Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Perceptions of distress and positive consequences following exposure to a major disaster amongst a well-studied cohort

Objectives: Research on the impact of natural disasters on health and well-being faces several methodological challenges, including: sampling issues; exposure assessment; and outcome measurement. The present study used a comprehensive measure of disaster exposure to assess relationships between exposure to the Canterbury (New Zealand) Earthquakes of 2010–2011 and both: (a) self-reported distress and (b) positive outcomes; and also investigated gender differences in reports. Methods: Data were gathered from the Christchurch Health and Development Study, a 35-year longitudinal study. The study examined data from 495 individuals exposed to the Canterbury Earthquakes for who complete data on exposure and reactions to the earthquakes at age 35 were available. Results: Participants with higher levels of exposure to the earthquakes reported significantly (p<0.0001) higher levels of distress due to fear, death and injury, and disruption caused by the earthquakes. Higher levels of exposure to the earthquakes were also associated with significantly (p<0.0001) higher levels of reporting positive consequences following the earthquakes. Women reported significantly (p<0.0001) greater distress than men and significantly (p<0.001) greater positive consequences. Conclusions: Higher levels of exposure to disaster were associated with higher levels of distress, but also with higher levels of self-reported positive outcomes, with females reporting higher levels of both positive and negative outcomes. The findings highlight the need for comprehensive assessment of disaster exposure, to consider gender and other group differences in reactions to disaster exposure, and for studies of disasters to examine both positive and negative consequences.
Stimulant use disorders in people with psychosis: A meta-analysis of rate and factors affecting variation

Objective: Stimulant abuse and dependence often complicate the care of people with psychotic disorders. This study systematically reviews the prevalence estimates reported for stimulant abuse and dependence in people with psychotic disorders, and examines personal, clinical, regional and methodological factors which explain variation in these rates. Methods: PsychINFO, EMBASE and MEDLINE (1946–2013) were searched systematically for studies reporting on stimulant drug use disorders in representative samples of people with psychotic disorders. Random effects models estimated the pooled rate of a stimulant use disorder, defined to include stimulant abuse and stimulant dependence. Study characteristics associated with heterogeneity in rates of stimulant use disorder were examined by subgroup analyses for categorical variables, by meta-regression for continuous independent variables and by multiple meta-regression. Results: Sixty-four studies provided 68 estimates of lifetime or recent stimulant use disorders in 22,500 people with psychosis. The pooled rate of stimulant use disorder was 8.9% (95% CI 7.4%, 10.5%). Higher rates of stimulant use disorders were reported in studies of affective psychosis, studies from inpatient settings, studies from the USA and Australia, and studies with higher rates of cannabis disorder; in multiple meta-regression analysis these factors explained 68% of between-study variance. Rates of stimulant use disorder were stable over time, and unrelated to age, sex, stage of psychosis, type of stimulant drug or study methodology factors. Conclusions: Reported rates of stimulant use disorder in people with psychosis are much higher than in the general population but vary widely and are associated with regional, service setting and clinical differences between studies. It is likely that stimulants contribute to the overall burden of psychosis, and that social and environmental factors combine with drug and illness-related factors to influence stimulant use in psychosis.
Is electroconvulsive therapy safe in multiple sclerosis?

Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 49(10) of tics. The average age of such patients was 47 years, ranging from 25 to 63 years. Clonazepam has been found to be effective in tic disorder, albeit used infrequently (Shprecher and Kurlan, 2009). The current case represents a rare occurrence of late onset tic disorder, treated with an equally unconventional agent, clonazepam. Declaration of interest
Deep brain stimulation in mental health: Review of evidence for clinical efficacy

Objective: There is increasing interest in the use of deep brain stimulation as a treatment for psychiatric disorders. In this review, we consider the evidence for the effectiveness of deep brain stimulation for psychiatric indications, with a primary focus on obsessive compulsive disorder and major depressive disorder. Methods: Case reports, case series and clinical trials where deep brain stimulation was primarily utilised in the treatment of a psychiatric disorder, including obsessive compulsive disorder, major depressive disorder, anorexia nervosa or an addictive disorder were identified. The evidence for the effectiveness of deep brain stimulation in the treatment of obsessive compulsive disorder and major depressive disorder was reviewed with studies clustered by the site of implantation. Results: The majority of identified manuscripts report small case series or single cases. A limited number of studies have reported some form of randomised or blinded stimulation comparison. All of these comparative reports have included small samples of subjects (less than 20 per study in total) compromising the feasibility of making statistical comparison between outcomes in the comparison phases. The two exceptions to this have been industry-sponsored studies conducted in the treatment of major depressive disorder. However, both were stopped prematurely due to concerns about poor efficacy. Conclusions: There is insufficient evidence at this point in time to support the use of deep brain stimulation as a clinical treatment for any psychiatric disorder outside of research and programmes where formal outcome data are being systematically collated. While some promising initial data exist to support its potential efficacy for a number of psychiatric conditions, further research is required to establish optimal implantation targets, patient characteristics associated with positive therapeutic outcomes and optimal deep brain stimulation parameters and parameter-programming methods.
Methods of combining multiple classifiers and their applications to handwriting recognition

Possible solutions to the problem of combining classifiers can be divided into three categories according to the levels of information available from the various classifiers. Four approaches based on different methodologies are proposed for solving this problem. One is suitable for combining individual classifiers such as Bayesian, k-nearest-neighbor, and various distance classifiers. The other three could be used for combining any kind of individual classifiers. On applying these methods to combine several classifiers for recognizing totally unconstrained handwritten numerals, the experimental results show that the performance of individual classifiers can be improved significantly. For example, on the US zipcode database, 98.9% recognition with 0.90% substitution and 0.2% rejection can be obtained, as well as high reliability with 95% recognition, 0% substitution, and 5% rejection. >
Exploring the validity of the Fantastic Lifestyle Checklist in an inner city population of people presenting with suicidal behaviours

Purpose: Although patients demonstrate a range of problematic health-related lifestyle behaviours preceding suicidal behaviour, there is little research that routinely measure these behaviours. This paper seeks to establish the utility of health-related lifestyle measure (Fantastic Lifestyle Checklist) in people presenting to a major inner city Emergency Department with a range of suicidal behaviours. Methods: From 2007–2014, data from the 366 patients who had completed the Fantastic Lifestyle Checklist, after referral by the Emergency Department to a service for people with deliberate self-harm or suicidal ideation, were included in the analysis study. A Maximum Likelihood factor analysis was performed to assess the factor structure of the Fantastic Lifestyle Checklist and the resultant factors were explored in relation to measures of health; namely the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale and the 12-item Short-Form Health Survey. Results: A three-component factor structure emerged comprising Component 1 ‘positive life investments’, Component 2 ‘poor emotional regulation’ and Component 3 ‘poor health behaviours’. There was a significant negative correlation between ‘positive life investments’ and each of the Depression, Anxiety and Stress scales subscales and significant positive associations with ‘poor emotional regulation’ and Short Form Health Survey-12 mental health scores. Only the Short Form Health Survey-12 physical health subscale was weakly correlated with ‘poor health behaviours’, in females. Conclusion: Our findings support the construct and concurrent validity of the Fantastic Lifestyle Checklist measure. The three factors obtained for the Fantastic Lifestyle Checklist were coherent and seem useful for research and clinical practice.
Effect of digital transformation on organisational performance of SMEs: Evidence from the Taiwanese textile industry's web portal

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of the pilot implementation of an industry-specific web portal as an IT resource on textile SMEs organisational performance. Using a resource-based perspective, portal delivery functionalities, considered as non-physical IT resources, are analysed using the dimensions of portal usefulness, portal interface, and service-oriented portal functions on SMEs users’ perceived outcomes of organisational performance. Design/methodology/approach – Qualitative and quantitative approaches are used to explore the research hypotheses. Data were collected using field interviews and survey from senior executives of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the Taiwanese textile industry. Findings – Results indicate that the service-oriented portal function dimension, consisting of portal maintenance service, B2B function, and cloud computing, significantly influences organisational performance. Unexpected findings, such as the negative impact of greater ind.
Abuse in care? The identification of early indicators of the abuse of people with learning disabilities in residential settings

Although No Secrets suggests that adult protection practices should seek to prevent abuse, it can be argued that such practice predominately focuses on pursuing effective responses to abuse that has already happened, rather than preventing the onset of abuse. This research sought to contribute to the prevention of abuse, through the identification of ‘early indicators’. Early indicators were identified, and this knowledge has been applied to equip families and practitioners to report concerns at an early stage and seek protective responses.
Dysphagia, disability, and icebergs: A discussion

What is the common link between dysphagia, disability, and icebergs? At first glance very little. In this article, it will be suggested that the management of dysphagia in people with a developmental disability is much like an iceberg, which reveals little of its enormity at first glance. The need to see beyond the obvious and see what the client is communicating through behaviour and history is the key to a greater and more holistic understanding of these complex issues.
Computers and Mathematics with Applications

Uncertainty theory provides a new tool to deal with the shortest path problem with nondeterministic arc lengths. With help from the operational law of uncertainty theory, thispapergivestheuncertaintydistributionoftheshortestpathlength.Also,itinvestigates solutions to the α -shortest path and the most shortest path in an uncertain network. It points out that there exists an equivalence relation between the α -shortest path in an uncertain network and the shortest path in a corresponding deterministic network, which leads to an effective algorithm to find the α -shortest path and the most shortest path. Roughly speaking, this algorithm can be broken down into two parts: constructing a deterministic network and then invoking the Dijkstra algorithm. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Solving peg-in-hole tasks by human demonstration and exception strategies

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose a new algorithm based on programming by demonstration and exception strategies to solve assembly tasks such as peg-in-hole. Design/methodology/approach – Data describing the demonstrated tasks are obtained by kinesthetic guiding. The demonstrated trajectories are transferred to new robot workspaces using three-dimensional (3D) vision. Noise introduced by vision when transferring the task to a new configuration could cause the execution to fail, but such problems are resolved through exception strategies. Findings – This paper demonstrated that the proposed approach combined with exception strategies outperforms traditional approaches for robot-based assembly. Experimental evaluation was carried out on Cranfield Benchmark, which constitutes a standardized assembly task in robotics. This paper also performed statistical evaluation based on experiments carried out on two different robotic platforms. Practical implications – The developed framework can have an.
Pattern of psychotropic medication use over two decades in Australian women

Objective: Few population-based studies have been used to investigate secular trends in psychotropic medication use. Therefore, the aim of this study was to examine psychotropic medication use over time using data from the Geelong Osteoporosis Study, an on-going, population-based, cohort study of Australian women. Methods: Of the 1494 women recruited at Time 1 (1993–1997), self-reported medication use from Time 2 (2004–2008) and/or Time 3 (2011–2014) was available for 889 women. Prevalence of antidepressant/antipsychotic/anxiolytic/sedative/anticonvulsant use by age and cohort strata was calculated using bootstrapping methods. Simultaneous age-cohort patterns were evaluated using logistic regression techniques. Results: The prevalence of any psychotropic medication use increased from 8.0% (95% confidence interval = [6.3, 9.8]) at Time 1 to 26.0% (95% confidence interval = [22.4, 29.4]) at Time 3, translating to a 4.3-fold increase in the likelihood of psychotropic medication use over the study period (odds ratio = 4.3, 95% confidence interval = [3.2, 5.8], p < 0.001). This increase was driven by the use of antidepressants (odds ratio = 6.4, 95% confidence interval = [4.2, 9.5], p < 0.001) and anticonvulsants (odds ratio = 4.4, 95% confidence interval = [1.8, 11.1]) and modest increases in the use of anxiolytic agents (odds ratio = 1.9, 95% confidence interval = [1.1, 3.1]) and sedatives (odds ratio = 1.7, 95% confidence interval = [1.6, 1.9]). The prevalence of any psychotropic medication use increased with increasing age (40–59.9 years: odds ratio = 1.9, 95% confidence interval = [1.5, 2.6]; 60–79.9 years: odds ratio = 2.6, 95% confidence interval = [1.9, 3.5], compared to the 20- to 39.9-year group). Use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors increased dramatically over the study period (odds ratio = 15.3, 95% confidence interval = [7.0, 33.4]). Conclusion: Use of psychotropic medication has increased substantially over the past two decades, especially among older women. Further investigations into the correlates and outcomes of the increased use of psychotropic medications are warranted.
Validated novel software to measure the conspicuity index of lesions in DICOM images

A novel software programme and associated Excel spreadsheet has been developed to provide an objective measure of the expected visual detectability of focal abnormalities within DICOM images. ROIs are drawn around the abnormality, the software then fits the lesion using a least squares method to recognize the edges of the lesion based on the full width half maximum. 180 line profiles are then plotted around the lesion, giving 360 edge profiles.
Robust group-wise rigid registration of point sets using t-mixture model

A probabilistic framework for robust, group-wise rigid alignment of point-sets using a mixture of Students t-distribution especially when the point sets are of varying lengths, are corrupted by an unknown degree of outliers or in the presence of missing data. Medical images (in particular magnetic resonance (MR) images), their segmentations and consequently point-sets generated from these are highly susceptible to corruption by outliers. This poses a problem for robust correspondence estimation and accurate alignment of shapes, necessary for training statistical shape models (SSMs). To address these issues, this study proposes to use a t-mixture model (TMM), to approximate the underlying joint probability density of a group of similar shapes and align them to a common reference frame. The heavy-tailed nature of t-distributions provides a more robust registration framework in comparison to state of the art algorithms. Significant reduction in alignment errors is achieved in the presence of outliers, using the proposed TMM-based group-wise rigid registration method, in comparison to its Gaussian mixture model (GMM) counterparts. The proposed TMM-framework is compared with a group-wise variant of the well-known Coherent Point Drift (CPD) algorithm and two other group-wise methods using GMMs, using both synthetic and real data sets. Rigid alignment errors for groups of shapes are quantified using the Hausdorff distance (HD) and quadratic surface distance (QSD) metrics.
Single trial classification for the categories of perceived emotional facial expressions: an event-related fMRI study

Recently, several studies have successfully applied multivariate pattern analysis methods to predict the categories of emotions. These studies are mainly focused on self-experienced emotions, such as the emotional states elicited by music or movie. In fact, most of our social interactions involve perception of emotional information from the expressions of other people, and it is an important basic skill for humans to recognize the emotional facial expressions of other people in a short time. In this study, we aimed to determine the discriminability of perceived emotional facial expressions. In a rapid event-related fMRI design, subjects were instructed to classify four categories of facial expressions (happy, disgust, angry and neutral) by pressing different buttons, and each facial expression stimulus lasted for 2s. All participants performed 5 fMRI runs. One multivariate pattern analysis method, support vector machine was trained to predict the categories of facial expressions. For feature selection, ninety masks defined from anatomical automatic labeling (AAL) atlas were firstly generated and each were treated as the input of the classifier; then, the most stable AAL areas were selected according to prediction accuracies, and comprised the final feature sets. Results showed that: for the 6 pair-wise classification conditions, the accuracy, sensitivity and specificity were all above chance prediction, among which, happy vs. neutral , angry vs. disgust achieved the lowest results. These results suggested that specific neural signatures of perceived emotional facial expressions may exist, and happy vs. neutral, angry vs. disgust might be more similar in information representation in the brain.
Immunespecific interferon production by peripheral blood mononuclear leukocytes from patients with primary and recurrent orolabial herpes simplex virus infections

Immunespecific IFN (IFN) is produced by the peripheral blood mononuclear leukocytes (PBML) of greater than 95% of HSV‐seropositive humans with infrequent recurrences of herpes labialis [Green, Yeh, and Overall, 1981]. However, herpes virus‐induced immunespecific IFN was produced by PBML from only 33 of 48 (68.8%) persons with frequent recurrences (2–12 episodes a year). Two of eight subjects with primary herpes gingivostomatitis also failed to produce immunespecific IFN during either the acute or convalescent phases of their initial HSV infection. These data suggest that some persons have a defective immunespecific IFN response that exists from the time of their primary orolabial HSV type 1 infection. This defect may predispose to a higher frequency of disease in some individuals.
An SPM12 extension for multiple sclerosis lesion segmentation

Purpose: Magnetic resonance imaging is nowadays the hallmark to diagnose multiple sclerosis (MS), characterized by white matter lesions. Several approaches have been recently presented to tackle the lesion segmentation problem, but none of them have been accepted as a standard tool in the daily clinical practice. In this work we present yet another tool able to automatically segment white matter lesions outperforming the current-state-of-the-art approaches. Methods: This work is an extension of Roura et al. [1], where external and platform dependent pre-processing libraries (brain extraction, noise reduction and intensity normalization) were required to achieve an optimal performance. Here we have updated and included all these required pre-processing steps into a single framework (SPM software). Therefore, there is no need of external tools to achieve the desired segmentation results. Besides, we have changed the working space from T1w to FLAIR, reducing interpolation errors produced in the registration process from FLAIR to T1w space. Finally a post-processing constraint based on shape and location has been added to reduce false positive detections. Results: The evaluation of the tool has been done on 24 MS patients. Qualitative and quantitative results are shown with both approaches in terms of lesion detection and segmentation. Conclusion: We have simplified both installation and implementation of the approach, providing a multiplatform tool1 integrated into the SPM software, which relies only on using T1w and FLAIR images. We have reduced with this new version the computation time of the previous approach while maintaining the performance.
Diagnósticos e intervenções de enfermagem para pacientes portadores de insuficiência cardíaca congestiva utilizando a CIPE

The aim of this descriptive exploratory study was to construct nursing diagnosis and intervention statements for patients with Congestive Heart Failure. To accomplish this aim, 53 terms were identified in the focus axis of the International Classification for Nursing Practice (ICNP®), which guided the construction of these statements using the guidelines of the International Council of Nurses and ISO 18. 104. A total of 92 nursing diagnosis statements were constructed, which resulted in 66 statements after standardization. The standardized statements were separated according to the following pathophysiological models: 13 related to tachycardia, 20 related to dyspnea, 19 related to edema, and 14 related to congestion. A total of 234 interventions were constructed for these statements using the terms from the 7-Axis Model of the ICNP®, the literature in the area and the clinical experience of the authors. The nursing diagnosis and intervention statements designed are expected to facilitate the evaluation of CHF patients and assist in the construction of a terminological subset for the ICNP®.