialiser le test fonctionnel

Ce livre s'adresse a tous les chefs de projets et aux personnes qui ont a mettre en place une strategie de tests pour les applications dont ils ont la charge, que ce soit des projets specifiques ou des progiciels. Il concerne egalement les DSI, les responsables methodes et qualite qui ont a guider les methodes de travail de leurs equipes. Ce livre traite du test fonctionnel au cours des differentes phases de qualification. Il montre comment la conception, puis la construction et la mise en oeuvre des tests peuvent s'appuyer sur des processus systematiques et "industrialisables". La premiere partie presente un constat de la situation actuelle du test logiciel. Elle decrit le cycle de la qualification et les besoins d'industrialisation associes. La deuxieme partie decrit les techniques a mettre en oeuvre pour aboutir a une demarche systematique. Elle presente un processus outille et les elements cles d'un deploiement reussi. La troisieme partie expose dans le detail trois etudes de cas (progiciel, application web, systeme embarque) et synthetise les facteurs du ROI. Le test logiciel a beaucoup progresse ces dernieres annees, tant au niveau des methodes, des processus que des outils disponibles. Ce livre vous fournit les elements operationnels qui vous permettront de vous situer au meilleur niveau des pratiques actuelles.
A literature review of role of obesity in adult health with reference to Africa.

Although obesity is a global epidemic that affects every socio-economic class, little is available in the literature on the status of the syndrome in Africa. This literature review was therefore written in order to highlight the causes, effects and potential mitigation measures of the syndrome with particular interest on the status of the condition in Africa. Obesity results from an incorrect energy balance leading to an increased store of energy, mainly as fat. The major factors that contribute to obesity include over-nutrition, physical inactivity, change of dietary habits, modernization, consumption of high fat, high carbohydrate foods, urbanization and in a minority of patients a physical condition or metabolic disturbance. Body mass index (BMI) is currently being used by competent authorities as an index of obesity. BMI differentiates classes of obesity, with class I, II and III being identified with BMI of . 30 but <35, . 35 but <40, and . 40, respectively. A BMI of 18.5-25 is regarded as normal. However, it is sometimes difficult to differentiate obesity due to excess fat deposition and that due to muscle atrophy. Also, current procedures for estimating body fat percentage are not as accurate as they should and often give different results. Despite women tending to be more obese than men, they are less prone to hypertension, heart disease and type 2 diabetes than men before they reach menopause due to their fat deposition being predominantly sub-cutaneous rather than abdominal. In 2010, the WHO estimated that about 1.4 billion adults were overweight and obese, but 300-400 million were obese. The defining metabolic changes in obesity are decreased glucose tolerance, decreased sensitivity to insulin, hyperinsulinemia and reduced life expectancy. Obesity can be treated by restricting food intake and engaging in regular physical exercises. Other measures include the use of anorectic drugs and various forms of jejunoileostomy. Obesity is a controllable behavioural disorder, with regular exercise and sensible eating being the best ways to regulate body fat percentage and maintain a healthy body weight. As it is difficult to treat obesity, efforts should be directed towards prevention in order to keep it in check. Keywords : Obesity, global situation, Africa, mitigation
Design considerations of recent advanced monolitic current-mode DC-DC converters

CMOS monolithic current-mode DC-DC converters have been widely used as a core part of integrated power management circuits. The design of the current sensors and efficiency enhance structures are challenging and have kept evolving with the advanced technology. A review of the state-of-the-art current sensor designs and efficiency enhancement structure will be discussed in the paper.
Exogenous Treatment and Endogenous Factors: Vanishing of Omitted Variable Bias on the Interaction Term

Abstract Whether interested in the differential impact of a particular factor in various institutional settings or in the heterogeneous effect of policy or random experiment, the empirical researcher confronts a problem if the factor of interest is correlated with an omitted variable. This paper presents the circumstances under which it is possible to arrive at a consistent estimate of the mentioned effect. We find that if the source of heterogeneity and omitted variable are jointly independent of policy or treatment, then the OLS estimate on the interaction term between the treatment and endogenous factor turns out to be consistent.
Benchmarking viromics: an in silico evaluation of metagenome-enabled estimates of viral community composition and diversity

Background Viral metagenomics (viromics) is increasingly used to obtain uncultivated viral genomes, evaluate community diversity, and assess ecological hypotheses. While viromic experimental methods are relatively mature and widely accepted by the research community, robust bioinformatics standards remain to be established. Here we used in silico mock viral communities to evaluate the viromic sequence-to-ecological-inference pipeline, including (i) read pre-processing and metagenome assembly, (ii) thresholds applied to estimate viral relative abundances based on read mapping to assembled contigs, and (iii) normalization methods applied to the matrix of viral relative abundances for alpha and beta diversity estimates. Results Tools specifically designed for metagenomes, specifically metaSPAdes, MEGAHIT, and IDBA-UD, were the most effective at assembling viromes. Read pre-processing, such as partitioning, had virtually no impact on assembly output, but may be useful when hardware is limited. Viral populations with 2–5 × coverage typically assembled well, whereas lesser coverage led to fragmented assembly. Strain heterogeneity within populations hampered assembly, especially when strains were closely related (average nucleotide identity, or ANI ≥97%) and when the most abundant strain represented <50% of the population. Viral community composition assessments based on read recruitment were generally accurate when the following thresholds for detection were applied: (i) ≥10 kb contig lengths to define populations, (ii) coverage defined from reads mapping at ≥90% identity, and (iii) ≥75% of contig length with ≥1 × coverage. Finally, although data are limited to the most abundant viruses in a community, alpha and beta diversity patterns were robustly estimated (±10%) when comparing samples of similar sequencing depth, but more divergent (up to 80%) when sequencing depth was uneven across the dataset. In the latter cases, the use of normalization methods specifically developed for metagenomes provided the best estimates. Conclusions These simulations provide benchmarks for selecting analysis cut-offs and establish that an optimized sample-to-ecological-inference viromics pipeline is robust for making ecological inferences from natural viral communities. Continued development to better accessing RNA, rare, and/or diverse viral populations and improved reference viral genome availability will alleviate many of viromics remaining limitations.
Estimation of the number of endmembers via the hubness phenomenon

Estimating the number of endmembers in a hyperspectral image is an important first task in any unmixing chain. Several existing algorithms typically underestimate this number due to the high correlations encountered in spectral data sets. We present a new method for estimating the number of endmembers which does not suffer from this problem, based upon comparing the indegree distribution of the data set with artificially generated distributions. This approach exploits the hubness phenomenon, the observation that indegree distributions show a high dependence on the intrinsic dimensionality of the data set. We demonstrate that this method outperforms several popular alternatives on artificial data sets, and that realistic values are obtained on real hyperspectral data sets.
Marmoricola endophyticus sp. nov., an endophytic actinobacterium isolated from Thespesia populnea.

A novel endophytic actinobacterium, designated strain 8BXZ-J1T, was isolated from surface-sterilized branches of Thespesia populnea collected from Beilun Estuary Mangrove Forest National Nature Reserve in Guangxi, China, and examined by a polyphasic approach to determine its taxonomic position. Cells of the isolate were Gram-stain-positive, aerobic, non-spore-forming, non-motile and short rod-shaped. Phylogenetic analysis based on 16S rRNA gene sequences suggested that strain 8BXZ-J1T belonged to the genus Marmoricola, sharing highest similarity with Marmoricola solisilvae DSM 27140T (96.9 %). The isolate grew at 10-35 °C (optimum, 28-30 °C), at pH 6.0-8.0 (optimum, pH 7.0) and in the presence of 0-10 % (w/v) NaCl (optimum, 0-5.0 %). The organism contained ll-2,6-diaminopimelic acid as the diagnostic diamino acid of the peptidoglycan, MK-8(H4) as the major menaquinone, and a polar lipid profile including diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylcholine, phosphatidylinositol and two unknown lipids. The major fatty acids of strain 8BXZ-J1T were C18 : 0 10-methyl, iso-C16 : 0 and C16 : 0. The G+C content of the genomic DNA was 68.7 mol%. These data demonstrate that strain 8BXZ-J1T is representative of a novel species of the genus Marmoricola, for which the name Marmoricola endophyticus sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is 8BXZ-J1T (=KCTC 39789T=CGMCC 1.16067T).
Grasping and Coordinated Manipulation by a Multifingered Robot Hand

A new avenue of progress in the area of robotics is the use of multifingered robot hands for fine motion manipulation. This paper treats two fundamental problems in the study of multi fingered robot hands: grasp planning and the determination of coordinated control laws with point contact models. First, we develop the dual notions of grasp stability and grasp manipulability and propose a procedure for task modeling. Using the task model, we define the structured grasp quality measures, and using these measures we then devise a grasp planning algorithm. Second, based on the assumption of point contact models, we develop a computed torque-like con trol algorithm for the coordinated manipulation of a multi fingered robot hand. This control algorithm, which takes into account both the dynamics of the object and the dynamics of the hand, will realize simultaneously both the position trajec tory of the object and any desired value of internal grasp force. Moreover, the formulation of the control scheme can be easily extended to allow rolling and sliding motion of the fingers with respect to the object.