Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Executive functioning in preschool children : utility of two new instruments

Executive Functioning skills develop with age, emerging in infancy and becoming established in early adulthood. Despite the considerable attention given them in child, adolescent and adult research, they have received only minimal attention in research with preschool age children. Many disorders of childhood begin to present themselves as the child begins to emerge from the largely non-verbal world of the toddler. The lack of research in this age group presents a very real problem for clinicians wanting to characterize disorders in time to begin early intervention programs. This study aims to contribute to a greater understanding of executive functioning in the preschool age group, by evaluating two developmentally appropriate instruments with an Australian sample. Thirty-three normally developing preschool children between the ages of 54 and 66 months were tested using two recently developed, preschool specific neuropsychological tests of executive functioning; Espy's (1997) Shape School Task (SST) and Byrne's et al., (1998) Picture Deletion Task for preschoolers (PDTP). Results showed consistency between U S and Australian data on measures of inhibitory control using the SST, but not on measures of mental flexibility. Results from the PDTP showed high levels of variability within the US and Australian samples and quite large discrepancies between US and Australian performances, particularly with regard to omission errors. The absence of IQ data and limited methodological detail in the US studies made comparison of results difficult to interpret. Additional analysis was undertaken on the Australian sample with the division of the group into two separate cohorts of 54-59 and 60-66 months of age. As expected, there were no developmental trends evident between the younger and the older age groups, suggesting that spurts in the development of impulse control and mental flexibility are most noticeable prior to the age of four years. It was concluded that in particular the SST showed promise as a tool for assessing aspects of executive functioning in preschool age children, but that the PDTP with its greater variability requires further refinement. Both tasks would benefit from further investigations with both normally developing children over a wider age range, and with clinical samples. The application of these instruments in two clinical case studies are also presented.
The Effect of Colistin Resistance-Associated Mutations on the Fitness of Acinetobacter baumannii

Acinetobacter baumannii had emerged as an important nosocomial and opportunistic pathogen worldwide. To assess the evolution of colistin resistance in A. baumannii and its effect on bacterial fitness, we exposed five independent colonies of A. baumannii ATCC 17978 to increasing concentrations of colistin in agar (4/5) and liquid media (1/5). Stable resistant isolates were analyzed using whole genome sequencing. All strains were colistin resistant after exposure to colistin. In addition to the previously reported lpxCAD and pmrAB mutations, we identified four novel putative colistin resistance genes: A1S_1983. hepA. A1S_3026, and rsfS. Lipopolysaccharide (LPS) loss mutants exhibited higher fitness costs than those of the pmrB mutant in nutrient-rich medium. The colistin-resistant mutants had a higher inhibition ratio in the serum growth experiment than that of the wild type strain in 100% serum. Minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) results showed that the LPS-deficient but not the pmrB mutant had an altered antibiotic resistance profile. The compensatory mutations partially or completely rescued the LPS-deficient’s fitness, suggesting that compensatory mutations play an important role in the emergence and spread of colistin resistance in A. baumannii.
A Practical Approach to Classifying and Managing Feeding Difficulties

Many young children are thought by their parents to eat poorly. Although the majority of these children are mildly affected, a small percentage have a serious feeding disorder. Nevertheless, even mildly affected children whose anxious parents adopt inappropriate feeding practices may experience consequences. Therefore, pediatricians must take all parental concerns seriously and offer appropriate guidance. This requires a workable classification of feeding problems and a systematic approach. The classification and approach we describe incorporate more recent considerations by specialists, both medical and psychological. In our model, children are categorized under the 3 principal eating behaviors that concern parents: limited appetite, selective intake, and fear of feeding. Each category includes a range from normal (misperceived) to severe (behavioral and organic). The feeding styles of caregivers (responsive, controlling, indulgent, and neglectful) are also incorporated. The objective is to allow the physician to efficiently sort out the wide variety of conditions, categorize them for therapy, and where necessary refer to specialists in the field.
Evaluation of Electrocardiographic Diagnosis of Ventricular Hypertrophy Based on Autopsy Comparison

wave equals or exceeds 5.0 mm.2. aVL or aVF when the Rwave equalsor exceeds 5.0 mm.d) Marked right axis deviation, greater than110 degrees suggests, but is not in itselfdiagnostic of, right ventricular hyper-trophy. [Note: Their subjects included40 per cent infants under the age of 5.The cases in which V1 showed M-shapedQRS complexes with prominent R waveand a ventricular activation time exceed-ing 0.07 second in lead V1 were all ex-cluded. ]II. Myers, Klein, and Stofer14They studied the 40 cases of preponderantright ventricular hypertrophy proved byautopsy, and classified them into the follow-ing 6 groups. Among these cases lead V3Rwastaken in 8 cases. The unipolar limb leads
Labour markets and representative institutions: evidence from colonial British America

Summary The literature has identified the quality of political institutions in the transition region as an essential but understudied component of growth, transition and reform. This paper aims to disentangle the determinants of democratic institutions by investigating if high income inequality is always detrimental to the emergence and stability of such regimes, and under what circumstances labour scarcity can mitigate its adverse effect. Instead of using a crosscountry data set of transition countries covering only 20 years and prone to simultaneity and reverse causality, I present a quantitative analysis of suffrage restrictions in the 13 British American colonies from their establishment to the American Revolution. I show that in cases of a labour shortage elites use the right to vote as a tool to attract workers. Democratic institutions thus emerge despite high inequality and redistribution pressures, and only when labour demand eases do those in power have an incentive to contract the suffrage, as predicted by standard inequality-democracy arguments. Using a new and unique colony-level panel data set covering nearly 150 years, I estimate that a 10 percentage point decrease in the scarcity of labour, conditional on inequality and other controls, decreases the inclusiveness of political institutions by over 8 per cent in the short run, and by close to 20 per cent in the long run.
Exercise-enhanced activation of glycogen synthase in human skeletal muscle.

The present study was undertaken to elucidate aspects of the regulatory mechanisms leading to enhanced glucose metabolism and insulin sensitivity of muscle after physical exertion. Biopsies were obtained from the vastus lateralis muscle of healthy volunteers before and after 60 min of bicycle exercise at 60% of their maximal aerobic capacity. Insulin binding to wheat germ agglutinin-purified muscle insulin receptors as well as basal and insulin-stimulated receptor kinase activity toward an exogenous substrate were unaltered by exercise. Muscle glycogen levels diminished from 3.35 +/- 0.26 to 1.85 +/- 0.13 mg/100 mg muscle (P less than 0.01) and the half-maximal activation constant of glycogen synthase for glucose 6-phosphate decreased from 0.62 +/- 0.05 to 0.25 +/- 0.02 mM (P less than 0.001). Total glycogen synthase activity was unchanged. In the absence of phosphatase inhibitors, glucose 6-phosphate-independent glycogen synthase activity of the crude enzyme extract increased during in vitro incubation. The initial rate of activation (through dephosphorylations) of glycogen synthase was 0.18 +/- 0.06 vs. 0.37 +/- 0.03 U.min-1.mg-1 protein before and after exercise, respectively (P less than 0.02). The total as well as the glycogen-associated phosphoprotein phosphatase activity was, however, unaffected by exercise.
Distinct Capacity Limits for Attention and Working Memory

A hallmark of both visual attention and working memory is their severe capacity limit: People can attentively track only about four objects in a multiple object tracking (MOT) task and can hold only up to four objects in visual working memory (VWM). It has been proposed that attention underlies the capacity limit of VWM. We tested this hypothesis by determining the effect of varying the load of a MOT task performed during the retention interval of a VWM task and comparing the resulting dual-task costs with those observed when a VWM task was performed concurrently with another VWM task or with a verbal working memory task. Instead of supporting the view that the capacity limit of VWM is solely attention based, the results indicate that VWM capacity is set by the interaction of visuospatial attentional, central amodal, and local task-specific sources of processing.
Breaking the Intergenerational Cycle of Physical Punishment

Fifteen women and five men participated in a study aimed at devising strategies to reduce the use of physical punishment in New Zealand. The potential problems with the use of physical punishment, the extent of its use in New Zealand, and the likelihood of intergenerational transmission are discussed to justify the aim of the study. The participants were all parents who had been smacked themselves, but who had decided not to smack their own children. Their ages ranged from 28 to 57, and only three had less than some tertiary education. They were from various ethnic backgrounds; fourteen had an occupation other than parenting, and nine were single parents. The participants had broken the intergenerational cycle of physical punishment: they had been smacked themselves but did not smack their own children. All participated in an individual, semi-structured interview, in which their childhood physical punishment, their decision not to smack, the maintenance of that decision, and their use of alternative disciplinary techniques were discussed. Four participated in a focus group, in which the strategies suggested in the interviews were discussed and refined to produce a final list of recommendations. The parents made a conscious decision against smacking, which involved a particular experience that prompted them to consider their disciplinary practices. Negative views of smacking (ineffective, modelling violence, and potential to escalate) were also helpful in making the decision.
Feeding Problems in Children With Neonatal Arterial Ischemic Stroke

Feeding disorders and the association of neonatal feeding disorders with other outcomes were assessed in a cohort of 84 children with neonatal arterial ischemic stroke at a tertiary children’s hospital. Both χ2 tests and Fisher’s exact test were used to test associations. Forty-one of 84 children (48.8%) had feeding difficulties. Infarcted vascular territory (unilateral vs bilateral, P = .24) and neonatal seizures (P = .39) were not associated with feeding problems. Children with at least 1 perinatal comorbidity (P = .002, odds ratio = 4.27; 95% confidence interval: 1.65-11.03) and specifically respiratory problems (P = .004, odds ratio = 3.85; 95% confidence interval: 1.49-9.93) were significantly more likely to have feeding problems. Neonatal feeding problems were predictive of feeding problems at 12 to 24 months of age (P = .026, odds ratio = 3.33; 95% confidence interval: 1.12-9.90) but did not predict speech delay (P = .97) or cerebral palsy (P = .70). Feeding problems are important sequelae of neonatal stroke, but neonatal feeding problems in this group do not predict speech delay or cerebral palsy.
Ceramide regulation of the tumor suppressor phosphatase PTEN in rafts isolated from neurotumor cell lines

The neutral sphingolipid ceramide has been implicated in the apoptotic death of cells by a number of different mechanisms, including activation of protein kinase B (Akt) phosphatase. Here we present evidence that ceramide recruits the tumor suppressor PTEN (phosphatase and tensin homolog deleted from chromosome 10) into membrane microdomains (rafts), where it could act to reduce the levels of polyphosphoinositides necessary for the activation of Akt. A PTEN construct with a red‐fluorescent protein (RFP) tag was overexpressed in both a human cell line derived from oligodendroglioma (HOG) and a rat pheochromocytoma cell line (PC12) by means of an inducible promoter system (Tet‐Off). Induction of PTEN by removal of doxycycline enhanced both capsase‐3 and cell death with staurosporine, wortmannin, or C2‐ceramide, whereas antisense PTEN had the reverse effect. Overexpression of PTEN also increased acid sphingomyelinase (ASMase) activity. PTEN normally has a generalized (cytosolic/membrane) distribution, but treatment with C2‐ceramide translocated a fraction of the PTEN to the plasma membrane, showing a plasma membrane distribution similar to that observed for a prenylated green‐fluorescent (GFP) construct. PTEN was then shown to translocate to the detergent‐resistant membrane microdomain fraction (raft) of the plasma membrane. The colocalization of sphingomyelinases, ceramide, polyphosphoinositides, and PTEN in the raft fraction further suggests that the association of these lipids is critical for regulating cell death. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
The Burden of Proof: Validity as Improvement of Instructional Practice

This article examines the validity of three recent efforts to improve instructional assessment in mathematics for special education students. In our view, to claim that an assessment is valid for informing instruction, researchers must present evidence indicating that the assessment information is in fact used by teachers as intended and that it results in improved student learning. We use examples from the three research efforts to illustrate these points and suggest fruitful areas for further research. This discussion highlights crucial relationships among constructs underlying effective practice and assessment in the context of the mathematics reform movement.
Comparison of Statistical Indicators for the Automatic Detection of 80 Hz Auditory Steady State Responses

Objective: To evaluate, using receiver operation characteristic (ROC) curves, the performance of several statistical indicators in the objective detection of 80 Hz steady state auditory evoked responses. Design: Steady state auditory evoked responses elicited by amplitude modulated tones of 500 and 1000 Hz, were obtained in 16 normal adults. Recordings were made at intensities ranging from 80 to 30 dB SPL and without stimulation. Four statistics: coherence synchrony measure, circularT2, a new variant of Hotelling T2(labeled HT2) and a test for hidden periodicity (F test) were calculated. The statistics were compared using ROC curves and bootstrapping techniques. Two outcome measures were considered: behavioral threshold prediction and averaging efficiency. Results: All indicators were highly accurate to detect a response (8 to 9 dB above mean behavioral threshold for the 1000 Hz and 14 to 16 dB for the 500 Hz carrier). Responses could be reliable detected after averaging about five individual epochs of long duration. No statistically significant differences were evidenced though in their capability to predict behavioral threshold or their averaging efficiency. Conclusions: Despite the more adequate statistical properties of some of these indicators no significant differences were found in their performance. Thus all of these indicators could be recommended for automatic detection of 80 Hz auditory steady state responses.
Why are Population Flows so Persistent?

Extending the neoclassical growth model to allow for mobile labor, small shocks to a local economy's productivity or quality of life along with small frictions to capital and labor mobility effect extended equilibrium transition paths. During such transitions local population may be far away from its steady-state level but local wages and housing prices remain relatively close to their steady-state levels. Exogenous technological progress together with a partially elastic local housing supply imply steady-state population flows from high productivity to high quality-of-life economies. In addition, consumption smoothing causes steady-state population density to be history dependent. Empirical evidence suggests that some time around 1930, the United States experienced a shock which realigned productivity across its localities and which set in motion extended population flows. The data further suggest that some time around 1960,> quality-of-life considerations became more important in driving population flows and that a capital shock temporarily drove population flows during the 1970s.
Gaze cuing of attention in snake phobic women: the influence of facial expression

Only a few studies investigated whether animal phobics exhibit attentional biases in contexts where no phobic stimuli are present. Among these, recent studies provided evidence for a bias toward facial expressions of fear and disgust in animal phobics. Such findings may be due to the fact that these expressions could signal the presence of a phobic object in the surroundings. To test this hypothesis and further investigate attentional biases for emotional faces in animal phobics, we conducted an experiment using a gaze-cuing paradigm in which participants’ attention was driven by the task-irrelevant gaze of a centrally presented face. We employed dynamic negative facial expressions of disgust, fear and anger and found an enhanced gaze-cuing effect in snake phobics as compared to controls, irrespective of facial expression. These results provide evidence of a general hypervigilance in animal phobics in the absence of phobic stimuli, and indicate that research on specific phobias should not be limited to symptom provocation paradigms.
Polymorphic variants of H-RAS protooncogene and their possible role in bladder cancer etiology

Introduction H-RAS gene is a protooncogene encoding p21ras, a small protein with GTPase activity. This protein is a component of many signaling cascades, while mutations in H-RAS gene are often found in urinary bladder cancer and leads to continuous transmission of signals stimulating cancer cell growth and proliferation. The T81C polymorphism of H-RAS gene is a SNP, which, although does not seem to impair p21ras protein structure and function, may contribute to the development of bladder cancer. Objectives The aim of our study was to characterize the prevalence and clinical significance of T81C polymorphism in patients with diagnosed bladder cancer. Materials and methods 132 patients with diagnosed urinary bladder cancer were included in this study. The control group consisted of 106 healthy individuals. The experimental material was DNA, isolated from tumor tissue and peripheral blood lymphocytes. T81C polymorphism was detected using the MSSCP method and DNA sequencing. Results In the examined DNA samples, frequent polymorphic variations were found in codon 27 of H-RAS gene. In order to assess the clinical relevance of the polymorphism, the results were compared with those for the control group. The homozygous CC variant occurred more frequently in bladder cancer patients than in healthy individuals. Conclusions DNA polymorphisms start to play an important role in evaluation of disease risk and progression. The occurrence of multiple variants of the same gene may contribute to differences in reactions to specific medications and sensitivity to carcinogens or DNA repair capacity. Our study demonstrated T81C polymorphism of H-RAS gene to have seemingly been associated with an increased risk of bladder cancer development.
On the Intertranslatability of Argumentation Semantics

Translations between different nonmonotonic formalisms always have been an important topic in the field, in particular to understand the knowledge-representation capabilities those formalisms offer. We provide such an investigation in terms of different semantics proposed for abstract argumentation frameworks, a nonmonotonic yet simple formalism which received increasing interest within the last decade. Although the properties of these different semantics are nowadays well understood, there are no explicit results about intertranslatability. We provide such translations wrt. different properties and also give a few novel complexity results which underlie some negative results.
An Analysis of Deep Neural Network Models for Practical Applications

Since the emergence of Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) as a prominent technique in the field of computer vision, the ImageNet classification challenge has played a major role in advancing the state-of-the-art. While accuracy figures have steadily increased, the resource utilisation of winning models has not been properly taken into account. In this work, we present a comprehensive analysis of important metrics in practical applications: accuracy, memory footprint, parameters, operations count, inference time and power consumption. Key findings are: (1) power consumption is independent of batch size and architecture; (2) accuracy and inference time are in a hyperbolic relationship; (3) energy constraint are an upper bound on the maximum achievable accuracy and model complexity; (4) the number of operations is a reliable estimate of the inference time. We believe our analysis provides a compelling set of information that helps design and engineer efficient DNNs.
BIM's up first

In vivo analysis of the genetic determinants of Myc-induced apoptosis reveals a specific requirement for the Bcl2 family protein Bim (Bcl2l11). Surprisingly, apoptosis induced by Myc in multiple solid tissues does not require p19Arf (Cdkn2a), whereas Puma (Bbc3) is required only in the context of sensitization by Myc to death induced by DNA damage.
Does Training Reduce Computer Anxiety

This study uses a modified version of the Computer Anxiety Rating Scale (CARS) (Heinnsen, Glass, & Knight, 1987) to longitudinally analyze levels of student anxiety over time. We predict that computer anxiety will behave as a transitory state (Spielberger, 1970) that will respond favorably to interventions. Specifically, we predict that levels of computer anxiety will decrease after students in an introductory computer applications course complete assignments and receive training using personal productivity software tools. Further, we also plan to analyze gender differences in levels of computer anxiety. We propose that women will experience higher levels of computer anxiety than men both before and after training. We have already collected data and plan to statistically test our hypotheses and draw conclusions based on the results obtained.