Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Renal pro-apoptotic proteins are reduced by growth hormone resistance but not by visceral fat removal

Abstract Growth hormone (GH) receptor knockout (GHRKO) mice are highly insulin sensitive and long-lived. Surgical visceral fat removal (VFR) improves insulin signaling in normal mice and rats and extends longevity in rats. We have previously demonstrated decreased expression of certain pro-apoptotic genes in kidneys of GHRKO mice and suggested that this could contribute to the increased longevity of these animals. The aim of the present study was to examine the level of the following proteins: caspase-3, caspase-9, caspase-8, bax, bad, phospho-bad, bcl-2, Smac/DIABLO, Apaf-1, phospho-p53 (pp53) and cytochrome c in male GHRKO and normal (N) mice subjected to VFR or sham surgery, at approximately six months of age. The kidneys were collected two months after VFR. Caspase-3, caspase-8, bax, bad, Smac/DIABLO, Apaf-1 and pp53 levels were decreased in GHRKO mice as compared to N animals. VFR did not change the level of any of the examined proteins. The decreased renal levels of pro-apoptotic proteins could contribute to the extended life-span caused by targeted disruption of the GH receptor gene but are apparently not involved in mediating the effects of VFR.
Muscle Dysmorphia: A New Form of Eating Disorder?

Abstract Muscle dysmorphia (MD) has been put forth as a variation of the eating disorders anorexia and bulimia nervosa. In this case, individuals believe that their physiques are too small (i.e., unmuscular) rather than too large. Psychosocial distress and various compensatory behaviors are thought to accompany such misperceptions. Research on this novel diagnostic entity has just begun, with most studies to date examining MD in small samples of male bodybuilders and powerlifters. Instead, the present study examined MD in a relatively large, nonclinical, mixed-gender sample of 323 college students. Results revealed that MD symptomology does appear in the general population, and that men and women experience it to the same extent. Furthermore, MD was significantly associated with eating disorder pathology and depression, and to a lesser extent impaired social support. Sociocultural influences also appear to contribute to this disorder. Hence, treatment is recommended on both the individual and societal level. Individual treatment might entail cognitive-behavioral techniques similar to those applied to individuals with anorexia and bulimia nervosa, whereas societal-level interventions might involve media advocacy and activism approaches.
A First-Order Primal-Dual Algorithm with Linesearch

The paper proposes a linesearch for a primal-dual method. Each iteration of the linesearch requires an update of only the dual (or primal) variable. For many problems, in particular for regularized least squares, the linesearch does not require any additional matrix-vector multiplications. We prove convergence of the proposed method under standard assumptions. We also show an ergodic $O(1/N)$ rate of convergence for our method. In the case when one or both of the prox-functions are strongly convex, we modify our basic method to get a better convergence rate. Finally, we propose a linesearch for a saddle-point problem with an additional smooth term. Several numerical experiments confirm the efficiency of our proposed methods.
Black.White. and a Survivor of The Real World: Constructions of Race on Reality TV

This essay examines three reality TV shows: MTV's The Real World: Denver, CBS's Survivor: Cook Islands, and the FX network's miniseries Black.White. The essay uses Grindstaff's conceptual framework of news media and television talk shows as a mechanism to examine the way race is constructed on reality TV. It argues that the shows promote a politics of difference,emphasize conflict and division by positioning race as a point of contention among the cast members and dramatize scenarios that reinforce cultural codes and stereotypes. Three points of reference will guide this analysis: First, Jhally and Lewis write that we should more closely examine the ways that media texts purposely, critically and unapologetically confront race in the US. Second, Brummett proposes that media texts are sites of struggle over meaning and that we engage in an unconscious yet powerful struggle over how to interpret them. Third, recent theoretical discourses on race and representation in media call for continued critique of how media marginalize the lived experiences of African Americans, perpetuate crippling representations of marginalized groups, and often render them invisible.
The prediction of Internet utilization behavior of undergraduate agricultural students: An application of the theory of planned behavior

Abstract The theory of planned behavior has received significant attention more recently. This study used a survey to apply the theory of planned behavior to predict the Internet utilization behavior among 214 undergraduate agricultural students in Iran. Coefficient correlations and linear regressions were employed to analyze relationships among constructs. Results revealed that subjective norm and intention were the strongest predictors of the Internet utilization behavior, which explained 57% of the variance. Perceived behavioral control was the most significant predictor of the Internet use intentions. Subjective norms, to a lesser degree also had important influences on intention. Attitude did not surface as an effective direct predictor of the Internet utilization behavior. Finally, the theory of planned behavior was supported as an effective model explaining the Internet utilization behavior. The most prevalent reason to stop using the Internet was that they were experiencing problems getting access to the Internet.
[Factors associated to leisure-time sedentary lifestyle in adults of 1982 birth cohort, Pelotas, Southern Brazil].

OBJECTIVE To assess factors associated to leisure-time physical activity and sedentary lifestyle. METHODS Prospective cohort study of people born in 1982 in the city of Pelotas, southern Brazil. Data were collected at birth and during in a visit in 2004-5 when 77.4% of the cohort were evaluated, making a total of 4,297 people studied. Information about leisure-time physical activity was collected using the International Physical Activity Questionnaire. Sedentary people were defined as those with weekly physical activity below 150 minutes. The following independent variables were studied: gender, skin color, birth weight, family income at birth and income change between birth and 23 years of age. Poisson's regression with robust adjustment of variance was used for the assessment of risk factors of sedentary lifestyle. RESULTS Men reported 334 min of weekly leisure-time physical activity compared to 112 min among women. The prevalence of sedentary lifestyle was 80.6% in women and 49.2% in men. Scores of physical activity increased as income at birth increased. Those who were currently poor or who became poor during adult life were more sedentary. CONCLUSIONS Leisure-time sedentary lifestyle in young adults was high especially among women. Physical activity during leisure time is determined by current socioeconomic conditions.
Pathological significance and prognostic role of microvessel density, evaluated using CD31, CD34, and CD105 in prostate cancer patients after radical prostatectomy with neoadjuvant therapy

Neoadjuvant hormonal therapy (NHT) is performed to improve the outcome in organ‐confined prostate cancer. However, there is little information regarding the relationship between angiogenesis and NHT. The aim of this study was to identify a suitable method to evaluate the angiogenic status of tissue, and to determine the prognostic value of this method for biochemical recurrence in patients who had undergone radical prostatectomy after NHT.
Using a Satisfaction Index to Compare Students’ Satisfaction During and After Higher Education Service Consumption

This study explores the factors that influence students’ satisfaction with higher education services and assess how they change after graduation, when students enter the labour market. To achieve the objectives, a survey was performed on two occasions, 2002 and 2008. Data on satisfaction were collected from current and former students in order to test the conceptual model of satisfaction formation using partial least squares path modelling and estimate the satisfaction index. The results show that the overall satisfaction level is almost similar in the two samples, nevertheless, the weights in the explanatory model of satisfaction changed between the two samples. With the exception of quality perception, all other factors show an increase in importance. This paper presents an innovative approach to students’ satisfaction with higher education services as it compares current and former students’ satisfaction and extends current knowledge on the importance of professional experience for satisfaction.
Emotional Labor in Service Roles: The Influence of Identity

Emotional labor is the display of expected emotions by service agents during service encounters. It is performed through surface acting, deep acting, or the expression of genuine emotion. Emotional labor may facilitate task effectiveness and self-expression, but it also may prime customer expectations that cannot be met and may trigger emotive dissonance and self-alienation. However, following social identity theory, we argue that some effects of emotional labor are moderated by one's social and personal identities and that emotional labor stimulates pressures for the person to identify with the service role. Research implications for the micro, meso, and macro levels of organizations are discussed.
Elastic-net regularization of singular values for robust subspace learning

Learning a low-dimensional structure plays an important role in computer vision. Recently, a new family of methods, such as l1 minimization and robust principal component analysis, has been proposed for low-rank matrix approximation problems and shown to be robust against outliers and missing data. But these methods often require heavy computational load and can fail to find a solution when highly corrupted data are presented. In this paper, an elastic-net regularization based low-rank matrix factorization method for subspace learning is proposed. The proposed method finds a robust solution efficiently by enforcing a strong convex constraint to improve the algorithm's stability while maintaining the low-rank property of the solution. It is shown that any stationary point of the proposed algorithm satisfies the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker optimality conditions. The proposed method is applied to a number of low-rank matrix approximation problems to demonstrate its efficiency in the presence of heavy corruptions and to show its effectiveness and robustness compared to the existing methods.
SALT DESIDERATUM OF VIBRIO COSTICOLUS, AN OBLIGATE HALOPHILIC BACTERIUM II

Information is meager concering the influence of salts on the metabolic processe of halophiles. In fact, reports of the work of Robinson et al. (1952) are the only recent studies in this field. Robinson (1952) showed that there was an optimum concentration of sodium chloride for maximum activity of lactic acid dehydrogenase. While studying the effect of salt on Micrococcwu halodenifns, Robinson and Gibbons (1952) found that different optimal concentrations of salt were required for maximum nitrogen production and oxygen uptake. This paper presents data on the effects of various concentrations of salts and nonelectrolytes on the oxidation of glucose by Vibrio costicolu.
Assessment of acute injuries, exposure to environmental toxins, and five-year health surveillance of New York Police Department working dogs following the September 11, 2001, World Trade Center terrorist attack.

OBJECTIVE To determine deployment logistics of New York Police Department (NYPD) working dogs that assisted in relief efforts at the World Trade Center (WTC) site following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack; establish types and rates of related acute injuries and illnesses; identify environmental toxin exposures; and determine long-term (ie, 5-year) health effects of deployment. DESIGN Prospective cohort study. ANIMALS 27 working dogs. PROCEDURES Deployment logistics for the period from September 11, 2001, through May 30, 2002, were determined, and acute health disorders were identified by means of physical examination; a questionnaire; interviews with dog handlers; and toxicologic (blood and hair samples), clinicopathologic, microbiologic (nasal swab specimens submitted for Bacillus anthracis culture), and radiographic methods. Long-term health surveillance ended September 21, 2006. RESULTS Dogs worked a total of 1,428 days (15,148 hours) at the site. Seventeen of the 27 (62.9%) dogs had health disorders during the first week. Specific conditions included fatigue (incidence rate [events/1,000 active deployment hours], 13.1), conjunctival irritation (13.1), respiratory tract problems (12.4), decreased appetite (10.8), dehydration (10), and cuts (9.3). Only minor hematologic and serum biochemical abnormalities were identified. Bacterial culture of nasal swab specimens did not yield B anthracis. Only mild and infrequent health conditions were identified during the 5-year follow-up period. None of the dogs were identified as having chronic respiratory tract disease. Six dogs died of various causes. CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE Results suggested that acute injuries and illnesses were common among NYPD working dogs deployed to the WTC disaster site, but that longterm health complications were minimal.
GPU-Accelerated Finite-Element Matrix Generation for Lossless, Lossy, and Tensor Media [EM Programmer's Notebook]

This paper presents an optimization approach for limiting memory requirements and enhancing the performance of GPU-accelerated finite-element matrix generation applied in the implementation of the higher-order finite-element method (FEM). It emphasizes the details of the implementation of the matrix-generation algorithm for the simulation of electromagnetic wave propagation in lossless, lossy, and tensor media. Moreover, the impact of GPU RAM memory requirements on the performance of the finite-element matrix-generation process is discussed. The numerical results were obtained using a workstation equipped with a Tesla K40 GPU and two Intel Xeon Sandy Bridge E5-2687W CPUs. The results obtained for the high-end test platform indicated that the utilization of a GPU in the finite-element matrix-generation process allowed significant time reduction. With double-precision arithmetic, the GPU-accelerated matrix generation of over 5 million unknowns could be carried out in a matter of tens of seconds, as opposed to a CPU that required several minutes.
Dyadic family relationships and adolescent internalizing and externalizing problem behavior: Effects of positive and negative affect

The aim of the present study was (1) to examine the longitudinal effect of negative and positive affect in the parent-child, marital and sibling relationship on adolescent internalizing and externalizing problems, and (2) to compare the strengths of these effects for the different family relationships, for internalizing and externalizing problems, and for negative and positive affect. In this longitudinal study, 280 families (father, mother, and two adolescents 11–15 years old) reported on their affective relationships. Adolescents also reported on their problem behavior. Our results show significant longitudinal effects of negative and positive affect of the parent-adolescent and sibling relationship on adolescent internalizing and externalizing problem behavior. Neither positive nor negative marital affect were significant predictors of adolescent problem behavior. Model comparison showed that the effects were similar for externalizing versus internalizing problems, and for negative versus positive affect. Our study supports the notion that the family system is important for adolescent functioning, as the different family subsystems have different effects on adolescent internalizing and externalizing problems. An interesting finding is the relatively large contribution of the father-adolescent and sibling relationship to adolescent problem behavior. Whereas these relationships are usually not the focus of intervention, our results suggested that these relationships also deserve attention.
Confucianism, baseball and ethnic stereotyping in Taiwan

Unlike the experience of indigenous people in some societies, notably North America and Australia, where there is a significant modern sporting culture to which indigenous people contribute relatively little, in Taiwan the situation is reversed. Here the sporting culture is relatively underdeveloped in large part, we argue, because of the continuing influence of Confucian ideas, but aborigines play a disproportionately significant role not least in what is the most visible aspect of that sporting culture – baseball. Drawing upon existing published work together with interviews and personal communications, this article examines the extent to which sport in Taiwan, and specifically baseball, reflects the ongoing influence of Confucian attitudes towards physical cultures in Taiwanese society not least in relation to the stereotyping of the island’s indigenous population. Given the status of baseball as Taiwan’s national sport and in light of the contribution made to national teams by aboriginal players, these findings are hugely significant. They suggest that, as in the case of women, traditional Confucian values not only have an impact in relation to physical activity but, by extension, affect the ways in which a specific social group is perceived more widely.
Nonintellective Undergraduate Socialization in Academic Departments.

This study is an investigation of the impact of college on changes in students' values. To more clearly delineate the nature of such impact, the study focuses on the academic department, a particularly salient setting for student activity since it is the unit through which completion of degree requirements is generally certified, and on the interpersonal processes through which change (i.e., socialization) occurs in individuals. Wheeler [29, p. 54] discusses two general questions that must be addressed in the study of socialization in organizations. One pertains to social interaction: What are the interpersonal processes through which people are socialized? The other pertains to organizational structure: What are the normative characteristics of the organization that exert socializing influences on members? At college, the relationship between interpersonal and organizational variables can be explained as follows: Just as students differ in their patterns of interaction with others, colleges differ in their structuring, intentionally or not, of both normative contexts such as classrooms and student residences and of opportunities for social interaction among students and college staff.
Vitamin D, calcium supplementation, and colorectal adenomas: results of a randomized trial.

BACKGROUND Calcium and vitamin D both appear to have antineoplastic effects in the large bowel. Although these nutrients are inter-related metabolically in bone and in the normal intestine, their potential interactions in large-bowel carcinogenesis are not well understood. METHODS We assessed independent and joint effects of calcium supplementation and vitamin D status on adenoma recurrence in 803 subjects in a multi-center, placebo-controlled randomized clinical trial of calcium supplementation for the prevention of colorectal adenoma recurrence. Serum levels of 25-hydroxy [25-(OH)] vitamin D and 1,25-dihydroxy [1,25-(OH)2] vitamin D levels were determined, and the Taq I and Fok I polymorphisms in the vitamin D receptor (VDR) gene were analyzed by polymerase chain reaction. Risk ratios (RRs) for any adenoma recurrence were computed for calcium supplementation within groups defined by serum vitamin D levels and for serum vitamin D levels within treatment groups. Associations of VDR polymorphisms with recurrence risk were also evaluated. All statistical tests were two-sided. RESULTS Among subjects with baseline 25-(OH) vitamin D levels at or below the median (29.1 ng/mL), calcium supplementation was not associated with adenoma recurrence, whereas among those with levels above the median, calcium supplementation was associated with a reduced risk (RR = 0.71, 95 % confidence interval [CI] = 0.57 to 0.89, P for interaction =.012). Conversely, serum 25-(OH) vitamin D levels were associated with a reduced risk only among subjects receiving calcium supplements (RR per 12 ng/mL increase of vitamin D = 0.88, 95% CI = 0.77 to 0.99, P for interaction =.006). VDR polymorphisms were not related to adenoma recurrence and did not modify the associations with vitamin D or calcium. CONCLUSIONS Calcium supplementation and vitamin D status appear to act largely together, not separately, to reduce the risk of colorectal adenoma recurrence. VDR genotype does not appear to be associated with risk.
‘It didn’t really change my opinion’: exploring what works, what doesn’t and why in a school science, technology, engineering and mathematics careers intervention

Background: It is widely agreed that more needs to be done to improve participation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Despite considerable investment in interventions, it has been difficult to discern their effectiveness and/or impact on participation. Purpose: This paper discusses findings from a six-week pilot STEM careers intervention that was designed and overseen by a teacher from one London girls’ school. We reflect on the challenges for those attempting such interventions and the problems associated with evaluating them. Sample: Data were collected from Year 9 students (girls aged 13–14 years) at the school. Design and methods: Pre- and post-intervention surveys of 68 students, classroom observations of intervention activities, three post-intervention discussion groups (five or six girls per group) and a post-intervention interview with the lead teacher were conducted. Results: Although the intervention did not significantly change students’ aspirations or views of science, it did appear to have a positive effect on broadening students’ understanding of the range of jobs that science can lead to or be useful for. Conclusions: Student aspirations may be extremely resistant to change and intervention, but students’ understanding of ‘where science can lead’ may be more amenable to intervention. Implications are discussed, including the need to promote the message that science is useful for careers in and beyond science, at degree and technical levels.