Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Inferential Comprehension Strategy for Use with Primary Grade Children.

Jane Hansen Primary teachers seem to be divided between those who teach compre hension and those who do not. There may be several reasons for not teaching comprehension, but the most common seems to be that there just is not enough time to teach everything; everything means both phonics and comprehension. However, many believe that com prehension skills need to be taught from the beginning. Some of these teachers emphasize literal compre hension; a few include an emphasis on drawing inferences. The inferential reading skills of most young students are not well developed. Students flounder when confronted with questions that can be answered only by reading be yond the lines. Why is this so? Some people feel that inferential thinking is difficult for young chil dren simply because they are young; they feel it is a process that develops with age. However, intermediate teachers complain that their students have not developed inferential skills to their satisfaction either. Perhaps if we concentrated on developing these skills at an earlier age, the ability of young children to think inferentially could be improved, and these stu dents would enter the intermediate grades with better comprehension skills. This article presents an instruc tional method that was successful in
Incidence and Predictors of Early and Late Mortality After Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation in 663 Patients With Severe Aortic Stenosis

Background— There is a lack of information on the incidence and predictors of early mortality at 30 days and late mortality between 30 days and 1 year after transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) with the self-expanding CoreValve Revalving prosthesis. Methods and Results— A total of 663 consecutive patients (mean age 81.0±7.3 years) underwent TAVI with the third generation 18-Fr CoreValve device in 14 centers. Procedural success and intraprocedural mortality were 98% and 0.9%, respectively. The cumulative incidences of mortality were 5.4% at 30 days, 12.2% at 6 months, and 15.0% at 1 year. The incidence density of mortality was 12.3 per 100 person-year of observation. Clinical and hemodynamic benefits observed acutely after TAVI were sustained at 1 year. Paravalvular leakages were trace to mild in the majority of cases. Conversion to open heart surgery (odds ratio [OR] 38.68), cardiac tamponade (OR 10.97), major access site complications (OR 8.47), left ventricular ejection fraction <40% (OR 3.51), prior balloon valvuloplasty (OR 2.87), and diabetes mellitus (OR 2.66) were independent predictors of mortality at 30 days, whereas prior stroke (hazard ratio [HR] 5.47), postprocedural paravalvular leak ≥2+ (HR 3.79), prior acute pulmonary edema (HR 2.70), and chronic kidney disease (HR 2.53) were independent predictors of mortality between 30 days and 1 year. Conclusions— Benefit of TAVI with the CoreValve Revalving System is maintained over time up to 1 year, with acceptable mortality rates at various time points. Although procedural complications are strongly associated with early mortality at 30 days, comorbidities and postprocedural paravalvular aortic regurgitation ≥2+ mainly impact late outcomes between 30 days and 1 year.
Blotter: Low Latency Transactions for Geo-Replicated Storage

Most geo-replicated storage systems use weak consistency to avoid the performance penalty of coordinating replicas in different data centers. This departure from strong semantics poses problems to application programmers, who need to address the anomalies enabled by weak consistency. In this paper we use a recently proposed isolation level, called Non-Monotonic Snapshot Isolation, to achieve ACID transactions with low latency. To this end, we present Blotter, a geo-replicated system that leverages these semantics in the design of a new concurrency control protocol that leaves a small amount of local state during reads to make commits more efficient, which is combined with a configuration of Paxos that is tailored for good performance in wide area settings. Read operations always run on the local data center, and update transactions complete in a small number of message steps to a subset of the replicas. We implemented Blotter as an extension to Cassandra. Our experimental evaluation shows that Blotter has a small overhead at the data center scale, and performs better across data centers when compared with our implementations of the core Spanner protocol and of Snapshot Isolation on the same codebase.
Can trans‐generational experiments be used to enhance species resilience to ocean warming and acidification?

Human‐assisted, trans‐generational exposure to ocean warming and acidification has been proposed as a conservation and/or restoration tool to produce resilient offspring. To improve our understanding of the need for and the efficacy of this approach, we characterized life‐history and physiological responses in offspring of the marine polychaete Ophryotrocha labronica exposed to predicted ocean warming (OW: + 3°C), ocean acidification (OA: pH −0.5) and their combination (OWA: + 3°C, pH −0.5), following the exposure of their parents to either control conditions (within‐generational exposure) or the same conditions (trans‐generational exposure). Trans‐generational exposure to OW fully alleviated the negative effects of within‐generational exposure to OW on fecundity and egg volume and was accompanied by increased metabolic activity. While within‐generational exposure to OA reduced juvenile growth rates and egg volume, trans‐generational exposure alleviated the former but could not restore the latter. Surprisingly, exposure to OWA had no negative impacts within‐ or trans‐generationally. Our results highlight the potential for trans‐generational laboratory experiments in producing offspring that are resilient to OW and OA. However, trans‐generational exposure does not always appear to improve traits and therefore may not be a universally useful tool for all species in the face of global change.
Mineral fibre analysis and routes of exposure to asbestos in the development of mesothelioma in an English region.

OBJECTIVES: To compare the concentrations of inorganic fibres in the lungs in cases of mesothelioma and controls: to determine whether concentrations of retained asbestos fibres differ with the different exposures identified from interview; and to investigate the existence of a cut off point in concentrations of asbestos fibres that indicates occupational exposure. METHODS: Case-control study; 147 confirmed cases of mesothelioma and 122 controls identified from deaths occurring in four districts of Yorkshire between 1979 and 1991. Surviving relatives were interviewed to determine lifetime exposure history to asbestos. Mineral fibre analysis was carried out on lung tissue from postmortem examinations. RESULTS: Odds on high concentrations of retained asbestos fibres were greater in cases than controls. After excluding subjects with occupational and paraoccupational exposure, the odds on high concentrations were still greater in cases than controls, but only significantly so for amphiboles. There was only a weak relation between probability of occupational exposure to asbestos and concentrations of retained asbestos fibres, and no significant difference in fibre concentrations was found between subjects who had been exposed to asbestos through different routes: these comparisons were only based on small groups. There was considerable overlap in concentrations of retained asbestos fibres between cases and controls with and without histories of occupational exposure. CONCLUSIONS: The study has confirmed previous results of higher concentrations of asbestos fibres in cases than controls, and has shown that this is still found in subjects with little evidence of occupational and para-occupational exposure. The overlap in concentrations of retained asbestos for different groups of subjects did not suggest a clear cut of value.
The prosodic marking of rhetorical questions in German

This study investigates the prosody of rhetorical questions in German. In an interaction study we examined how speakers use boundary tones, pitch, duration and voice quality to mark syntactically ambiguous questions as rhetorical or information seeking. To this end, speakers produced identical interrogatives (polar and wh questions) in rhetorical and information seeking contexts. The results show that, phonologically, rhetorical questions end in low boundary tones more often, but the difference is minimal (5%), especially compared to the effect of interrogative type on boundary tones (polar questions are rising and wh questions are falling in more than 90% of the cases, respectively). Phonetically, rhetorical questions are characterized by longer utterance durations and lower initial pitch. Furthermore, the first constituent (wh word or verb) is produced with a softer voice compared to information seeking questions. Overall the results show that there are prosodic differences between RQs and ISQs for both polar and wh questions. There seems to be a tendency for rhetoricity to be signalled early on in the utterance in both polar and wh questions. Furthermore, the phonetic cues for disambiguation are stronger in wh questions than in polar questions.
Effects of prolonged unemployment and reemployment on psychological and physical health

3 There is a wide-spread conviction that unemployment has adverse health effects. However, the research supporting this conviction is decisive only for various aspects of psychological or mental health, such as depression and hopelessness, anxiety, psychosomatic symptoms, and negative self-esteem. Indeed, numerous cross-sectional studies have amply shown that job-less individuals have worse mental health than their employed counterparts (e.g., Fryer & Payne, 1986; Hanish, 1999; Warr, 1987; Winefield, 1995, 2000). It is possible that poor mental health predisposes individuals to become and/or remain unemployed (the outcome known as “selection effect”). However, longitudinal studies, which tracked cohorts of individuals from employment to unemployment and conversely, provided convincing evidence that unemployment not only results from, but also causes poor metal health (“social causation effect”). As meta-analytic reviews have unanimously shown (e.g., McKee-Ryan, Song, Wanberg, & Kinciki, 2005; Murphy & Athanasou, 1999), there is significant decrease in mental health following job loss, and a sizable improvement after reemployment. The estimated causation effect is moderate in size and much stronger than the selection effect (McKeeRyan et al., 2005). Besides, the effect is invariant with the type of mental health indicator used (Paul, 2005). In other words, the observed impact of unemployment is equally pronounced for various measures of distress, anxiety, psychological well-being, or self-esteem. Research has shown that prolonged unemployment is also associated with impaired physical health (see, for example, reviews by Jin, Shah, & Svoboda, 1995, or Mathers & Schofield, 1998). Unemployed individuals report lower subjective physical health and more psychosomatic complains than their employed counterparts (Paul, 2005). They also report more visits to the physician, spend more days in bed sick (Linn, Sandifer, & Stein, 1985), and take more medication (Dragun, Rosso, & Rumbolt, 2006). Moreover, unemployed people, compared to employed counterparts, tend to report higher prevalence of manifest cardiovascular diseases (Brackbill, Siegel, & Ackermann, 1995; Cook, Cummins, Bartley, & Shaper, 1982; Gallo et al., 2004), and higher mortality rates (Iversen, 2006). However, because of many confounding factors and lack of convincing longitudinal research, the underlying causal link is considered unresolved (Weber & Lehnert, 1997). The main justification for the causation hypothesis, which states that unemployment causes impaired physical health, utilizes the concept of stress and the tenet that for most people unemployment is a stressful situation. Stress, as an organism’s total response to environmental threats, involves various physiological changes. Those include Zvonimir Galić, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Ivana Lučića 3, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia. E-mail: zvgalic@ffzg.hr (the address for correspondence).
Combining Reaction Time and Accuracy

It is generally agreed upon that the mechanisms underlying task switching heavily depend on working memory, yet numerous studies have failed to show a strong relationship between working memory capacity (WMC) and task-switching ability. We argue that this relationship does indeed exist but that the dependent variable used to measure task switching is problematic. To support our claim, we reanalyzed data from two studies with a new scoring procedure that combines reaction time (RT) and accuracy into a single score. The reanalysis revealed a strong relationship between task switching and WMC that was not present when RT-based switch costs were used as the dependent variable. We discuss the theoretical implications of this finding along with the potential uses and limitations of the scoring procedure we used. More broadly, we emphasize the importance of using measures that incorporate speed and accuracy in other areas of research, particularly in comparisons of subjects differing in cognitive and developmental levels.
Complete allelic analysis of BRCA1 and BRCA2 variants in young Nigerian breast cancer patients

Breast cancer is a leading cause of cancer deaths among women, and is expected to claim the lives of nearly 40 000 individuals in the USA each year (American Cancer Society Breast Cancer Facts and Figures 2003–2004 ). Only 5–10% of breast cancers are associated with mutations in the susceptibility genes BRCA1 and BRCA2 . However, in cases associated with strong family history, mutation rates are higher, ranging from 16% to 26% for BRCA1 1–3 and from 7% to 13% for BRCA2 . 2,3 However, many breast cancer patients with strong family histories have no obvious mutations in BRCA1 /2. While there is an active search for other breast cancer susceptibility genes, it is possible that the true contributions of BRCA1 and BRCA2 to early onset breast cancer have been underestimated. Indeed, one study has shown that only 63% of breast cancer families linked to BRCA1 are associated with detectable mutations in BRCA1 . 4 Several reasons for this discrepancy are possible. For example, mutations in BRCA1 promoter sequences might be undetectable by current detection techniques. Additionally, inherited genomic rearrangements that inactivate BRCA1 and BRCA2 but cannot be detected by conventional polymerase chain reaction (PCR) based assays have been reported.5,6,7,8,9,10 Finally, it is possible that some genetic variants previously dismissed as “unclassified variants” or “polymorphisms” may have hitherto underappreciated effects on protein synthesis or function. Most studies of BRCA1 and BRCA2 associated breast cancers have focused on white populations, yet several observations suggest that there might be a genetic component to breast cancer susceptibility in families of African ancestry.11 Breast cancer is less common in African populations than in other populations but, when it does occur, it is characterised by an early age of onset and a higher mortality.12–14 Additionally, …
Genetic proof of unequal meiotic crossovers in reciprocal deletion and duplication of 17p11.2.

A number of common contiguous gene syndromes have been shown to result from nonallelic homologous recombination (NAHR) within region-specific low-copy repeats (LCRs). The reciprocal duplications are predicted to occur at the same frequency; however, probably because of ascertainment bias and milder phenotypes, reciprocal events have been identified in only a few cases to date. We previously described seven patients with dup(17)(p11.2p11.2), the reciprocal of the Smith-Magenis syndrome (SMS) deletion, del(17)(p11.2p11.2). In >90% of patients with SMS, identical approximately 3.7-Mb deletions in 17p11.2 have been identified. These deletions are flanked by large (approximately 200 kb), highly homologous, directly oriented LCRs (i.e., proximal and distal SMS repeats [SMS-REPs]). The third (middle) SMS-REP is inverted with respect to them and maps inside the commonly deleted genomic region. To investigate the parental origin and to determine whether the common deletion and duplication arise by unequal crossovers mediated through NAHR between the proximal and distal SMS-REPs, we analyzed the haplotypes of 14 families with SMS and six families with dup(17)(p11.2p11.2), using microsatellite markers directly flanking the SMS common deletion breakpoints. Our data indicate that reciprocal deletion and duplication of 17p11.2 result from unequal meiotic crossovers. These rearrangements occur via both interchromosomal and intrachromosomal exchange events between the proximal and distal SMS-REPs, and there appears to be no parental-origin bias associated with common SMS deletions and the reciprocal duplications.
Genetic polymorphisms in sepsis

Context: Wide variability exists in the susceptibility to and outcome from sepsis even within similar intensive care unit populations. Some of this variability in the host may be due to genetic variation in genes coding for components of the innate immune response. Objective: To review the evidence for a genetic influence on the susceptibility to and outcome from sepsis. Design: Literature review. Patients: Variety of adult and pediatric patients with various critical illnesses and infections. Interventions: None. Main Outcome Measures: Susceptibility to clinical symptoms of sepsis and outcome as measured by severity of disease and mortality. Results: Polymorphisms in genes coding for proteins involved in the recognition of bacterial pathogens (Toll-like receptor 4, CD14, Fc&ggr;RIIa, and mannose-binding lectin) and the response to bacterial pathogens (tumor necrosis factor-&agr;, interleukin (IL)-1&agr;, IL-1&bgr;, IL-1 receptor agonist, IL-6, IL-10, heat shock proteins, angiotensin I converting enzyme, plasminogen activator inhibitor-1) can influence the amount or function of the protein produced in response to bacterial stimuli. Evidence is discussed suggesting that some of these genetic polymorphisms influence the susceptibility to and outcome from sepsis. Conclusion: Host genetic variability in the regulatory and coding regions of genes for components of the innate immune system may influence the susceptibility to and/or outcome from sepsis. The disparate results observed in many studies of polymorphisms in sepsis emphasize the need for future studies to be larger, to include the analysis of multiple polymorphisms, and to be better designed with respect to control populations to identify the degree of influence that genetic variability has on sepsis.
Field Validity and Feasibility of Four Techniques for the Detection of Trichuris in Simians: A Model for Monitoring Drug Efficacy in Public Health?

BACKGROUND Soil-transmitted helminths, such as Trichuris trichiura, are of major concern in public health. Current efforts to control these helminth infections involve periodic mass treatment in endemic areas. Since these large-scale interventions are likely to intensify, monitoring the drug efficacy will become indispensible. However, studies comparing detection techniques based on sensitivity, fecal egg counts (FEC), feasibility for mass diagnosis and drug efficacy estimates are scarce. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS In the present study, the ether-based concentration, the Parasep Solvent Free (SF), the McMaster and the FLOTAC techniques were compared based on both validity and feasibility for the detection of Trichuris eggs in 100 fecal samples of nonhuman primates. In addition, the drug efficacy estimates of quantitative techniques was examined using a statistical simulation. Trichuris eggs were found in 47% of the samples. FLOTAC was the most sensitive technique (100%), followed by the Parasep SF (83.0% [95% confidence interval (CI): 82.4-83.6%]) and the ether-based concentration technique (76.6% [95% CI: 75.8-77.3%]). McMaster was the least sensitive (61.7% [95% CI: 60.7-62.6%]) and failed to detect low FEC. The quantitative comparison revealed a positive correlation between the four techniques (Rs = 0.85-0.93; p<0.0001). However, the ether-based concentration technique and the Parasep SF detected significantly fewer eggs than both the McMaster and the FLOTAC (p<0.0083). Overall, the McMaster was the most feasible technique (3.9 min/sample for preparing, reading and cleaning of the apparatus), followed by the ether-based concentration technique (7.7 min/sample) and the FLOTAC (9.8 min/sample). Parasep SF was the least feasible (17.7 min/sample). The simulation revealed that the sensitivity is less important for monitoring drug efficacy and that both FLOTAC and McMaster were reliable estimators. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE The results of this study demonstrated that McMaster is a promising technique when making use of FEC to monitor drug efficacy in Trichuris.
Phenotypic Analysis of Random hnsMutations Differentiate DNA-Binding Activity from Properties offimA Promoter Inversion Modulation and Bacterial Motility

ABSTRACT H-NS is a major Escherichia coli nucleoid-associated protein involved in bacterial DNA condensation and global modulation of gene expression. This protein exists in cells as at least two different isoforms separable by isoelectric focusing. Among other phenotypes, mutations in hns result in constitutive expression of theproU and fimB genes, increased fimApromoter inversion rates, and repression of the flhCDmaster operon required for flagellum biosynthesis. To understand the relationship between H-NS structure and function, we transformed a cloned hns gene into a mutator strain and collected a series of mutant alleles that failed to repress proUexpression. Each of these isolated hns mutant alleles also failed to repress fimB expression, suggesting that H-NS-specific repression of proU and fimBoccurs by similar mechanisms. Conversely, alleles encoding single amino acid substitutions in the C-terminal DNA-binding domain of H-NS resulted in significantly reduced affinity for DNA yet conferred a wild-type fimA promoter inversion frequency, indicating that the mechanism of H-NS activity in modulating promoter inversion is independent of DNA binding. Furthermore, two specific H-NS amino acid substitutions resulted in hypermotile bacteria, while C-terminal H-NS truncations exhibited reduced motility. We also analyzed H-NS isoform composition expressed by various hnsmutations and found that the N-terminal 67 amino acids were sufficient to support posttranslational modification and that substitutions at positions 18 and 26 resulted in the expression of a single H-NS isoform. These results are discussed in terms of H-NS domain organization and implications for biological activity.