Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cognitive Impairment Affects Physical Recovery of Patients with Heart Failure Undergoing Intensive Cardiac Rehabilitation

Purpose. To determine whether the presence of cognitive impairment (CI) affects physical recovery of patients with chronic heart failure (CHF) undergoing a cardiac rehabilitation program (CRP). Methods. We enrolled 80 CHF patients (M/F = 53/27). CI was evaluated by means of the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), exercise tolerance was evaluated by six-minute walking test (6 mwt). All patients underwent a 6-week CRP program at 50–70% of maximal V O2. Patients were divided into two groups according to their MMSE (group 1: 16–23; group 2: 24–30). Results. MMSE resulted directly related to ejection fraction (r = 0.42; P = 0.03), and it was inversely related to creatinine (r = −0.36; P = 0.04). At 6 week group 1 had a lower increase in distance walked at 6 MWT than group 2 (P = 0.008). At multivariate logistic regression MMSE 16–23 predicted a reduced exercise recovery in the overall population (OR = 1.84; 95% CI = 1.50–2.18) and in women (OR = 1.42; 95% CI = 1.22–1.75), while it was not predicted in males. Conclusions. CI is a marker of advanced CHF and is an independent predictor of lower exercise recovery after CRP.
Effect of off-pump coronary artery bypass surgery on clinical, angiographic, neurocognitive, and quality of life outcomes: randomised controlled trial

Abstract Objective To compare the clinical, angiographic, neurocognitive, and quality of life outcomes of off-pump coronary artery bypass surgery with conventional coronary artery bypass grafting surgery using cardiopulmonary bypass. Design Randomised controlled clinical trial. Setting Tertiary cardiothoracic centre in Middlesex, England. Participants 168 patients (27 women) requiring primary isolated coronary artery bypass grafting surgery. Interventions Patients were randomised to conventional coronary artery bypass grafting surgery using cardiopulmonary bypass (n = 84) or off-pump coronary artery bypass surgery (n = 84), carried out by one surgeon. Angiographic examination was carried out at three months postoperatively. Neurocognitive tests were carried out at baseline and at six weeks and six months postoperatively. Main outcome measures Clinical outcome, graft patency at three months, neurocognitive function at six weeks and six months, and health related quality of life. Results Graft patency was evaluated by angiography in 151 (89.9%) patients and was similar between the cardiopulmonary bypass and off-pump groups (risk difference − 1%, 95% confidence interval − 5% to 4%), with the off-pump group considered the treatment group. Patients in the off-pump group required fewer blood transfusions (1.7 units v 1.0 unit, P = 0.02), shorter duration of mechanical ventilation (7.7 hours v 3.9 hours, P = 0.03), and shorter hospital stay (10.8 days v 8.9 days). Scores for neurocognitive function showed a significant difference in three memory subtests at six weeks and two memory subtests at six months in favour of the off-pump group. Conclusions Patients who underwent off-pump coronary artery bypass surgery showed similar patency of grafts, better clinical outcome, shorter hospital stay, and better neurocognitive function than patients who underwent conventional coronary artery bypass grafting surgery using cardiopulmonary bypass.
An Ecological Systems Theory Perspective on Youth Programming

Youth programs have the capacity to make major developmental impacts on participants. Youth who engage in structured activities (e.g., sports, clubs, youth programs, etc.) are more likely to experience positive outcomes than those who spend their time hanging out with their friends (Mahoney & Stattin, 2000). However, youth programs differ in their design and quality, suggesting that practitioners should identify and implement best youth development practices. While a fairly extensive body of research has identified practices associated with efficacious programs (e.g., Catalano, Berglund, Ryan, Lonczak, & Hawkins, 2002; Eccles & Gootman, 2003), the amount of time it takes to track down, process, and implement this information may prove overwhelming. Practitioners need ways to succinctly identify, synthesize, and apply the insights of youth development research. While a full review of the literature is beyond the scope of this paper, we do present a selection of key findings organized within a practitioner-friendly, theoretical framework based upon ecological systems theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). This theory focuses on the importance of interactions within and between life contexts (e.g., work, school, family, etc.). The organization of key youth development best practices within this framework should assist practitioners in their efforts to identify ways to improve their own programs as well as encourage them to establish collaborative relationships with other contexts that also play key roles in their participants’ lives.
Teacher Preparation Concerns: Professional Needs of Malaysian Secondary School Science Teachers.

ABSTRACT An assessment of the professional needs of science teachers was conducted in order to aid in the development of more effective preservice and inservice teacher training programs in Malaysia. A modified version of the Teacher Need Assessment Questionnaire was administered to 78 science teachers. Data analysis indicated that the top 25 perceived needs were mainly related to self-improvement. The five items rated as highest priority included: being creative in science instruction, updating knowledge in the application of science and technology in everyday life, updating knowledge of innovations in science instruction, updating knowledge in evaluating teaching effectiveness, and understanding the goals of the syllabus. Implications for teacher preparation in pieservice and inservic, programs are discussed. (JRH)
BMI, lipid profile, physical fitness and smoking habits of young male adults and the association with parental education.

BACKGROUND Few studies have focused on the potential relationship between parental educational level and cardiovascular risk factors among young male adults. The aim of this study was to investigate cardiovascular disease risk factors among young men and whether body mass index (BMI), serum lipids, physical fitness and smoking habits were related to paternal and maternal education. METHODS In this cross-sectional study 750 18- to 26-year-old male recruits participated. RESULTS Linear regression analyses showed that the paternal education was inversely associated with BMI (P = 0.035) and the concentration of total cholesterol (P = 0.003) and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) (P = 0.014). Running performance was inversely related to cigarette smoking (P = 0.022) and the concentration of triacylglycerol (P = 0.001). BMI was positively related to the concentration of LDL (P = 0.002), total cholesterol/high-density lipoprotein (HDL) ratio (P < 0.001) and inversely related to the concentration of HDL (P < 0.001), running performance (P < 0.001) and muscular strength (P = 0.011). Recruits with low BMI, both high and low fitness, had a significantly better lipid profile than recruits with high BMI and low fitness (P <or= 0.016). A lower concentration of triacylglycerol (P <or= 0.001) and a higher concentration of HDL (P = 0.034) were further shown among recruits with high BMI/high fit compared to recruits with high BMI/low fit. CONCLUSIONS High paternal educational level was associated with a lower BMI and a better lipid profile among young adult men. Furthermore, men with low BMI, both high and low fit, had a better lipid profile than those with high BMI/low fit. Men with high BMI/high fit had a better lipid profile that those with high BMI/low fit.
Learning Strategies Employed by College Aged Students with Disabilities: The Link Between Metacognition, Motivation, and Working Memory

The aim of this study is two-fold. First, we want to understand the levels of metacognitive awareness of learning strategies in undergraduates with learning disabilities. Previous research states that recall is the most effective method of studying, but most students prefer to reread their notes or textbook which is ineffective. Second, we want to explore the link between Working Memory and metacognitive awareness of learning strategies in undergraduates with learning disabilities. The learning strategies that college students with and without disabilities is examined, we found that students in both groups preferred the usage of the same strategies equally. The most preferred strategy was rereading notes/textbook, and least preferred was studying in groups. Interestingly, we found no differences between the groups with regards to their: motivation, metacognition, and working memory. Initially, it was found that the group of students with disabilities greatly differed in visual-spatial working memory, however, once we controlled for those who were visually-impaired or had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), the results became non-significant. Gender differences in learning strategies was examined and we found that males preferred the usage of completing practice problems and the usage of mnemonic devices, whereas females preferred highlighting their notes or textbook. keywords: metacognition, motivation, working memory, learning strategies, studying strategies COLLEGE STUDENTS AND LEARNING 5 Learning Strategies Employed by College Aged Students with Disabilities: The Link Between Metacognition, Motivation, and Working Memory Previous research on students’ learning strategies primarily focuses on how they incorporate their prior knowledge and skills and how they adjust their learning strategies. Weinstein and Mayer (1986) define learning strategies as behavior and cognition that students execute while learning, to better influence the efficiency and amount of information they acquire. Previous research (McKeachie, 1987) has identified two distinct branches of this broad learning strategy definition; micro-processes, such as cognition and memory, are more inherent and can’t usually be directly manipulated, while macro-processes, which will be the focus of this study, involve the student’s methods of taking in and processing information (e.g. textbook, teacher, note-taking etc.). McKeachie points out that these “macrolevel” learning strategies involve both students’ use of them, as well as students’ knowledge about them. He further categorizes these strategies into cognitive, metacognitive, and resource management strategies. In this research, the focus is on the cognitive and metacognitive strategies that students in higher education with learning disabilities can use.
The Dative Alternation in African American English : Researching Syntactic Variation and Change in a Conglomerated Corpus

Recent research has shown the dative alternation in English to be a productive arena for examining the relationship between group-level variation and the internalization of individuals’ grammars. Experimental methods (e.g., Bresnan and Ford 2010) and the analysis of large published corpora (e.g., Bresnan et al. 2007) have revealed subtle cross-dialect differences for this variable. The current paper seeks to improve our understanding of this feature and its bearings on experience-based models of grammar by examining African American English (AAE) data from sociolinguistic interviews and from historical letters written by semi-literate ex-slaves. We also consider some methodological problems of conducting corpus-like analyses on non-standard varieties.
Partially Linear Hazard Regression for Multivariate Survival Data

This article studies estimation of partially linear hazard regression models for multivariate survival data. A profile pseudo–partial likelihood estimation method is proposed under the marginal hazard model framework. The estimation on the parameters for the linear part is accomplished by maximization of a pseudo–partial likelihood profiled over the nonparametric part. This enables us to obtain -consistent estimators of the parametric component. Asymptotic normality is obtained for the estimates of both the linear and nonlinear parts. The new technical challenge is that the nonparametric component is indirectly estimated through its integrated derivative function from a local polynomial fit. An algorithm of fast implementation of our proposed method is presented. Consistent standard error estimates using sandwich-type ideas are also developed, which facilitates inferences for the model. It is shown that the nonparametric component can be estimated as well as if the parametric components were known and the failure times within each subject were independent. Simulations are conducted to demonstrate the performance of the proposed method. A real dataset is analyzed to illustrate the proposed methodology.
Combinatorial algorithms for the generalized circulation problem

A generalization of the maximum-flow problem is considered in which the amounts of flow entering and leaving an arc are linearly related. More precisely, if x(e) units of flow enter an arc e, x(e) lambda (e) units arrive at the other end. For instance, nodes of the graph can correspond to different currencies, with the multipliers being the exchange rates. Conservation of flow is required at every node except a given source node. The goal is to maximize the amount of flow excess at the source. This problem is a special case of linear programming, and therefore can be solved in polynomial time. The authors present polynomial-time combinatorial algorithms for this problem. The algorithms are simple and intuitive. <<ETX>>
Human relevance of pre-clinical studies in stem cell therapy: systematic review and meta-analysis of large animal models of ischaemic heart disease.

AIMS Stem cell therapy is a treatment strategy for ischaemic heart disease patients. Meta-analysis of randomized human trials showed <5% improvement in left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF). Meta-analysis of available pre-clinical data of ischaemic heart disease could provide important clues to design human clinical trials. METHODS AND RESULTS Random-effects meta-analysis was performed on pig, dog, or sheep studies investigating the effect of cardiac stem cell therapy in ischaemic cardiomyopathy (52 studies; n = 888 animals). Endpoints were LVEF and death. Ischaemia/reperfusion infarction was performed in 23 studies and chronic occlusion in 29 studies. Pooled analysis showed a LVEF difference of 7.5% at follow-up after cell therapy vs. control (95% confidence interval, 6.2-8.9%; P < 0.001). By exploratory multivariable meta-regression, significant predictors of LVEF improvement were: cell type [bone marrow mononuclear cells (BM-MNC) showed less effect than other cell types, e.g. mesenchymal stem cells; P = 0.040] and type of infarction (left anterior descending artery 8.0 vs. left circumflex artery 5.8%; P = 0.045). Cell therapy was not associated with increased mortality (P = 0.68). Sensitivity analysis showed trends towards more improvement with higher cell number (≥10(7)), chronic occlusion models, and late injections (>1 week). After follow-up of 8 weeks, the effect of cell therapy decreased to 6%. CONCLUSION This meta-analysis showed that large animal models are valid to predict the outcome of clinical trials. Our results showed that cell therapy is safe and leads to a preserved LVEF. Future trials should focus on cell types other than BM-MNC, large infarction, and strategies to obtain sustained effects.
Understanding Rural Student Achievement: Identifying Instructional and Organizational Differences between Rural and Nonrural Schools.

National math assessment data from 3,112 eighth-grade students in 123 schools were used to determine whether location (rural versus nonrural) affects student achievement when related student and school-level factors are taken into account. Findings indicate that rural schools outperformed nonrural schools in math achievement and that the competitive edge of rural schools arose from school effects beyond the influences of school composition and individual student characteristics. Rural schools tended to have a better organizational context (teacher training, safe/orderly climate, collective support) conducive to higher performance, but suffered from poor instructional conditions (in terms of classroom resources, advanced courses, and progressive instruction), which balanced out achievement gains. Rural schools should capitalize on existing organizational and contextual strengths and also focus more effort on improving curricular and instructional weaknesses. Given that many rural students are poor and attend schools whose instructional resources and course offerings are limited, the level of their academic performance relative to their nonrural counterparts is encouraging. This study shows that rural schools can provide a model of strength worth studying and emulating. Contains 20 references and hierarchical linear regression formulas. (Author/TD) ******************************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ******************************************************************************** Understanding Rural Student Achievement: Identifying Instructional and Organizational Differences between Rural and Nonrural Schools Jaekyung Lee and Walter G. McIntire College of Education and Human Development University of Maine Paper to be presented at the Annual Meeting of the AERA (Monreal, Canada, April 19, 1999) This research was supported by Grant No. R902B980008 from the U.S. Department of Education. The views expressed herein are solely those of the authors. BESTCOPY AVAILABLE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of E ucational Research and Improvement EDUC IONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) his document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization originating it 0 Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality. Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent official OEM position or policy.
Approaches to collection selection and results merging for distributed information retrieval

We have investigated two major issues in Distributed Information Retrieval (DIR), namely: collection selection and search results merging. While most published works on these two issues are based on pre-stored metadata, the approaches described in this paper involve extracting the required information at the time the query is processed. In order to predict the relevance of collections to a given query, we analyse a limited number of full documents (e.g., the top five documents) retrieved from each collection and then consider term proximity within them. On the other hand, our merging technique is rather simple since input only requires document scores and lengths of results lists. Our experiments evaluate the retrieval effectiveness of these approaches and compare them with centralised indexing and various other DIR techniques (e.g., CORI). We conducted our experiments using two testbeds: one containing news articles extracted from four different sources (2 GB) and another containing 10 GB of Web pages. Our evaluations demonstrate that the retrieval effectiveness of our simple approaches is worth considering.
Income Sharing Amongst Medieval Peasants: Usury Prohibitions and the Non-Market Provision of Insurance

Traditional economic analysis posits market-based institutions as being substitutes for non-market based institutions. The process of development then tends to be seen as the process of substituting the more efficient market based institutions for their less efficient counterparts. This paper argues that non-market institutions are at times more efficient than market based institutions. Informal pooling arrangements constituted an important method of non-market consumption smoothing for medieval peasants. Usury prohibitions were promulgated in order to support such arrangements in the face of competition from more market-based alternatives, i.e., the capital market.
Teachers’ Experience of Working With Underachieving Students: A Comparative Phenomenological Study of Teachers in South Africa, Russia, and the United States

This research project presents three phenomenological studies: (1) teachers’ experience of working with underachieving students in South Africa, (2) teachers’ experience of working with underachieving students in Russia, and (3) teachers’ experience of working with underachieving students in the United States. It also involves a comparative study of teachers’ experience of working with underachieving students in the three countries. All teacher participants in these studies were recommended as expert teachers who displayed qualities of teacher professionalism such as (1) commitment to learners; (2) the ability to make decisions in complex and ill-defined contexts; (3) reflective practice; and (4) a body of specialized knowledge (Ingersoll, 2003). The first three studies employed an existential phenomenological research methodology for studying experience. This methodology gave an opportunity to identify the thematic structure of teachers’ experience for each country and to provide a nondualistic description of the experience of teachers working with underachieving students. A comparison of the three thematic structures provided an opportunity to describe invariant themes of that experience. Similarities identified in the thematic descriptions of teachers’ experience allowed the introduction of the concept culture of the classroom which included the following characteristics: (1) holistic approach to students; (2) creating a safe place for learning and taking time to establish a relationship with students; (3) teachers’ focus on students learning; (4) helping students become independent self-reliant individuals; (4) teachers’ involvement in students’ lives; (5) teachers and students growing and changing together;
[Prevalence of trachoma in preschool and schoolchildren in the city of São Paulo].

OBJECTIVE To assess the prevalence of trachoma among preschool and school children of public schools to give new focus to control programs. METHODS An epidemiological survey was carried out in São Paulo City in 1999. Children between four and 14 years old were selected by a cluster sampling where school shift was the sampling unit. External eye examination was conducted to detect trachoma. RESULTS A total of 27,091 children were examined and 597 cases of trachoma were found (2.2%; 95% CI: 1.86-2.55). The prevalence ranged from 0.4% to 4.2% in 10 city areas. The trachoma detection rate in the household contacts examined was 8.7%. Follicular trachoma was found in 99% of the cases and intense trachoma in 1.0%. It was observed that 21.8% of the cases were asymptomatic. CONCLUSIONS Though the trachoma prevalence was low, the occurrence of severe cases points out to the likelihood of cicatricial trachoma cases in the future if they are not adequately treated and controlled. The great difference in the prevalences in different city areas indicates the need for strengthening epidemiological surveillance activities.