Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Knowledge and Attitudes of a Number of Iranian Policy-makers towards Abortion

Introduction Unsafe and illegal abortions are the third leading cause of maternal death. It affects physical, emotional and social health of women and their families. Abortion is a multi-dimensional phenomenon with several social, legal, and religious implications. The views of policy-makers affect the approach to abortion in every society. Understanding the attitudes and knowledge of high-ranking decision makers towards abortion was the purpose of this study. Materials and Methods A qualitative research was implemented by carrying out individual interviews with 29 out of a selection of 80 presidents of medical sciences universities, senior executive managers in the legal system, forensic medicine and decision-makers in the health system and a number of top Muslim clerics, using a semi-structured questionnaire for data gathering. Content analysis revealed the results. Results There were considerable unwillingness and reluctance among the interviewees to participate in the study. The majority of participants fairly knew about the prevalence of illegal abortions and their complications. There was strong agreement on abortion when health of the mother or the fetus was at risk. Abortion for reproductive health reasons was supported by a minority of the respondents. The majority of them disagreed with abortion when pregnancy was the result of a rape, temporary marriage or out of wedlock affairs. Making decision for abortion by the pregnant mother, as a matter of her right, did not gain too much approval. Conclusion It seemed that physical health of the mother or the fetus was of more importance to the respondents than their mental or social health. The mother's hardship was not any indication for induced abortion in the viewpoints of the interviewed policy-makers. Strengthening family planning programs, making appropriate laws in lines with religious orders and advocacy programs targeting decision makers are determined as strategies for improving women's health rights.
Outcomes in Reoperated Low-Grade Gliomas.

BACKGROUND Low-grade gliomas (LGGs) comprise a diverse set of intrinsic brain tumors that correlate strongly with survival. Data on the effect of reoperation are sparse. OBJECTIVE To evaluate the effect of reoperation on patients with LGG. METHODS Fifty-two consecutive patients with reoperated LGGs treated at the University of Washington between 1986 and 2004 were identified and evaluated in a retrospective analysis. RESULTS The average overall survival (OS) for this cohort was 12.95 ± 0.96 years. The overall 10-year survival rate was 57%. The absence of any residual tumor at either the first or second operation was associated with significantly increased OS. Negative prognostic variables for OS included the use of upfront radiation and pathology at recurrence. The average overall progression-free survival to the first recurrence (PFS1) was 6.23 ± 0.51 years. Positive prognostic factors for improved PFS1 included the use of upfront radiation therapy. Variables not associated with differences in PFS1 included the use of upfront chemotherapy, enhancement, pathology, extent of resection, the presence of residual tumor, and Karnofsky Performance Scale score <80. The average overall progression-free survival to the second recurrence was 2.73 ± 0.39 years. Pathology at recurrence was associated with significant differences in progression-free survival to the second recurrence, as was extent of resection at time of first recurrence, and Karnofsky Performance Scale score <80. CONCLUSION This is among the largest studies to assess variables associated with outcome in patients with reoperated LGG. Reresection appears to provide significant benefit, and extent of resection remains the strongest predictor of OS.
In vivo analysis of insulin-like growth factor type 1 receptor humanized monoclonal antibody MK-0646 and small molecule kinase inhibitor OSI-906 in colorectal cancer

The development and characterization of effective anticancer drugs against colorectal cancer (CRC) is of urgent need since it is the second most common cause of cancer death. The study was designed to evaluate the effects of two IGF-1R antagonists, MK-0646, a recombinant fully humanized monoclonal antibody and OSI-906, a small molecule tyrosine kinase inhibitor on CRC cells. Xenograft study was performed on IGF-1R-dependent CRC cell lines for analyzing the antitumor activity of MK-0646 and OSI-906. Tumor proliferation and apoptosis were assessed using Ki67 and TUNEL assays, respectively. We also performed in vitro characterization of MK-0646 and OSI-906 treatment on CRC cells to identify mechanisms associated with drug-induced cell death. Exposure of the GEO and CBS tumor xenografts to MK-0646 or OSI-906 led to a decrease in tumor growth. TUNEL analysis showed an increase of approximately 45–55% in apoptotic cells in both MK-0646 and OSI-906 treated tumor samples. We report the novel finding that treatment with IGF-1R antagonists led to downregulation of X-linked inhibitor of apoptosis (XIAP) protein involved in cell survival and inhibition of cell death. In conclusion, IGF-1R antagonists (MK-0646 and OSI-906) demonstrated single agent inhibition of subcutaneous CRC xenograft growth. This was coupled to pro-apoptotic effects resulting in downregulation of XIAP and inhibition of cell survival. We report a novel mechanism by which MK-0646 and OSI-906 elicits cell death in vivo and in vitro. Moreover, these results indicate that MK-0646 and OSI-906 may be potential anticancer candidates for the treatment of patients with IGF-1R-dependent CRC.
Stellar Populations of Globular Clusters in the Elliptical Galaxy NGC 1407

We present high-quality Keck spectroscopic data for a sample of 20 globular clusters (GCs) in the massive E0 galaxy NGC 1407. A subset of 20 line-strength indices of the Lick/IDS system has been measured for both the GC system and the central integrated starlight of the galaxy. Ages, metallicities, and [α/Fe] ratios have been derived using several different approaches. The majority of GCs in NGC 1407 studied are old, follow a tight metallicity sequence reaching values slightly above solar, and exhibit mean [α/Fe] ratios of ∼0.3 dex. In addition, three GCs are formally derived to be young (∼4 Gyr), but we argue that they are actually old GCs hosting blue horizontal branches. We report, for the first time, evidence for the existence of two chemically distinct subpopulations of metal-rich (MR) GCs. We find that some MR GCs exhibit significantly larger [Mg/Fe] and [C/Fe] ratios. Different star formation timescales are proposed to explain the correlation between Mg and C abundances. We also find striking CN overabundances over the entire GC metallicity range. It is interesting to note that the behavior of C and N in metal-poor GCs clearly deviates from that in MR GCs. In particular, for MR GCs, N increases dramatically while C essentially saturates. This may be interpreted as a consequence of the increasing importance of the CNO cycle with increasing metallicity.
Audio-visual Evaluation and Detection of Word Prominence in a Human-Machine Interaction Scenario

This paper investigates the audio-visual correlates and the detection of word prominence. Subjects were interacting with a computer in a small game which created a broad and a narrow focus condition. Audio-visual recordings with a distant microphone and without visual markers were made. As acoustic features duration, intensity, fundamental frequency and spectral emphasis were calculated. From the visual channel head movements and image transformation based features from the mouth region were extracted. First the results show that the extracted features are significantly different for the two focus conditions (broad and narrow). Based on classification results it is demonstrated that they can be differentiated without knowledge of the word identity with accuracies of approx. 80%. Furthermore, it is shown that the visual channel by itself yields accuracies notably better than chance (approx. 65%) and that a combination of both modalities increases performance to approx. 85%.
Soil engineering in vivo: harnessing natural biogeochemical systems for sustainable, multi-functional engineering solutions

Carbon sequestration, infrastructure rehabilitation, brownfields clean-up, hazardous waste disposal, water resources protection and global warming—these twenty-first century challenges can neither be solved by the high-energy consumptive practices that hallmark industry today, nor by minor tweaking or optimization of these processes. A more radical, holistic approach is required to develop the sustainable solutions society needs. Most of the above challenges occur within, are supported on, are enabled by or grown from soil. Soil, contrary to conventional civil engineering thought, is a living system host to multiple simultaneous processes. It is proposed herein that ‘soil engineering in vivo’, wherein the natural capacity of soil as a living ecosystem is used to provide multiple solutions simultaneously, may provide new, innovative, sustainable solutions to some of these great challenges of the twenty-first century. This requires a multi-disciplinary perspective that embraces the science of biology, chemistry and physics and applies this knowledge to provide multi-functional civil and environmental engineering designs for the soil environment. For example, can native soil bacterial species moderate the carbonate cycle in soils to simultaneously solidify liquefiable soil, immobilize reactive heavy metals and sequester carbon—effectively providing civil engineering functionality while clarifying the ground water and removing carbon from the atmosphere? Exploration of these ideas has begun in earnest in recent years. This paper explores the potential, challenges and opportunities of this new field, and highlights one biogeochemical function of soil that has shown promise and is developing rapidly as a new technology. The example is used to propose a generalized approach in which the potential of this new field can be fully realized.
Action researchers encountering ethical review: a literature synthesis on challenges and strategies

Abstract Action research (AR) comprises a diverse family of methodologies. Common amongst most types of AR are both an emergent design – leading to action or change – and participation or community involvement. While this type of research has expanded considerably since the early 2000s, the criteria used for ethical review have apparently been slow to adapt to the emergent and participatory nature of this research. This has resulted in researchers reporting negative attitudes towards, and experiences with, review boards and ethics review processes; painting ethical review committees, at times, as insufficient or unnecessary. A review of the literature was undertaken to assess the state of play in this regard. Few articles disclose the side of the ethical review boards or committee members and the issues they face in undertaking ethical review of studies with an emergent, action, or participatory focus. A larger number of peer-reviewed journal articles report on the views of the researchers, but mainly through specific case examples where ethical review processes presented challenges to researchers and communities employing a participatory approach to research. The focus of this article will be on both the generic challenges researchers report in managing ethical review and of strategies utilized or recommended to conduct participatory research in an ethical manner. The contrasting experiences of researchers and ethical review committee members will be considered where available.
ERRORLESS LEARNING IN A MULTIHANDICAPPED ADOLESCENT1

An errorless learning technique was used to teach a multihandicapped adolescent three discrimination tasks. The student learned to correctly identify objects which corresponded to the teacher's verbal cues. Stimulus control was transferred from the teacher's physical prompts (pointing to the correct object) to verbal cues during training. Performance was better than 99 percent correct during learning. The procedure appears to be an efficient and simple alternative to trial and error teaching procedures. Children can be taught to respond to correct stimuli and to not respond to incorrect stimuli. If no or relatively few mistakes are made during discrimination training, the method is called errorless learning (Terrace, 1963, 1966). Errorless learning procedures have been effective for teaching preschoolers figure orientations and letter discriminations (Moore and Goldiamond, 1964). Corey and Shamow (1972) have taught children to read errorlessly by pairing the word with a picture of the word. Over many trials the picture was gradually faded out so that the children were reading without picture prompts. The authors found that this fading procedure was more effective for teaching sight reading than the typical picture-word pairing method. Dorry and Zeaman (1973, 1975) replicated these results when they found that mentally retarded children were able to read better by a similar fading procedure than by use of traditional picture-word pairings. Egeland (1975) taught preschoolers to discriminate pairs of similar letters by highlighting the distinctive features of the letters in color and gradually fading out the color. Similarly Haupt, Van Kirk, and Terraciano (1975) taught children addition, subtraction, and multiplication by gradually covering the answer to a number fact with layers of cellophane to make it less
Information Systems Development Success: Perspectives from Project Team Participants

This research article reports on those factors project team members perceive as leading to systems development success. The amount of perceived impact of environmental variables, task variables and personal characteristics of project team members on systems success was explored. Results demonstrate that project team members are concerned with group process issues as well as with technical issues within the ranks of the project team. The sobering finding in their responses was that information systems personnel perceive neither management support nor user involvement as critical to the successful development of systems.
Using Multistate Observational Studies to Determine Role of Hypertension and Diabetes as Risk Factors for Dementia

Background: Evidence suggests that modifiable risk factors which can be targeted by prevention are vascular diseases, such as diabetes, midlife hypertension (HTN), midlife obesity, midlife cholesterol, mid- and late-life depression as well as lifestyle factors such as smoking, physical inactivity, and poor diet. Methods: A comprehensive search of the National Library of Medicine's PubMed database and Google Scholar was conducted. A combinations of medical subject headings and free text words that included search terms related to the exposure (e.g., prevalence, HTN, raised BP, high BP, diabetes, high blood sugar, DM, India, state), were combined with search terms related to the outcomes (e.g., prevalence, disease burden, estimate, dementia, India). The filters included were English for the language category and humans for the study category. Results: The PubMed search initially identified 269 references, and a total of 204 abstracts were screened by inclusion criteria. Full-text assessment of 136 articles on prevalence of dementia resulted in 20 relevant articles from which the different regions of the country were identified. Based on the search conducted according to the regions; 287abstracts of the prevalence of HTN and 577 on the prevalence of diabetes mellitus were screened. There were 43 full-text articles on the prevalence of HTN and diabetes from the regions where the prevalence of dementia was available. Of these potentially relevant articles were 14 in number. Conclusion: Despite the uncertainty in the role, the data analysis, therefore, points to a role in the prevention of HTN and diabetes to prevent dementia.
Rab3A Triggers the Acrosome Reaction in Permeabilized Human Spermatozoa1

Abstract The acrosome reaction is a regulated exocytotic process leading to a massive fusion between the outer acrosomal membrane and the cell membrane. In spite of the great amount of information available related to the acrosome reaction in several species, there is a remarkable paucity about the role of monomeric guanosine triphosphatases (GTPases) of the Rab family—well-established participants in exocytosis in other cell types—in the acrosome reaction. Western blot and immunofluorescence analysis indicate that Rab3A is present in human spermatozoa and localizes to the acrosomal region in the sperm head. One difficulty in studying the role of proteins in intact cells is the fact that they are unable to cross the cell membrane. Therefore, we established a working model of streptolysin O-permeabilized human spermatozoa. Permeabilized spermatozoa were able to respond in a regulated way to different stimuli, such as G protein activators and calcium. An acrosomal reaction was also triggered by a Rab3A peptide corresponding to the effector region. More important, recombinant Rab3A protein in the GTP-bound form caused acrosome exocytosis. The same protein loaded with GDP or Rab11 in the GTP-bound form was inactive. Also, recombinant GDI (GDP dissociation inhibitor)—a protein that releases Rab proteins from membrane—inhibited a GTPγS-stimulated acrosome reaction. Our results indicate that 1) permeabilized spermatozoa can be used to study the role of macromolecules in the acrosome reaction, 2) Rab3A is present in human spermatozoa, and 3) Rab3A or another Rab3 isoform is involved in the exocytosis of the acrosomal granule in human spermatozoa.
Role of the Intravoxel Incoherent Motion Diffusion Weighted Imaging in the Pre-treatment Prediction and Early Response Monitoring to Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy in Locally Advanced Breast Cancer

AbstractThe aim of this study was to explore whether intravoxel incoherent motion (IVIM) diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) can probe pre-treatment differences or monitor early response in patients with locally advanced breast cancer receiving neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC). Thirty-six patients with locally advanced breast cancer were imaged using multiple-b DWI with 12 b values ranging from 0 to 1000 s/mm2 at the baseline, and 28 patients were repeatedly scanned after the second cycle of NAC. Subjects were divided into pathologic complete response (pCR) and nonpathologic complete response (non-pCR) groups according to the surgical pathologic specimen. Parameters (D, D*, f, maximum diameter [MD] and volume [V]) before and after 2 cycles of NAC and their corresponding change (&Dgr;parameter) between pCR and non-pCR groups were compared using the Student t test or nonparametric test. The diagnostic performance of different parameters was judged by the receiver-operating characteristic curve analysis.Before NAC, the f value of pCR group was significantly higher than that of non-pCR (32.40% vs 24.40%, P = 0.048). At the end of the second cycle of NAC, the D value was significantly higher and the f value was significantly lower in pCR than that in non-pCR (P = 0.001; P = 0.015, respectively), whereas the D* value and V of the pCR group was slightly lower than that of the non-pCR group (P = 0.507; P = 0.676, respectively). &Dgr;D was higher in pCR (−0.45 × 10–3 mm2/s) than that in non-pCR (−0.07 × 10−3 mm2/s) after 2 cycles of NAC (P < 0.001). &Dgr;f value in the pCR group was significantly higher than that in the non-pCR group (17.30% vs 5.30%, P = 0.001). There was no significant difference in &Dgr;D* between the pCR and non-pCR group (P = 0.456). The prediction performance of &Dgr;D value was the highest (AUC [area under the curve] = 0.924, 95% CI [95% confidence interval] = 0.759–0.990). When the optimal cut-off was set at −0.163 × 10−3 mm2/s, the values for sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), and negative predictive value (NPV) were up to 100% (95% CI = 66.4–100), 73.7% (95% CI = 48.8–90.9), 64.3% (95% CI = 35.6–86.0), and 100% (95% CI = 73.2–99.3), respectively.IVIM-derived parameters, especially the D and f value, showed potential value in the pre-treatment prediction and early response monitoring to NAC in locally advanced breast cancer. &Dgr;D value had the best prediction performance for pathologic response after NAC.
RELIABLE INFERENCE FOR THE GINI INDEX

Although attention has been given to obtaining reliable standard errors for the plug-in estimator of the Gini index, all standard errors suggested until now are either complicated or quite unreliable. An approximation is derived for the estimator by which it is expressed as a sum of IID random variables. This approximation allows us to develop a reliable standard error that is simple to compute. A simple but effective bias correction is also derived. The quality of inference based on the approximation is checked in a number of simulation experiments, and is found to be very good unless the tail of the underlying distribution is heavy. Bootstrap methods are presented which alleviate this problem except in cases in which the variance is very large or fails to exist. Similar methods can be used to find reliable standard errors of other indices which are not simply linear functionals of the distribution function, such as Sen's poverty index and its modification known as the Sen-Shorrocks-Thon index. of Canada, and the Fonds Québécois de Recherche sur la Société et la Culture. I thank my colleague Michel Lubrano for useful comments, and for having provoked me to write the paper in the first place.
Metareasoning for Planning Under Uncertainty

The conventional model for online planning under uncertainty assumes that an agent can stop and plan without incurring costs for the time spent planning. However, planning time is not free in most real-world settings. For example, an autonomous drone is subject to nature's forces, like gravity, even while it thinks, and must either pay a price for counteracting these forces to stay in place, or grapple with the state change caused by acquiescing to them. Policy optimization in these settings requires metareasoning-- a process that trades off the cost of planning and the potential policy improvement that can be achieved. We formalize and analyze the metareasoning problem for Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). Our work subsumes previously studied special cases of metareasoning and shows that in the general case, metareasoning is at most polynomially harder than solving MDPs with any given algorithm that disregards the cost of thinking. For reasons we discuss, optimal general metareasoning turns out to be impractical, motivating approximations. We present approximate metareasoning procedures which rely on special properties of the BRTDP planning algorithm and explore the effectiveness of our methods on a variety of problems.