Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Estrogen replacement and cognition in postmenopausal women: effect of years since menopause on response to treatment

The use of estrogen replacement therapy (ERT) to treat or prevent cognitive changes has become highly controversial in the past several years. Recent studies have suggested that participant age might play an important role in clinical response to estrogen. Specifically, previous studies have suggested that the age of participants might be a critical factor in drug response in that younger or more recently postmenopausal women might benefit more than older women and might help to explain conflicting results of other studies. In the present study, we used a randomized, placebo‐controlled design and a transdermal estrogen preparation composed of 17‐beta estradiol. Twenty depressed subjects and 17 age‐matched nondepressed control subjects were tested. A neuropsychological battery was administered at baseline and after completion of the 10‐week trial, and test scores were grouped into four composite scores using psychometric techniques. Baseline to follow‐up change was analyzed using repeated measures analysis of covariance. Results indicate that, while little overall beneficial effect of estrogen was found, years since menopause was significantly related to change in executive functioning in the estrogen group, but not the placebo group. Thus, more recently postmenopausal women demonstrated greater positive change than older women. This finding occurred in both the depressed sample and the control subjects. These results suggest that reproductive events are related to the clinical response to ERT, and that it might be worthwhile re‐analyzing results of prior studies with this variable in mind. Drug Dev. Res. 66:150–159, 2006. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Set the P.A.C.E.! A Curriculum to Promote Mother-Child Communication About Sexuality and Reduce Sexual Risk Behaviors in Children Ages 6–12

Abstract In this article, we describe the Set the P.A. C.E. (Parents And Children Empowered) curriculum designed for mothers of children 6–12 years of age. The development of the curriculum was part of a research study to test an intervention to enhance the mother's role in promoting resilience among 6- to 12-year-old children and to reduce the risk of early initiation of sexual intercourse as the children grow. The curriculum was based on an ecological model and social cognitive theory. It consisted of 10 sessions, each two hours in length and held once per week. The session content included communication and listening skills, parenting skills, sexual development of children and adolescents, and peer pressure and monitoring. Motivational interviewing techniques were used by facilitators in the conduction of the program. The implementation of the program taught us that such programs are appreciated by mothers. The program does take considerable effort to develop and to refine. Process evaluation data are discussed along with lessons learned from the implementation of the program.
Validation of an administrative claims-based diagnostic code for pneumonia in a US-based commercially insured COPD population

Objective To estimate the accuracy of claims-based pneumonia diagnoses in COPD patients using clinical information in medical records as the reference standard. Methods Selecting from a repository containing members’ data from 14 regional United States health plans, this validation study identified pneumonia diagnoses within a group of patients initiating treatment for COPD between March 1, 2009 and March 31, 2012. Patients with ≥1 claim for pneumonia (International Classification of Diseases Version 9-CM code 480.xx–486.xx) were identified during the 12 months following treatment initiation. A subset of 800 patients was randomly selected to abstract medical record data (paper based and electronic) for a target sample of 400 patients, to estimate validity within 5% margin of error. Positive predictive value (PPV) was calculated for the claims diagnosis of pneumonia relative to the reference standard, defined as a documented diagnosis in the medical record. Results A total of 388 records were reviewed; 311 included a documented pneumonia diagnosis, indicating 80.2% (95% confidence interval [CI]: 75.8% to 84.0%) of claims-identified pneumonia diagnoses were validated by the medical charts. Claims-based diagnoses in inpatient or emergency departments (n=185) had greater PPV versus outpatient settings (n=203), 87.6% (95% CI: 81.9%–92.0%) versus 73.4% (95% CI: 66.8%–79.3%), respectively. Claims-diagnoses verified with paper-based charts had similar PPV as the overall study sample, 80.2% (95% CI: 71.1%–87.5%), and higher PPV than those linked to electronic medical records, 73.3% (95% CI: 65.5%–80.2%). Combined paper-based and electronic records had a higher PPV, 87.6% (95% CI: 80.9%–92.6%). Conclusion Administrative claims data indicating a diagnosis of pneumonia in COPD patients are supported by medical records. The accuracy of a medical record diagnosis of pneumonia remains unknown. With increased use of claims data in medical research, COPD researchers can study pneumonia with confidence that claims data are a valid tool when studying the safety of COPD therapies that could potentially lead to increased pneumonia susceptibility or severity.
Friendships among people with dementia in long-term care

Despite the growing literature on social interactions in dementia settings, few studies have investigated ‘friendships’ in people with dementia living in long-term care. ‘Social interactions’ describe communicating, verbally and/or non-verbally, at least once with another person while ‘friendship’ suggests a deeper, more meaningful connection that may include reciprocity, intimacy, and shared trust. During a 6-month, mixed-methods study, we investigated friendships among 31 assisted living residents with moderate to advanced dementia. Results revealed no correlation between test scores or demographic characteristics (except gender) and friendship dyads identified by staff. Staffs’ perceptions of residents’ friendships were not supported through our observations. We did observe friendships among residents characterized by voluntary participation and accommodation in conversation, and recognition of the uniqueness of the other. Findings suggest staff perceptions of residents’ friendships are not sufficient and that more research on this topic is needed.
Effects of Instructional Set and Personality Variables on the Use of Touching

The effects of demand characteristics and relevant personality variables on the use of touching were explored. Half of the 32 male and 32 female subjects received instructions discussing touching as one method of expressing emotions. All subjects pretended that an assistant was a friend with whom they roleplayed six emotional feelings. Subjects completed the Mosher Sex-guilt Scale and the Body Accessibility Questionnaire. Those subjects given additional instructions touched more but felt less comfortable with the assistant. Sex of the subject, sex of the assistant, amount of sex guilt, and degree of body accessibility did not have significant effects on touching. However, differential touching was produced by different emotional cues. The results contradict previous suggestions that touching is a function of a stable personality characteristic. Also, unlike clinical literature which suggests that touching produces intimacy and comfort, these findings suggested that instructional set can increase touching but decrease comfort.
Religious orientation, personality, mental health, and religious activity

A sample of 471 subjects, 303 women and 168 men, with 392 nonpatents and 79 nonpsychotic psychiatric inpatients, was studied. Only subjects who had a positive attitude to Christianity and who prayed to God were included in the sample. They answered a questionnaire with 358 items about sociodemographic information, their gender, age and education, religious activity, religious orientation (Intrinsic, Extrinsic, and Quest Scales), belief (Doctrinal Orthodoxy and Liberal Belief Scales), and morality (Moral Conservatism Index and Humanistic Morality Scale), the psychiatric Symptom Check-list-90 (SCL-90), and Basic Character Inventory (BCI) Oral, Obsessive, and Hysterical Scales. Cronbach's alphas were high or satisfactory for most of the scales. In hierarchic multiple regression analysis with the SCL-90 Global Symptom Index (SCL-90 GSI) as dependent variable, education, BCI Oral, Obsessive, and Hysterical Scales, Extrinsic and Quest Scales, and Moral Conservatism Index together explained 38.8% of the variance.
Kinematics of Rotation in Joints of the Lower Limbs and Pelvis during Gait: Early Results—SB ACLR Approach versus DB ACLR Approach

It is difficult to find publications comparing rotation kinematics in large joints of the lower limbs and pelvis during gait in patients after single-bundle (SB) reconstruction of the anterior cruciate ligament (ACLR) with double-bundle (DB) ACLR of the knee. The aim of this study was to compare rotation kinematics in ankle, knee, and hip joints and the pelvis during gait in the 14th week after SB and DB ACLR. The subjects were males after SB (n = 10) and DB (n = 13) ACLR and a control group (n = 15). The values of kinematic parameters were recorded during internal (IR) and external (ER) rotation in the joints during gait using the BTS SMART. The SB ACLR group obtained significantly higher values of ER in the involved knee comparing to DB ACLR and controls and excessive IR in the hip comparing to controls. In the DB ACLR group, excessive ER was noted in the involved leg's foot. Comparing with the DB ACLR and control groups, SB ACLR subjects had more substantial disorders of rotation kinematics in the lower limb joints. However, in both ACLR groups, 14 weeks of postoperative physiotherapy were not enough to fully restore rotation kinematics in joints of the lower limbs during gait.
DHA Supplemented in Peptamen Diet Offers No Advantage in Pathways to Amyloidosis: Is It Time to Evaluate Composite Lipid Diet?

Numerous reports have documented the beneficial effects of dietary docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) on beta-amyloid production and Alzheimer's disease (AD). However, none of these studies have examined and compared DHA, in combination with other dietary nutrients, for its effects on plaque pathogenesis. Potential interactions of DHA with other dietary nutrients and fatty acids are conventionally ignored. Here we investigated DHA with two dietary regimes; peptamen (pep+DHA) and low fat diet (low fat+DHA). Peptamen base liquid diet is a standard sole-source nutrition for patients with gastrointestinal dysfunction. Here we demonstrate that a robust AD transgenic mouse model shows an increased tendency to produce beta-amyloid peptides and amyloid plaques when fed a pep+DHA diet. The increase in beta-amyloid peptides was due to an elevated trend in the levels of beta-secretase amyloid precursor protein (APP) cleaving enzyme (BACE), the proteolytic C-terminal fragment beta of APP and reduced levels of insulin degrading enzyme that endoproteolyse beta-amyloid. On the contrary, TgCRND8 mice on low fat+DHA diet (based on an approximately 18% reduction of fat intake) ameliorate the production of abeta peptides and consequently amyloid plaques. Our work not only demonstrates that DHA when taken with peptamen may have a tendency to confer a detrimental affect on the amyloid plaque build up but also reinforces the importance of studying composite lipids or nutrients rather than single lipids or nutrients for their effects on pathways important to plaque development.
Event-related Potentials (ERPs) in Second Language Research: A Brief Introduction to the Technique, a Selected Review, and an Invitation to Reconsider Critical Periods in L2

This article provides a selective overview of recent event-related brain potential (ERP) studies in L2 morpho-syntax, demonstrating that the ERP evidence supporting the critical period hypothesis (CPH) may be less compelling than previously thought. The article starts with a general introduction to ERP methodology and language-related ERP profiles in native speakers. The second section presents early ERP studies supporting the CPH, discusses some of their methodological problems, and follows up with data from more recent studies avoiding these problems. It is concluded that well-controlled ERP studies support the convergence hypothesis, according to which L2 learners initially differ from native speakers and then converge on native-like neurocognitive processing mechanisms. The fact that ERPs in late L2 learners at high levels of proficiency are often indistinguishable from those of native speakers suggests that age-of-acquisition effects in SLA are not primarily driven by maturational constraints.
Quality of Parent/Adolescent Attachment and Aggression in Young Adolescents

A model of the association between adolescents’ perception of the quality of parent/adolescent attachment and adolescent aggression was examined, with social cognition and self-esteem as mediators. A total of 68 sixth graders, their parents, and their language arts teachers participated. Adolescents completed measures of attachment with mother and with father, self-esteem, social cognition, and aggressive tendencies. Mothers, fathers, and teachers each completed measures of adolescent aggressive and prosocial behavior. Evidence was obtained for social cognition and self-esteem both as mediators between adolescents’ perceived quality of mother/adolescent attachment and adolescent selfreport of aggression. Controlling for mother/adolescent and father/adolescent attachment and adolescent self-esteem, adolescent higher social cognition was associated with adolescent lower self-report of aggression. Controlling mother/adolescent and father/adolescent attachment and adolescent social cognition, adolescent higher self-esteem was associated with father-reported lower adolescent aggression and father-reported higher adolescent prosocial behavior. Implications for further research are discussed.
Gabapentin may be hazardous in myasthenia gravis

A patient with painful neuropathy developed ocular, facial, and masticatory weakness and fatigue after 3 months of gabapentin (GBP) treatment (400 mg/day). An elevated level of serum acetylcholine receptor antibodies (AChR‐Ab) was detected. The patient recovered following pyridostigmine therapy and withdrawal of GBP and, 2 years later, is practically asymptomatic despite positive AChR‐Ab. Because of this clinical observation, we gave 150 mg/kg GBP to rats with experimental autoimmune myasthenia gravis (EAMG). Repetitive nerve stimulation at 3‐Hz was performed, and the 5th/1st amplitude ratio was used to calculate the decremental response. In all EAMG rats, GBP induced a transient, abnormal decrement (7–20%) 90 to 240 min after administration. No decrement was induced by GBP in normal rats. Thus, GBP aggravates the decrement in EAMG. The mechanism involved in the hitherto unreported possible unmasking of myasthenia gravis (MG) by GBP is unknown. Gabapentin should be used with caution in this disease. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Muscle Nerve 23: 1204–1208, 2000
Two-Phase Learning for Weakly Supervised Object Localization

Weakly supervised semantic segmentation and localization have a problem of focusing only on the most important parts of an image since they use only image-level annotations. In this paper, we solve this problem fundamentally via two-phase learning. Our networks are trained in two steps. In the first step, a conventional fully convolutional network (FCN) is trained to find the most discriminative parts of an image. In the second step, the activations on the most salient parts are suppressed by inference conditional feedback, and then the second learning is performed to find the area of the next most important parts. By combining the activations of both phases, the entire portion of the target object can be captured. Our proposed training scheme is novel and can be utilized in well-designed techniques for weakly supervised semantic segmentation, salient region detection, and object location prediction. Detailed experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of our two-phase learning in each task.
Diversity and Antimicrobial Properties of Lactic Acid Bacteria Isolated from Rhizosphere of Olive Trees and Desert Truffles of Tunisia

A total of 119 lactic acid bacteria (LAB) were isolated, by culture-dependant method, from rhizosphere samples of olive trees and desert truffles and evaluated for different biotechnological properties. Using the variability of the intergenic spacer 16S-23S and 16S rRNA gene sequences, the isolates were identified as the genera Lactococcus, Pediococcus, Lactobacillus, Weissella, and Enterococcus. All the strains showed proteolytic activity with variable rates 42% were EPS producers, while only 10% showed the ability to grow in 9% NaCl. In addition, a low rate of antibiotic resistance was detected among rhizospheric enterococci. Furthermore, a strong antibacterial activity against plant and/or pathogenic bacteria of Stenotrophomonas maltophilia, Pantoea agglomerans, Pseudomonas savastanoi, the food-borne Staphylococcus aureus, and Listeria monocytogenes was recorded. Antifungal activity evaluation showed that Botrytis cinerea was the most inhibited fungus followed by Penicillium expansum, Verticillium dahliae, and Aspergillus niger. Most of the active strains belonged to the genera Enterococcus and Weissella. This study led to suggest that environmental-derived LAB strains could be selected for technological application to control pathogenic bacteria and to protect food safety from postharvest deleterious microbiota.
Occasions and the Reliability of Classroom Observations: Alternative Conceptualizations and Methods of Analysis

Student–teacher interactions are dynamic relationships that change and evolve over the course of a school year. Measuring classroom quality through observations that focus on these interactions presents challenges when observations are conducted throughout the school year. Variability in observed scores could reflect true changes in the quality of student–teacher interaction or simply reflect measurement error. Classroom observation protocols should be designed to minimize measurement error while allowing measureable changes in the construct of interest. Treating occasions as fixed multivariate outcomes allows true changes to be separated from random measurement error. These outcomes may also be summarized through trend score composites to reflect different types of growth over the school year. We demonstrate the use of multivariate generalizability theory to estimate reliability for trend score composites, and we compare the results to traditional methods of analysis. Reliability estimates computed for average, linear, quadratic, and cubic trend scores from 118 classrooms participating in the MyTeachingPartner study indicate that universe scores account for between 57% and 88% of observed score variance.
Amikacin Pharmacokinetics in Patients with Spinal Cord Injury

The influence of chronic (> 1 yr duration) spinal cord injury (SCI) on the disposition of amikacin was studied in seven healthy subjects with SCI (five paraplegic, two tetraplegic) and seven able‐bodied controls (intact neuraxes). The time course of amikacin serum concentration after a 30‐minute infusion (7.5 mg/kg) was followed for up to 8.5 hours using fluorescence polarization immunoassay. Pharmacokinetic values were estimated by a noncompartmental analysis (NC). Amikacin steady‐state volume of distribution (Vss) was increased to 0.20 ± 0.04 l/kg (mean ± SD) as compared to 0.17 ± 0.02 l/kg in able‐bodied controls (p 0.03), and its mean terminal elimination half‐life in patients with SCI was prolonged by 0.64 hours over the control value of 2.11 ± 0.27 hours (p 0.01). The NC estimated mean residence time (MRT) in patients with SCI (3.65 ± 0.75 hrs) was 0.89 hours longer than that observed in controls (p 0.03). Our data suggest that the Vss, half‐life, and MRT of amikacin are increased in persons with chronic SCI. As a result, amikacin dosing regimens developed in able‐bodied humans may demonstrate diminished efficacy when extrapolated uncritically to these patients.
Optimal estimates from below for biharmonic Green functions

Optimal pointwise estimates are derived for the biharmonic Green function under Dirichlet boundary conditions in arbitrary C 4,γ-smooth domains. Maximum principles do not exist for fourth order elliptic equations and the Green function may change sign. It prevents using a Harnack inequality as for second order problems and hence complicates the derivation of optimal estimates. The present estimate is obtained by an asymptotic analysis. The estimate shows that this Green function is positive near the singularity and that a possible negative part is small in the sense that it is bounded by the product of the squared distances to the boundary.
‘How far down can you go? Can you get reincarnated as a floorboard?’ Religious education pedagogy, pupil motivation and teacher intelligence

A doctoral study is reported, of action research on the motivation of 12–14‐year‐old religious education pupils in England. An earlier master's dissertation gives the basis and cues a developed conceptual framework including adolescence, creativity, ethnography, pedagogy and iterativity. Four cycles of praxis are traced. The emergent factors in pupil motivation are dialogue with difference, existential and ethical interest and personal significance. Recommendations for religious education pedagogy are advanced but their epistemological status as possibilities for change, subject to assessment and refinement in successive contexts, is kept in view. A critical discussion integrates the recommendations with elements of current religious education debate and then reviews the study's methodology in the light of current discussions of the nature of action research. The article concludes with remarks on the power of action research as a teacher development tool.
Do internet-based sexual offenders reduce to normal, inadequate and deviant groups?

Abstract How heterogeneous men who download paedophilic content from the Internet are is unknown. Cluster analysis of 422 Internet-based sexual offenders examined whether they fell into clear groups according to their scores on a standard psychometric screening battery. Three clusters were identified; the apparently normal (near or within the normal range on all measures), the inadequate, and the deviant. Though the inadequate cluster had clear socio-affective deficits, they were not high in pro-offending measures. The deviant group were characterised by very poor victim empathy. Test differences between clusters were statistically significant. These findings were supported by a factor analysis which revealed two underlying test dimensions, emotional inadequacy and deviancy, upon which the inadequate and deviant were respectively raised. Emotional inadequacy correlated more with impulsivity than did deviancy. These results were not attributable to social desirability. Our clusters are equivalent to contact sexual offender groupings, and support general interventions with such persons.