Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Erythrocyte Fatty Acid Profile and Cognitive Function in Old Chinese Adults

Objective: To explore the relationship between the erythrocyte fatty acid profile and cognition in elderly Chinese adults. Methods: 60 mild cognitive impairment (MCI) subjects and 60 age- and gender-matched control adults (aged 55 years and above) were involved in this cross-sectional study. Cognitive function was measured by using the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) test. Information regarding the demographic characteristics and lifestyle of the participants was collected with a questionnaire. A semi-quantified food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) method was used for dietary assessment. The erythrocytes fatty acid profile was measured. Results: The MCI subjects had a lower education level than the control subjects (p < 0.05). Compared with control subjects, MCI subjects had higher daily poultry intake and lower fish intake (p < 0.05). Erythrocyte fatty acid profile of the MCI subjects was characterized as lower erythrocyte proportions of 20:4 n-6, 20:5 n-3, and total n-3 fatty acids compared with control subjects (p < 0.05). An association of erythrocyte proportions of 18:0, 22:0, total SFA, 18:2 n-6, 24:4 n-6 fatty acids, docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), and total n-6 PUFAs with cognition in elderly Chinese adults was detected. Conclusion: The erythrocyte fatty acid profile was related to cognitionin the elderly. Lower erythrocyte unsaturated fatty acid and higher saturated fatty acid proportions might predict cognitive function decline in elderly Chinese adults.
Presynaptic control of transmission along the pathway mediating disynaptic reciprocal inhibition in the cat

1 In cat lumbar motoneurones, disynaptic inhibitory postsynaptic potentials (IPSPs) evoked by stimulation of antagonist motor nerves were depressed for at least 150 ms following conditioning stimulation of flexor (1.7‐2 times threshold (T)) and ankle extensor (5T) nerves. The aim of the present study was to investigate the possibility that this depression is caused by presynaptic inhibitory mechanisms acting at the terminals of group I afferent fibres projecting to the Ia inhibitory interneurones and/or the terminals of these interneurones to the target motoneurones. 2 Conditioning stimulation of flexor, but not ankle extensor, nerves evoked a depression of the monosynaptic Ia excitatory postsynaptic potentials (EPSPs) recorded intracellularly in Ia inhibitory interneurones. This depression lasted between 200 and 700 ms and was not accompanied by a depression of the monosynaptic EPSPs evoked by stimulation of descending pathways. These results suggest that flexor, but not ankle extensor, group I afferent fibres can modulate sensory transmission at the synapse between Ia afferent fibres and Ia inhibitory interneurones. 3 Conditioning stimulation of flexor muscle nerves, extensor muscle nerves and cutaneous nerves produced a long‐lasting increase in excitability of the terminals of the Ia inhibitory interneurones. The increase in the excitability of the terminals was not secondary to an electrotonic spread of synaptic excitation at the soma. Indeed, concomitant with the excitability increase of the terminals there were signs of synaptic inhibition in the soma. 4 The unitary IPSPs induced in target motoneurones following the spike activity of single Ia inhibitory interneurones were depressed by conditioning stimulation of muscle and cutaneous nerves. Since the conditioning stimulation also evoked compound IPSPs in those motoneurones, a firm conclusion as to whether unitary IPSP depression involved presynaptic inhibitory mechanism of the terminals of the interneurones could not be reached. 5 The possibility that the changes in excitability of the Ia interneuronal terminals reflect the presence of a presynaptic inhibitory mechanism similar to that operating at the terminals of the afferent fibres (presynaptic inhibition) is discussed.1. In cat lumbar motoneurones, disynaptic inhibitory postsynaptic potentials (IPSPs) evoked by stimulation of antagonist motor nerves were depressed for at least 150 ms following conditioning stimulation of flexor (1.7‐2 times threshold (T)) and ankle extensor (5T) nerves. The aim of the present study was to investigate the possibility that this depression is caused by presynaptic inhibitory mechanisms acting at the terminals of group I afferent fibres projecting to the Ia inhibitory interneurones and/or the terminals of these interneurones to the target motoneurones.
Inference Based on Alternative Bootstrapping Methods in Spatial Models with an Application to County Income Growth in the United States

This study examines correlates with aggregate county income growth across the 48 contiguous states from 1990 to 2001. Since visual inspection of the variable to be explained shows a clear spatial relationship and to control for potentially endogenous variables, we estimate a two-stage spatial error model. Given the lack of theoretical and asymptotic results for such models, we propose and implement a number of spatial bootstrap algorithms, including one allowing for heteroskedasticity, to infer parameter significance. Among the results of a comparison of the marginal effects in rural versus non-rural counties, we find that outdoor recreation and natural amenities favor positive growth in rural counties, densely populated rural areas enjoy stronger growth, and property taxes correlate negatively with rural growth.
Understanding Health Behavior: An Integrated Model for Social Marketers

Many effective social marketing campaigns seek to change health-related behavior by utilizing various health-protective behavioral theories. In this article, we review and integrate three such theories: protection motivation theory (PMT), the extended parallel process model (EPPM), and the transtheoretical model (TTM). We highlight how EPPM and TTM can be used to refine PMT by adding insight into the decision-making process involved when consumers consider whether or not to follow a particular recommended health behavior. Specifically, the development of an integrated PMT model can provide insight into the characteristics of people more or less likely to change, what happens when persuasion fails, and what can be done to increase persuasion. Developing an integrated PMT model opens new avenues of research that have the potential to increase our understanding of behavior and assist in creating more persuasive social marketing campaigns.
Severe and unresponsive HIV-associated alopecia areata successfully treated with thalidomide.

Sir, Alopecia areata (AA) is a non-scarring recurrent cause of hair loss afflicting approximately 1–2% of the general population. Up to 15% of patients progress to a severe form of the disease, and develop total scalp (alopecia totalis) or scalp and body hair loss (alopecia universalis). At this time spontaneous remission occurs rarely and the treatment is usually difficult. Thalidomide has turned out to be an extremely interesting drug, not only for inflammatory skin conditions. We describe here a patient with severe AA, resistant to several treatments, who showed a dramatic response to thalidomide.
Changes in Right Ventricular Function Measured by Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Patients Receiving Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension–Targeted Therapy: The EURO-MR Study

Background—Most measures that predict survival in pulmonary hypertension (PH) relate directly to, or correlate with, right ventricular (RV) function. Direct assessment of RV function using noninvasive techniques such as cardiac MRI may therefore be an appropriate way of determining response to therapy and monitoring disease progression in PH. Methods and Results—In this pan-European study, 91 patients with PH (mean pulmonary arterial pressure 46±15 mm Hg) underwent clinical and cardiac MRI assessments at baseline and after 12 months of disease-targeted therapy (predominantly endothelin receptor antagonists [47.3%] or phosphodiesterase type-5 inhibitors [25.3%]). At month 12, functional class had improved in 21 patients, was unchanged in 63 patients, and had deteriorated in 7 patients. Significant improvements were achieved in RV and left ventricular ejection fraction (P<0.001 and P=0.0007, respectively), RV stroke volume index (P<0.0001), and left ventricular end-diastolic volume index (P=0.0015). Increases in 6-minute walk distance were significant (P<0.0001) and correlated with change in RV ejection fraction and left ventricular end-diastolic volume, although correlation coefficients were low (r=0.28, P=0.01 and r=0.26, P=0.02, respectively). Conclusions—On-treatment changes in cardiac MRI–derived variables from left and right sides of the heart reflected changes in functional class and survival in patients with PH. Direct measurement of RV function using cardiac MRI can fully assess potential benefits of treatment in PH.
Perthes' disease and blood manganese levels

Editor,—Children with Perthes' disease have aseptic necrosis of the hip and a selective impairment of growth. Trace metal deficiency in chickens leads to a similar condition, and in 1989 Hall et al reported low blood manganese levels in 27 children with this disease.1 With consent from the ethical committee of the same hospital as in their study, we have measured blood Mn of a further group of Perthes' patients, and control patients with minor musculoskeletal trauma matched for age and sex. Blood was drawn …
Prospective quality‐of‐life outcomes for low‐risk prostate cancer: Active surveillance versus radical prostatectomy

For patients with low‐risk prostate cancer (PCa), active surveillance (AS) may produce oncologic outcomes comparable to those achieved with radical prostatectomy (RP). Health‐related quality‐of‐life (HRQoL) outcomes are important to consider, yet few studies have examined HRQoL among patients with PCa who were managed with AS. In this study, the authors compared longitudinal HRQoL in a prospective, racially diverse, and contemporary cohort of patients who underwent RP or AS for low‐risk PCa.
Robust blurred face recognition using sample-wise kernel estimation and random compressed multi-scale local binary pattern histograms

Robust face recognition from blurred images is an important and challenging problem. We propose sample-wise kernel estimation (SWKE). For each sharp gallery sample, an optimal blur kernel making the distance between probe and corresponding blurred sample minimum is estimated. Then, the kernel is applied to blur the sharp gallery sample. All such blurred samples compose the adaptive blurred sample set acting as references during recognition. Next, we present random compressed multi-scale local binary pattern histograms (RCMSLBPH). Due to the sparseness of the histogram of each sub-region and each feature image, it is possible to accomplish large-margin dimensionality reduced without impairing great information loss by using random Gaussian projection matrix. Finally, we design two stage framework involving coarse recognition and fine recognition to obtain an optimized effectiveness-efficiency trade-off. The experimental results confirm the improvement of the proposed SWKE, RCMSLBPH and two stage framework on public face database recognition.
Not sticks and stones but tweets and texts: findings from a national cyberbullying project

This paper presents key findings from a project commissioned by a group of young people to explore issues related to cyberbullying with 12–18-year olds. In particular, the paper focuses on those findings related to impact and support needs. The project collected data through a web-based Survey Monkey questionnaire and focus groups. A total of 473 young people aged 11–19 years in England responded to the questionnaire and 17 young people aged 10–18 took part in the focus groups: 19.7% (n = 87) admitted that they had been cyberbullied, just under half the young people in this study knew someone who had been cyberbullied and a similar proportion of girls and boys admitted having cyberbullied others. Most of the young people thought cyberbullying was as harmful as traditional face to face bullying. But while a few thought it could be more serious, others thought it less serious or even non-existent. Over a quarter of those who had been cyberbullied stayed away from school and over a third stopped socialising outside school. However, just over half the total sample said they did not worry about cyberbullying. The finding that 78% of those that sought support did so by talking to their parents contrasts starkly with previous research. Further research is needed to explore what makes some young people more resilient than others to cyberbullying; the role of the school and parents in dealing with cyberbullying.
Teaching students in the basic course how to use presentation software

Seventy‐six students from a mid‐sized southeastern university in four basic communication courses were broken into two treatment groups‐two classes received hands‐on training in PowerPoint, while the other two classes were handed a brief User's Guide to PowerPoint that was created by the authors. Students in the User's Guide group were told to learn PowerPoint on their own, while the hands‐on, computer‐trained group received forty‐five minutes of training during classtime. Results from this study indicate that training‐regardless if it takes the form of hands‐on training delivered in a computer classroom or if a User's Guide to PowerPoint is distributed to the students‐makes a difference in students’ overall confidence level using both computers and PowerPoint. However, hands‐on computer training was not significantly more effective in raising students’ confidence level (using either computers or PowerPoint) than simply giving the students the User's Guide and having the student learn the software package on their own. Implications of this finding for Basic Course Directors is offered, along with possible avenues for future research.
Bean counters or bright young things?: Towards the visual study of identity construction among professional accountants

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to put forward a “next step” research agenda for investigating accountants' professional identity. Design/methodology/approach – The visual nature of identity construction is discussed, issues of media stereotyping are revisited and recruitment/educational implications are reviewed. Attention is also paid to the accounting profession's attempts to change perceptions of the accounting identity. Findings – A hybrid strategy of research participant generated photographs and semi-structured interviews is exemplified as a fruitful methodology and outlined as a way forward for tapping into the identity construction processes and perceptions of accountants from their particular perspectives. Research limitations/implications – The paper is intended to stimulate further research into accountants' identities from a visual perspective. However, it does not directly report on empirical findings. Practical implications – Questions of identity construction offer us a window into the degree to which public stereotypes are matched by professional accountants' own personal definitions and the bearing these may have on current and future career intentions. Such insights can provide foundations for a range of profession policy issues spanning recruitment, retention, training and professional development. Originality/value – This paper proposes a visual methodology not employed in accounting research before and addresses the neglected area of accountants' identities as individual professionals.
Escape from the Hall of Mirrors: Commentary on Paper by Jody Messler Davies

The author suggests some ways in which this important paper contributes to the relational perspective on clinical work. In particular, the analyst's role in owning participation in the struggle for the position of the doer, the “bad one” is seen as crucial to shifting out of the negative symmetry in which each person feels done-to by the other. Davies's crucial identification of the dynamic whereby the child must own all of the badness for the parent helps to clarify how repetition works in the analytic dyad. Whereas the repetition may be understood in terms of the complementary relation of doer and done-to, the owning of responsibility for participation is associated with the space of thirdness, the alternative. This author sees the Davies paper as a seminal contribution to the effort to unpack the mystification that projective processes foster, that are concretized in relationship rather than merely in the individual psyche by forcing the other to bear the toxic identity while denying it in the self. Davies's work illustrates how the intersubjective third can be reestablished by the analyst's careful ownership of hatred and also makes clear that the issue is recognition of what cannot really be hidden, except by reproducing mystification in the analytic process. This author also notes that Davies has provided an important redefinition of what has often been misunderstood as disclosure.
Sulfation of “Estrogenic” Alkylphenols and 17β-Estradiol by Human Platelet Phenol Sulfotransferases*

We have investigated the ability of alkylphenols to act as substrates and/or inhibitors of phenol sulfotransferase enzymes in human platelet cytosolic fractions. Our results indicate: (i) straight chain alkylphenols do not interact with the monoamine-sulfating phenol sulfotransferase (SULT1A3); (ii) short chain 4-n-alkylphenols (C < 8) are substrates for the phenol-sulfating enzymes (SULT1A1/2), which exhibit two activity maxima against substrates with alkyl chain lengths of C1–2 and C4–5; (iii) long chain 4-n-substituted alkylphenols (C ≥ 8) are poor substrates and act as inhibitors of SULT1A1/2; (iv) human platelets contain two activities, of low and high affinity, capable of sulfating 17β-estradiol, and 4-n-nonylphenol is a partial mixed inhibitor of the low affinity form of this activity. We conclude that by acting either as substrates or inhibitors of SULT1A1/2, alkylphenols may influence the sulfation, and hence the excretion, of estrogens and other phenol sulfotransferase substrates in humans.
The city and the subculture career: Professional street skateboarding in LA

This article provides a detailed ethnographic description of skateboarding’s main career opportunities and contributes to arguments about subculture theory and the impact of specific subcultures on cities. Professional street skateboarders perform tricks on obstacles in the urban environment and publish these tricks in magazines and videos to share with other members of the subculture. This need for documentation and dissemination of skateboard tricks, as well as the need to design and distribute subculture media, skateboards and skateboarding products, makes skateboarding a self-sustaining industry and provides skaters with an opportunity for subculture careers. These careers are in skating and also the ancillary careers necessary to support this industry. These subculture careers have a positive impact on individual skaters by providing opportunities, in many cases where none existed, and also upon the urban centers where this industry is most prominent by drawing creative, talented people to the city to participate in the subculture and quite possibly even make a career.
A coherent framework for the application of psychology in schools

A coherent and integrated theoretical model for the application of psychology in schools will serve two major purposes. Firstly, it will allow practitioner educational psychologists (EPs) to represent the extent of the work they carry out with schools to research-based psychologist colleagues. This in turn could reveal the rich research agenda that awaits creative combinations of practitioner experience and academic research skills. Secondly, a coherent framework will allow all those seeking to apply or draw on psychology when working in schools to explicate that psychology in order to promote a productive dialogue with professional colleagues, be they teachers, researchers or other psychologists. The framework proposed in this article draws mainly on practitioner-directed research within educational and organisational psychology, supplemented by related university-based research. In particular, the model highlights the need for those who seek to apply psychology in schools, to appreciate the relationships between both the formal and informal aspects of school staff, pupil, and family subsystems, and the ways in which different interventions impact upon different areas of this psycho-social framework.
Determinants of reduced walking speed in people with musculoskeletal pain.

OBJECTIVE Maintenance of good walking speed is essential to independent living. People with musculoskeletal disease often have reduced walking speed. We investigated determinants of slower walking, other than musculoskeletal disease, that might provide valuable additional targets for therapy. METHODS We analyzed data from the Somerset and Avon Survey of Health, a community based survey of people aged over 35 years. A total of 2703 participants who reported hip or knee pain at baseline (1994/1995) were studied, and reassessed in 2002-2003; 1696 were available for followup, and walking speed was tested in 1074. Walking speed (m/s) was used as outcome measure. Baseline characteristics, including comorbidities and socioeconomic factors, were tested for their ability to predict reduced walking speed using multiple linear regression analysis. RESULTS Age, female sex, and immobility at baseline were predictive of slower walking speed. Other independent risk factors included the presence of cataract, low socioeconomic status, intermittent claudication, and other cardiovascular conditions. Having a cataract was associated with a decrease of 0.10 m/s (95% CI 0.03, 0.16). Those in social class V had a walking speed 0.22 m/s (95% CI 0.126, 0.31) slower than those in social class I. CONCLUSION Comorbidities, age, female sex, and lower socioeconomic position determine walking speed in people with joint pain. Issues such as poor vision and social-economic disadvantage may add to the effect of musculoskeletal disease, suggesting the need for a holistic approach to management of these patients.
Leadership in High Achieving Schools in Singapore: The Influence of Societal Culture

Abstract ‘Societal culture’ in Singapore can be understood as an evolving mix of ‘traditional’ and ‘modernizing’ cultural strands, complexly related to dominant political and economic processes and aligned in the pursuit of a wider national vision. Following the mid-80s economic slowdown, there was a major realignment in these cultural strands that resulted in a process of decentralization of the education system, and a rethinking of the principal's role. Though the immediate effect of this was the creation of independent and autonomous schools, a space for autonomous action was opened up generally for school principals who were willing and able to seize the opportunity. We draw on two case studies of improving Singapore secondary schools to explore the links between societal culture, school leadership and school improvement. We argue that although both of the case study principals appropriated aspects of societal culture as part of their improvement strategies, it was the nature of the appropriation that made the schools and leadership styles distinctive.
Victimization and Fear Among Lesbians and Gay Men in Stockholm

Victimization among lesbians and gay men creates, apart from harm and fear amongst the victimized, great fear among non-victimized gays and lesbians. This article is based on a comparison between victimized and non-victimized gays and lesbians in four populations in Stockholm. The study shows that differences in lifestyle, primarily concerning openness about sexual identity and frequency of participating in· night-time city life result in different rates of victimization. Furthermore, there are great differences in fear of crime between the victimized and non-victimized. Somewhat surprisingly there are no differences in fear of crime among male and female victims. Among the non-victims, male respondents report more fear than females.