Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An application of the A* algorithm on the ambulance routing

EMS ambulance is designed to provide medical care or treatments to patient at the emergency site. If intensive care is needed, the patient will be send to the nearest hospital. Quick response and comprehensive care is vital in this case. In order to ensure the ambulance can arrive to incident site within the targeted time, ambulance availability must be ensured and the time taken to arrive must be controlled. Therefore, this paper describes the application of A* Algorithm and road network as parts of the development for the ambulance routing system. Methods mention is used in finding the shortest distance for the ambulances located at Klinik Kesihatan Shah Alam (KKSA) to the emergency sites. Based on the results obtained, we can say that routes that satisfy the 10 minutes response time has been generated by the algorithm for the EMS ambulances. It is always a preferable if ambulances can arrive at the incident faster as many lives can be saved.
Prevalence of Tuberculosis in HIV/AIDS Patients in Lafia, Central Nigeria

Tuberculosis (TB) and HIV have been closely linked since the emergence of AIDS. Worldwide, TB is the most common opportunistic infection affecting HIVseropositive individuals (Pape, 2004) and it remains the most common cause of death in patients with AIDS (Raviglione et al., 1995). Although HIV-related TB is both treatable and preventable, incidence continues to climb in developing nations wherein HIV infection and TB are endemic and resources are limited. About 25% to 65% of patients with HIV/AIDS have tuberculosis of any organ and tuberculosis accounts for about 13% of all HIV related deaths worldwide (Arora and Kumar, 1999; Corbette et al., 2003; Gothi and Joshi, 2004; Sharma et al., 2004; Sharma et al., 2005). While tuberculosis prevalence has declined by more than 20% worldwide, the rates in Africa have tripled since 1990 in countries with high HIV prevalence and are still rising across the continent at 3 4% per year (WHO, 2005). ISSN: 2319-7706 Volume 3 Number 6 (2014) pp. 831-838 http://www.ijcmas. com
Lof, Matthijs; Mekasha, Tseday Jemaneh; Tarp, Finn Aid and income: Another time-series perspective

Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org) This material is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights, and duplication or sale of all or part of any of the repository collections is not permitted, except that material may be duplicated by you for your research use or educational purposes in electronic or print form. You must obtain permission for any other use. Electronic or print copies may not be offered, whether for sale or otherwise to anyone who is not an authorised user. Lof, Matthijs; Mekasha, Tseday Jemaneh; Tarp, Finn
The Informal Caregiver Responsible for Home Care of the Individual with Cognitive Dysfunction Following Brain Injury

&NA; The brain‐injured often require care long after they leave the acute care setting. Increasingly this care is being given at home. Informal caregivers are an important link to the brain‐injured patient's achieving optimal health and wellness. Characteristics of caregivers are given and the AFFIRM model used as a guide to assist nurses in their preparation of caregivers. A case study illustrates use of the model.
Evaluation of the Performance of Brazilian Blood Banks in Testing for Chagas’ Disease

Background and Objectives: Due to the low sensitivity and reproducibility of available tests, in 1989 it became mandatory for all Brazilian blood donors to be screened for Chagas’ disease by at least two serological techniques. In 1994 the Brazilian Ministry of health launched a program to systematically evaluate the quality of serological screening for the detection of blood-transmissible diseases as performed by public blood banks. Methods: A blind panel containing positive samples for blood-transmissible disease was distributed to 57 major public blood banks in four sequential programs. Results: The ELISA test was chosen by the majority of the blood banks. There were 64 (3.7%) false-negative results, 49 produced by banks using indirect hemagglutination. Since most blood banks screened with more than one test for Chagas, only 8 samples were actually missed, of which 3 were by banks using only one test. Conclusion: Our data show a clear improvement in performance of Brazilian blood banks testing for Chagas’ disease.
Theory of the temperature-dependent giant magnetoresistance in magnetic multilayers.

The giant magnetoresistance (GMR) in magnetic multilayers at finite temperatures is studied with the use of the functional-integral method in the static approximation. Numerical calculations are performed by using a simple model. The effect of spin fluctuations is shown to play important roles in discussing the temperature-dependent GMR. The temperature dependence of the calculated GMR is much larger than that of the magnetization, and it shows an almost linear decrease near the Curie temperature when the temperature is raised. It is also shown that the temperature dependence of the GMR is more significant in a multilayer with a larger ground-state GMR. Our calculation accounts well for the GMR feature observed in many transition-metal multilayers.
Automatic segmentation of 4D cardiac MR images for extraction of ventricular chambers using a spatio-temporal approach

An accurate ventricular function quantification is important to support evaluation, diagnosis and prognosis of several cardiac pathologies. However, expert heart delineation, specifically for the right ventricle, is a time consuming task with high inter-and-intra observer variability. A fully automatic 3D+time heart segmentation framework is herein proposed for short-axis-cardiac MRI sequences. This approach estimates the heart using exclusively information from the sequence itself without tuning any parameters. The proposed framework uses a coarse-to-fine approach, which starts by localizing the heart via spatio-temporal analysis, followed by a segmentation of the basal heart that is then propagated to the apex by using a non-rigid-registration strategy. The obtained volume is then refined by estimating the ventricular muscle by locally searching a prior endocardium- pericardium intensity pattern. The proposed framework was applied to 48 patients datasets supplied by the organizers of the MICCAI 2012 Right Ventricle segmentation challenge. Results show the robustness, efficiency and competitiveness of the proposed method both in terms of accuracy and computational load.
Sex Differences in Indicators of Well-Being in Adolescents

The 1999 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, administered to 964 females and 852 males in randomly selected high schools in a midwestern state, indicated significantly greater negative indicators of mental and physical well-being for adolescent girls than adolescent boys. Results of the 1997 survey finding that significantly more adolescent girls reported engaging in several high risk sexual and drug behaviors such as having their first drink of alcohol at an earlier age, driving a vehicle in the past 30 days when they had been drinking, smoking at an earlier age, smoking more cigarettes per day, and using over-the-counter drugs to get high more often, were supported and enlarged.
Modelling the effect of specific inositol 1,4,5‐trisphosphate receptor isoforms on cellular Ca2+ signals

Background information. Oscillations of cytosolic Ca2+ are well‐known to rely on the regulatory properties of the InsP3R (inositol 1,4,5‐trisphosphate receptor). Three isoforms of this channel have been identified. They differ in their regulatory properties by Ca2+ and InsP3. Experiments in different cell types clearly indicate that the relative amounts of each isoform affect the time course of Ca2+ changes after agonist stimulation. In the present study, we investigate whether different steady‐state curves for the open probability of the InsP3Rs as a function of Ca2+ imply different dynamical behaviours when these receptors are present in a cellular environment. We therefore describe by a specific phenomenological model the three main types of curves that have been reported: (i) the classical bell‐shaped curve, (ii) the bell‐shaped curve that is shifted towards higher Ca2+ concentrations when InsP3 is increased, and (iii) a monotonous increasing function of cytosolic Ca2+.
Inductively Finding a Reachable State Space Over-Approximation

In this work, an inductive technique is introduced that will prove implications among nodes in a design. These implications form an over-approximation to the set of reachable states. Complementing this over-approximation gives a set of unreachable states that can be used as don’t cares to resynthesize the network. The results are very promising, yielding nearly the same optimization as if exact reachability analysis had been used to find unreachable states for use as don’t cares. Thus expensive reachability analysis can be substituted for this inductive technique without compromising optimization potential.
Patient‐specific recovery patterns over time measured by dependence in activities of daily living after stroke and post‐stroke care: The South London Stroke Register (SLSR)

Background and purpose: Data on patient‐specific recovery after stroke are lacking and the effects of complex healthcare interventions on the course of recovery were not reported. To quantify the recovery pattern up to 1 year post‐stroke and assess effects of evidence‐based treatments on the patient‐specific course of recovery allowing its prediction.
Validation of different pediatric triage systems in the emergency department.

BACKGROUND Triage system in children seems to be more challenging compared to adults because of their different response to physiological and psychosocial stressors. This study aimed to determine the best triage system in the pediatric emergency department. METHODS This was a prospective observational study. This study was divided into two phases. The first phase determined the inter-rater reliability of five triage systems: Manchester Triage System (MTS), Emergency Severity Index (ESI) version 4, Pediatric Canadian Triage and Acuity Scale (CTAS), Australasian Triage Scale (ATS), and Ramathibodi Triage System (RTS) by triage nurses and pediatric residents. In the second phase, to analyze the validity of each triage system, patients were categorized as two groups, i.e., high acuity patients (triage level 1, 2) and low acuity patients (triage level 3, 4, and 5). Then we compared the triage acuity with actual admission. RESULTS In phase I, RTS illustrated almost perfect inter-rater reliability with kappa of 1.0 (P<0.01). ESI and CTAS illustrated good inter-rater reliability with kappa of 0.8-0.9 (P<0.01). Meanwhile, ATS and MTS illustrated moderate to good inter-rater reliability with kappa of 0.5-0.7 (P<0.01). In phase II, we included 1 041 participants with average age of 4.7±4.2 years, of which 55% were male and 45% were female. In addition 32% of the participants had underlying diseases, and 123 (11.8%) patients were admitted. We found that ESI illustrated the most appropriate predicting ability for admission with sensitivity of 52%, specificity of 81%, and AUC 0.78 (95%CI 0.74-0.81). CONCLUSION RTS illustrated almost perfect inter-rater reliability. Meanwhile, ESI and CTAS illustrated good inter-rater reliability. Finally, ESI illustrated the appropriate validity for triage system.
Hierarchical Clustering of Gene Expression Data with Divergence Measure

Hierarchical clustering is a commonly used and valuable approach in clustering analysis. However it depends on the measure used to assess similarity between samples. Two frequently adopted distance measures are Euclidean distance (L 2 - norm) and city-block distance (L 1 -norm), and they do not take into account special characteristics of data at hand. In this paper, considering the nonnegativity of gene expression data, we apply a generalized Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence to measure the similarity in hierarchial clustering analysis. Experimental results on several real cancer related gene expression datasets show that the proposed KL divergence outperforms both L 2 and L 1 distances.
Cancer incidence and mortality

A.G. Ramirez et al. (eds.), The South Texas Health Status Review: A Health Disparities Roadmap, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-00233-0_5, © The Author(s) 2013 Cancer is a vital health issue in Texas. Thousands of Texas residents are affected by cancer each year, and cancer is the second leading cause of death in the state and in the nation, accounting for one of every four deaths. More than 1.6 million Americans are expected to be diagnosed with cancer and more than 577,000 Americans are expected to die from cancer-related causes in 2012 [ 1 ]. In Texas, more than 110,000 residents are expected to be diagnosed with cancer in 2012, and more than 39,000 cancer-related deaths are expected [ 2 ]. Cancer begins when certain cells in the body change and start to grow abnormally and uncontrollably. Cancer cells can also invade other organs and tissues and be spread by the bloodstream and lymphatic system in a process called metastasis. This uncontrolled growth and spread of cancer can result in serious health problems and death. Currently, doctors cannot determine what causes cancer in an individual person, but there are several risk factors that may play a role in cancer development including aging, tobacco, alcohol consumption, sunlight, ionizing radiation, certain viruses and bacteria, poor nutrition, lack of physical activity, being overweight, certain hormones, and certain chemicals [ 3 ]. Many of these risk factors can be avoided, thus lowering a person’s risk of developing cancer. Other risk factors cannot be avoided, but many cancers can be cured if detected and treated early. Incidence and mortality rates for each cancer are presented as age-adjusted rates or age-specifi c rates.
Burkitt's lymphoma cells are resistant to programmed cell death in the presence of the epstein‐barr virus latent antigen EBNA‐4

Group I Epstein‐Barr virus (EBV)‐positive Burkitt's lymphoma (BL) cells display a surface phenotype characteristic of germinal centre B cells and readily undergo apoptosis in response to a variety of stimuli, including serum deprivation. Activation of EBV latent gene expression has been shown to increase the survival of these tumour cells by blocking programmed cell death. To investigate the nature of this protection, we assessed the function of the EBV latent EBNA‐4 gene in a group 1 lymphoma line, dG75. Group I BL cells induced to undergo apoptosis in response to serum starvation were protected in the presence of EBNA‐4 protein. A possible factor underlying this EBNA‐4‐associated survival was increased expression of the oncoprotein bcl‐2, a known repressor of cell death. Together these data suggest that EBNA‐4 plays an important role in the regulation of programmed cell death in BL tumour cells. © 1995 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Evolution and maintenance of haploid–diploid life cycles in natural populations: The case of the marine brown alga Ectocarpus

The evolutionary stability of haploid–diploid life cycles is still controversial. Mathematical models indicate that niche differences between ploidy phases may be a necessary condition for the evolution and maintenance of these life cycles. Nevertheless, experimental support for this prediction remains elusive. In the present work, we explored this hypothesis in natural populations of the brown alga Ectocarpus. Consistent with the life cycle described in culture, Ectocarpus crouaniorum in NW France and E. siliculosus in SW Italy exhibited an alternation between haploid gametophytes and diploid sporophytes. Our field data invalidated, however, the long‐standing view of an isomorphic alternation of generations. Gametophytes and sporophytes displayed marked differences in size and, conforming to theoretical predictions, occupied different spatiotemporal niches. Gametophytes were found almost exclusively on the alga Scytosiphon lomentaria during spring whereas sporophytes were present year‐round on abiotic substrata. Paradoxically, E. siliculosus in NW France exhibited similar habitat usage despite the absence of alternation of ploidy phases. Diploid sporophytes grew both epilithically and epiphytically, and this mainly asexual population gained the same ecological advantage postulated for haploid–diploid populations. Consequently, an ecological interpretation of the niche differences between haploid and diploid individuals does not seem to satisfactorily explain the evolution of the Ectocarpus life cycle.
A newly developed visual method of sexing the os pubis.

Preliminary investigation has indicated that the use of the ventral arc, subpubic concavity, and medial aspect of the ischio-pubic ramus as sexing criteria allows one to sex the os pubis with an accuracy in excess of 95%. The method described here is simple and objective enough to allow the beginning researcher to sex hip bones accurately while requiring the presence of only a small fragment of the bone.
Variation in Psychiatric Practices: Implications for Health Care Policy and Financing

The study of geographic variation in physician practices has been a mainstay of health policy research for more than 20 years. In 1972 Wennberg and Gittebohn' observed that 13 geographic areas in Vermont had very different per capita rates of common surgical procedures. The frequency of tonsillectomy, for example, varied more than tenfold between the communities with the lowest and the highest utilization rates. Subsequently, Wennberg and others extended the study of practice variation to include hundreds of medical treatments and surgical procedures. ' Communities have differed when practices have been compared across states'. ' and among countries. ' These findings have led to extensive research into the causes of practice variation; they contributed to the rise of managed care and the creation of the US. Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (AHCPR). They have prompted further investigation into patient access to care, the appropriateness of health services, and the extent of physician agreement about treatment. They have also spurred the development of research-based practice guidelines, which are intended to educate physicians in the use of efficacious treatments. Although little of this work has come directly from the study of psychiatric practices, variation studies have been influential in the financing and shaping of mental health care and are likely to play a more prominent role in psychiatry's future. W h y should the utilization rates of common medical treatments differ across different communities? One reason might be that the prevalence rates of the illnesses treated may vary widely. However, epidemiological research has not found prevalence to vary to the extent seen in treatment practices. Another possibility is that even if rates of specific illnesses are comparable, other community demographic factors such as age, gender, race, and socioeco-
Micromagnetic simulation of high-power spin-torque oscillator in half-metallic Heusler alloy spin valve nanopillar

We investigated the spin-torque oscillator in a half-metallic Heusler alloy Co2MnSi (CMS) spin-valve nanopillar using micromagnetic simulations. Although it is known that the out-of-plane precession (OPP) usually has a larger power output than the in-plane precession (IPP), only IPP mode was experimentally observed in CMS. Our simulations revealed the fundamental and second harmonic radio frequency (rf) oscillations of the IPP mode, consistent with the experimental measurements in CMS-based pillars. Our simulations predicted that the OPP mode can be obtained under the condition of an initially antiparallel state, a small external magnetic field, and a sufficiently large current density.
Suicide, religion, and socioeconomic conditions. An ecological study in 26 countries, 1990.

STUDY OBJECTIVE: Relative risks are frequently assumed to be stable across populations but this may not apply in psychiatric epidemiology where sociocultural context may modify them. Such ecological effect modification will give curved associations between aggregated risk factor and outcome. This was examined in connection with the ecological association between suicide rates and an aggregate index of religiosity. DESIGN: Ecological study of associations between suicide rates and an index of religiosity, adjusted for socioeconomic variation. The effect of stratification of the study sample according to levels of religiosity, was examined. SETTING: 26 European and American countries. SUBJECTS: Interview data from 37,688 people aggregated by country. OUTCOME MEASURES: Age and sex specific (1986-1990) suicide rates. MAIN RESULT: Adjusted for socioeconomic variation, negative associations of male suicide rates with religiosity were apparent in the 13 least religious countries only (test for interaction F (1, 25) = 5.6; p = 0.026). Associations between religiosity and female suicide rates did not vary across countries. CONCLUSION: The bent ecological association was apparent only after adjustment for socioeconomic variation suggesting that, rather than confounding, ecological modification of individual level links between religion and male (but not female) suicide risk is the responsible mechanism. This concurs with micro-level findings suggesting that suicide acceptance depends not only on personal but also on contextual levels of religious belief, and that men are more sensitive to this phenomenon than women. In psychiatric epidemiology, relative risks vary with the exposure's prevalence. This has important implications for research and prevention.
The Architectural Design of Information Spaces in Virtual Environments

This paper deals with the architectural aspect of virtual environment design. It builds on precedents from the areas of architectural, urban design and environmental cognition and attempts to suggest an architectural way of thinking about designing the spatial elements of a virtual environment. A taxonomy of the objects and the spatial elements that a VE consists of is presented as the main hypothesis. Finally, a method for evaluating this hypothesis is suggested.
Burden of Hepatitis C in Iran Between 1990 and 2010: findings from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010.

BACKGROUND Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is the foremost cause of deaths attributable to cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. The Global Burden of Disease study 2010 (GBD 2010) quantifies and compares the degree of health loss as a result of diseases, injuries, and risk factors by age, sex, and geography overtime. This study aimed to present and critique the burden of hepatitis C and its trend in Iran between 1990 and 2010 by using the GBD study 2010. METHODS We used the results of GBD 2010 for Iran to measure rates and trends of mortality, causes of deaths, years of life lost (YLLs), years lived with disability (YLDs), and disability adjusted life years (DALYs) due to hepatitis C. Hepatitis C was defined as the presence of hepatitis C virus in the serum. Data were presented in three categories: acute hepatitis C, cirrhosis secondary to hepatitis C, and liver cancer secondary to hepatitis C. RESULTS HCV infection (including the three categories of the study) led to 57.29, 59.92, and 66.45 DALYs (per 100,000 population) in 1990, 2000, and 2010, respectively. DALYs and death rates showed a slight decreasing trend for HCV cirrhosis; however, DALYs and death rates increased for acute hepatitis and liver cancer due to patients with HCV. The majority of deaths and DALYs were in individuals aged 70 years and above in all three categories of HCV. YLLs made the greatest contributions to DALYs. CONCLUSION DALYs due to HCV infection are increasing in Iran according to GBD 2010; however, the estimations of DALYs using GBD 2010 are mostly from model-based data and there are significant uncertainties for extrapolated data. In this regard, a comprehensive study such as the National and Subnational Burden of Diseases (NASBOD) study would be needed to estimate and calculate precisely prevalence and burden of HCV-related diseases at national and subnational levels.