Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Can a picture ruin a thousand words? The effects of visual resources in exam questions

Background When an exam question is read, a mental representation of the task is formed in each student's mind. This processing can be affected by features such as visual resources (e.g. pictures, diagrams, photographs, tables), which can come to dominate the mental representation due to their salience. Purpose The aim of this research was to investigate the effects of visual resources in exam questions and, in particular, to investigate how and when students use images and whether subtle changes to these salient physical features can affect whether a question is understood and answered in the way intended by the question-setters. Sample The participants were 525 16-year-old students, with a range of ability, in four secondaryschools. Design and methods Experimental test papers were constructed including six questions based on past examination questions and involving graphical elements. For five of the six questions, two versions were designed in order to investigate the effects of changes to visual resources on processing and responses. A sample of the students were interviewed afterwards. Results Where two versions of a question were trialled in parallel, the differences in the visual resources significantly affected marks for one question and had smaller effects on marks and the nature of answers with some of the others. There were mixed views from students over whether a visual resource that is not strictly necessary should be used. Some considered it reassuring, whilst others deemed it unnecessary. Evidence in the literature suggests that caution may be needed since there is a risk that some students may pay too much attention to the image. Findings from one question (question 6) indicated that visuals can increase the likelihood of students making unhelpful interpretations of a question. Students were seen to have sensible expectations regarding when to use information from a visual resource and what is important in an illustration. In addition, more use tended to be made of a technical diagram (in question 12) in comparison to pictures or sketches, and it was found that if an image provides a clue to an answer, this may be used in preference to information in the text. Evidence regarding the use that students made of a table (question 1) indicated that the data in the table cells were given more attention than some of the preceding text and text in a header. This might apply similarly to other resources like graphs and charts. Conclusions It is important to ensure that the inclusion of a visual resource is carefully considered and appropriately designed. If a visual resource is not strictly needed in a question, the writer will need to balance the advantages and disadvantages. Authors should also consider whether and how students are likely to use or be affected by the particular visual resource chosen. The findings and suggested implications of this study are most applicable to high-stakes testing but may also be useful to those preparing school textbooks and to teachers in their preparation of classroom materials.
Phenotypic variation of a Thr704Met mutation in skeletal sodium channel gene in a family with paralysis periodica paramyotonica

OBJECTIVES Patients with paralysis periodica paramyotonica exhibit a clinical syndrome with characteristics of both hyperkalaemic periodic paralysis and paramyotonia congenita. In several types of periodic paralysis associated with hyperkalaemia, mutations in the skeletal muscle sodium channel (SCN4A) gene have been previously reported. Phenotypic variations of mutations inSCN4A, however, have not been described yet. The present study aimed to evaluate genetic variations in a family with clinical and electrophysiological characteristics of paralysis periodica paramyotonia. METHODS Seven members of a family affected with symptoms of paralysis periodica paramyotonia were studied by electrophysiological and genetic analyses. There were increased serum potassium concentrations in four members during paralytic attacks induced by hyperkalaemic periodic paralysis provocation tests. Short exercise tests before and after cold immersion were carried out in four patients to distinguish electrophysiological characteristics of hyperkalaemic periodic paralysis and paramyotonia. Sequencing analyses of SCN4Awere performed on one patient and a normal control to identify polymorphisms. Restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) analysis was then performed at the identified polymorphic sites. RESULTS Electrophysiological studies showed both exercise sensitivity and temperature sensitivity. Compound motor action potential (CMAP) amplitudes were decreased (7.3%-28.6%) after short exercise tests. The CMAP amplitudes were even more severely decreased (21.7%-56.5%) in short exercise tests after cold exposure. Three polymorphic sites, Gln371Glu, Thr704Met, and Aspl376Asn were identified in SCN4A. RFLP analyses showed that all affected patients carried the Thr704Met mutation, whereas unaffected family members and a normal control did not. CONCLUSION Phenotypic variation of the Thr704Met mutation, which was previously reported in patients with hyperkalaemic periodic paralysis, is described in a family affected with paralysis periodica paramyotonia.
Adynamic and dynamic muscle transposition techniques for anal incontinence

Gracilis muscle transposition is well established in general surgery and has been the main muscle transposition technique for anal incontinence. Dynamization, through a schedule of continuous electrical stimulation, converts the fatigue-prone muscle fibres to a tonic fatigue-resistant morphology with acceptable results in those cases where there is limited sphincter muscle mass. The differences between gluteoplasty and graciloplasty, as well as the techniques and complications of both procedures, are outlined in this review. Overall, these techniques are rarely carried out in specialized units with experience, as there is a high revision and explantation rate.
Role and Results of Surgery in Acute Type B Aortic Dissection: Insights From the International Registry of Acute Aortic Dissection (IRAD)

Background— The clinical profiles and outcomes of patients treated surgically for acute type B aortic dissection (ABAD) are often reported for those in small series or for those cared for at a single institution over a long time period, during which a continuous evolution in techniques has occurred. Accordingly, we sought to evaluate the clinical features and surgical results of patients enrolled in the International Registry of Acute Aortic Dissection by identifying primary factors that influenced surgical outcome and estimating average surgical mortality for ABAD in the current era. Methods and Results— A comprehensive analysis of 290 clinical variables and their relation to surgical outcomes for 82 patients who required surgery for ABAD (from a population of 1256 patients; mean±SD age, 60.6±15.0 years; 82.9% male) and who were enrolled in the International Registry of Acute Aortic Dissection was performed. The overall in-hospital mortality was 29.3%. Factors associated with increased surgical mortality based on univariate analysis were preoperative coma or altered consciousness, partial thrombosis of the false lumen, evidence of periaortic hematoma on diagnostic imaging, descending aortic diameter >6 cm, right ventricle dysfunction at surgery, and shorter time from the onset of symptoms to surgery. Factors associated with favorable outcomes included radiating pain, normotension at surgery (systolic blood pressure 100 to 149 mm Hg), and reduced hypothermic circulatory arrest time. The 2 independent predictors of surgical mortality were age >70 years (odds ratio, 4.32; 95% confidence interval, 1.30 to 14.34) and preoperative shock/hypotension (odds ratio, 6.05; 95% confidence interval, 1.12 to 32.49). Conclusions— The present study provides insights into current-day clinical profiles and surgical outcomes of ABAD. Knowledge about different preoperative clinical conditions may help surgeons in making treatment decisions among these high-risk patients.
A case study of women academics' views on equal opportunities, career prospects and work-family conflicts in a British university

This paper reports on the views that women academics have about their career prospects, equal opportunities and the conflicts they experience between their work and personal lives in one UK university. The university in question has formal equal opportunities policies and gender monitoring systems in place. However, very few women have progressed into senior academic roles. They continue to be handicapped by well‐ingrained structural and cultural barriers and by promotion systems that still largely rely on the publication records of candidates for appointments and promotions. But this is only half the story. Some of the women we interviewed reported that they had opted to put their careers on hold because of domestic and family responsibilities. A few have resigned themselves to never achieving senior positions because of these commitments. The wider implications of these findings are discussed, including the possible effects that this will have on recruiting women graduates into careers in higher education in the future.
The configuration of the university image and its relationship with the satisfaction of students

This work centers on the study of the image of universities, with the aims of explaining the process of image forming by means of its different components, both in its cognitive and affective dimensions and of analyzing its relationship with the students’ satisfaction with the university. The results of the empirical work carried out on a representative sample of 6,775 students studying at a Spanish university demonstrate that the cognitive component of image is an antecedent of the affective component. In turn, both of those components influence the forming of the overall image of the university and the cognitive, affective and overall images statistically and significantly influence the students’ satisfaction with the university.
Language and Cultural Characteristics That Explain Differential Item Functioning for Hispanic Examinees on the Scholastic Aptitude Test

The standardization methodology was used to help identify item characteristics that might explain differential item functioning among Hispanics on the Scholastic Aptitude Test. Results indicated that true cognates or words with a common root in English and Spanish and content of special interest for Hispanics seemed to help Hispanics performance. Limited occurrence of false cognates (words that appear to be cognates but have different meanings in both languages) and of homographs (words that are spelled alike but have different meanings in English) restricted their evaluation. Nevertheless, examination of items with false cognates or homographs gave some evidence indicating that their occurrence might make items unexpectedly more difficult for Hispanic examinees
Whispers on the Wind: The Small Quiet Voice of Rural Health and Welfare Practice

Abstract The rural health, social work and welfare literature includes work on the provision of services in rural and remote settings, the challenges of addressing those communities’ needs, and the issues of the funding and staffing of service provision agencies. Rural sociology addresses the social, political and economic factors impinging on contemporary Australian rural life. What is missing from the discussion is extensive exploration of practitioner experience – the voices of the workers are largely unheard, particularly with regard to personal and professional role boundary issues. Health and welfare workers are confronted daily with ethical dilemmas arising from engagement in dual and multiplerelationships within their communities. Numerous practitioners have presentedanecdotes from their work, some small studies have been undertaken, and a few larger studies have been reported. These examples, which whet the appetite with regard to how these workers experience the boundary issues of rural practice, provide an introduction to the phenomenon that is Australian rural practice. This paper seeks to stimulate discussion about the experience of living and working in rural communities, and how ethical practice is achieved. It considers some of the published reflections of workers in this context, and gives voice to some previously unheard practitioners.
When Game Becomes Life The Creators and Spectators of Online Game Replays and Live Streaming

Online gaming franchises such as World of Tanks, Defense of the Ancients, and StarCraft have attracted hundreds of millions of users who, apart from playing the game, also socialize with each other through gaming and viewing gamecasts. As a form of User Generated Content (UGC), gamecasts play an important role in user entertainment and gamer education. They deserve the attention of both industrial partners and the academic communities, corresponding to the large amount of revenue involved and the interesting research problems associated as UGC sites and social networks. Although previous work has put much effort in analyzing general UGC sites such as YouTube, relatively little is known about the gamecast sharing sites. In this work, we provide the ﬁrst comprehensive study of gamecast sharing sites, including commercial streaming-based sites such as Amazon’s Twitch.tv and community-maintained replay-based sites such as WoTreplays. We collect and share a novel dataset on WoTreplays that includes more than 380 thousand game replays, shared by over 60 thousand creators with over 1.9 million gamers. Together with an earlier published dataset on Twitch.tv, we investigate basic characteristics of gamecast sharing sites, and we analyze the activities of their creators and spectators. Among our results, we ﬁnd that (i) WoTreplays and Twitch.tv are both fast-consumed repositories, with millions of gamecasts being uploaded, viewed, and soon forgotten; (ii) both the gamecasts and the creators exhibit highly skewed popularities, with a signiﬁcant heavy tail phenomenon; and (iii) the upload and the download preference of creators and spectators are different: while the creators emphasize their individual skills, the spectators appreciate team-wise tactics. Our ﬁndings provide important knowledge for infrastructure and service improvement, for example, in the design of proper resource allocation mechanisms that consider future gamecasting, and in the tuning of incentive policies that further help player retention.
The Assessment of Foreign Language Reading Comprehension: Refining the Task

From an information processing perspective, reading comprehension involves, in Spiro's words, the "interaction of text and context of various kinds, including linguistic, prior knowledge, situational, attitudinal, and task contexts, among others. "' Therefore, if we accept this statement, the instruments used in foreign language classrooms to evaluate L2 reading comprehension need to reflect the interactive nature of the reading process. Research by Bernhardt argues in favor of the immediate recall protocol as one of the most construct valid instruments currently available for the assessment of reading comprehension.2 The immediate recall protocol "circumvents the pitfalls of traditional test design and, at the same time, focuses on the communication between text and reader,"3 thus encouraging students to attend to meaning by rewarding them for the amount of meaning which they can derive from an L2 text. Johnston maintains that the immediate recall protocol procedure provides "the most straightforward assessment of the result of the text-reader interaction. "4
Driving better and safer HER2-specific CARs for cancer therapy

Given the clinical efficacy of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-based therapy in hematological malignancies, CAR T-cell therapy for a number of solid tumors has been actively investigated. Human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) is a well-established therapeutic target in breast, as well as other types of cancer. However, HER2 CAR T cells pose a risk of lethal toxicity including cytokine release syndrome from “on-target, off-tumor” recognition of HER2. In this review, we summarize the development of conventional HER2 CAR technology, the alternative selection of CAR hosts, the novel HER2 CAR designs, clinical studies and toxicity. Furthermore, we also discuss the main strategies for improving the safety of HER2 CAR-based cancer therapies.
On the context dependence of national stereotypes: Some Scottish data

This study explores the context dependence of national stereotypes. Scottish subjects stereotyped their own national group in three between-subject conditions: after rating the English, after rating the Greeks, and in isolation (i.e. without explicit reference to any other category). Following the logic of self-categorization theory (Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher & Wetherell, 1987; Turner, Oakes, Haslam & McGarty, 1994), we predicted that the Scottish self-stereotype would depend on the frame of reference created by the experimental manipulations. Further we predicted that changes in the definition of this stereotype would be dimension specific. In other words, stereotype variation was predicted to be contingent upon the relevance of the dimension of judgment for capturing the differences between the Scottish and the category constituting the frame of reference. These predictions were confirmed. As these data were obtained in a context where quite specific predictions about the nature and form of stereotype variation were possible, these data confirm and extend Haslam, Turner, Oakes, McGarty & Hayes' (1992) analysis of the context dependence of stereotypes.
On Classification Models of Gene Expression Microarrays: The Simpler the Better

We investigate the relative efficacy of several classification models with and without feature selection. Simple classification rules are frequently preferable and superior to more complex models for microarray data that are typically undersampled. Improved classification accuracy is obtained with feature selection. We summarize some of the important questions considered in the literature that practitioners have to take into account when selecting a classifier for microarrays.
The Relevance of Spirituality in Policing: A Dual Analysis

Operational policing is demanding and threatening. Repeatedly dealing with death, serious injury, horrific crime scenes, the need to be constantly alert whether on or off duty, and being ostracised by communities, friends and family, are only some examples of what officers encounter. All take their toll on police officers: on their health, fitness and well-being, and on their view of people and the world. The toll also extends to those who are served by these officers. While this toll is recognised, there are still high levels of sickness absence, ill health, alcohol/drug-related problems as well as suicides. These are clear illustrations of the challenging nature of policing. If we look at the deeper issues of these challenges — nature of policing and its struggle for good; not being recognised as whole people; not being treated as valuable parts of a community; the reality of facing death and destructiveness on a daily basis — we see that, at a fundamental level, these have a spiritual component to them. This is an important but often unrecognised aspect of policing. Forces emphasise the physical and mental well-being of officers but neglect their spiritual well-being. There are sound reasons for a greater focus on this area. It is morally appropriate to address this area. This paper draws from two PhDs. It identifies the issues related to coping strategies and officer fitness, highlights how the spiritual dimension may assist in the development of coping strategies, and identifies how these issues might be taken forward.
Phosphorus Improves Arsenic Phytoremediation by Anadenanthera Peregrina by Alleviating Induced Oxidative Stress

Due to similarities in their chemical behaviors, studies examining interactions between arsenic (As)—in special arsenate—and phosphorus (P) are important for better understanding arsenate uptake, toxicity, and accumulation in plants. We evaluated the effects of phosphate addition on plant biomass and on arsenate and phosphate uptake by Anadenanthera peregrina, an important Brazilian savanna legume. Plants were grown for 35 days in substrates that received combinations of 0, 10, 50, and 100 mg kg−1 arsenate and 0, 200, and 400 mg kg−1 phosphate. The addition of P increased the arsenic-phytoremediation capacity of A. peregrina by increasing As accumulation, while also alleviating As-induced oxidative stress. Arsenate phytotoxicity in A. peregrina is due to lipid peroxidation, but not hydrogen peroxide accumulation. Added P also increased the activity of important reactive oxygen species-scavenging enzymes (catalase and ascorbate peroxidase) that help prevent lipid peroxidation in leaves. Our findings suggest that applying P represents a feasible strategy for more efficient As phytoremediation using A. peregrina.
Large Differences in Bacterial Community Composition among Three Nearby Extreme Waterbodies of the High Andean Plateau

The high Andean plateau or Altiplano contains different waterbodies that are subjected to extreme fluctuations in abiotic conditions on a daily and an annual scale. The bacterial diversity and community composition of those shallow waterbodies is largely unexplored, particularly, of the ponds embedded within the peatland landscape (i.e., Bofedales). Here we compare the small-scale spatial variability (<1 m) in bacterial diversity and community composition between two of those ponds with contrasting apparent color, using 454 pyrosequencing of the 16S rRNA gene. Further, we compared the results with the nearest (80 m) main lagoon in the system to elucidate the importance of different environmental factors such as salinity and the importance of these ponds as a source of shared diversity. Bacterial diversity was higher in both ponds than in the lagoon and community composition was largely different among them and characterized by very low operational taxonomic unit sharing. Whereas the “green” pond with relatively low dissolved organic carbon (DOC) concentration (33.5 mg L-1) was dominated by Proteobacteria and Bacteroidetes, the one with extreme DOC concentration (424.1 mg L-1) and red hue was dominated by Cyanobacteria. By contrast, the lagoon was largely dominated by Proteobacteria, particularly by Gammaproteobacteria. A large percentage (47%) of all reads was unclassified suggesting the existence of large undiscovered bacterial diversity. Our results suggest that even at the very small-scale spatial range considered, local environmental factors are important in explaining differences in bacterial community composition in those systems. Further, our study highlights that Altiplano peatland ponds represent a hitherto unknown source of microbial diversity.
Corrective Experiences in Everyday Life

Based on a transtheoretical definition of corrective experience (CE), the authors interviewed 25 adults who could identify a pivotal event or relationship they had experienced, at any point in their lifetime, as positively transformative. The narratives show that the CEs described by participants often had a negative precipitant or took place during a life transition. CEs involving other people tended to occur when an important relationship ended or was reflected upon in retrospect. Many participants had a new cognitive understanding while the CE was occurring as well as long afterward. Interestingly, the life-changing consequences of the CEs were similar to desired outcomes in psychotherapy: positive outlook, changed relationships, self-affirmation, and determination. Notably, the few individuals who had discussed the circumstances surrounding their specific CE with a therapist reported the importance of common change factors (support, validation, emotional release). Results are examined for their theoretical and practical implications.