nils-herrmann/clean_scirepeval huggingface dataset:
Integrating Geropsychiatric Nursing and Interprofessional Collaborative Practice Competencies Into Adult Gerontology Clinical Nurse Specialist Education
Venue: Clinical nurse specialist CNS

Specific changes to the national clinical nurse specialist (CNS) certification are necessitating a move away the psychiatric/mental health (P/MH) CNS population focus. However, a rapidly increasing older adult population with P/MH comorbidities such as depression and anxiety means that the adult gerontology CNS (AGCNS) will likely be coordinating much of the complex care needs of this vulnerable population. Therefore, strategies are needed to ensure AGCNSs are competent in advanced practice P/MH nursing. In addition, at this critical time in the redesign of healthcare, the Institute of Medicine has made interprofessional practice center stage for healthcare professional education. Therefore, the purpose of this manuscript is to propose aligning the current AGCNS population focused competencies with the CNS geropsychiatric nursing competency enhancements and interprofessional collaborative practice education competencies. Examples of the proposed alignment and educational application strategies are presented. When AGCNS educational curricula encompass P/MH nursing at an advanced level from an interprofessional perspective, future AGCNSs will continue to be positioned to make significant contributions to the design of care systems and monitor and trend important outcomes, while ensuring safe and efficient, high quality healthcare for older adults with P/MH comorbidities.
Avoiding costly hospitalisation at end of life: findings from a specialist palliative care pilot in residential care for older adults
Venue: BMJ Supportive Palliative Care

Specialist palliative care is not a standardised component of service delivery in nursing home care in Australia. Specialist palliative care services can increase rates of advance care planning, decrease hospital admissions and improve symptom management in such facilities. New approaches are required to support nursing home residents in avoiding unnecessary hospitalisation and improving rates of dying in documented preferred place of death. This study examined whether the addition of a proactive model of specialist palliative care reduced resident transfer to the acute care setting, and achieved a reduction in hospital deaths.  A quasi experimental design was adopted, with participants at 4 residential care facilities. The intervention involved a palliative care nurse practitioner leading 'Palliative Care Needs Rounds' to support clinical decision making, education and training. Participants were matched with historical decedents using propensity scores based on age, sex, primary diagnosis, comorbidities and the Aged Care Funding Instrument rating. Outcome measures included participants' hospitalisation in the past 3 months of life and the location of death.  The data demonstrate that the intervention is associated with a substantial reduction in the length of hospital stays and a lower incidence of death in the acute care setting. While rates of hospitalisation were unchanged on average, length of admission was reduced by an average of 3.22 days (p<0.01 and 95% CI 5.05 to 1.41) a 67% decrease in admitted days.  The findings have significant implications for promoting quality outcomes through models of palliative care service delivery in residential facilities.
Along the write lines: A case study exploring activities to enable creative writing in a Secondary English classroom.

This article arises from a four week study of a class of 14 15 year old students. The study explored students' perception of themselves as writers and the effects of a variety of teaching and learning strategies on their creative writing responses. The aim of the project was to enhance the students' creative writing, whilst ascertaining whether there were particular activities or types of writing that would lead to students perceiving more satisfactory outcomes in their writing. It answers the research question: What do I observe, and what do my students say, about the experience of different classroom based creative writing tasks?
Technological innovation of higher education in New Zealand: a wicked problem?

New Zealand, like many countries, faces the challenge of building and sustaining an educated population. Particular challenges are posed by the need to educate an increasing proportion of the population to higher levels in order to support the growth of a modern skills and knowledge economy, as opposed to an economy built on low cost labour and commodities. New Zealand higher education faces a challenging combination of political and economic drivers that interact to create a "wicked problem" obstructing and complicating innovation in the models used to educate adults. This paper explores the wicked character of New Zealand higher education and considers what strategies potentially offer ways of addressing and minimising the extent of the wickedness, and potentially enable progress in the quality, efficiency and impact of education in New Zealand society.
Selective reduction of fMRI responses to transient achromatic stimuli in the magnocellular layers of the LGN and the superficial layer of the SC of early glaucoma patients
Venue: Human brain mapping

Glaucoma is now viewed not just a disease of the eye but also a disease of the brain. The prognosis of glaucoma critically depends on how early the disease can be detected. However, early glaucomatous loss of the laminar functions in the human lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) and superior colliculus (SC) remains difficult to detect and poorly understood. Using functional MRI, we measured neural signals from different layers of the LGN and SC, as well as from the early visual cortices (V1, V2 and MT) in patients with early stage glaucoma and normal controls. Compared to normal controls, early glaucoma patients showed more reduction of response to transient achromatic stimuli than to sustained chromatic stimuli in the magnocellular layers of the LGN, as well as in the superficial layer of the SC. Magnocellular responses in the LGN were also significantly correlated with the degree of behavioral deficits to the glaucomatous eye. Finally, early glaucoma patients showed no reduction of fMRI response in the early visual cortex. These findings demonstrate that 'large cells' in the human LGN and SC suffer selective loss of response to transient achromatic stimuli at the early stage of glaucoma.  2016.
Routing and spectrum allocation in multi ring based data center networks

Recently, we proposed a multi ring based optical circuit switching (OCS) network following the principle of a Clos network. The network can provide connectivity to a large number of racks which may be distributed across a relatively large geographical space in a data center. However, property of the ring based switch in the central stage of the multi ring based OCS network introduces a unique routing and spectrum allocation (RSA) problem which is more complex than the routing problem in a classical Clos switching network. In this paper, we extend our work to investigate the RSA problem. For a given set of inter rack traffic requests, we consider two spectrum allocation schemes, namely fixed spectrum allocation and flexible spectrum allocation. For the fixed case, we show that the RSA problem degenerates into the traditional routing problem of the Clos network. As for the flexible case, property of spectrum division multiplexing technology and bandwidth limitation of the ring based switches should be taken into consideration during allocation of the central module, such that the system throughput can be maximized. This paper presents an integer linear program (ILP) formulation as well as a heuristic algorithm we developed to solve the flexible RSA problem. We evaluate the performance of both the two spectrum allocation schemes under different traffic patterns. Our results demonstrate that, to handle uneven inter rack traffic pattern in general data center networks, flexible spectrum allocation can lead to an increase of about 120% in system throughput, although its computational complexity is slightly higher than that of the fixed spectrum allocation scheme.
MCDC: Multicast routing leveraging SDN for Data Center networks
Venue: 2016 6th International Conference Cloud System and Big Data Engineering (Confluence)

Software defined networking(SDN) can provide solution to many old problems in networks. In this paper we propose to give an algorithm for multicast routing in data center networks. Minimizing link utilization and reducing latency are the objectives of Data Centers but at the same time increasing throughput is also the other objective. Multicast not only helps to save bandwidth usage but also reduces load on servers and thus can increase the performance of the data centers in terms of link utilization and latency. Application layer multicast solutions do exist but network level multicast always has less latency than its application level counterparts but IP multicast has many challenges from the days of the Internet. PIM SM which is prevalent multicast routing algorithm cannot leverage the advantages available in Data center networks Hence a new algorithm specifically designed for data center networks is a need. We propose MCDC(Multicast routing for Data Centers) a SDN enabled algorithm which enables congestion aware multicast routing.
An Efficient Routing Algorithm in Fat Tree Data Center Networks
Venue: 2016 IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM)

In fat tree data center networks, routing a packet from its source to destination includes two phases, upstream (i.e. from source to watershed switch) and downstream (i.e. from watershed switch to destination) The throughput/non blocking performance of networks hinges much on the effects of two phases above. In this paper, we propose a new routing algorithm called Global Round Robin (GRR) for fat tree data center networks. In the upstream of GRR, each packet is sent to a toppest switch based on the GRR relationship between its source and toppest switches. Then the packet can arrive at a toppest switch in a single time slot without any blocking and buffering en route. In the downstream of GRR, the packet is routed to its destination using self routing. The simulation results show that GRR provides the best delay/throughput performance among the existing routing algorithms for data center networks.
Judge Shopping in the Eastern District of Texas

Judge Rodney Gilstrap has a lot of patent cases on his docket. In fact, in 2015 there were 1,686 patent cases that were filed and assigned to Judge Gilstrap, an astronomical number for a single judge. Judge Gilstrap one of eight federal judges who sit on the Eastern District of Texas is so popular with patent plaintiffs that over one fourth of all patent cases in the country are heard by him. This Article addresses the problems with allowing this judge shopping to occur. It reviews the scholarship on the topic that is almost universally opposed to judge shopping for reasons of judicial legitimacy. In addition to those concerns, this Article argues against judge shopping for a separate reason. Judge shopping is often a way that district courts compete for litigation. It is this competition that poses the greatest threat to judicial impartiality. To effectively root out judge shopping in patent cases, some form of venue reform is needed in patent law. Either congressional action or changes from the Supreme Court are required to more evenly distribute the patent cases across the country.
Potential role of sodium glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitors in the treatment of hypertension
Venue: Current opinion in nephrology and hypertension

Purpose of reviewThe majority of patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) have hypertension requiring combination therapy. Sodium glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitors are novel glucose lowering drugs with shared and potentially unique beneficial effects on cardiovascular risk beyond glycemic control. This review focuses on the potential role of SGLT2 inhibitors in the treatment of hypertension associated with T2DM. Recent findingsSGLT2 inhibitors reduce office SBP by 3 5 mmHg and DBP by 2 3 mmHg across all class members. Corresponding clinically meaningful, significant blood pressure (BP) lowering effects have been confirmed using 24 h ambulatory BP monitoring. SGLT2 inhibitors reduce BP irrespective of the type of background antihypertensive medication. The antihypertensive actions of SGLT2 inhibitors involve several mechanisms including modest diuretic effects, weight loss, and direct vascular effects leading to decreased arterial stiffness and vascular resistance. The first in class cardiovascular outcome trial with empagliflozin showed a significant reduction in a composite endpoint of cardiovascular death, nonfatal stroke, and nonfatal myocardial infarction in T2DM patients at high risk for cardiovascular events. SummarySGLT2 inhibitors have clinically significant antihypertensive effects. SGLT2 inhibition could be a potentially useful supplement to the BP lowering treatment armamentarium in patients with T2DM.
Impact of sodium glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitors on blood pressure
Venue: Vascular health and risk management

SGLT2 inhibitors are glucose lowering agents used to treat type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) These agents target the kidney to promote urinary glucose excretion, resulting in improved blood glucose control. SGLT2 inhibitor therapy is also associated with weight loss and blood pressure (BP) lowering. Hypertension is a common comorbidity in patients with T2DM, and is associated with excess morbidity and mortality. This review summarizes data on the effect of SGLT2 inhibitors marketed in the US (namely canagliflozin, dapagliflozin, or empagliflozin) on BP in patients with T2DM. Boolean searches were conducted that included terms related to BP or hypertension with terms for SGLT2 inhibitors, canagliflozin, dapagliflozin, or empagliflozin using PubMed, Google, and Google Scholar. Data from numerous randomized controlled trials of SGLT2 inhibitors in patients with T2DM demonstrated clinically relevant reductions in both systolic and diastolic BP, assessed via seated office measurements and 24 hour ambulatory BP monitoring. Observed BP lowering was not associated with compensatory increases in heart rate. Circadian BP rhythm was also maintained. The mechanism of SGLT2 inhibitor associated BP reduction is not fully understood, but is assumed to be related to osmotic diuresis and natriuresis. Other factors that may also contribute to BP reduction include SGLT2 inhibitor associated decreases in body weight and reduced arterial stiffness. Local inhibition of the renin angiotensin aldosterone system secondary to increased delivery of sodium to the juxtaglomerular apparatus during SGLT2 inhibition has also been postulated. Although SGLT2 inhibitors are not indicated as BP lowering agents, the modest decreases in systolic and diastolic BP observed with SGLT2 inhibitors may provide an extra clinical advantage for the majority of patients with T2DM, in addition to improving blood glucose control.
Sodium glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitors and cardiovascular outcomes
Venue: Postgraduate medicine

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is associated with an elevated risk of cardiovascular (CV) morbidity and mortality. Furthermore, many patients with T2DM have comorbidities that are risk factors for CV disease. While intensive glucose control reduces the risk of diabetic microvascular complications, its relationship to CV outcomes remains unclear. Consequently, the management of CV risk factors in patients with T2DM is complex, and factors other than blood glucose must be considered. Sodium glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitors, a class of oral glucose lowering agents, are associated with reductions in blood pressure and body weight, in addition to decreasing hyperglycemia, and therefore have the potential to reduce CV risk in patients with T2DM. The clinical trial results of SGLT2 inhibitors regarding CV safety and outcomes are discussed, including data from the recently published EMPA REG OUTCOME study. This trial was the first dedicated CV outcomes study to demonstrate that a glucose lowering agent lowered CV mortality and all cause mortality, and reduced hospitalization for heart failure in patients with T2DM at high risk of CV events.
Distinct bone marrow blood vessels differentially regulate hematopoiesis
Venue: Nature

Bone marrow endothelial cells (BMECs) form a network of blood vessels that regulate both leukocyte trafficking and haematopoietic stem and progenitor cell (HSPC) maintenance. However, it is not clear how BMECs balance these dual roles, and whether these events occur at the same vascular site. We found that mammalian bone marrow stem cell maintenance and leukocyte trafficking are regulated by distinct blood vessel types with different permeability properties. Less permeable arterial blood vessels maintain haematopoietic stem cells in a low reactive oxygen species (ROS) state, whereas the more permeable sinusoids promote HSPC activation and are the exclusive site for immature and mature leukocyte trafficking to and from the bone marrow. A functional consequence of high permeability of blood vessels is that exposure to blood plasma increases bone marrow HSPC ROS levels, augmenting their migration and differentiation, while compromising their long term repopulation and survival. These findings may have relevance for clinical haematopoietic stem cell transplantation and mobilization protocols.
Leptin Receptor Promotes Adipogenesis and Reduces Osteogenesis by Regulating Mesenchymal Stromal Cells in Adult Bone Marrow.
Venue: Cell stem cell

Skeletal stem cells (SSCs) that are the major source of osteoblasts and adipocytes in adult bone marrow express leptin receptor (LepR) To test whether LepR regulates SSC function, we conditionally deleted Lepr from limb bone marrow stromal cells, but not from the axial skeleton or hypothalamic neurons, using Prx1 Cre. Prx1 Cre;Lepr(fl/fl) mice exhibited normal body mass and normal hematopoiesis. However, limb bones from Prx1 Cre;Lepr(fl/fl) mice exhibited increased osteogenesis, decreased adipogenesis, and accelerated fracture healing. Leptin increased adipogenesis and reduced osteogenesis by activating Jak2/Stat3 signaling in bone marrow stromal cells. A high fat diet increased adipogenesis and reduced osteogenesis in limb bones from wild type mice, but not from Prx1 Cre;Lepr(fl/fl) mice. This reflected local effects of LepR on osteogenesis and adipogenesis by bone marrow stromal cells and systemic effects on bone resorption. Leptin/LepR signaling regulates adipogenesis and osteogenesis by mesenchymal stromal cells in the bone marrow in response to diet and adiposity.
Niche heterogeneity in the bone marrow
Venue: Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

In adult mammals, hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) are defined by their abilities to self renew and to differentiate to form all blood cell lineages. These rare multipotent cells occupy specific locations in the bone marrow (BM) microenvironment. The specific microenvironment regulating HSCs, commonly referred to as the niche, comprises multiple cell types whose exact contributions are under active investigation. Understanding cellular cross talk involving HSCs in the BM microenvironment is of fundamental importance for harnessing therapies against benign and malignant blood diseases. In this review, we summarize and evaluate recent advances in our understanding of niche heterogeneity and its influence on HSC function.
Web 2.0, Language Learning and Intercultural Competence

Whenever a new form of communication appears on the scene, it immediately becomes the object of discussion. This has been going on since the first penny press edition in 1834, whereas today discussions are carried out with reference to the Internet. The stability with which mass media have faced different criticism can be well understood thanks to the functionalist analysis which considers the media as a social system working within an external system made up of a set of cultural and social conditions. In spite of its complexity, any set of repetitive actions contribute to maintaining or to weakening the stability of the system. We can say that globalization would not have been possible without the media and Web 2.0 may be of remarkable interest for its role in influencing cultural identity. All the past technologies, from electric light to the airplane, took a whole generation to gain ground among people, and Internet has not required such a long time. The impossibility to digest the new modalities of communication offered by the net creates the risk of unexpected contamination. Geographical magazines often show pictures of native Amazonians dressed in their traditional costumes while using computers and mobile phones. Educational uses of Web 2.0 and mobile learning tools have been rapidly expanded over the last few years and a great number of projects have been planned for teaching languages. Mobile learning includes many areas: handheld computers, MP3 players, notebooks and mobile phones. In this paper we shall outline the methodology including selection of web tools, task design, implementation and intercultural communication. The study carried out at the University of Florence shows that learners develop their communication competence while performing entertaining activities which enable them to achieve the desired goals.
Intercultural Competence in Teaching: Defining the Intercultural Profile of Student Teachers

This article describes the intercultural profile of European student teachers in order to clarify the relationship between Intercultural Competence (IC) and teacher training. The main tool used for that was a questionnaire to assess IC, following the criteria established by the Intercultural Competence Assessment (INCA) Project in which IC levels are ranked. The survey poses a variety of personal and professional situations where IC comes into play and different responses to choose from, ranging from insufficiently intercultural to highly intercultural. The results of this study show that most European student teachers participating in the research displayed an intermediate level of IC, which indicates a necessity to improve future teachers' IC training, particularly highlighting IC dimensions such as behavioural flexibility or communicative awareness.
Combination of carboxymethyl cellulose based coatings with calcium and ascorbic acid impacts in browning and quality of fresh cut apples

Fresh cut apples have a short shelf life due to their high rate of deterioration, water loss and cut surface browning that can rapidly reduce fruit quality. In this study the effects of carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) coatings in combination with CaCl 2 and ascorbic acid (AA) has been studied. Apple slices were dipped for 5 min in distilled water (uncoated) CMC (1% w/v) CaCl 2 (0.5% or CMC (1% CaCl 2 (0.5% AA (2% and then stored at 4 degC, 90 95% (RH) The treatments suppressed browning, retained flesh firmness, and reduced soluble solid content, titratable acidity and pH changes of the slices. Browning incidence with CMC in combination with AA was lower than that of CMC solely. Vitamin C and antioxidant capacity in treatments was higher than that of uncoated. Coating treatments generally reduced total phenolic and flavonoid concentrations and polyphenol oxidase and peroxidase activity changes of slices during storage. These findings suggest that the combination use of CMC AA may be useful for maintaining quality and reducing surface browning of fresh cut apples.