Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Density and Molecular Epidemiology ofAspergillus in Air and Relationship to Outbreaks ofAspergillus Infection

ABSTRACT After five patients were diagnosed with nosocomial invasive aspergillosis caused by Aspergillus fumigatus andA. flavus, a 14-month surveillance program for pathogenic and nonpathogenic fungal conidia in the air within and outside the University Hospital in Rotterdam (The Netherlands) was begun. A. fumigatus isolates obtained from the Department of Hematology were studied for genetic relatedness by randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) analysis. This was repeated with A. fumigatus isolates contaminating culture media in the microbiology laboratory. The density of the conidia of nonpathogenic fungi in the outside air showed a seasonal variation: higher densities were measured during the summer, while lower densities were determined during the fall and winter. Hardly any variation was found in the numbers of Aspergillus conidia. We found decreasing numbers of conidia when comparing air from outside the hospital to that inside the hospital and when comparing open areas within the hospital to the closed department of hematology. The increase in the number of patients with invasive aspergillosis could not be explained by an increase in the number ofAspergillus conidia in the outside air. The short-term presence of A. flavus can only be explained by the presence of a point source, which was probably patient related. Genotyping A. fumigatus isolates from the department of hematology showed that clonally related isolates were persistently present for more than 1 year. Clinical isolates of A. fumigatus obtained during the outbreak period were different from these persistent clones. A. fumigatus isolates contaminating culture media were all genotypically identical, indicating a causative point source. Knowledge of the epidemiology of Aspergillus species is necessary for the development of strategies to prevent invasive aspergillosis. RAPD fingerprinting of Aspergillus isolates can help to determine the cause of an outbreak of invasive aspergillosis.
Requirements for Reproducibility, Trueness and Error of Measurement in Internal Quality Control Schemes

Abstract Among the various models proposed to meet requirements for metrological performance in clinical laboratory measurements, that most widely used is intraand inter-biological variation. However, this model has weaknesses: a) in some cases, intra-individual biological variation is so small that requirements based on such data may not be met by routine methods; b) there is great variation among the intra- and inter-individual biological variations themselves. We therefore propose integration between “state-of-the-art” methods to minimize imprecision, and also suggest that requirements calculated on the basis of biological variations should be used in setting requirements for minimizing imprecision. Furthermore, we describe a new scale for setting requirements from biological variation data and suggest that systematic error should be corrected whenever it is statistically significant.
Physical activity and the prevention of coronary heart disease.

INthe course of evaluating new approaches to the prevention of a disease, their acceptance generally can be characterized as evolving through three levels: the possibly beneficial, the prudent, and the proved. It is our thesis that the value of physical activity as a preventive approach to coronary heart disease (CHD) today is widely accepted as being both possibly beneficial and prudent and that we now are in the research stage where we must prove or disprove the efficacy of this approach. Certainly the value of physical activity as a beneficial means of preserving and enhancing health and total human performance long has had many advocates, who stretch back to the ancient philosophers, among them Plato, who said: "Lack of activity destroys the good condition of every human being while movement and methodical physical exercise save it and preserve it. " At the same time there also are those who have been less inclined to espouse the benefits of exercise, not the least of whom is Robert M. Hutchins, who is alleged to have said: "Whenever I feel like exercise, I lie down until the feeling goes away. "
Five Alive: Using Mock Code Simulation to Improve Responder Performance During the First 5 Minutes of a Code

Purpose:This article reviews the institution of mock code simulation training to improve registered nurses responder performance at a trauma 1 teaching hospital. Method:An in-situ mock code is held on random medical-surgical/telemetry units every month. Participants are asked to respond to 2 different scenarios using a 3-G Sim Man and the unit's emergency equipment. Each session is followed by debriefing, postsurveys, and evaluation. The time to cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and defibrillation is recorded for analysis. The participant's level of confidence is measured before and after simulation. Results:More than 250 nurses have participated in the Five Alive course since its initiation in March 2011. The participants have expressed more confidence in recognizing a declining patient health status after the simulation. They have also demonstrated a marked improvement in time to CPR and defibrillation. Conclusions:Initial findings reveal that in-situ medical emergency team/code simulation followed by debriefing improved the performance of responders. We are currently offering the Five Alive program monthly during four 1-hour sessions and have found this program to be an effective training tool. There is one challenge to offering the program on the off shift and weekends. That is finding a time that is not too disruptive to patient care.
Playing with Constraints: Stylistic Variation with a Simple Electronic Instrument

Stylistic Variation with a Simple Electronic Instrument Michael Gurevich,∗ Adnan Marquez-Borbon,† and Paul Stapleton† ∗University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance E.V. Moore Building 1100 Baits Drive Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-2085, USA mdgurev@umich.edu www.michaelgurevich. com †Sonic Arts Research Centre Queen’s University Belfast Belfast BT7 1NN, UK {amarquezborbon01, p.stapleton}@qub.ac. uk
21.4 kW peak power from a gigahertz multimode-diode-pumped solid-state laser with carrier envelope offset frequency detection

Summary form only given. Typical frequency combs from modelocked lasers are either based on complex green-pumped Ti:sapphire oscillators or amplified fiber lasers. Ti:sapphire lasers deliver very short pulses and exhibit low noise levels, but they rely on multi-watt green pump lasers and complex Kerr lens modelocking (KLM). More convenient and robust diode-pumped fiber laser systems suffer from higher quantum noise and limited repetition rates. Excellent compact sources for frequency combs are ultrafast diode-pumped solid-state lasers (DPSSLs). They combine the favorable properties of cost-efficient diode-pumping, robust SESAM modelocking and an intrinsic low quantum noise level [1]. Furthermore, DPSSLs can achieve watt-level average powers without any amplification, even in combination with high gigahertz repetition rates. Frequency combs at gigahertz repetition rates offer increased power per mode and simpler access to individual optical lines. Applications in ultrafast data transmission, nonlinear spectroscopy and calibration of spectrometers greatly benefit from reliable high repetition rate frequency combs. For stabilization of a frequency comb the comb spacing (i.e. the pulse repetition frequency) and the comb offset (i.e. the carrier envelope offset (CEO) frequency) have to be measured and locked. Detecting the repetition rate is straightforward using a simple photodiode. However, measuring the CEO frequency is more challenging, especially at high repetition rates. The standard f-to-2f interferometer scheme for CEO detection is based on a coherent octave-spanning spectrum [2], which is a supercontinuum typically generated by launching ultrashort laser pulses with high peak power into a highly nonlinear photonic crystal fiber (PCF) [3]. We investigated the feasibility for high repetition rate frequency comb generation from DPSSLs and report the highest average power, shortest pulse duration and therefore record high peak power from a DPSSL with gigahertz repetition rate. The soliton-modelocked laser is based on Yb:KGW (ytterbium-doped potassium gadolinium tungstate). Stable, fundamental cw modelocked operation at pulse repetition rates of 1.06 GHz was achieved with a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM). Using a commercial fiber-coupled multimode diode laser as the pump source this compact diode-pumped solid-state laser reaches 3.33 W average output power with pulse durations of 121 fs at 1044 nm center wavelength (Fig. 1a, b). Therefore 21.4 kW peak power is directly obtained from this gigahertz DPSSL operating with an optical-to-optical efficiency of 26 %. We used this laser without additional pulse compression and explored the regime for stable CEO detection and self-referenceable gigahertz frequency comb generation. Launching only 901 mW of the total average power with a coupling efficiency of 70 % directly into a highly nonlinear photonic crystal fiber we generated an octavespanning spectrum and measured a CEO signal exceeding 30 dB S/N (Fig. 1c).
Studies Of The G Factor For Cr4+ Ion In Bi4ge3o12 Crystal From Crystal-Field And Charge-Transfer Mechanisms

The complete third-order perturbation formulas of the g factors g|| and g⊥ for 3d2 ions in tetragonal MX4 clusters have been obtained by a cluster approach. In these formulas, in addition to contributions to the g factors from the crystal-field mechanism in the crystal-field theory, the contributions from the charge-transfer mechanism are included. From these formulas, the g factors g|| and g⊥ for a Cr4+ ion in a Bi4Ge3O12 crystal are calculated. The results agree with the observed values. The calculated Δ gi(i = || or ⊥) value due to the charge-transfer is opposite in sign and about 20% greater than that due to the crystal-field mechanism. So, for the 3dn ions having a high valence in crystals, a reasonable explanation of the g factors should take both the crystal-field and charge-transfer mechanisms into account.
Plague prompts worldwide action

Health officials at airports around the world have responded to the outbreak of plague in India with measures ranging from screening passengers on arrival to banning all incoming flights from India (see editorial on p 893). At London's Heathrow airport last week port health inspectors were boarding all incoming flights to spray the atmosphere with an insecticide, pyrethrin, before passengers were allowed to disembark. Baggage was also being sprayed. All passengers were being issued with a pamphlet in various languages summarising the symptoms of plague and urging anyone feeling ill during the next three days to seek medical advice immediately. Dr George Stewart, principle medical officer at Heathrow, said that airport staff …
Subspace Correction Methods for a Class of Nonsmooth and Nonadditive Convex Variational Problems with Mixed L1/L2 Data-Fidelity in Image Processing

The minimization of a functional composed of a nonsmooth and nonadditive regularization term and a combined $L^1$ and $L^2$ data-fidelity term is proposed. It is shown analytically and numerically that the new model has noticeable advantages over popular models in image processing tasks. For the numerical minimization of the new objective, subspace correction methods are introduced which guarantee the convergence and monotone decay of the associated energy along the iterates. Moreover, an estimate of the distance between the outcome of the subspace correction method and the global minimizer of the nonsmooth objective is derived. This estimate and numerical experiments for image denoising, inpainting, and deblurring indicate that in practice the proposed subspace correction methods indeed approach the global solution of the underlying minimization problem.
Female Entrepreneurship in Kenya: How do Female Micro-Entrepreneurs Learn to be Entrepreneurial?

There is renewed interest in female entrepreneurship as policy makers recognize the importance of social inclusiveness in economic development. Womeni¯s involvement in entrepreneurship is applauded as a necessary precursor to economic growth of developing nations despite women under-representation among business owners. Many factors have been blamed for this under-representation among them, socialisation and lack of motivation in choosing entrepreneurship as a career option. In Kenya, women entrepreneurs have low levels of education; are in need of business knowledge and skills yet unable to pay for business development services; and are affected strongly by patriarchal structures especially the role of husbands. Yet, some few women own growing businesses that contribute towards wealth and employment creation. This study sought to determine how women learn to be entrepreneurial and to establish hindrances to female entrepreneurial learning process. A survey was conducted on 106 women micro-entrepreneurs in the Kenyan dairy processing industry. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews and analysed using descriptive statistics. Findings showed that majority (76.9%) of the micro-entrepreneurs went into business without any prior business skills. Only 5.5% of them had training in business-related fields before starting their businesses. Another 17.6% had learnt some business skills from previous employment. Social contacts and relations were important sources of business knowledge and skills for 68.7% of them. Rarely did the respondents engage in active search of business knowledge and skills. Probably an entrepreneurship development curriculum weaved through the entire school syllabus would help in entrenching an enterprising culture among women.
Subquadratic Encodings for Point Configurations

For most algorithms dealing with sets of points in the plane, the only relevant information carried by the input is the combinatorial configuration of the points: the orientation of each triple of points in the set (clockwise, counterclockwise, or collinear). This information is called the order type of the point set. In the dual, realizable order types and abstract order types are combinatorial analogues of line arrangements and pseudoline arrangements. Too often in the literature we analyze algorithms in the real-RAM model for simplicity, putting aside the fact that computers as we know them cannot handle arbitrary real numbers without some sort of encoding. Encoding an order type by the integer coordinates of some realizing point set is known to yield doubly exponential coordinates in some cases. Other known encodings can achieve quadratic space or fast orientation queries, but not both. In this contribution, we give a compact encoding for abstract order types that allows efficient query of the orientation of any triple: the encoding uses O(n^2) bits and an orientation query takes O(log n) time in the word-RAM model. This encoding is space-optimal for abstract order types. We show how to shorten the encoding to O(n^2 (loglog n)^2 / log n) bits for realizable order types, giving the first subquadratic encoding for those order types with fast orientation queries. We further refine our encoding to attain O(log n/loglog n) query time without blowing up the space requirement. In the realizable case, we show that all those encodings can be computed efficiently. Finally, we generalize our results to the encoding of point configurations in higher dimension.
Existence and Explicit Constructions of q + 1 Regular Ramanujan Graphs for Every Prime Power q

For any prime power q, we give explicit constructions for many infinite linear families of q + 1 regular Ramanujan graphs. This partially solves a problem that was raised by A. Lubotzky, R. Phillips, and P. Sarnak. They gave the same results as here, but only for q being prime and not equal to two, and raised the question of the existence and explicit construction of such graphs for other degrees of regularity. Moreover, our construction removes the nondeterministic part of finding large prime numbers, which for some applications may appear in their construction. Our graphs are given as Cayley graphs of PGL2 or PSL2 over finite fields, with respect to very simple generators. They also satisfy all other extremal combinatorial properties that those of Lubotsky, Phillips, and Sarnak do.
Outcomes and charges of elderly patients with acute myeloid leukemia

A retrospective database analysis was conducted to evaluate hospitalization outcomes and charges among elderly acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients. The data source was a longitudinal (2000–2003) inpatient database from 28 US hospitals. Data on 275 AML patients aged 60 and older were analyzed for demographic and treatment characteristics, hospital mortality, length of stay (LOS), overall days of stay (DOS), and charges across multiple admissions. Multivariate modeling was performed to determine factors that influenced outcomes. Overall, 115 (41.8%) patients received inpatient chemotherapy (CT); most (90.4%) received it on the first admission. Of all initial CT regimens 40.9% consisted of a single agent. The mean LOS for initial hospitalization was 23.0 (SD 21.8) days for patients who received CT and 6.7 (SD 7.5) days for those who did not. One quarter (25.3%) of initial hospitalizations resulted in death. On initial hospitalization, mean total charges were $113,118 (SD $220,417) for patients who received CT and $43,999 (SD $190,533) for those who did not; for both groups mean charges were higher than respective subsequent admission charges. Overall, in‐hospital mortality did not differ significantly between on‐CT and off‐CT groups (43.5 and 38.8%, respectively). In multivariate modeling, CT was significantly associated (P < 0.0001) with increased charges and LOS. Elderly patients with AML incurred substantial hospital charges and inpatient mortality. The highest charges and a substantial number of deaths occurred during first admission. Although treatment with CT was associated with increased charges and days in‐hospital, inpatient mortality in the two groups was found to be similar. Am. J. Hematol. , 2006. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Merging metamaterials with quantum photonics

We have studied the effect of a high photonic density of states provided by a metamaterial environment on the dynamics of nanodiamond based nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers. We have experimentally demonstrated the broadband enhancement of single-photon emission from nanodiamond NV centers coupled to a planar multilayer metamaterial with hyperbolic dispersion. In addition, we have studied the influence of Purcell effect on the fluorescent contrast between the NV center spin states.
On the Progenitor of Binary Neutron Star Merger GW170817

On 2017 August 17 the merger of two compact objects with masses consistent with two neutron stars was discovered through gravitational-wave (GW170817), gamma-ray (GRB 170817A), and optical (SSS17a/AT 2017gfo) observations. The optical source was associated with the early-type galaxy NGC 4993 at a distance of just ~40 Mpc, consistent with the gravitational-wave measurement, and the merger was localized to be at a projected distance of ~2 kpc away from the galaxy's center. We use this minimal set of facts and the mass posteriors of the two neutron stars to derive the first constraints on the progenitor of GW170817 at the time of the second supernova (SN). We generate simulated progenitor populations and follow the three-dimensional kinematic evolution from binary neutron star (BNS) birth to the merger time, accounting for pre-SN galactic motion, for considerably different input distributions of the progenitor mass, pre-SN semimajor axis, and SN-kick velocity. Though not considerably tight, we find these constraints to be comparable to those for Galactic BNS progenitors. The derived constraints are very strongly influenced by the requirement of keeping the binary bound after the second SN and having the merger occur relatively close to the center of the galaxy. These constraints are insensitive to the galaxy's star formation history, provided the stellar populations are older than 1 Gyr.
Hardness Results for Structured Linear Systems

We show that if the nearly-linear time solvers for Laplacian matrices and their generalizations can be extended to solve just slightly larger families of linear systems, then they can be used to quickly solve all systems of linear equations over the reals. This result can be viewed either positively or negatively: either we will develop nearly-linear time algorithms for solving all systems of linear equations over the reals, or progress on the families we can solve in nearly-linear time will soon halt.
Heroin and cocaine co-use in a group of injection drug users in Montréal.

OBJECTIVE To describe the pattern of co-use of heroin and cocaine in individuals who were not receiving methadone maintenance treatment. DESIGN Structured interviews. SETTING Community hospital. PARTICIPANTS Individuals (n = 1111) selected from a cohort of out-of-treatment injection drug users in Montréal, Que. OUTCOME MEASURE Frequency (injections per day) and quantity (number of days of use) of heroin, cocaine and speedball (the simultaneous administration of heroin and cocaine) use reported in the month preceding the interview. RESULTS About 50% of the sample reported using only cocaine intravenously (C group), about 8% reported using only heroin (H group) intravenously and about 15% reported using both heroin and cocaine (HC group) intravenously. Reported cocaine consumption was similar in the HC and C groups. Heroin was used on fewer days by the HC than by the H group, but the number of injections per day was similar. Speedball use, which was quantified independently from heroin and cocaine use, was reported almost exclusively by the HC group, and speedball was used less often than either heroin or cocaine alone. Finally, a similar proportion of individuals in the C and the HC groups consumed alcohol in the 24 hours preceding the interview, but a larger proportion of individuals in the HC group reported the use of marijuana. CONCLUSION In a cohort of injection drug users in Montréal, cocaine was the most prevalent illicit drug. Furthermore, about 70% of the heroin users also injected cocaine, but not in the form of speedball. Thus, the sequential co-use of heroin and cocaine is highly prevalent in Montréal and deserves particular clinical attention.
The influence of oil speed and temperature on PD phenomena in transformer insulation

Identifying partial discharge (PD) phenomena in power transformers is the key to achieve proper maintenance actions. In order to tag a recorded PD pattern obtained from either on site testing or monitoring as, e.g., internal, surface or corona discharges, a diagnostic database has to be built first. This database would contain patterns and relevant statistic parameters recorded in the lab under controlled conditions. One of the limits of this approach is that several factors may influence the PD pattern or the partial discharge inception voltage and, thus, identification procedures. In this paper, focus will be on the effects of both temperature and oil flow velocity on surface PD in a pressboard layer at five different oil speeds and with static oil. Statistical analysis is presented to compare the PDIV values.
First record and establishment of the mosquito Aedes albopictus in Spain

Abstract. The invasive mosquito Aedes (Stegomyia) albopictus (Skuse) (Diptera: Culicidae) was detected for the first time in Spain, in Sant Cugat del Vallès, a city in the north‐east of the country (41°28′ N, 2°4′ E, altitude 120 m), during August 2004. A male and one larva were collected in the backyard of a house and in a tree hole, respectively. Dense populations of adults and larvae were found in subsequent surveys, confirming the establishment of the species in the area. This is the first report of the establishment of this species in the Iberian Peninsula.