Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Does tertiary education in music promote psychological well-being and curb negative emotions

The study aimed to find out whether stream of study (Music / Non-Music) influences tertiary students’ extents of psychological well-being and experience of negative emotions (viz. depression, anxiety and stress). Two random samples were selected. One sample consisted of 145 (103 undergraduate; 42 postgraduate) students of music. Another sample comprised 87 (59 undergraduate; 28 post-graduate) students who have never studied music. Females and males were represented in the samples. Age range of the participants was 18 – 25 years. They belonged to middle socio-economic status families as assessed by standardized tool . They were residents of Kolkata. Tools administered for data collection included a General Information Schedule and three standardized tests viz. Psychological Well – Being Scales , Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale [11] and Socio – Economic Status Index . Descriptive statistics were computed. Analysis of Variance was conducted. Results showed that stream of study (Music / NonMusic) had significant influence on participating tertiary students’ extents of autonomy, depression, anxiety and stress. Participating students of music tended to be superior in autonomy but on the average suffered more from depression, anxiety and stress as compared with their peers from other disciplines. Institutions must provide counseling and guidance services customized to satisfy the needs of students of music.
The structure of participants’ turn-transition practices in aided conversations that use speech-output technologies

Abstract Using the concepts and principles of conversation analysis (CA), this paper examines the everyday, unscripted, spontaneous conversations between 4 males who communicated with the aid of speech-output technologies and their mothers. The analyses focused on describing the conversationalists’ various actions in aided turn-transition processes, resulting in a 3-part turn-transition structure used to accomplish aided turn initiation. Despite the challenges to conversational progress, the participants did not consider the conversational speed a challenge. The participants and their mothers were oriented to the progression of the aided conversation by creating interaction practices to achieve successful turn-transitions. By understanding the structural characteristics of fluent aided conversations, it may be possible to develop effective interaction strategies for communication partners and for augmentative and alternative communication technologies that are intentionally designed to facilitate interactive communication.
Characterization of Pathogenic and Nonpathogenic Fusarium oxysporum Isolates Associated with Commercial Tomato Crops in the Andean Region of Colombia

In Colombia, tomato production under protected conditions represents an important economic contribution to the agricultural sector. Fusarium wilt diseases, caused by pathogenic formae speciales of the soil-borne fungus Fusarium oxysporum Schltdl. , cause significant yield losses in tomatoes throughout the world. Investigation of the F. oxysporum–tomato pathosystem in Colombia is required to develop appropriate alternative disease management. In this study, 120 fungal isolates were obtained from four different departments in the Central Andean Region in Colombia from tomato crops with symptoms of wilt disease. A molecular characterization of the fungal isolates was performed using the SIX1, SIX3, and SIX4 effector genes of Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. lycopersici W.C. Snyder & H.N. Hansen (Fol). Additionally, we developed a new specific marker to distinguish between Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. radicis-lycopersici Jarvis & Shoemaker (Forl) and Fol isolates. Furthermore, a phylogenetic analysis using the Translation Elongation Factor 1-alpha (EF1a) gene was performed with the collected isolates. Two isolates (named Fol59 and Fol-UDC10) were identified as Fol race 2, four isolates were identified as Forl, six isolates were identified as F. solani, and most of the isolates were grouped within the F. oxysporum species complex. The phylogenetic tree of EF1a showed that most of the isolates could potentially correspond to nonpathogenic strains of F. oxysporum. Additional pathogenicity assays carried out with Fol59 and Fol-UDC10 confirmed that both isolates were highly virulent strains. This study represents a contribution to the understanding of the local interaction between tomatoes and F. oxysporum in Colombia.
Beyond Independence: Enabling Richer Participation through Relational Technologies

From ageing to education, from tourism to shopping, many systems and applications have been proposed that aim to free users from the nuisance of depending on others. In this paper, we problematise independence and argue that when closely scrutinised, the purported aim to independence of many works in the literature appears to be a proxy for a broad range of related values, including agency, dignity, autonomy, freedom of choice, and participation. We unpack and reflect on the tensions and trade-offs that come with the quest for independent life. We explore these issues through two case studies: one on democratising IoT design for older adults; the other on digitally enabling person-centred approaches with people with intellectual disability. We propose that many design and research initiatives would be better served by a focus on the interdependent network of social relations, from family to friends, and the broader community, and on Relational Technologies capable of supporting a fulfilling participation in those networks.
Village Cadre Competency and Rural Development : A Literature Review

Rural development is affected by many factors, among which the influence of village cadres is also very important. Many studies have indicated that the village cadres played a significant role in the social, political and economic development of the rural areas. The village cadre is the leader for becoming rich, the spreader of farming techniques and the maintainer of rural social stability. The sense of responsibility and the working capabilities of village cadres have a direct impact on the development of rural areas. From the perspective of competency, this paper analyzes and evaluates the main views of village cadre competency and rural development to further clarify the present research situation and the future research trends, which provides a reference for the modes by which endogenetic power can be utilized to change the backward conditions prevalent in the rural areas of China.
Arterial Stiffness Accelerates Within 1 Year of the Final Menstrual Period

Supplemental Digital Content is available in the text. Objective: Menopause may augment age-dependent increases in arterial stiffness, with black women having greater progression in midlife compared with white women. We sought to determine whether and when women experience changes in arterial stiffness relative to the final menstrual period (FMP) and whether these changes differ between black and white midlife women. Approach and Results: We evaluated 339 participants from the SWAN (Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation) Heart Ancillary study (Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation). Women had ≤2 carotid-femoral pulse-wave velocity (cfPWV) exams over a mean±SD of 2.3±0.5 years of follow-up. Annual percentage changes in cfPWV were estimated in 3 time segments relative to FMP and compared using piecewise linear mixed-effects models. At baseline, women were 51.1±2.8 years of age and 36% black. Annual percentage change (95% CI) in cfPWV varied by time segments: 0.9% (−0.6% to 2.3%) for >1 year before FMP, 7.5% (4.1% to 11.1%) within 1 year of FMP, and −1.0% (−2.8% to 0.8%) for >1 year after FMP. Annual percentage change in cfPWV within 1 year of FMP was significantly greater than the other 2 time segments; P<0.05 for both comparisons. Adjusting for concurrent cardiovascular disease risk factors explained part of the change estimates but did not eliminate the difference. Black women had greater increase in cfPWV compared with white women in the first segment; P for interaction, 0.04. Conclusions: The interval within 1 year of FMP is a critical period for women when vascular functional alterations occur. These findings underscore the importance of more intensive lifestyle modifications in women transitioning through menopause.
Error by omission: A lack of integration across implementation and use in structuring health information technology contracts

Limited work identifies best practices to assess functional electronic health record system performance when contracting for health information technology and information technology–related services. Without a set of best practices or specific contracting provisions to assess the performance of electronic health record systems, healthcare providers will not be able to fully leverage the performance of these systems to reduce the cost of care and improve patient outcomes. This work seeks to provide operational considerations and best practices when forming teams to negotiate health information technology system specifications in contracts. To better understand the contracting and performance assessment process, we conducted a cross-sectional survey of eligible healthcare personnel. Our study highlights a potential disconnect between respondents setting contract structure, knowledge of ongoing functional performance assessments in practice, and the relationship to those with direct system involvement to avoid potential legal risk.
A Comparison of Nonsmooth, Nonconvex, Constrained Optimization Solvers for the Design of Time-Delay Compensators

We present a detailed set of performance comparisons of two state-of-the-art solvers for the application of designing time-delay compensators, an important problem in the field of robust control. Formulating such robust control mechanics as constrained optimization problems often involves objective and constraint functions that are both nonconvex and nonsmooth, both of which present significant challenges to many solvers and their end-users hoping to obtain good solutions to these problems. In our particular engineering task, the main difficulty in the optimization arises in a nonsmooth and nonconvex stability constraint, which states that the infinite spectrum of zeros of the so-called shaper should remain in the open left half-plane. To perform our evaluation, we make use $\beta$-relative minimization profiles, recently introduced visualization tools that are particularly suited for benchmarking solvers on nonsmooth, nonconvex, constrained optimization problems. Furthermore, we also introduce new visualization tools, called Global-Local Profiles, which for a given problem and a fixed computational budget, assess the tradeoffs of distributing the budget over few or many starting points, with the former getting more budget per point and latter less.
Mental Health Needs of Aging Veterans: Recent Evidence and Clinical Recommendations

ABSTRACT Objectives: Large numbers of older Americans have a history of military service, which may be positively or negatively associated with mental health in late life. We reviewed literature with the aim of better understanding the mental health needs of older Veterans. Methods: Articles included those published in 2009–2018 and focused on prevalence/risk for mental illness and suicide among older Veterans; utilization of mental health services; effectiveness of evidence-based behavioral treatments; and pertinent care delivery models. Results: Older Veterans are generally resilient. A significant minority experience mental health concerns that are associated with poor outcomes including a substantial number of suicides. Most published research is based on the approximately one third of Veterans who use the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) for care. Older Veterans with mental health diagnoses are less likely to utilize mental health services compared to younger Veterans, but as likely to benefit once engaged. Integrated care models in primary and geriatric care settings are promising. Conclusions: Aging Veterans are a large subset of Americans whose mental health needs are complex and deserve attention. Clinical Implications: Clinicians should ask about history of military service (i.e., Veteran status) and utilize available resources when providing care for older Veterans.
Nonlinear Modeling and Inferential Multi-Model Predictive Control of a Pulverizing System in a Coal-Fired Power Plant Based on Moving Horizon Estimation

Fuel preparation is the control bottleneck in coal-fired power plants due to the unmeasurable nature or inaccurate measurement of key controlled variables. This paper proposes an inferential multi-model predictive control scheme based on moving horizon estimation for the fuel preparation system in coal-fired power plants, i.e., the pulverizing system, aimed at improving control precision of key operating variables that are unmeasurable or inaccurately measured, and improving system tracking performance across a wide operating range. We develop a first principle model of the pulverizing system considering the nonlinear dynamics of primary air, and then employ the genetic algorithm to identify the unknown model parameters. The outputs of the identified first principle model agree well with measured data from a real pulverizing system. Thereafter we derive a moving horizon estimation approach to estimate the desired, but unmeasurable or inaccurately measured, controlled variables. Estimation constraints are explicitly considered to reduce the influence of measurement uncertainty. Finally, nonlinearity of the pulverizing system is analyzed and a multi-model inferential predictive controller is developed using the extended input-output state space model to achieve offset-free performance. Simulation results show that the proposed soft sensor can provide improved estimates than conventional extended Kalman filter, and the proposed inferential control scheme can significantly improve performance of the pulverizing system.
Semi-unsupervised Learning using Deep Generative Models

We introduce ‘semi-unsupervised learning’, a problem regime related to transfer learning and zero/few shot learning where, in the training data, some classes are sparsely labelled and others entirely unlabelled. Models able to learn from training data of this type are potentially of great use as many real-world datasets are like this. Here we demonstrate a new deep generative model for classification in this regime. Our model, a Gaussian mixture deep generative model, demonstrates superior semi-unsupervised classification performance on MNIST to model M2 from Kingma and Welling (2014).
Chordoma: A Case Report and Review of Literature

Patient: Female, 68-year-old Final Diagnosis: Chordoma Symptoms: Hoarseness • neck pain • weakness Medication: — Clinical Procedure: — Specialty: Oncology Objective: Unusual or unexpected effect of treatment Background: Chordoma is rare, but aggressive bone tumor, primarily affecting the axial skeleton. Systemic chemotherapies are not effective against the tumor, and treatment primarily consists of surgical resection and radiation. Despite these treatment modalities, recurrence is common. Our case highlights the role of afatinib as an effective treatment option in such cases. Case Report: We present case of 68-year-old female with chordoma, who underwent multiple surgical resections, radiotherapy session, and had course complication by disease progression on imatinib and local recurrence. She was eventually placed on afatinib with good effect. Conclusions: This article discusses the effectiveness of afatanib as a treatment modality, along with diagnosis, histopathological features, associated genetic aberrations, currently available and upcoming treatment options. Special emphasis is placed on molecular targeted therapy, emerging immunotherapies and use of vaccination in this field.
A Microsociological Approach to Understanding the Robot Collaborative Motion in Human-Robot Interaction

Existing approaches to human-robot collaboration typically focus on how to build robots that can work safely and fluently with humans on collaborative tasks. Less is known about how people interpret the boundary between movement-based collaboration and non-collaboration when interacting with robots. By applying a microsociological theory to analysing the process of interaction as it unfolds, we propose and identify points of breakdown in the collaborative task of a human and a robot carrying an object to a destination. In designing the experiment, Kinetography Laban is used to enable a precise description of the intended normative and disruptive motion paths of the robot. The contribution of the paper is the theoretical understanding of collaboration from sociology, and a method for designing and evaluating collaborative motion between humans and robots that combines microsociology and Kinetography Laban. The proposed method accounts for the contingent meaning construction performed by people in recognising behavioural motion cues of robots as part of an ongoing interaction process, and enables the boundary between collaborative and non-collaborative robot motion to be defined.
Complement C3 and Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease in Chronic Kidney Disease Patients: A Pilot Study

Context: Evidences have suggested complement C3 is a biomarker for nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) in the general population. Objective: The present study was conducted to explore the predictive function of C3 for NAFLD in chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients. Design, Setting, and Participants: CKD patients were recruited for evaluation of their liver function, kidney function, serum lipids, glycated hemoglobin, blood, and immune function. The glomerular filtration rate was calculated using the CKD-EPI equation. NAFLD was diagnosed according to predefined ultrasonographic criteria. Results: A total of 648 consecutive CKD patients were included, with 216 (33.3%) patients diagnosed with NAFLD. The NAFLD group had significant higher levels of serum protein, serum albumin, triglycerides, glycated hemoglobin, complement C3, hemoglobin (p = 0.001), alanine aminotransferase (p = 0.002), estimated glomerular filtration rate (p = 0.007), and C4 (p = 0.043) and lower levels of cystatin C, β2-microglobulin, proteinuria (p = 0.001), and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (p = 0.008). In a logistic regression model, only complement C3 (OR = 1.003; 95% CI 1.002–1.004, p = 0.001) was associated with a higher likelihood of being diagnosed with NAFLD. Finally, we constructed ROC curves for complement C3 for prediction of having NAFLD. The best cut-off for complement C3 was 993.5 mg/L and it yielded a sensitivity of 63.9% and a specificity of 70.1%. Conclusion: Our study revealed that complement C3 can be used as a surrogate biomarker of NAFLD in CKD patients.
The use of a high dose of controlled-release oxycodone in a switch from oral morphine : a case report

cer of unknown primary site and severe pain successfully switched from high dose of controlled-release (CR) morphine to CR oxycodone. A 71-year-old man was admitted to home hospice due to cancer dissemination to bones and cervical lymph nodes after palliative radiotherapy. His main complain was severe pain (NRS 6-8) in the cervical and thoracic spine that was non-responsive to tramadol, subsequently changed to transdermal fentanyl and CR morphine with final daily dose of 240 mg (40 mg for breakthrough pain) and constipation. Regular morphine was stopped and CR oxycodone 80 mg twice daily was started, after 6 weeks increased to the dose of 100 mg twice daily achieving satisfactory analgesia (NRS 3-4). No significant adverse effects were present during CR oxycodone therapy. The patient continued his regimen successfully until seizure episode due to brain metastases development and referral to a hospital for further treatment.
Characterization of the Immune Response of MERS-CoV Vaccine Candidates Derived from Two Different Vectors in Mice

Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) is an acute, high-mortality-rate, severe infectious disease caused by an emerging MERS coronavirus (MERS-CoV) that causes severe respiratory diseases. The continuous spread and great pandemic potential of MERS-CoV make it necessarily important to develop effective vaccines. We previously demonstrated that the application of Gram-positive enhancer matrix (GEM) particles as a bacterial vector displaying the MERS-CoV receptor-binding domain (RBD) is a very promising MERS vaccine candidate that is capable of producing potential neutralization antibodies. We have also used the rabies virus (RV) as a viral vector to design a recombinant vaccine by expressing the MERS-CoV S1 (spike) protein on the surface of the RV. In this study, we compared the immunological efficacy of the vaccine candidates in BALB/c mice in terms of the levels of humoral and cellular immune responses. The results show that the rabies virus vector-based vaccine can induce remarkably earlier antibody response and higher levels of cellular immunity than the GEM particles vector. However, the GEM particles vector-based vaccine candidate can induce remarkably higher antibody response, even at a very low dose of 1 µg. These results indicate that vaccines constructed using different vaccine vector platforms for the same pathogen have different rates and trends in humoral and cellular immune responses in the same animal model. This discovery not only provides more alternative vaccine development platforms for MERS-CoV vaccine development, but also provides a theoretical basis for our future selection of vaccine vector platforms for other specific pathogens.
EFFECTS OF THE NEUTRINO MASS SPLITTING ON THE NONLINEAR MATTER POWER SPECTRUM

We have performed cosmological N-body simulations which include the effect of the masses of the individual neutrino species. The simulations were aimed at studying the effect of different neutrino hierarchies on the matter power spectrum. Compared to the linear theory predictions, we find that nonlinearities enhance the effect of hierarchy on the matter power spectrum at mildly nonlinear scales. The maximum difference between the different hierarchies is about 0.5% for a sum of neutrino masses of 0.1 eV. Albeit this is a small effect, it is potentially measurable from upcoming surveys. In combination with neutrinoless double-β decay experiments, this opens up the possibility of using the sky to determine if neutrinos are Majorana or Dirac fermions.