Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Therapeutic Advantages of Treatment of High-Dose Curcumin in the Ovariectomized Rat

Objective Although curcumin has a protective effect on bone remodeling, appropriate therapeutic concentrations of curcumin are not well known as therapeutic drugs for osteoporosis. The purpose of this study was to compare the bone sparing effect of treatment of low-dose and high-dose curcumin after ovariectomy in rats. Methods Forty female Sprague-Dawley rats underwent either a sham operation (the sham group) or bilateral ovariectomy (OVX). The ovariectomized animals were randomly distributed among three groups; untreated OVX group, low-dose (10 mg/kg) curcumin administered group, and high-dose (50 mg/kg) curcumin group. At 4 and 8 weeks after surgery, serum biochemical markers of bone turnover were analyzed. Bone histomorphometric parameters of the 4th lumbar vertebrae were determined by micro-computed tomography (CT). In addition, mechanical strength was determined by a three-point bending test. Results High-dose curcumin group showed significantly lower osteocalcin, alkaline phosphatase, and the telopeptide fragment of type I collagen C-terminus concentration at 4 and 8 weeks compared with the untreated OVX group as well as low-dose curcumin group. In the analyses of micro-CT scans of 4th lumbar vertebrae, the high-dose curcumin treated group showed a significant increase in bone mineral densities (p=0.028) and cortical bone mineral densities (p=0.036) compared with the low-dose curcumin treated group. Only high-dose curcumin treated group had a significant increase of mechanical strength compared with the untreated OVX group (p=0.015). Conclusion The present study results demonstrat that a high-dose curcumin has therapeutic advantages over a low-dose curcumin of an antiresorptive effect on bone remodeling and improving bone mechanical strength.
Propiedades psicométricas de la versión española del Inventario de Ansiedad Competitiva CSAI-2R en deportistas

Psychometric properties of the Spanish version of the Revised Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 with athletes. The aim of this work was to develop a Spanish adaptation of the Revised Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2. The scale was translated and its psychometric properties were analyzed with data from a sample of 149 athletes. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were performed which supported a 16-item CSAI-2R assessing the three hypothesised dimensions of anxiety: Somatic anxiety, Cognitive anxiety, and Self-confidence. Overall fit of the model was good with a value of . 97 for Comparative and Non-Normed Fit Indexes, and . 045 for Root Mean Square Error of Approximation. Cronbach alpha coefficients for the factors ranged from . 79 to . 83. It is concluded that this version shows adequate properties, in terms of its dimensionality and internal consistency. Guidelines are also provided for future research on its validity as a measure of state anxiety in competitive situations.
Peripartal cognitive impairment: Secondary to depression?

Twenty pregnant women and 20 controls matched for age and IQ were tested on a range of cognitive functions at three time points: in the last month of pregnancy, 48 hours after delivery, and four weeks after delivery. Pregnant women obtained significantly lower scores on digit symbol and paced auditory serial addition tests 48 hours after delivery. There were no significant differences between the groups on logical memory, trail making or letter cancellation tasks. The degree of cognitive impairment was correlated with the severity of depression, and the differences between the pregnant and control groups in cognitive function became nonsignificant when the effect of depression was controlled. Cognitive functions related to fluid cognitive ability are impaired in the immediate post-partum period and the severity of impairment is correlated with self-reported depression.
Does Valproic Acid Induce Neuroendocrine Differentiation in Prostate Cancer?

Valproic Acid (VPA) is a histone deacetylase inhibitor that holds promise for cancer therapy. Here, we investigate whether VPA treatment induces neuroendocrine differentiation of Prostate Cancer (PCa). A tissue microarray of VPA-treated and untreated tumor xenografts and cell lines of human PCa (LNCaP, C4-2, DU145, and PC-3) were generated and were analyzed by immunohistochemical analysis (IHC) for NE markers chromogranin A (CgA), synaptophysin, and NCAM (neural cell adhesion molecule). Western blot analysis for CgA was performed to confirm the results of the TMA. IHC analysis did not reveal any induction of CgA, synaptophysin, or NCAM in any xenograft after VPA treatment in vivo. In vitro, VPA treatment induced little synaptophysin expression in C4-2 and PC-3 cells and NCAM expression in LNCaP and PC-3 cells. In the case of CgA, VPA treatment decreased its expression in vitro in a dose-dependent manner, as determined by western blot analysis. Thus our data demonstrates that VPA does not induce NE differentiation of PCa cells in the physiologically relevant in vivo setting.
The Educational Plight of Foster Children in Schools and What Can Be Done About It

The purpose of this article is to increase awareness of teachers and other school personnel to the difficulties of many foster children. More specifically, we intend to alert them to the problems these youngsters have while they are in school and once they have left. Moreover, we intend to apprise educators of the fact that large numbers of foster children are receiving, or should be receiving, special services.
Cooperative particle filtering for emitter tracking with unknown noise variance

We introduce in this paper a novel cooperative particle filter algorithm for tracking a moving emitter using received-signal strength (RSS) measurements with unknown observation noise variance. In the studied scenario, multiple RSS sensors passively observe independently attenuated and perturbed versions of the same broadcast signal transmitted by an emitter which is moving through the sensor field and cooperate to estimate the emitter state. The new algorithm differs from previous methods by employing a parametric approximation to reduce the associated communication burden.
Age Differences in the Correlates of Physical Functioning in Patients With Chronic Pain

OBJECTIVES Pain-related disability in the elderly is a major contributor to poor quality of life. In this study, the author examined age-related differences in the factors associated with physical disability in the context of chronic pain. METHOD A large cohort of chronic pain patients was categorized into four age groups, and correlates of physical disability were evaluated within each age category. RESULTS Several important age differences in the predictors of physical disability were noted. Affective distress was unrelated to physical disability among the elderly, whereas this association was quite strong among younger patients. In contrast, pain severity was a weak predictor of disability within the younger group, but it accounted for more than one fourth of the variance in physical disability in those older than 65. DISCUSSION These data suggest that the determinants of functioning may vary across the life span, implying a potential for pain management programs tailored to a patient's age.
Aboriginal learning styles: A critical review

Abstract This article reviews critically the reviews and studies carried out under the broad rubric of aboriginal learning styles with the intent of assessing the utility of this approach for the study and practice of aboriginal education. It concludes that interactive learning style approaches have more to offer than cognitive based perspectives, particularly those that assume that aboriginal students have more‐or‐less fixed mental learning capacities. The former approach can be particularly useful when combined with classroom methods that are specifically geared to equip aboriginal students with the analytic and verbal skills which they need to get along in school and in the contemporary world.
CRIME AND FEAR: Evidence from Australia

This study, which is based on unit record data from the Queensland Crime Victim Survey of 1991, conducts, using a common set of explanatory variables, a joint analysis of the probabilities of becoming, and of being afraid of becoming, a victim of personal and of housing crime. It then proceeds to analyse the relationship between previous victimization experience and fear of crime (personal and housing). Its broad conclusion is that unlike personal crime, where reducing the fear of crime--over and above concern with reducing the incidence of crime--might be an important policy objective, the policy goal for housing crime should, primarily, be to reduce its incidence. This is because, for personal crime, variations in the probability of being afraid greatly exceeded variations in the risk of becoming a victim: fear of personal crime thus emerges as a problem in its own right. On the other hand, for housing crime, incidence is an accurate reflection of fear. It also concludes that lack of neighbourhood cohesion, neighbourhood incivility and perception of relatively high neighbourhood crime levels contribute significantly to the probability of being afraid of crime and to the risk of victimization. It suggests that, in policy terms, community action might be a more effective means of combating both crime and the fear of crime than a leave it to the police, that's what they get paid for' attitude.
ESTIMATING THE COMPLEXITY OF ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR: HOW MOUNTAIN GORILLAS EAT THISTLES

Mountain gorillas use elaborate, multi-stage procedures for dealing with plant defences. This paper investigates the use of mathematically-inspired, informational measures to gauge the complexity of one of these tasks, eating thistle Carduus nyassanus , from field observations of 38 adults and juveniles. Behaviour was analysed at two levels, a detailed, movementbased description of the form of actions, and an organizational description of techniques that were composed of a series of many actions. Complexity, as measured by counting the sizes of behavioural repertoires, correlated at the two levels. Repertoires were shown to be incomplete, but the rates of cumulative increase in actions differed between tasks. Thistle eating was the most complex, and apparently involved many more actions than even chimpanzee tool-use. Techniques were highly selective arrangements of actions, so that their organization (sequence, bimanual coordination, hierarchical structure) reflected cognitive capacity. Although ideally it would preferable to estimate complexity of task organization, this may seldom be feasible, and was not in this case. Instead, the length of a regularly occurring sequence of actions may be the best practical estimate of an underlying complexity of mental process. Confidence in this measure will be increased if it broadly agrees with other, independent estimates of task complexity; in the case of gorilla plant processing, both the size of repertoire of functionally distinct actions and the degree of lateral specialization were, like sequence length, greater for thistle processing than for other tasks studied to date.
The effect of dynamic shear force on chondrocyte biosynthesis in agarose gels

The dense extracellular matrix (ECM) within the articular cartilage derives its compressive modulus from the electrostatic and osmotic interactions between highly charged glycosaminoglycan (GAG) chains. Furthermore, the structural integrity of the ECM comes from the tightly interwoven collagen network, which accounts for the tensile and shear stiffness of the cartilage. Due to the avascular, aneural, and alymphatic nature of cartilage, its native cells (chondrocytes) have limited regeneration capabilities after injury. Previous investigators discovered that dynamic compressive loading can increase cell biosynthesis in cartilage explants as well as in hydrogels such as agarose and self-assembling peptides. Also, recent research has revealed that biosynthesis in cartilage explants can be increased by dynamic tissue shear loading as well. Thus, the purpose of this study was to investigate whether dynamic tissue shear loading could affect chondrocyte biosynthesis in agarose gels. Chondrocytes from 1-2 week old bovine knee cartilage were seeded into 3% agarose gel slabs, and 2-mm thick by 4-mm diameter cylindrical disks were cored from these gels. Groups of disks were maintained in free swelling control culture, or subjected to 5% static compression control, or 3% sinusoidal shear strain (0. l1Hz) superimposed on a 5% static compressive offset. After loading, specimens were examined to measure total GAG concentration and DNA content (cell number) over the days of culture + 24 hours of loading. However, the rate of GAG synthesis using 35 S-sulfate and the rate of protein synthesis using 3H-proline were only observed for the 24 hours of loading. We found that on any given day during a time course study, dynamic shear loading caused a statistically significant increase in chondrocyte biosynthesis when compared to the controls. The data suggests that the effect of dynamic shear loading on biosynthesis can be optimized by considering factors such as the state of the cell-gel construct, the supplements added to the culture medium, and the shear loading protocol. In conclusion, the experiments, presented in this study, show that dynamic tissue shear loading, which isolates mechanical deformation from fluid flow, also has the potential to stimulate chondrocyte biosynthesis of GAG and protein in tissue engineered hydrogel scaffolds. Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Alan. J. Grodzinsky Title: Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering, and Biological Engineering
Functional dissection of the cytoplasmic subregions of the IL‐2 receptor βc chain in primary lymphocyte populations

The interleukin 2 (IL‐2) receptor βc chain (IL‐2Rβc) is known to regulate the development and function of distinct lymphocyte populations. Thus far, the functions of the IL‐2Rβc cytoplasmic subregions have been studied extensively by using cultured cell lines; however, this approach has limitations with respect to their functions in distinct primary lymphocyte populations. In the present study, we generated mice each expressing a mutant form of an IL‐2Rβc transgene, lacking the cytoplasmic A‐ or H‐region, on an IL‐2Rβc null background. We show that lack of the H‐region, which mediates activation of the Stat5/Stat3 transcription factors, selectively affects the development of natural killer cells and T cells bearing the γδ T cell receptor. This region is also required for the IL‐2‐induced proliferation of T cells in vitro, by upregulating IL‐2Rα expression. In contrast, the A‐region, which mediates activation of the Src family protein tyrosine kinase (PTK) members, contributes to downregulation of the T cell proliferation function. The IL‐2Rβc null mutant mice develop severe autoimmune symptoms; these are all suppressed following the expression of either of the mutants, suggesting that neither the Stats nor the Src PTK members are required. Thus, our present approach offers new insights into the functions of these cytoplasmic subregions of the IL‐2Rβc chain.
Through Myth to Reality: Reframing Education as Academic Development

Research Findings: There is ample evidence that true educational progress has been elusive, even after decades of countless school reform efforts. Practice or Policy: In this article, barriers to meaningful transformation in the form of common, persistent, and resistant educational myths are presented and summarily debunked. An alternative and more facilitative conception of formal education as academic development is then offered, and the positive ramifications of this orientation for the fostering of learners' cognitive and socioemotional competences are overviewed. If we set aside, for the moment, our concerns with the questions of how people learn and look simply at the outcomes of schooling, what do we see? Are students acquiring enough knowledge, or the right kind of “knowledge”? Or, in a more nearly ultimate sense, are they becoming more competent, more able to adjust to and cope with living in our complex society, more capable of practical problem solving, increasingly able to find a satisfying quality to their lives? (Gagné, 1977, p. 411)
Classroom behaviour problems: The relationship between preparedness, classroom experiences, and self-efficacy in graduate and student teachers

Past research suggests that teachers who are the most effective classroom managers, are teachers who are the most confident in their abilities. Therefore, the importance of preparedness and classroom experiences as factors that are involved in the development and maintenance of teacher self-efficacy in behaviour management were assessed. Differences in self-efficacy in behaviour management between graduate and student teachers were also assessed. The participants in this study were 54 primary education teachers with less than three years experience, and 25 student teachers in their final year of primary education training. The results revealed a significant positive association between selfefficacy in behaviour management, preparedness and classroom experiences. Furthermore, preparedness and classroom experiences significantly predicted teachers’ ratings of self-efficacy in behaviour management. However, both graduate and student teachers reported feeling only moderately prepared and self-efficacious, with 83.5% of the total sample indicating they would like additional training in the area of behaviour management. The present findings provide important information for teacher training programs and school support structures.
Trophoblast Class I Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) Products Are Resistant to Rapid Degradation Imposed by the Human Cytomegalovirus (HCMV) Gene Products US2 and US11

US11 and US2 encode gene products expressed early in the replicative cycle of human cytomegalovirus (HCMV), which cause dislocation of human and murine major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I molecules from the lumen of the endoplasmic reticulum to the cytosol, where the class I heavy chains are rapidly degraded. Human histocompatibility leukocyte antigens (HLA)-C and HLA-G are uniquely resistant to the effects of both US11 and US2 in a human trophoblast cell line as well as in porcine endothelial cells stably transfected with human class I genes. Dislocation and degradation of MHC class I heavy chains do not appear to involve cell type–specific factors, as US11 and US2 are fully active in this xenogeneic model. Importantly, trophoblasts HLA-G and HLA-C possess unique characteristics that allow their escape from HCMV-associated MHC class I degradation. Trophoblast class I molecules could serve not only to block recognition by natural killer cells, but also to guide virus-specific HLA-C– and possibly HLA-G–restricted cytotoxic T-lymphocytes to their targets.
Teaching for learner autonomy: the teacher's role and sociocultural theory

What is the role of the teacher in developing learner autonomy? The limited research in this area is seldom situated in theory and often based on self-reported data. This study is situated in sociocultural theory and draws on two constructs, the zone of proximal development and imitation, to explain the teacher's role in developing autonomy. The case of an experienced English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teacher of Japanese college students in an English-language immersion program is examined through 12 lesson observations with field notes collected over a 9-month period, and augmented with 3 audiotaped interviews based on videotapes of the final 3 observations. The interview transcripts were deductively coded for autonomy through control, choice, and responsibility, and these codes used in examining summaries of the observations while looking for patterns of development. The findings show that the teacher understood autonomy as student accountability for their own learning, which he tried to promote by handing over management of classroom activities to the students. One implication is that teacher autonomy was the foundation on which this teacher's cognitions and practices were built. Another is that teachers implicitly know more than they can readily articulate, as the research process pushed the teacher to articulate his cognitions.
Knowledge-Based and Contextual Factors Associated with R&D Teams’ Improvisation Capability

We examine three knowledge-based processes and interactions underlying an effective improvisation capability in research and development (R&D) teams: a team’s ability to create a shared understanding of new knowledge, a team’s experience working together, and a team’s ability to gather external knowledge. Using a sample of 100 R&D teams developing computer technology innovations, we also examine the moderating role of “minimal structures” (goal clarity combined with autonomy) as a contextual factor supporting effective improvisation. Our results detected different ways in which the processes and interactions involved in an improvisation capability interacted with the context. We find support for the positive relationship between shared understanding of new knowledge and improvisation capability and find that this relationship is strengthened by minimal structures. Team’s experience working together was not associated with improvisation capability, but when minimal structures are present, more experience working together is positively related to improvisation. Finally, a team’s external knowledge-gathering ability is positively associated with improvisation, but, surprisingly, when minimal structures are present, this positive effect is reduced. We conclude with implications for improvisation theory and for the practice of R&D teams.
Effects of Fees On Clientele Characteristics and Participation in Adult Education

Fifty-nine adult education courses were randomly assigned to a fee and non-fee condition to establish the extent to which fee and non-fee courses attract different clientele. Seven hundred and twenty-one participants completed the Education Participation Scale and a questionnaire eliciting social and demographic data. Nearly 70 per cent of the participants enrolled in the non- fee courses. Participants were motivated by E.P.S. factors cognitive interest and escape stimula tion. The social, demographic and motivational profile of non-fee payers was similar to that of the fee-payers. In pursuit of variable configurations that explain fee-status (paying or not paying) a multi-variate AID3 analysis was run. With fee-status as the dependent variable the independent variables accounted for 35 per cent of the variance. It was concluded that mere removal of fees from leisure-centered adult education courses does not result in the attraction of participants who are significantly different from the middle-class participants traditionally attracted to such courses. The results are discussed within the framework of Miller's force-field analysis and Boshier's congruence model.
Gossip along the way: order-optimal consensus through randomized path averaging

Gossip algorithms have recently received significant attention, mainly because they constitute simple and robust algorithms for distributed information processing over networks. However for many topologies that are realistic for wireless ad-hoc and sensor networks (like grids and random geometric graphs), the standard nearest-neighbor gossip converges very slowly. A recently proposed algorithm called geographic gossip improves gossip efficiency by a $\sqrt{n / \log n}$ factor for random geometric graphs, by exploiting geographic information of node locations. In this paper we prove that a variation of geographic gossip that averages along routed paths, improves efficiency by an additional $\sqrt{n / \log n}$ factor and is order optimal for grids and random geometric graphs. Our analysis provides some general techniques and can be used to provide bounds on the performance of randomized message passing algorithms operating over various graph topologies.