Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Development of a Movement Quality Measurement Tool for Children

Background Pediatric physical therapists assess the quantity and quality of children's motor skills. Several quantitative motor tests are currently available, but a concise measurement tool of observable movement quality (OMQ) is lacking. Objective The purpose of this study was to develop an OMQ measurement tool for children from the perspective of pediatric physical therapists. Design A qualitative, 3-phase study involving pediatric physical therapists was conducted. Methods The first phase consisted of 7 semistructured interviews. The second phase comprised a structured meeting using a nominal group technique, with the interviewees required to identify the most relevant OMQ aspects. The third phase comprised a Delphi technique involving 61 pediatric physical therapy experts with the aim of achieving at least 80% agreement on relevance, terminology, and definitions of OMQ aspects. Results Across all 3 phases, 32 aspects based on different theoretical constructs were considered. Fifteen aspects were included in the measurement. The pediatric physical therapy experts achieved at least 80% agreement on the definitions of 14 OMQ aspects: automated movements, asymmetry in movements, variation in movements, appropriate gross motor movements, fluency of movements, reduced muscle tone, increased muscle tone, involuntary movements, accuracy, slow/delayed movements, accelerated/abrupt movements, tremors, strength regulation, and stereotyped movements. The definition of appropriate fine motor movements achieved 75% agreement. This aspect was included because gross and fine motor movements are complementary. The aspects were scored using a 5-point Likert scale, with a total score ranging from 15 to 75 and with a higher score indicating a better OMQ. Conclusion The OMQ scale, a concise measurement tool with 15 defined aspects, was developed. Content validity was obtained, but before the OMQ scale can be used in clinical practice, studies on reliability, construct validity, and responsiveness are needed.
Harnessing immune cells to enhance β-cell mass in type 1 diabetes

Type 1 diabetes is characterized by early β-cell loss leading to insulin dependence in virtually all patients with the disease in order to maintain glucose homeostasis. Most studies over the past few decades have focused on limiting the autoimmune attack on the β cells. However, emerging data from patients with long-standing diabetes who continue to harbor functional insulin-producing cells in their diseased pancreas have prompted scientists to examine whether proliferation of existing β cells can be enhanced to promote better glycemic control. In support of this concept, several studies indicate that mononuclear cells that infiltrate the islets have the capacity to trigger proliferation of islet cells including β cells. These observations indicate the exciting possibility of identifying those mononuclear cell types and their soluble factors and harnessing their ability to promote β-cell growth concomitant with autoimmune therapy to prevent the onset and/or halt the progression of the disease.
The Onset, Spread, and Prevention of Mass Atrocities: Perspectives From Formal Network Models

ABSTRACT Mass atrocity case studies routinely refer to networks of perpetrators (and of victims and bystanders) but little formal work is available to pinpoint characteristics of atrocity committing networks and how they operate. For example, how do atrocity ideas spread throughout a population, and how may such diffusion be thwarted? How does one explain the scaling up from few perpetrators to mass participation by thousands of perpetrators? Why do some communities in a given society appear nearly immune to participation whereas others participate en masse? We introduce three formal illustrative models to derive insights into these questions and other issues related to the onset, spread, and possible prevention of mass atrocities. The models demonstrate that formal networking theory can provide compelling insights into a number of puzzles that the genocide literature grapples with.
Ionizing radiation impacts photochemical quantum yield and oxygen evolution activity of Photosystem II in photosynthetic microorganisms

Purpose: Long-term space exploration requires biological life support systems capable of coping with the deleterious space environment. The use of oxygenic photosynthetic microorganisms represents an intriguing topic in this context, mainly from the point of view of food and O2 production. The aim of the present study was to assess the effects of space ionizing radiation exposure on the photosynthetic activity of various microorganisms. Materials and methods: Ground-based irradiation experiments were performed using fast neutrons and gamma rays on microorganisms maintained at various light conditions. A stratospheric balloon and a European Space Agency (ESA) flight facility were used to deliver organisms to space at the altitude of 38 and 300 km, respectively. During the balloon flight, the fluorescence activity of the organisms was real-time monitored by means of a special biosensor. Results: The quantum yield of Photosystem II (PSII), measured directly in flight, varied among the microorganisms depending on the light conditions. Darkness and irradiation of cells at 120 and 180 μmol m−2 s−1 enhanced the radiation-induced inhibition of photosynthetic activity, while exposure to weaker light irradiance of 20 and 70 μmol m−2 s−1 protected the cells against damage. Cell permanence in space reduced the photosynthetic growth while the oxygen evolution capacity of the cells after the flight was enhanced. Conclusions: A potential role of PSII in capturing and utilizing ionizing radiation energy is postulated.
Clinical implications of the 'no reflow' phenomenon. A predictor of complications and left ventricular remodeling in reperfused anterior wall myocardial infarction.

BACKGROUND Recent studies demonstrated that the "no reflow" phenomenon after coronary reflow implies the presence of advanced myocardial damage. In this study, we verified the prognostic value of the detection of this phenomenon by studying complications, left ventricular morphology, and in-hospital survival after acute myocardial infarction (AMI). METHODS AND RESULTS The study population consisted of 126 patients with a first anterior AMI. All patients received coronary reflow within 24 hours of onset of symptoms and underwent myocardial contrast echocardiography (MCE) before and shortly after coronary reflow with an intracoronary injection of sonicated microbubbles. From contrast reperfusion patterns, patients were divided into two subsets: those with MCE no reflow (47 patients, 37%) and those with MCE reflow (79 patients). There was no difference in the frequency of arrhythmia or coronary events between the two subsets. Pericardial effusion and early congestive heart failure were observed more frequently in patients with MCE no reflow than in those with MCE reflow (26% versus 4%, P < .05; 45% versus 15%, P < .05, respectively). Congestive heart failure tended to be prolonged in those with MCE no reflow, and 3 patients (7%) of this subset died of pump failure. Left ventricular end-diastolic volume progressively increased in the convalescent stage in patients with MCE no reflow (early versus late, 145 +/- 43 versus 169 +/- 60 mL, P < .001), whereas it decreased in those with MCE reflow (154 +/- 42 versus 144 +/- 44 mL, P < .01). CONCLUSIONS The substantial size of the MCE no reflow phenomenon at coronary reflow conveys useful information about an outcome of coronary intervention and left ventricular remodeling in individual patients with anterior wall AMI, although these are suggestive results in a limited number of patients.
The Global Health Service Partnership: An Academic–Clinical Partnership to Build Nursing and Medical Capacity in Africa

The World Health Organization estimates a global deficit of about 12.9 million skilled health professionals (midwives, nurses, and physicians) by 2035. These shortages limit the ability of countries, particularly resource-constrained countries, to deliver basic health care, to respond to emerging and more complex needs, and to teach, graduate, and retain their future health professionals—a vicious cycle that is perpetuated and has profound implications for health security. The Global Health Service Partnership (GHSP) is a unique collaboration between the Peace Corps, President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, Seed and host-country institutions, which aims to strengthen the breadth and quality of medical and nursing education and care delivery in places with dire shortages of health professionals. Nurse and physician educators are seconded to host institutions to serve as visiting faculty alongside their local colleagues. They serve for 1 year with many staying longer. Educational and clinical best practices are shared, emphasis is placed on integration of theory and practice across the academic–clinical domains and the teaching and learning environment is expanded to include implementation science and dissemination of locally tailored and sustainable practice innovations. In the first 3 years (2013–2016) GHSP placed 97 nurse and physician educators in three countries (Malawi, Tanzania, and Uganda). These educators have taught 454 courses and workshops to 8,321 trainees, faculty members, and practicing health professionals across the curriculum and in myriad specialties. Mixed-methods evaluation included key stakeholder interviews with host institution faculty and students who indicate that the addition of GHSP enhanced clinical teaching (quality and breadth) resulting in improved clinical skills, confidence, and ability to connect theory to practice and critical thinking. The outputs and outcomes from four exemplars which focus on the translation of evidence to practice through implementation science are included. Findings from the first 3 years of GHSP suggest that an innovative, locally tailored and culturally appropriate multi-country academic–clinical partnership program that addresses national health priorities is feasible and generated new knowledge and best practices relevant to capacity building for nursing and medical education. This in turn has implications for improving the health of populations who suffer a disproportionate burden of global disease.
Hashtag popularity prediction for social networks

Currently, in social networks, labeling media content with hashtags is used to make the content reachable to more visualizations. The ones who do use this marketing method to promote their products, vary from big companies like worldwide brands or individuals, such as freelancers or photographers, since it usually involves low costs. However, a real time analysis of the social networks’ hashtags’ popularity ecosystem is a complex task, whose efficiency is hard to evaluate. This is due to the nature of hashtags: they can have abstract meanings, created at any time by any user. The implemented system addresses this problem since it follows the behaviour of a set of hashtags and measures the impact each hashtag as on the posts that use it. Instagram is the platform of choice for users who share content with hashtags because Instagram does not punish its users for the use of many hashtags, like many other Social Networks do. This and hashtag specific features, like search and follow hashtags, made Instagram the Social Network we chosen for our implementation. To analyse the behaviour of a set of hashtags, we implemented a web scraper module that made possible to fetch information from Instagram. With this module, we perform a graph search to find different hashtags and understand how they were related. This graph search resulted in 17599 hashtags (vertices) and 41777 connections (edges) between hashtags. With that result, we used Walktrap [PL06] and Pagerank [PBMW99] to find what hashtags were more relevant and less abstract. For that set of hashtags the system autonomously analysed the posts that used them, checks their likes’ progress through time. When a post reaches its end of life, it adds a new popularity value (popularity index) to the hashtags it uses related with the expected and real likes of the post. Having a sequence of each hashtag’s popularity indexes, we then implemented a Neural Network with LSTM architecture. We fine tuned the hyperparameters of the NN which resulted in a Mean of each hashtag prediction’s MSE of 0,05488. The results show that it is able to predict the near future behaviour of a hashtag popularity index. Understading the peak relevance of a hashtag allows users to take advantage of the most relevant hashtags. This allows users to schedule their publications or choose the most popular hashtags for their media content. This tool opens the possibility for users to have a bigger influence in Social Networks.
Cooperative action of glutamate transporters and cystine/glutamate antiporter system Xc– protects from oxidative glutamate toxicity

Oxidative glutamate toxicity in the neuronal cell line HT22 is a model for cell death by oxidative stress. In this paradigm, an excess of extracellular glutamate blocks the glutamate/cystine‐antiporter system , depleting the cell of cysteine, a building block of the antioxidant glutathione. Loss of glutathione leads to the accumulation of reactive oxygen species and eventually cell death. We selected cells resistant to oxidative stress, which exhibit reduced glutamate‐induced glutathione depletion mediated by an increase in the antiporter subunit xCT and system activity. Cystine uptake was less sensitive to inhibition by glutamate and we hypothesized that glutamate import via excitatory amino acid transporters and immediate re‐export via system underlies this phenomenon. Inhibition of glutamate transporters by l‐trans‐pyrrolidine‐2,4‐dicarboxylic acid (PDC) and DL‐threo‐β‐benzyloxyaspartic acid (TBOA) exacerbated glutamate‐induced cell death. PDC decreased intracellular glutamate accumulation and exacerbated glutathione depletion in the presence of glutamate. Transient overexpression of xCT and the glutamate transporter EAAT3 cooperatively protected against glutamate. We conclude that EAATs support system to prevent glutathione depletion caused by high extracellular glutamate. This knowledge could be of use for the development of novel therapeutics aimed at diseases associated with depletion of glutathione like Parkinson's disease.
Schedulability analysis for mode changes in flexible real-time systems

One important requirement of many real-time systems is the ability to undergo several mutually exclusive modes of operation. By means of a mode change the system changes its functionality over time, thus being able to adapt to changing environmental situations. In order to successfully include mode changes in real-time systems, a mode change protocol with well known real-time behaviour is necessary. The authors provide a new model and related schedulability analysis for mode changes in flexible real-time systems.
Cost analysis of enteroviral polymerase chain reaction in infants with fever and cerebrospinal fluid pleocytosis.

BACKGROUND Infants with fever and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) pleocytosis are routinely admitted to the hospital for parenteral antibiotic therapy for potential bacterial meningitis pending results of CSF culture. Published estimates suggest that 90% of all episodes of meningitis are caused by enterovirus. Enteroviral polymerase chain reaction (ePCR) has a sensitivity of 92% to 100% and a specificity of 97% to 100% in CSF. OBJECTIVE To compare a management strategy using ePCR with current practice to determine potential savings by allowing earlier discharge. METHODS Decision analysis comparing 2 strategies for the care of a retrospective cohort of infants with fever and CSF pleocytosis: standard practice vs ePCR testing of all CSF samples. Model assumptions include the following: (1) standard practice patients continue parenteral antibiotic therapy until CSF cultures are negative at 48 hours, (2) patients with positive ePCR results would be discharged after 24 hours, (3) patients with positive ePCR results have a negative CSF culture, and (4) costs are calculated from actual patient charges with a cost-to-charge ratio of 0.65. SUBJECTS All infants aged 28 days to 12 months admitted to an urban teaching hospital with fever, CSF pleocytosis, and a negative CSF Gram stain from January 1996 through December 1997. OUTCOME MEASURE Total cost of hospitalization. RESULTS A total of 126 infants were identified. One hundred twelve (89%) were discharged with a diagnosis of aseptic meningitis; 72% of these cases occurred during the peak enterovirus season (June to October). Three of 3 patients with positive CSF cultures had bacterial growth within 24 hours of admission. Mean length of stay for patients with aseptic meningitis was 2.3 days (SD, +/-1.4 days). Total cost of hospital care for all 126 infants was $381,145. In our patient population, total patient costs would be reduced by the ePCR strategy if enterovirus accounts for more than 5. 9% of all meningitis cases. Varying the sensitivity of the ePCR assay from 100% to 90% changes the "break-even" prevalence from 5.8% to 6.5%. Total cost savings of 10%, 20%, and 30% would occur at an enteroviral meningitis prevalence of 36.3%, 66.7%, and 97.1%, respectively. CONCLUSIONS Enteroviral PCR analysis of CSF for infants admitted to the hospital with meningitis can result in cost savings when the prevalence of enteroviral meningitis exceeds 5.9%. Limiting use of ePCR to the enterovirus season would increase cost savings. A prospective study is needed to validate these results. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2000;154:817-821
Modelagem e previsão do valor em risco com modelos de volatilidade baseada em variação: evidências empíricas

Este artigo considera a modelagem da volatilidade baseada em variacao para a identificacao e previsao de modelos de volatilidade condicional baseados em retornos. Sugere-se a inclusao da medida de variacao, definida como a diferenca entre o preco maximo e minimo de um ativo em um intervalo de tempo, como uma variavel exogena em modelos generalizados de heterocedasticidade condicional autorregressiva (GARCH). A motivacao e avaliar se a variacao proporciona informacoes adicionais ao processo de volatilidade (variabilidade intradiaria) e aprimora a previsao, quando comparada a abordagens do tipo GARCH e ao modelo de variacao autorregressiva condicional (CARR). A analise empirica emprega dados dos principais indices das bolsas de valores das economias norte-americana e brasileira, ou seja, S&P 500 e Ibovespa, respectivamente, no periodo de janeiro de 2004 a dezembro de 2014. O desempenho e comparado em termos de precisao, modelagem e previsao do valor em risco (VaR). Os resultados fora da amostra indicam que os modelos de volatilidade baseados em variacao proporcionam previsoes do VaR mais precisas do que os modelos GARCH.
Information Variables in Voluntary Control and Classical Conditioning of Heart Rate: Field Dependence and Heart-Rate Perception

Two experiments focused on two information variables relevant to changes in heart rate, field dependence and the ability to perceive one's own heart rate. In Exp. I, 14 field-independent and 17 field-dependent subjects completed a heart-rate perception and a voluntary heart-rate control task. The anticipated superiority in heart-rate control by field-independent subjects was detected although no evidence was found for a relationship between the amount of biofeedback available in the situation and voluntary control of the cardiovascular system. Exp. II involved 9 field-independent and 8 field-dependent subjects in a classical conditioning paradigm involving shock sensitivity. In contrast with Exp. I, in this phase of the study heart-rate increases were correlated with the ability of the subject to discriminate heart beats, especially for the field-independent group. It was concluded that field dependence and heart-rate perception are related to classically conditioned heart-rate increase for some subjects and further that field dependence may be a potent variable operating in those situations involving the voluntary control of heart rate without exteroceptive feedback.
The molecular actions of oestrogen in the regulation of vascular health

What is the topic of this review? This review summarizes the beneficial actions of oestrogen on the vasculature, highlighting both molecular mechanisms and functional outcomes. What advances does it highlight? The net effect of oestrogen on the vascular health of women continues to be debated. Recent advances have provided strong evidence for the role of membrane‐bound oestrogen receptors in the maintenance of normal endothelial function. On a broader scale, functional outcomes of oestrogen actions on the vasculature may mediate the reduced risk of cardiovascular disease in premenopausal women.
Individuals Poststroke Do Not Perceive Their Spatiotemporal Gait Asymmetries as Abnormal

Background Following stroke, spatiotemporal gait asymmetries persist into the chronic phases, despite the neuromuscular capacity to produce symmetric walking patterns. This persistence of gait asymmetry may be due to deficits in perception, as the newly established asymmetric gait pattern is perceived as normal. Objective The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of usual overground gait asymmetry on the ability to consciously and unconsciously perceive the presence of gait asymmetry in people poststroke. Design An observational study was conducted. Methods Thirty people poststroke walked overground and on a split-belt treadmill with the belts moving at different speeds (0%–70% difference) to impose varied step length and stance time asymmetries. Conscious awareness and subconscious detection of imposed gait patterns were determined for each participant, and the asymmetry magnitudes at those points were compared with overground gait. Results For both spatial and temporal asymmetry variables, the asymmetry magnitude at the threshold of awareness was significantly greater than the asymmetry present at the threshold of detection or during overground gait. Participants appeared to identify belt speed differences using the type of gait asymmetry they typically exhibited (ie, step length or stance time asymmetries during overground gait). Limitations Very few individuals with severe spatiotemporal asymmetry were tested, and participants were instructed to identify asymmetric belt speeds rather than interlimb movements. Conclusions The data suggest that asymmetry magnitudes need to exceed usual overground levels to reach conscious awareness. Therefore, it is proposed that the spatiotemporal asymmetry that is specific to each participant may need to be augmented beyond what he or she usually has during walking in order to promote awareness of asymmetric gait patterns for long-term correction and learning.
Use of depot antipsychotic medications for medication nonadherence in schizophrenia.

OBJECTIVES To describe factors associated with initiation of depot antipsychotic medications in psychiatric outpatients with schizophrenia and recent medication nonadherence. METHODS A national sample of psychiatrists reported on adult outpatients with schizophrenia who were nonadherent with oral antipsychotic medications in the last year. RESULTS In total, 17.6% of psychiatrists initiated depot antipsychotic injections. Initiation was significantly and positively associated with public insurance, prior inpatient admission, proportion of time nonadherent, average or above average intellectual functioning, and living in a mental health residence. Use was inversely associated with using second-generation antipsychotics and other oral psychotropic medications prior to medication nonadherence. Psychiatrists who were male, nonwhite, and more optimistic about managing nonadherence were more likely to initiate depot injections. CONCLUSIONS Initiation of depot injections is a joint function of patient, physician, treatment, and setting factors. Use of long-acting preparations in this population is uncommon despite clinical recommendations urging their use.