LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Achievement Gap in Reading Is Present as Early as First Grade and Persists through Adolescence.

OBJECTIVES
To determine if differences between dyslexic and typical readers in their reading scores and verbal IQ are evident as early as first grade and whether the trajectory of these differences increases or decreases from childhood to adolescence.


STUDY DESIGN
The subjects were the 414 participants comprising the Connecticut Longitudinal Study, a sample survey cohort, assessed yearly from 1st to 12th grade on measures of reading and IQ. Statistical analysis employed longitudinal models based on growth curves and multiple groups.


RESULTS
As early as first grade, compared with typical readers, dyslexic readers had lower reading scores and verbal IQ, and their trajectories over time never converge with those of typical readers. These data demonstrate that such differences are not so much a function of increasing disparities over time but instead because of differences already present in first grade between typical and dyslexic readers.


CONCLUSIONS
The achievement gap between typical and dyslexic readers is evident as early as first grade, and this gap persists into adolescence. These findings provide strong evidence and impetus for early identification of and intervention for young children at risk for dyslexia. Implementing effective reading programs as early as kindergarten or even preschool offers the potential to close the achievement gap.
Open Government Data: A Stage Model

Public sector information constitutes a valuable primary material for added-value services and products, which however remains unexploited. Recently, Open Government Data (OGD) initiatives emerged worldwide aiming to make public data freely available to everyone, without limiting restrictions. Despite its potential however there is currently a lack of roadmaps, guidelines and benchmarking frameworks to drive and measure OGD progress. This is particularly true as proposed stage models for measuring eGovernment progress focus on services and do not sufficiently consider data. In this paper, we capitalize on literature on eGovernment stage models and OGD initiatives to propose a stage model for OGD. The proposed model has two main dimensions, namely organizational & technological complexity and added value for data consumers. We anticipate the proposed model will open up a scientific discussion on OGD stage models and will be used by practitioners for constructing roadmaps and for benchmarking just like the European Union stage model is currently used for measuring public service online sophistication.
Epithelial CaSR deficiency alters intestinal integrity and promotes proinflammatory immune responses.

The intestinal epithelium is equipped with sensing receptor mechanisms that interact with luminal microorganisms and nutrients to regulate barrier function and gut immune responses, thereby maintaining intestinal homeostasis. Herein, we clarify the role of the extracellular calcium-sensing receptor (CaSR) using intestinal epithelium-specific Casr(-/-) mice. Epithelial CaSR deficiency diminished intestinal barrier function, altered microbiota composition, and skewed immune responses towards proinflammatory. Consequently, Casr(-/-) mice were significantly more prone to chemically induced intestinal inflammation resulting in colitis. Accordingly, CaSR represents a potential therapeutic target for autoinflammatory disorders, including inflammatory bowel diseases.
Stroke Social Network Scale: development and psychometric evaluation of a new patient-reported measure.

OBJECTIVE
To describe the development and psychometric evaluation of a new patient-reported measure that assesses a person's social network in the first six months post stroke. Although it is known that the social networks of those with stroke and aphasia are vulnerable to change, there is currently no social network scale that has been validated for this population.


DESIGN AND SETTING
Repeated measures psychometric study, evaluating internal consistency, construct validity, and responsiveness to change of the Stroke Social Network Scale. Participants were interviewed two weeks, three months and six months following a first stroke.


MEASURES
Stroke Social Network Scale; Medical Outcomes Studies (MOS) Social Support Survey; National Institute of Health Stroke Scale; Stroke and Aphasia Quality of Life Scale-39g; Frenchay Aphasia Screening Test.


RESULTS
87 participants were recruited, of whom 71 were followed up at six months. Factor analysis was used with the Stroke Social Network Scale to derive five subdomains: satisfaction; children; relatives; friends; and groups, which explained 63% of variance. There was good evidence for the scale's internal consistency (α = 0.85); acceptability; and convergent (r = 0.34; r = 0.53) and discriminant validity (r = -0.10; r = -0.19). It differentiated between those with high versus low perceived social support (p = 0.01). Moderate changes from two weeks to six months supported responsiveness (d = 0.32; standardised response mean (SRM) = 0.46), with the friends factor, as expected, showing more change than the children's factor (friends factor: d = 0.46; SRM = 0.50; children's factor: d = 0.06; SRM = 0.19).


CONCLUSIONS
The Stroke Social Network Scale is a new measure that demonstrates good internal consistency, validity and responsiveness to change.
Towards reconstruction of past fire regimes from geochemical analysis of charcoal

Abstract: Production of charcoal has accompanied human life from the beginning. We aimed at evaluating the degree to which the chemical signatures of charcoal may serve as a fingerprint for burning conditions. After a compilation of fire literature we differentiated three typical fire regimes [grass and forest ground (285 ± 143 °C), shrub (503 ± 211 °C) and domestic fires (797 ± 165 °C)] and three main factors impacting on charcoal formation: charring duration, temperature and fuel. For fingerprint calibration and validation, typical fuels of prehistoric burning events (wood and grass) were charred under laboratory conditions (300-700 °C; varying duration) and compared with residues from natural fires in SE Europe. Analysis comprised assessment of benzene polycarboxylic acids (BPCAs), organic carbon (Corg) content, nitrogen content, oxygen index (OI: CO2/Corg) and hydrogen index (HI: HC/Corg), temperature of maximum heating (Tmax) and mid-infrared spectroscopy (MIRS). All parameters including mass loss increased with increasing combustion temperature, but were unaffected by charring duration. Grass charcoal had consistently lower Corg content and HI than wood, but values showed a bias towards the natural charcoals, probably because the latter contained higher amounts of mineral matter or were combusted under greater O2 supply. Nevertheless, natural charcoals could be differentiated into forest ground fires (B5CA/B6CA 1.3-1.9; OI >20; intense CH2 stretching, Tmax <488 °C) and grass fires (B5CA/B6CA 0.8-1.4; OI >20; weak CH2 stretching, Tmax <425 °C), whereas domestic fires revealed B5CA/B6CA values <0.8, OI values <20 and little MIRS absorbance. In summary, it appears possible to reconstruct fire regimes from the temperature sensitivity of BPCA patterns, Tmax, OI and aromatic and aliphatic MIRS signals, whereas assignment of fuel source was less reliable.
The ANGELINA Videogame Design System—Part I

Automatically generating content for videogames has long been a staple of game development and the focus of much successful research. Such forays into content generation usually concern themselves with producing a specific game component, such as a level design. This has proven a rich and challenging area of research, but in focusing on creating separate parts of a larger game, we miss out on the most challenging and interesting aspects of game development. By expanding our scope to the automated design of entire games, we can investigate the relationship between the different creative tasks undertaken in game development, tackle the higher level creative challenges of game design, and ultimately build systems capable of much greater novelty, surprise, and quality in their output. This paper, the first in a series of two, describes two case studies in automating game design, proposing cooperative coevolution as a useful technique to use within systems that automate this process. We show how this technique allows essentially separate content generators to produce content that complements each other. We also describe systems that have used this to design games with subtle emergent effects. After introducing the technique and its technical basis in this paper, in the second paper in the series we discuss higher level issues in automated game design, such as potential overlap with computational creativity and the issue of evaluation.
Cellular processing of platinum anticancer drugs

Cisplatin, carboplatin and oxaliplatin are platinum-based drugs that are widely used in cancer chemotherapy. Platinum–DNA adducts, which are formed following uptake of the drug into the nucleus of cells, activate several cellular processes that mediate the cytotoxicity of these platinum drugs. This review focuses on recently discovered cellular pathways that are activated in response to cisplatin, including those involved in regulating drug uptake, the signalling of DNA damage, cell-cycle checkpoints and arrest, DNA repair and cell death. Such knowledge of the cellular processing of cisplatin adducts with DNA provides valuable clues for the rational design of more efficient platinum-based drugs as well as the development of new therapeutic strategies.
Analog AGC Circuitry for a CMOS WLAN Receiver

The IEEE 802.11a standard uses orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) to allow high data rates in multipath WLAN environments. The high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) of OFDM signals, along with stringent settling-time constraints, make conventional closed-loop automatic gain control (AGC) schemes impractical for WLAN receivers. In a direct conversion receiver, AGC and channel-select filtering are performed by analog baseband circuitry. A baseband signal processor using a new open-loop analog gain-control algorithm for OFDM is described. The new AGC algorithm uses switched coarse gain-setting steps followed by an analog open-loop fine gain-setting step to set the final gain of variable gain amplifiers (VGAs). The AGC was implemented in a 0.18-mum CMOS process using newly designed circuits including linear VGAs, RMS detectors, and current-mode computation circuitry. Simulation and measurement results verify that the new AGC circuit converges with gain error less than 1dB to the desired level within 5.6 mus
Development and validation of a simplified chinese version of EORTC QLQ-CR38 to measure the quality of life of patients with colorectal cancer.

OBJECTIVES
This study aimed to develop and validate the simplified Chinese version of the EORTC Quality of Life Questionnaire for Colorectal Cancer, QLQ-CR38.


METHODS
It was developed by the strict translation procedure of EORTC translation guidelines, including translation, back translation, a pilot test and a cultural adaptation. Three instruments (QLQ-CR38, Quality of Life Instruments for Cancer Patients-Colorectal Cancer, and Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Colorectal) were used on a sample of 110 patients with colorectal cancer at the time of their admission to the hospital and 1-2 days after hospitalization, and a subsample of patients was measured a third time at discharge. The psychometric properties were evaluated by correlational analysis, multi-trait scaling analysis, factor analysis, and t tests.


RESULTS
Multi-trait scaling analysis and correlation analysis among domains and items of the three instruments showed good construct validity and criterion-related validity. Cronbach's α and the test-retest reliability coefficients were greater than 0.70 for all domains (except chemotherapy side effects, 0.44 and 0.60, respectively). All domains had statistically significant changes after treatment with the standardized response mean ranging from 0.44 to 2.47.


CONCLUSIONS
The simplified Chinese version of QLQ-CR38 has good validity, reliability, and responsiveness and can be used to measure the quality of life of Chinese patients with colorectal cancer.
A phase 2, placebo-controlled study of the opioid receptor antagonist LY2196044 for the treatment of alcohol dependence.

BACKGROUND
Endogenous opioid-mediated reward pathways may play a role in the development and maintenance of alcohol dependence. This study tested whether LY2196044, an opioid receptor antagonist, in combination with medical management would reduce drinking in alcohol-dependent patients.


METHODS
This was a multicenter, outpatient, randomized, double-blind, parallel, and placebo-controlled trial with a 16-week treatment period. Patients (N = 375) were alcohol-dependent, treatment-seeking adults. Patients were randomly assigned to once-daily LY2196044 (final doses of 125 or 250 mg/d) or placebo. DNA samples were collected at baseline. At each visit, patients underwent safety assessments, laboratory testing, efficacy measures, and medical management. Blood samples were also obtained for pharmacokinetic testing. The primary measure was the change from baseline in the percent heavy drinking days (HDD). Secondary efficacy measures were percent days abstinent per month and number of drinks per day.


RESULTS
The treatment difference in change from baseline in % HDD between LY2196044 and placebo was not statistically significant (-43.02 vs. -38.72%, respectively; p = 0.12). There was a trend toward greater change from baseline in the percent days abstinent per month for the LY2196044 group compared with the placebo group (33.49 vs. 28.12%, respectively; p = 0.051). The decrease from baseline for mean number of drinks per day was statistically significantly greater in the LY2196044 group compared with the placebo group (-5.37 vs. -4.66 drinks per day, respectively; p = 0.013). LY2196044-treated patients who were dopamine receptor type 4-variable number tandem repeat L carriers had greater reductions in % HDD (p = 0.0565), increased percent days abstinent (p = 0.0496), and reduced drinks per day (p = 0.0069) than placebo-treated L carriers. The safety profile for LY2196044 appeared similar to that of other opioid antagonists.


CONCLUSIONS
The results from this proof-of-concept clinical trial warrant further evaluation of LY2196044 for the treatment of alcohol dependence.
Strategic human resource management : The evolution of the fi eld

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t This review takes an evolutionary and chronological perspective on the development of strategic human resource management (SHRM) literature. We divide this body of work into seven themes that reflect the directions and trends researchers have taken over approximately thirty years of research. During this time the field took shape, developed rich conceptual foundations, and matured into a domain that has substantial influence on research activities in HR and related management disciplines. We trace how the field has evolved to its current state, articulate many of the major findings and contributions, and discuss how we believe it will evolve in the future. This approach contributes to the field of SHRM by synthesizing work in this domain and by highlighting areas of research focus that have received perhaps enough attention, as well as areas of research focus that, while promising, have remained largely unexamined. 1. Introduction Boxall, Purcell, and Wright (2007) distinguish among three major subfields of human resource management (HRM): micro HRM (MHRM), strategic HRM (SHRM), and international HRM (IHRM). Micro HRM covers the subfunctions of HR policy and practice and consists of two main categories: one with managing individuals and small groups (e.g., recruitment, selection, induction, training and development, performance management, and remuneration) and the other with managing work organization and employee voice systems (including union-management relations). Strategic HRM covers the overall HR strategies adopted by business units and companies and tries to measure their impacts on performance. Within this domain both design and execution issues are examined. International HRM covers HRM in companies operating across national boundaries. Since strategic HRM often covers the international context, we will include those international HRM articles that have a strategic focus. While most of the academic literature on SHRM has been published in the last 30 years, the intellectual roots of the field can be traced back to the 1920s in the U.S. (Kaufman, 2001). The concept of labor as a human resource and the strategic view of HRM policy and practice were described and discussed by labor economists and industrial relations scholars of that period, such as John Commons. Progressive companies in the 1920s intentionally formulated and adopted innovative HR practices that represented a strategic approach to the management of labor. A small, but visibly elite group of employers in this time period …
Adaptive skin-color filter

In this paper, we propose a new method, called an adaptive skin color xlter, for detecting skin color regions in a color image. The use of skin color provides an e$cient way to "nd candidate regions for faces or hands in color images. However, it is not easy to "nd skin color regions because the color of skin regions varies from image to image due to a variety of reasons. Since most of the previous methods adopt a "xed threshold scheme, they are useful only in the restricted (i.e., controlled) environment. However, our method is applicable to images in more general situations since it is capable of adaptively adjusting its threshold values and e!ectively separating skin color regions from similar background color regions. Our method consists of basically two stages. In the "rst stage, a thresholding box in HSV color space is updated adaptively using a color histogram under the assumption that the area of skin color regions is comparable to that of similar background color ones. In the second stage, color vectors inside the thresholding box are classi"ed into two groups: skin color vectors and background color vectors. Our method and other conventional methods were tested with 379 images obtained from the Internet. Experimental results show that our method is robust to the variations of skin regions' color compared to the conventional methods. ( 2001 Pattern Recognition Society. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
An empirical study of groupware support for distributed software architecture evaluation process

Software architecture evaluation is an effective means of addressing quality related issues early in the software development lifecycle. Scenario-based approaches to evaluate architecture usually involve a large number of stakeholders, who need to be collocated for faceto-face evaluation meetings. Collocating a large number of stakeholders is an expensive and time-consuming exercise, which may prove to be a hurdle in the wide-spread adoption of disciplined architectural evaluation practices. Drawing upon the successful introduction of groupware applications to support geographically distributed teams in software inspection, and requirements engineering disciplines, we propose the concept of distributed architectural evaluation using Internet-based collaborative technologies. This paper presents a pilot study used to assess the viability of a larger experiment intended to investigate the feasibility of groupware support for distributed software architecture evaluation. In addition, the results of the pilot study provide some preliminary findings on the viability of groupwaresupported software architectural evaluation process. 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Lifetime recreational exercise activity and breast cancer risk among black women and white women.

BACKGROUND
Physical inactivity is a potentially modifiable breast cancer risk factor. Because few data on this relationship exist for black women, we examined the relationship between breast cancer risk and lifetime and time- or age-specific measures of recreational exercise activity among white women and among black women.


METHODS
The Women's Contraceptive and Reproductive Experiences Study was a multicenter population-based case-control study of black women and white women aged 35-64 years with newly diagnosed invasive breast cancer. We collected detailed histories of lifetime recreational exercise activity during in-person interviews with 4538 case patients with breast cancer (1605 black and 2933 white) and 4649 control subjects (1646 black and 3033 white). Control subjects were frequency-matched to case patients on age, race, and study site. We examined associations between exercise activity measures (metabolic equivalents of energy expenditure [MET]-hours per week per year) and breast cancer risk overall and among subgroups defined by race, other breast cancer risk factors, and tumor characteristics by use of unconditional logistic regression. All statistical tests were two-sided.


RESULTS
Among all women, decreased breast cancer risk was associated with increased levels of lifetime exercise activity (e.g., average MET-hours per week per year, P(trend) = .002). An average annual lifetime exercise activity that was greater than the median level for active control subjects was associated with an approximately 20% lower risk of breast cancer, compared with that for inactivity (for 6.7-15.1 MET-hours/week/year, odds ratio [OR] = 0.82, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.71 to 0.93; for > or =15.2 MET-hours/week/year, OR = 0.80, 95% CI = 0.70 to 0.92). The inverse associations did not differ between black and white women (for MET-hours/week/year, P(trend) = .003 and P(trend) = .09, respectively; homogeneity of trends P = .16). No modification of risk was observed by disease stage, estrogen receptor status, or any breast cancer risk factor other than first-degree family history of breast cancer.


CONCLUSIONS
This study supports an inverse association between physical activity and breast cancer among black women and among white women.
Метафорический образ будущего России в политическом дискурсе

This is a review of the monograph “Solopova O.A. Cognitive and Discursive Retrospect: the Study of the Models of Future in Political Discourse: monograph / O. A. Solopova. Chelyabinsk : Publishing House of South Ural State University, 2014.175p.” Metaphorical representation of the future of Russia in political discourse of the USA, the British Empire and the Russian Empire is compared. Metamodel of probable future is suggested for comparing cognitive and discursive versions of the future (the sequence of events leading to the probable future).
Ten arguments for the existence of racial differences in intelligence and why we should welcome race realism

An expanded and documented version of an address on the subject of race and intelligence. The author provides evidence for the reality of inherited racial differences in intelligence and stresses the need to make allowance for these in social and educational policies.